“I can think of no one better than the woman I love,” he said. I couldn’t really argue with that—not that I’d wanted to, anyway—and we’d left it for a time. Then there had been the business of rescuing Max, bringing Mom and Sadie safely out of the Mundane realm, and dealing with the Iron Queen. Life had been moving at a pretty fast pace, and we hadn’t had time to discuss such details as babies and inheritance.
Then Oriana was rescued from the Iron Queen’s oubliette, and as she struggled with her long recovery, the Heavies began discussing things like succession. You see, if childless Oriana were to perish, the rulership of metal would be passed to Micah, but he was also childless. Couple that with the lingering animosity between those of metal and those of stone, and it was a most precarious situation indeed.
Naturally, Micah and I had resumed our discussions about children. No, discussion was too strong a word; Micah had gushed about how much he loved me, and how happy he would be once we had our first child. First, as in he expected me to do this multiple times. Me, I just sat there, smiling and nodding, hoping he didn’t notice my sweaty palms. It seemed that, as long as I was a part of Micah’s life, the threat of babies was a part of mine as well.
I glanced at Sadie and sighed again. “Heirs. That’s what he wants.”
“Is that what you want?” she pressed.
“I guess.” Sadie raised her eyebrows; if she had been wearing glasses, it would have been the perfect “quiet, this is a library” look. “I mean, he needs an heir. And I don’t want him having them with anybody else. Besides, once I’m pregnant, I get to be Lady Silverstrand.”
Sadie pursed her lips and asked, “You’re already his consort, and you keep saying that you don’t want anything to do with politics. Do you really need to be Lady Silverstrand?”
Leave it to the little one to ask the tough questions. “I want to be his wife.”
“You mean you have to pop out a kid first?” Sadie demanded.
“No, I just have to be pregnant. Then, poof,” I flicked out my fingers, miming a small explosion, “we’re married.”
“That’s ridiculous. What if you were pregnant with someone else’s baby?” I glared at her, so she amended, “I know you wouldn’t do that. But still, this custom doesn’t seem very well thought out.”
“Tell me about it.” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Stupid customs or not, it’s what’s done around here. And, since I want to be his wife, babies are definitely in my future.”
“You love him that much?”
“I love him that much.”
“Well, then.” Sadie looked around the room. “Do you think Micah will let me set up a library?”
“With what books?” I countered.
“I’m sure the silverkin can get some.” She got to her feet, holding her hands together as if she were framing a scene. “All good aunts read to their nieces and nephews. Just sayin’.”
I threw the heart at her.
3
Since setting up a library was the first thing Sadie had shown any interest in here in the Otherworld, I went ahead and summoned the silverkin in order to get things started. After all, in addition to lots and lots of books, we would need shelves, tables, chairs, and a few lamps. Sadie even wanted a card catalog to keep everything organized. As if anyone besides her would be able to make heads or tails of that system.
Before long, Sadie was discussing her new library with the silverkin; she’d even made a few book wish lists, along with some fairly detailed schematics. How long has she been planning this library, anyway? While the little guys were normally quite attentive, today they were so aflutter they could hardly pay attention. After a bit of questioning, I learned why the silverkin were so agitated—Max had returned to the manor while Micah and I were at the Gathering of the Heavies and had brought his typical path of destruction home with him. Since we had entered via the garden door and taken the back stairs to our chamber, we’d avoided the mess Max had created.
The mess in question did not sit well with the silverkin’s leader, an energetic little fellow I called Shep, short for Shepherd. He’s forever inciting his flock of ’kin to scrub harder, faster, and more efficiently. He has no qualms about kneeling down to clean off the soles of your shoes while you’re still wearing them. He’d scrub under my toenails if I let him.
Shep and the rest of the silverkin had truly met their match in my brother, the epitome of slovenliness. Max typically trudged home in the dark of night, tracking mud, branches, and other filthy things across Shep’s shining floors. Once, he’d even brought home a clutch of boggarts, easily the ickiest creatures in the Otherworld. They ranged in size from chihuahua to bull terrier, though boggarts walked upright, and tended toward mud-brown pelts, long pointy snouts and ears, and enormous bellies; that last bit was because they ate everything in sight, regardless of whether it was actually food. And, they stank something fierce.
