Doyle squeezed my arm and that helped me think. It helped me tighten my magical shields, and the moment I did, the fear washed away from me, but I could still see it on the reporters’ faces.
Wright and O’Brian had their hands on their guns, looking around apprehensively. I spilled my shields outward to them, the way I’d done the glamour over Doyle and Frost earlier. Wright’s shoulders dropped as if a weight had gone from him. O’Brian said, “What was that?”
“Is that,” Doyle said.
“What?” she asked.
The reporters parted like a curtain. They simply didn’t want to be near whatever was walking between them. The Fear Dearg walked toward us grinning his snaggletoothed grin. I’d been right; it was an evil grin. His enjoyment of the reporters’ fear showed in his face and the jaunty roll of his walk.
He came to stand in front of us, and then went down on one knee before us. “My queen,” he said.
A camera flashed, freezing the image for tomorrow’s news, or tonight’s. The Fear Dearg looked in the direction of the flash and there was a yell, then a man went running down the sidewalk. His many cameras jangled as he raced away screaming, as if all the devil’s Dandy Dogs were chasing him.
The other reporters took a collective step back. The Fear Dearg gave an evil chuckle, and just the sound of it was enough to make me break out in goose bumps. If I’d been alone on some dark road it would have been terrifying.
“You must practice that laugh,” I said. “It’s positively evil.”
He grinned up at me. “A fey likes to know his work is appreciated, my queen.”
A reporter called out in a shaking voice, “He called you his queen. Does that mean you did keep the throne?”
The Fear Dearg got to his feet and bounced at them, hands up, and said, “Boo!” The reporters fled on that side. He made a move toward the other group, but most of them backed away, hands held out, as if to show that they meant no harm.
One woman asked in a breathless voice, “Meredith, are you queen of the Unseelie Court?”
“No,” I answered.
The Fear Dearg looked at me. “Shall I tell her the crown that sat upon your head first?”
“Not here,” Doyle said.
The Fear Dearg glared up at him. “I did not ask you, Darkness. If we were kin, then it would be different, but I owe you nothing, only her.”
I realized that Doyle refusing to acknowledge that his ancestry was similar to the Fear Dearg’s had insulted the fey.
Doyle seemed to figure it out then too, because he said, “I do not hide my mixed heritage, Fear Dearg. I only meant that I had none of your blood in my veins, which is only truth.”
“Ay, but you’ve had our blood on your sword, haven’t you? Before you were the Queen’s Darkness, before you were Nudons and healed at your magic spring, you were other things, other names.” The Fear Dearg lowered his voice with each word, until the remaining reporters began to come closer trying to hear. I had known that Doyle had been something before he was worshipped as a god, and that he had not sprung full grown at the side of Queen Andais, but I had never asked. The older of the sidhe did not like to talk about the time before, when our people were greater.
The Fear Dearg whirled and jumped at the reporters with a loud “Hah!” They ran, some falling down and others trampling them underfoot in a mad panic to be away from him. The ones on the ground got up and raced after the others.
O’Brian said, “It’s not strictly legal to use magic on the press.”
The Fear Dearg cocked his head to one side like a bird that has spied a worm. The look made O’Brian swallow a little harder, but with my shields around her she held her ground. “And how would you have moved them, girlie?”
“Officer O’Brian,” she said.
He grinned at her, and I felt her flinch, but she didn’t move back. It earned her a point for bravery, but I wasn’t certain that taunting him after he’d shown such obvious sexual interest in her during Bittersweet’s questioning was a good idea. Sometimes a little fear is a wise thing.
He started to invade her personal space, and I stepped between them. “What do you want, Fear Dearg? I appreciate the help, I do, but you did not do it out of the goodness of your heart.”
He leered at O’Brian, then turned the leer to me. It didn’t bother me. “I have no goodness in my heart, my queen, only evil.”
“No one is only evil,” I said.
The leer grew until his face was a mask of evil intent, but it was the kind of evil they put on Halloween masks. “You’re too young to understand what I am.”
