“I will remind them that I am part nightflyer and not just sidhe.”
“Would me by your side hurt you or help you?” I asked.
“Hurt, I think. I will talk to my people, then return for you all. Taranis has gone mad to besiege us.”
“Why has not the Unseelie Court aided the sluagh?” Doyle asked. “I will find out,” Sholto said, and had his hand on the door when Mistral called out.
“My congratulations to you, King Sholto, on being king to Meredith’s queen.” His voice was almost neutral when he said it—almost.
“Congratulations to you, too, Storm Lord, though with so many kings around, I am not certain what kingdom you will share.” With that Sholto was gone, with Henry at his side.
“What did he mean, wishing me congratulations?” Mistral asked. “I know that the princess carries Sholto’s child and yours, Doyle. I heard that from the conversation in the bed when we woke.”
“Mistral, didn’t the queen tell you?” I asked.
“I was told that you had finally gotten with child by some of the others. I have had little news of anything but pain.” He would not look at me as he said the next. “She was so angry when you left, Princess. Your green knight destroyed her hall of torture, so she took me as a guest to her room to be chained against her wall. There I have been at her mercy since you left.”
I touched his arm, but he pulled away.
“I feared she would hurt you for being with me,” I said. “I am so sorry.”
“I knew it was the price I would pay.” He almost looked at me, but finally let his long gray hair fall between us like a curtain to hide behind. “I was content to pay, because I had hoped…” he shook his head. “I hoped too late.” He turned to Doyle and held out his hand. “I envy you, Captain.”
Doyle came to take his hand, dark to light, clasping forearms together. “I cannot believe the queen did not tell her court the truth.”
“I have only been released from the chains this night, so whatever she told her court, I do not know. I am too far out of favor to be told anything. I was released and lured to my death by one of our own. Onilwyn needs killing, my captain.”
“He betrayed you?”
“He led me into an ambush of Seelie archers, armed with cold iron arrows.”
“This is the first I have heard of it. He will be punished.”
“He’s already been punished,” I said.
They both looked at me. “What do you mean, Merry?” Doyle asked. “Onilwyn is dead.”
“By whose hand?” Mistral asked.
“Mine.”
“What?” Mistral asked.
Doyle touched my arm, and studied my face. “What has happened while I was in the human hospital?”
I told them as quick a version as I could. They were full of questions about the wild hunt, and Doyle held me while I confirmed that Gran was dead.
“The Seelie being at the gates here is partly my fault. I sent the Seelie sidhe who were forced to join the hunt back to Taranis with a message—that I had killed Onilwyn by my own hand, and that the chalice had chosen to come to my hand.”
“Why did you show them the chalice when the queen has forbidden it?” Mistral asked.
“To save your life.”
“You used the chalice to save me?” Mistral asked.
“Yes.”
“You should not have wasted its magic on me. Doyle you had to save, and Sholto, but I was not worth such a risk.”
Doyle looked at me.
“He doesn’t know,” I said.
“I do not think he does.”
Mistral looked from one to the other of us. “What do I not know?”
“I did not mention Clothra’s name without purpose, Mistral. Just as she had one son with three fathers, so I will have two babes with three fathers each.”
“So many kings; what will you do with all of them, Princess?”
“Meredith, Mistral. Call me Meredith. If I am to bear your child, we should at least be on a first-name basis.”
Mistral stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. He turned back to Doyle. “She speaks in riddles. If I had been one of the fathers, the queen would have released me and let me go to the Western lands.”“We found out only moments before the king abducted Meredith. So there was not time for you to come to us in the Western lands because we were here in faerie, and in St. Louis.”
“Did she not know that I was one of the fathers?” Mistral asked.
“I informed her that Meredith was with child and who the fathers were personally,” Doyle said.
“She unchained me, but she told me nothing.” He turned to me, his eyes full of different colors, as if tiny slices of the sky, or clouds of different colors, were blowing through them. He didn’t seem to know what to think or feel, and his uncertainty was bare in his eyes.
