I nodded, raising the tea up to my face, not to drink, but just to breathe in the sweet scent of peppermint and spearmint intermingled. "I'll be okay, Jeremy."
He raised eyebrows that I happened to know he had plucked and shaped. Apparently trow have that bushy-eyebrow-across-the-entire-head thing going. The beetle-browed Neanderthal look just doesn't go with Armani suits and Gucci loafers.
I could have just left it at that, and by our culture he'd have had to accept my word and let it go. But Jeremy had been my boss and friend for years, long before he knew I was Princess anything. He'd given me a job on my own merits, not because the publicity of having a real live faerie princess on staff brought in business galore. In fact, the massive media coverage had made me useless for undercover work unless I used major personal glamour to change my appearance. Most of the reporters who specialized in tracking the fey had some magical ability. If they spotted the glamour, then it dissolved. Sometimes just for that reporter, but sometimes, if they were psychically talented enough, the glamour failed for everyone in sight. That was a very, very bad thing in the middle of an undercover operation.
I'd been out among the humans long enough to think I owed Jeremy an explanation. "I don't exactly know what happened, Jeremy. Rhys started ranting about goblins, then he made a grab for Kitto, and I threw him into the wall."Jeremy looked surprised, which wasn't very flattering, or polite.
I frowned at him. "I may not be in the same weight class as they are, Jeremy, but I can put my fist through a car door and not break a bone."
"Your guards could probably lift the car up and drop it on somebody."
I took a sip of tea. "Yeah, they're stronger than they look."
He gave a small laugh. "You, my dainty beauty, do not look anywhere near as tough as you are."
"I return the compliment," I said, toasting him with the mug.
He smiled, flashing that expensive smile. "Yes, I have surprised a few humans in my day." The smile faded around the edges. "If you had just told me to mind my own business, I'd have done it, but you volunteered information, so I'm going to ask some questions. Just tell me if you don't want to answer."
I nodded. "I started it, Jeremy. Go ahead."
"Rhys didn't get blood on his coat from you throwing him into a wall."
"That's not a question," I said.
He shrugged. "How did he get bloodied?"
"A knife."
"Doyle?"
I shook my head. "I cut Rhys."
"Because he tried to hurt Kitto?"
I nodded, but I met Jeremy's direct gaze with one of my own. "They wouldn't obey my orders last night. If I don't gain their respect, Jeremy, I may gain the throne, but I will be queen in name only. I don't want to risk my life and the lives of people I care about just to be some sort of figurehead."
"So you cut Rhys up to prove a point?"
"Partly. And partly, I just reacted, didn't think. He was trying to hurt Kitto over some stupid thing that happened centuries ago. Kitto has never given Rhys any reason to hate him like this."
"Our fair-haired guard hates goblins, Merry."
"Kitto is a goblin, Jeremy. He can't change that."
Jeremy nodded. "No, he can't."
We looked at each other. "What am I going to do?"
"You don't mean just with Rhys, do you?"
We exchanged another long look, and I had to look down, but that meant staring into Kitto's searching blue gaze. Everywhere I looked, people were expecting something of me. Kitto wanted me to take care of him. Jeremy, well, he just wanted me to be happy, I think.
"I thought I had their respect back in Illinois, but it's as if something's changed over the last three months."
"What?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know."
Kitto raised his head, which slid my hand to the warm curve of his neck. "Doyle," he said softly.
I looked down at him. "What about Doyle?"
He half lowered his eyes, as if afraid to look directly at me. He wasn't being coy; it was a habitual gesture, a subservient gesture. "Doyle says you made a good start, but you have made no use of your treaty with the goblins." He raised his eyes a little. "You have the goblins as your allies for only three more months, Merry. For three more months if the Unseelie go to battle, it is you who the Queen must come to for the goblin's aid, not our King Kurag. Doyle fears you are simply going to fuck everyone and make no move on your enemies."
"What's he want me to do, declare war on someone?"
Kitto hid his face against my knee. "I do not know, mistress, but I do know that the others follow Doyle's lead. It is he who you must win over, not the others."
Jeremy pushed away from my desk, came closer to the two of us. "I find it a little strange that sidhe warriors would speak so freely in front of you. No offense, Kitto, but you are a goblin. Why would they confide in you?"
"They did not, as you say, confide in me. But sometimes they talk over me like I am not there. Like you just did."
Jeremy frowned. "I am talking to you, not over you, Kitto."