Shep had barred the doors to the kitchens and the larder, which didn’t go over too well with the clutch. In retaliation, the boggarts had immediately claimed the front sitting room as their own. They were a pain in every sense of the word, from their insistence that Max had won them, fair and square, and that they needed to stay close to their leader, to the skinned knee I’d suffered as we herded them into the garden. Boggarts are not indoor pets.
It turned out that Max hadn’t actually won the boggarts. In reality, he’d lost a rather epic bout of gambling and, unable to pay his debts (again), had been cursed. It was Mom who had detected the curse, and Mom who had known the proper way to reverse it. Then she had to re-curse the boggarts with short-term amnesia, since we couldn’t very well have a band of scruffy beasts trolling about the Otherworld, claiming that they had seen a Fairy Queen living in the Whispering Dell, and one who should have been long since dead, at that.
With a sigh, I eyed the evidence of Max’s latest revels. The front door had several long scrapes in it, the atrium was trashed, and there was mud on the ceiling. The ceiling. At least we hadn’t found any boggarts, or other beasties, hiding in the corners or under a chair. Yet.
And where was the one responsible for this mess? Max, true to form, was snoring away on the couch, muddy boots propped up on the cushions, while Shep directed the silvery cleanup crew. I looked on in awe, amazed that my brother was such a jerk. A filthy, inconsiderate jerk. I mean, he could at least have the common decency to look ashamed. Awake and ashamed.
Although the way Mom had described Dad’s younger days, I was fathered by the very same sort of jerk. Intrigued, I left Sadie with the silverkin and went in search of Mom. She’d come in from the gardens and was taking her tea in the kitchen, oblivious to the chaos in the front of the manor. I sat beside her and grabbed a scone.
“Was Dad ever as bad as Max?” I began. Mom nearly blew out her tea.
“Oh, Beau was much worse,” Mom replied. “Give Max time, though. He’s still new at raising hell.” I smiled as I worried at my scone, reducing its tasty goodness to a heap of crumbs.
“What if…what if you find a man who isn’t so fiery?” I asked.
“Like Micah?” Mom asked. Okay, I know I was being obvious, but she could have let me beat around the bush a little. “I think Micah is a fine man. Don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then, what’s troubling you about him?”
“He’s not troubling me,” I clarified. “He wants a baby. I don’t—not yet, anyway—but I want to be more than a useless consort.”
“Do not make the mistake of seeing consorts as useless,” Mom said. “Many have shaped our world from the bedchamber.”
“I don’t want to shape a world! I just…” I shoved the plate away and sent crumbs flying. A silverkin was there in an instant to sweep them up. “Why do I have to be obviously pregnant before I’m Lady Silverstrand?”
“Ah. You don’t feel that consorts are useless; you feel useless as one.”
“Of course I do,” I grumbled, now pouring my own c
up of tea. “No one pays any attention to me; no one cares what I do or say.”
“Micah does.”
“All they do is stare at my stomach, looking for bulges.” I dumped too much sugar in my tea, stirred it a few times, and pushed it away. “So? Why do I have to be pregnant?”
“To prove that your relationship has been consummated,” Mom replied. “In the old days, a bride was held in a tower from her wedding night until she was heavy with child. That way, no one could dispute who’d fathered the babe.”
Well, that was pragmatic. “I hope Micah doesn’t stick me in a tower,” I mumbled.
“Come, now. It wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Mom!”
“That was the original intent of the honeymoon,” she continued, undeterred. “To drink sweet mead and come away with a babe for your troubles.”
“Is that what you and Dad did?” I sneered.
“Careful, or I’ll tell you,” she warned. She watched me squirm for a few moments before she continued. “As to your first question, Max will be fine. For all that he’s of metal, there’s fire in his blood, and he’s never gotten a chance to feel it. Let him burn a bit.”
