“How do you know that?” Mistral asked.
“My father had to make a phone call from here once when I was with him.”
“Why did he not use the phone at the Unseelie mound?” Mistral asked.
I looked at Doyle. “He didn’t trust the Unseelie,” Doyle said.
“Not in that moment. It was only weeks before he died.”
“What was the phone call about?” Mistral asked.
“He made me go with Sholto to see another part of the mound.”
“I thought you were afraid of the King of the sluagh,” Doyle said. “I was, but my father told me to go, and to remember that the sluagh had never harmed me. That the sluagh and goblin mounds were the only faerie mounds where I had never been beaten or abused. He was right. Now the sluagh are afraid that my being Sholto’s queen will destroy them as a people, but then I was just the daughter of Essus and they liked my father.”
“We all did,” Mistral said.
“Not all,” Doyle said.
“Who did not?” Mistral asked.“Whoever killed him. It had to be another sidhe warrior. No other could have stood against Prince Essus.” It was the first time I’d heard Doyle say out loud what I’d always known, that somewhere in the faces of those around me at court was my father’s murderer.
Doyle turned to me. “Who will you call?”
“I’ll call for help. I’ll say the truth, that the Seelie are trying to take me back to the king’s hands. That they do not believe his guilt, and I need help.”
“They cannot defeat the Seelie,” Doyle said.
“No, but neither can the Seelie defend themselves against human authority. If they do, they lose their right to live on American soil. They will be banished from the last country that will have them.”
The two men looked at me, then Mistral nodded. “Clever.”
“You put the Seelie in a situation that they cannot win,” Doyle said. “If they fail their king, he could have them killed.”
“They have the ability to bring him down as king, Doyle. If they are too weak-willed to do it, then their fate is their own.”
“Harsh words,” he said softly.
“I thought being pregnant would make me softer, but when I stood alone in the snow and realized that Onilwyn meant to kill me, knowing that I was with child,” I shook my head, trying to put it into words, “some terrible resolve took hold of me. Or perhaps it was Gran dying in my arms that finally made me realize.”
“Realize what, Meredith?”
“That I cannot afford to be weak, or even too terribly kind anymore. The time for such things must be over, Doyle. I will save faerie if I can, but I will protect my children and the men I love above all else.”
“Even above taking the throne?” Doyle asked.
I nodded. “You saw the noble houses when the queen presented me, Doyle. We have less than half the houses supporting me. I thought Andais was strong enough to push whatever heir she chose upon the nobles, but if the nobles of her court are conspiring with the nobles of the Seelie Court, she’s lost too much power over them. There is no way to be safe on this throne, unless we can find more allies here.”
“Are you giving up the crown?” Doyle asked, words very careful. “No, but I am saying that I cannot take it unless my safety and the safety of my kings and children can be guaranteed. I will not lose another person to assassins, and I will not die at their hands as my father did.” I put my hands on my stomach. Still so flat, but I had seen their tiny figures on the ultrasound. I would not lose them. “We go to the Western Lands, and we stay there until the babies are born, or until we are certain that we are safe.”
“We will never be safe, Meredith,” Doyle said.
“So be it, then,” I said.
“Be careful what you say, Princess,” Mistral said.
“I say the truth, Mistral. There are too many schemes, plots, enemies, or simply people who want to use me. My own cousin used our grandmother as a weapon, and set her up to be killed. So many of the sidhe care nothing for the lesser fey, and that’s wrong too. If I am to be queen here, then I will be queen of all, not just of the sidhe.”
“Merry…,” Doyle said.
“No, Doyle, the lesser fey haven’t tried to kill me and mine yet. Why should I keep being loyal to the very people who keep trying to hurt me?”
“Because you are part sidhe.”
“I am also part human and part brownie. We’ll need a guide to the phone room. It’s been too long since I was there. But we will call the police and they will come and get us out. We will be on a plane to Los Angeles, and the plane itself will be enough metal and technology to protect us.”