I went to him, touched his arm, and gazed into those uncertain eyes. “You are to be a father, Mistral.”
“But I was only with you twice.”
I smiled. “You know what they say; once is enough.”
He smiled then, a little uncertainly. He glanced at Doyle. “Is it true?” “It is. I was there when the visions spoke loudly to more than just Meredith. We are both to be fathers.” Doyle flashed that white smile in his dark face.
Mistral’s face filled with light. His eyes were suddenly the blue of a clear, summer sky. He touched my face very gently, as if afraid I would break. “Pregnant, with my child?” He made it a question.
“Yes,” I said.
I watched clouds slide across his eyes, like a reflection. His eyes were the color of a rainy sky. That sky began to rain down his strong, pale cheeks. I watched him cry, and of all the possible reactions; that was not what I’d expected from the Storm Lord. He was always so fierce in the bedroom and in battle, and now he, of all the fathers, was the only one who wept when he found out. Every time I think I understand men, I’m wrong again.
His voice came a little broken around the edges. “Why did she not tell me? Why did she hurt me when I had done what she said she wanted most in all the world? To have an heir of her own bloodline to sit on her throne was her wish, and she tortured me for it. Why?”
I knew who “she” was. I’d noticed that many of the guards spoke of Queen Andais as “she.” She was their queen, and the absolute ruler of their fates. The only woman they had had hope of touching for so very long.
I said the only truth I had to offer. “I don’t know.”
Doyle came and gripped the other man’s shoulder. “Logic has not ruled the queen for many years.”
It was a polite way of saying that Andais was mad. She was, but to say it out loud was not always wise.
I touched Mistral’s other arm. He jerked as if the touch had hurt. “If she finds out that faerie has handfasted you to Sholto, she could use it as an excuse to take the rest of us back into her guard.”
“She cannot take the fathers of my children,” I said, but I sounded more sure than I felt.
Mistral voiced my fears. “She is the queen, and she can do as she likes.”
“She swore to give you all to me if you would come to my bed. She would be forsworn. The wild hunt is real again, and oathbreakers, even royal ones, can be hunted again.”
Mistral grabbed my arm hard enough that it hurt immediately. “Do not threaten her, Meredith. For the love of the Goddess herself, do not give her reason to see you as a danger.”
“You’re hurting me, Mistral,” I said softly.
He eased his grip, but did not let me go. “Do not think that being with her brother’s grandchildren will keep you safe from her.”
“I am not safe inside faerie. I know that. That is why we must leave as soon as possible for Los Angeles. We must bring charges against the king and drag him before the human media. We must get away from faerie. The very magic that allows us to do great things is also a weapon to be used against us all.” I turned to Doyle, and laid my other hand on his arm. “The Goddess has warned me that the sidhe have not come round to her way of thinking. There are too many enemies here. We must go back to the city and surround ourselves with metal and technology. It will limit the other’s power.”
“It will limit ours,” Mistral said.
“Yes, but without the magic of faerie, I trust my guards to keep me safe with gun and blade.”
“Faerie has come to us in Los Angeles, Merry,” Doyle said.
I nodded. “Yes, but the closer we are to the faerie mounds, the more our enemies can gather round us. I’m not even certain that the Seelie are my enemies, but they are not my friends. They seek to control me and the magic I represent.”
“Then we must go to Los Angeles,” Doyle said.
“Sholto cannot leave his people besieged by the Seelie,” Mistral said.
“Nor can we,” I said.
“What do you mean to do, Meredith?” Doyle asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not certain, but I know that I need to convince them that the sluagh did not steal me away. I need to convince them that they cannot steal the chalice from me.”
“They are asking for you and the chalice,” Mistral said. “I think they understand that it is your hand it comes to.”
“True,” I said. I thought, “What do I do?” Goddess, what do I do to fix this? Then I had an idea, a very human idea. “There’s a room in the sluagh mound just like in the Unseelie mound. There’s a phone and computer, an office.”