I nodded, gazing past my mother to the heavy mantel above the kitchen hearth. Since the kitchen was always the heart of the home, it’s where we’d put the one of the few mementos we had from the Raven Compound—the picture of Max, Sadie, and me in the backyard beneath the fairy tree, taken when we were kids. As I looked at the sweet-faced boy crammed between his sisters, I tried to reconcile the brother of my memory with the man of today. “If he burns any more, Micah may extinguish him.”
“That he may,” Mom murmured. “That, he may.”
4
The next morning dawned bright and clear, complete with fluffy clouds and a soft breeze. I should have known that something bizarre was going to happen from the deceptively calm way the day began.
I’d spent the bulk of the morning shuffling around the manor, bored out of my mind. Micah had been summoned to some sort of a meeting that had to do with the Gold Queen, and, being that I’d insulted Old Stoney only the day prior, we both thought it best to give the old rock a bit of time to cool down. So I had helped Micah back into his formal attire and handed him his sword, and, after a lingering goodbye, he went off to hear about what I hoped was the Gold Queen’s most excellent recovery.
And really, it’s not that I minded being left to my own devices. I liked having free time to explore the manor and its surrounding gardens and orchards, since it was now, and probably always would be, my home, too. It was a far cry from the tiny two-room apartment I had rented in the Mundane realm, not to mention the gaudy opulence of the Raven Compound. Just like the girl in the fairy tale, I’d found myself a charming prince and moved right on in to his castle.
However, spending the last few weeks surrounded by this never-ending luxury had left me feeling more than a bit jaded. The Otherworld is an amazing land, filled with untold wonders and beauty, yes, but sometimes I just wanted to play a game on my phone. My poor, trusty, old phone, which by now had probably been confiscated and dissected by Peacekeepers, who were now very aware of how often I had called for takeout.
Speaking of takeout, I missed eating it in front of my elderly Picture Vision while I watched bad postwar movies and good prewar movies. Not to mention all the types of takeout I, um, took out—pizza, grinders, rubbery Chinese. Yeah, the silverkin could whip up anything I asked for, but they couldn’t quite manage the proper containers. Yes, I missed the little white cartons, and paper coffee cups with their badly fitting plastic lids, and my car, and…
I scrubbed my face with my hands; this trip down memory lane wasn’t going to accomplish much, other than feed my misguided nostalgia for the less fine things in life. Searching for a distraction, I left my rooms and prowled the manor’s silver hallways. Eventually, I found Sadie on the second level, standing alongside a heap of scrolls and books while she attempted to explain to Shep the basic concept of a library; I don’t think it ever occurred to her that the silverkin don’t read and therefore have little use for books.
Come to think of it, I wondered if they could read. They didn’t technically have eyes, and they were constantly bumping into things, but something was helping them navigate. Sonar? I made a mental note to ask Micah, and a second mental note to ask Sadie if she’d like to teach remedial reading to a bunch of metal critters. A class full of silverkin would sure keep her occupied.
Not wanting to get involved in any library-related hubbub, I continued down the hall to the large windows that looked out over the gardens. I saw Mom in her usual spot, meditating yet again; at this rate, she was on track to become an honorary Buddhist.
Really, I understood why Mom was behaving the way she was. It had been obvious how much she and Dad loved each other, even to us kids. Once, I’d tried imagining what I’d do if Micah disappeared, and the mere imagining was terrible.
“You went into hiding?” I’d asked her, back when she was still working locator spells. Luckily, Mom had been in the rare mood to share some of her history. It seemed that she had made quite a few enemies while she was queen of Connacht, back in her mortal days, and a fair few during her later days as the queen of the Seelie Court. “And that was how you ended up in Fairy?”
“Not exactly,” she replied. “My mortal enemies grew to be more than my court could handle, so I retreated to a brugh.” A brugh, I then learned, was a fairy hill. A single night’s revelry under the hill could be as short as a day, or as long as a century in the Mundane realm’s timekeeping.