“It is not a happy thing for me to fly, Meredith,” Doyle said.
I smiled at him. “I know that much metal is a problem for most of you, but it is the safest way for us to travel, and it will guarantee that we have human media on the other end waiting for us. We are going to embrace the media, because this is war, Doyle. Not a war of weapons, but of public opinion. Faerie grows stronger on the belief of mortals, so we will give them ourselves to believe in.”
“Have you been planning this all along?” he asked.
“No, no, but it’s time to embrace my own strengths. I was raised human, Doyle. I realize now that my father took me out of faerie as a child for the same reason I’m going now, because it was safer.”
“You are exiling all of us, including our children, from faerie.”
I went to him, wrapping my arms around him so that we were pressed together. “Only you lost to me would be exile.”
He searched my face. “Meredith, do not give up a throne for me.”
“I admit that the fact that they keep trying to kill you hardest of all affects my decisions, but it’s not just that, Doyle. The magic around me grows wilder, and I cannot control it. I no longer know how much and what is returning. There are things that were driven from faerie long ago, not at the humans’ request, but at our own. What if I bring back things that could truly destroy us all, human and fey alike? I am too dangerous to be this close to the faerie mounds.”
“Faerie has come to Los Angeles, Merry, or had you forgotten?” “That new bit of faerie cost us Frost, so no, I hadn’t forgotten. If I had not been in the new part of faerie Taranis could not have taken me. We will put guards on the doors and I at least will stay in the human world, until the Goddess or God tell me otherwise.”
“What dream did the Goddess give you, to make you so resolved?” he asked.
“It is the dream and the Seelie outside the sluagh’s home. I bring danger to all who would shelter me inside faerie. It is time to go home.”
“Faerie is home,” he said.
I shook my head. “I saw Los Angeles as a punishment, but no longer. I will treat it as a refuge, and I will make it our home.”
“I have never been to the city before,” Mistral said. “I am not sure I will thrive there.”
I held my hand out to the other man. “You will be by my side, Mistral. You will watch my body grow ripe, and you will hold our children in your hands. What more is home than that?”
He came to me then, to us, and they wrapped me in the strength of their arms. I buried my face in the scent of Doyle’s chest, and hid against his body. My resolve would have been firmer if the other arms holding me had been Frost’s. By returning to the human world and cutting myself off from faerie, I was cutting myself off from the last piece of him. The white stag was a fey creature, and it would not come to a metal city. I pushed the thought away. I was right in this choice. I felt it, like a firm yes in my mind. It was time to embrace the other part of my culture. It was time to go to Los Angeles and make it my home.CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHATTAN, SHOLTO’S COUSIN, WAS ON THE DOOR AS GUARD again. His brother was not with him. A nightflyer stood on the other side of the door, flat upon the floor, its great wings pulled tight around it so that it looked like a black cloak. Standing, the nightflyer was a little shorter than I. I looked into its huge, lidless eyes, and a glance at Chattan’s own eyes showed plainly where the genetics for those large liquid dark eyes had come from.
He was Sholto’s cousin on his father’s side.
Chattan came to attention, saying, “Princess Meredith, it is good to see you up and well. This is Tarlach. He is our uncle.”
I knew what he meant by the “our.”
“Greetings, Uncle Tarlach. It is good to meet another of my king’s relatives.”
Tarlach bowed in that liquid way that the nightflyers had, as if their spines worked in ways that human spines never would. His voice had some of the sibilance of a snake goblin, but there was also a sound of wind and open sky in his words, as if the sound that wild geese make in the autumn could be mingled with the edge of a storm and become human speech.
“It has been long since a sidhe called me uncle.”
“I bear the child of your nephew and your king. By sluagh law that makes us family. The sluagh have never stood on ceremony to make their family larger. Blood calls to blood.” In the Unseelie Court that would have been a threatening line, blood to blood, but among the sluagh it simply meant that I carried Tarlach’s genetics in my body.
“You know our ways; that is good. You are your father’s daughter.”