He looked up at both of us. "But before, you were talking as if I were something that couldn't understand you, like a dog or a chair. All of you do it."
I blinked down at him, staring into that innocent face. I wanted to deny it, but I held my tongue and thought about what he'd said. Was he right? The conversation that I'd just had with Jeremy had been private, sort of. Kitto had just been there. I hadn't wanted his opinion, or his help. Truthfully, I hadn't thought he could be of any help. I saw him as someone to be taken care of, a duty, not a friend, not, truthfully, a person.
I sighed and let my hand fall away from him, so that he was touching me, but I wasn't touching him. His eyes widened frantically, and he grabbed my hand, put it back on his head. "Please, don't be angry with me. Please!"
"I'm not angry, Kitto, but I think you're right. I treat you like you're a pet, not a person. I would never just sit and pet one of the other men. I've been taking liberties. I'm sorry."
He rose to his knees. "No, no, that's not what I meant. I love that you touch me. It makes me feel safe. It's the only thing that makes me feel safe here in this... place." The look on his face was distant, lost
I offered the tea mug to Jeremy, who took it and put it on the edge of my desk. I cupped Kitto's face in my hands, moved his gaze back to mine. "You tell me I treat you like a dog, a chair, and I try to treat you like a person, and you don't want that either. I don't understand what you want of me, Kitto."
He put his warm hands against mine, pressed my flesh firm against his face. His hands were so small; he was the only man I'd ever met with hands smaller than mine. "I always want you to touch me, Merry. Don't stop. I don't mind that people talk over me. It lets me hear things, know things."
"Kitto," I said softly.
He clambered into my lap like a child, forcing my hands to encircle him to keep him from falling. My right hand slid over the slickness of the scales on his back; my left cupped the smooth, hairless curve of his thigh. The sidhe didn't have much body hair, and snake goblins had none. The mixed heritage had left Kitto smooth and perfect like he'd been waxed from neck to toe. It added to the doll-like image and made him seem perpetually childlike. He'd been a product of the last sidhe-goblin war, which meant Kitto was a little over two thousand years old. I knew my history, I knew the date, but holding him in my arms like an oversize doll, it was hard to really believe it. Almost impossible to grasp that the man curled in my lap had been born not long before the death of Christ.Doyle was even older, and Frost, too. Rhys, under a different name, which he would never tell me, had been worshipped as a death deity. Nicca was only a few hundred years old, young by comparison. Galen was only seventy years older than me; in the courts it was almost the same thing as being raised together.
I'd grown up seeing them all remain the same. They were immortal; I wasn't. I was aging a little slower than a pure human, but not by much. I was about a decade or two behind where I should have been. Twenty extra years was great, but it wasn't forever.
I looked up at Jeremy for a hint of what to do with the goblin. He spread his hands wide. "Don't look at me. I've never had an employee crawl into my lap and want to be petted."
"He doesn't exactly want to be petted," I said. "He wants to be reassured."
"If you have all the answers, Merry, then why don't you reassure him?" Jeremy said.
"A little privacy, maybe," I said. The moment I asked for privacy I felt Kitto's body begin to relax against me. He slid his arm underneath my suit jacket, to curve at the small of my back. His knees unclenched enough so that he tucked them underneath my arm, sending my hand on his thigh sliding downward to the very edge of his shorts. Since Kitto never saw clients, he got to dress like it was casual day every day.
Jeremy straightened his tie, smoothed the edges of his jacket. Nervous gestures, all. "I'll leave you two alone, though I think that once Doyle finds out you're alone except for Kitto, he'll be in here."
"We don't need much time," I said.
"My condolences," Jeremy said. He opened his mouth like he was going to add to that, then shook his head, tugged on the sleeves of his suit jacket, and went, very firmly, for the door.
The door shut behind him, and I looked down at the goblin. We weren't going to do what Jeremy obviously thought we were going to do. I'd never had intercourse with Kitto, and didn't plan to start now. I'd had to share flesh with one of the goblins to cement the treaty between them and me, but sharing flesh can mean a lot of things to a goblin. Technically, once I'd let Kitto leave a perfect imprint of his teeth in my shoulder, we'd shared flesh, and it was done. But what should have been a scar had faded, then vanished from my skin. I'd shown King Kurag the bite mark when it was fresh, and neither Kitto nor I had mentioned that it had faded. Without the scar there was no proof that I belonged to Kitto.