Mom didn’t just party there. She became their queen.
“Drink enough of their wine, and one’s mortality burns away,” she had explained. “Then the prior Seelie Queen, Eleanore, was killed, and I took up the throne.” I’d learned long ago that when Mom uttered innocent-sounding phrases such as “took up the throne,” she actually meant something along the lines of “I fought a long and bloody battle and killed all who opposed me.” My mom’s badass that way.
“So when did you decide to leave?” asked Sadie, who had literally been on the edge of her seat. Not that I blamed her, since a story about Mom’s past was a rare treat indeed.
“I never decided, not one way or the other. Beau did that for me.” Mom smiled, gazing at a far-off memory. “He’d managed to infiltrate his way into the brugh, all yells and kicks. He was a scrappy boy, Beau was.” Sadie and I had laughed at that; around us, at least, Dad was anything but scrappy. “Once my guard captured him, he was dragged before my throne, this impertinent mortal with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.”
“Love at first sight!” Sadie squealed.
“More like love after his next bath,” Mom said. “After a few days of having your dear father around, I realized that my court’s magic would eventually overpower Beau’s, leaving him more fey than Elemental. I couldn’t let him lose his identity, so we slipped away.”
“And your court never looked for you?” I asked. If Micah went missing, I had no doubt that all those of metal would overturn every rock and twig in the Otherworld in order to find him. Shep would follow, straightening things up in their wake.
“I imagine they were too busy naming my successor,” Mom replied, in that way of hers that meant something a bit more involved had happened.
“You gave up being a queen for Dad?” Sadie asked, a bit awed.
“Oh, it wasn’t such a sacrifice,” Mom said. “I left behind a lonely life as a monarch for a husband and three wonderful babes. I’d make the same choice again a thousand times over, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Even though he’s gone now?” I ventured.
“Aye,” Mom murmured, tucking a length of hair behind my ear. “Even so.”
As I remembered that short discussion, I wondered if I should go down to the gardens and try to talk with her. I mean, all of this moping disguised as meditating was getting us nowhere. In the midst of my internal debate, Max emerged from his roo
m.
“Hey,” I greeted. All I got was a grunt in reply. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, yet.” Max shoved past me and made his way toward the kitchen. Not having anything better to do, I followed, then watched in utter amazement as he ate four bowls of oatmeal in the space of a few minutes, drained two truly enormous mugs of coffee, and then asked for a plate of eggs. It was like he was fattening up for hibernation.
“Where’s Micah?” he asked as he shoveled eggs into his mouth.
“With the bigwigs.” I picked at some bread. “And Sadie’s trying to build a library with the silverkin, and Mom is doing the strong and silent thing again, which means that I’m bored out of my mind.”
Max took another swig of coffee and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his shirt. Classy. “Want to come to the village with me?”
I eyed him dubiously, remembering his return the prior evening. “Depends. What’s going on there?”
He set down his tankard with a thud and scowled. “What’s Micah told you I do?” he countered.
“We’re all wondering what you do,” I snapped. “You come home in the dead of night, looking like you were dragged through the woods with these things chasing you…What are you doing?”
“I used to hang out at the market, but after the boggarts—”
“Wait.” I put my palms flat on the table and stared at my idiot brother. “Do you mean the Goblin Market?”
By the look on Max’s face, that was exactly what he meant. The Goblin Market was where the true evil congregated; the creatures that called the market home made the Iron Court look like a petting zoo. We’d been warned to stay away from the Goblin Market for as long as I could remember. Well, Dad had warned us. Mom had threatened us with eternal grounding.
“You are not,” I said. “If Mom finds out—”
“I haven’t been there since—”
“What good reason could you have for going there anyway?” I demanded.
“I was looking for Dad.” Max exhaled heavily, drank some more coffee, and worried at the edge of the table. “I figure if I go out in public, raise a little hell, word will get around. Eventually, it’ll get around to Dad.”
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