“I know what evil is,” I said, “and it does not come with a cartoon mask and a leer. Evil comes in the face of those who are supposed to love and care for you, but they don’t. Evil comes with a slap, or a hand holding you underwater until you can’t breathe, and all the time her face is serene, not angry, not mad, because she believes that she has the right.”
His evil face began to fold down into something more serious. He gazed up at me, and said, “Rumors say you endured much abuse at the hands of your sidhe relatives.”
Doyle turned to the police officers. “Give us some privacy, please?”
Wright and O’Brian exchanged glances, then Wright shrugged. “We were just told to get you safely into your car, so fine, we’ll wait over here.”
O’Brian tried to protest, but her partner insisted. They argued quietly as they gave us our privacy.
Doyle’s hand on my arm tightened, and Frost moved closer. They were telling me silently not to share stories out of court, but the queen had never cared that I talked about some things. “And their friends, never forget their friends, I never could,” I said.
He looked from Frost to Doyle, and asked, “Did they torment you before they became your lovers?”
I shook my head. “No, I have taken no lover who ever raised a hand to me.”
“You have cleared out the Unseelie sithen. They’ve all come to L.A. with you. Who is left, who tormented you so?”“I’ve taken only the guards away, not the nobles,” I said.
“But all guards are noble among the sidhe, or they are not worthy of guarding a queen, or a king.”
I shrugged. “I have called to me that which is mine.”
He went to his knees again, but closer to my feet, so that I had to fight the urge to back up a step. Earlier I would have, but something about this moment made me want to be the queen that the Fear Dearg needed. Doyle seemed to feel me think it, because he put a hand on my back as if to help me not give ground. Frost simply moved to my other side, so that he almost touched me, but he was keeping his hands free for weapons, just in case. In public they tried to keep one of them free for that, though sometimes it was hard to comfort me and guard me at the same time.
“You have not called the Fear Dearg, Queen Meredith.”
“I did not know they were mine to call.”
“We were cursed and our women destroyed so we would cease to be a people. No matter how long-lived we are, the Fear Dearg are a dying race.”
“I have never heard even a hint that the Fear Dearg have women, or of a curse.”
He turned those black, uptilted eyes to Doyle at my side. “Ask that one if I speak the truth.”
I looked at Doyle. He simply nodded.
“We and the Red Caps almost beat the sidhe. We were two proud races, and we existed on bloodshed. The sidhe came to help the humans, to save them.” His voice was bitter.
“You would have killed every man, woman, and child on the isle,” Doyle said.
“Mayhap we would have,” he said, “but it was our right to do it. They were our worshippers before they were yours, sidhe.”
“And what is a god if he destroys all those who worship him, Fear Dearg?”
“What is a god who has lost all his followers, Nudons?”
“I am no god, nor was I ever.”
“But we all thought we were, didn’t we, Darkness?” He gave that disturbing chuckle again.
Doyle nodded, his hand on my back tensing. “We thought many things that turned out not to be true.”
“Ay, that we did, Darkness.” The Fear Dearg sounded sad.
“I will tell you truth, Fear Dearg. I had forgotten you and your people and what happened so long ago.”
He looked up at Doyle. “Oh, ay, the sidhe do so many things that they simply forget. They wash their hands not in water, or even blood, but forgetfulness and time.”
“Meredith cannot do what you want.”
“She is crowned queen of the sluagh, and for a brief moment queen of the Unseelie. Crowned by faerie and Goddess, that’s what you made us wait for, Darkness. You and your people, we were cursed to be nameless, childless, homeless, until a queen crowned rightly by Goddesses and faerie itself granted us a name again.” He looked up at me. “It was a way for them to curse us forever without sounding like it was forever. It was a way to torment us. We used to come before every new queen and ask for our names back, and they all refused.”
“They remembered what you were, Fear Dearg,” Doyle said.
The Fear Dearg turned to Frost. “And you, Killing Frost, why so silent? Do you have no opinions but the ones that Darkness gives you? That’s the rumor, you’re his sub.”
I wasn’t entirely sure that Frost would understand that last part, but he knew he was being taunted. “I do not remember the Fear Dearg’s fate. I woke to winter, and your people were gone.”