"As well you should have, Princess, but I will offer my oath to you."
"I have not asked an oath of service from anyone," I said.
"No, you have not; it was the queen who forced Prince Essus to take our oath to him. He would have trusted to our loyalty and love of him."
Bryluen fussed in her sleep and I raised her to put her against my shoulder. She liked to be upright sometimes. I said, "Andais doesn't trust love, only fear."
"Essus understood that those who follow out of love are more powerful than those who follow out of fear."
"There is no loyalty in fear, only resentment," I said.
"You have been fair and gentle with those of us who would allow it, and fierce and ruthless with those who would not. I ask that you would take my oath so that I may serve you, Princess Meredith, daughter of Essus."
"Once you give oath you are bound to me forever, or until my death, and I may not be as much my father's daughter as you think."
"You are more ruthless than he was, and if you fight, you kill your enemy. I have never seen you offer mercy to anyone who tried to kill you or those dear to you."
"Shouldn't that give you pause, before you tie yourself to me, Cathbodua?"
"No, because if your father had held your edge of harshness he would have slain his assassin and not let love stay his hand. He would have been forced to kill his sister and become king, and so much pain, death, and useless bloodletting would have been avoided."
"Are you saying my father was weak?"
"Never, but he was softer than you are, Princess."
I laughed. "I think most of the nobles would not agree with you."
"Then they have not been paying attention since your hands of power manifested, Princess Meredith."
"I kill because I am not the warrior my father was, and I never will be. I am too small to fight as he could."
"Does it matter why someone has the will to win?" Cathbodua asked.
"I think it does," I said.
"I agree with Cathbodua," Galen said.
I looked down at him holding Gwenwyfar, sitting close enough to touch Kitto, his long leg close to the edge of the raven cloak as it pooled on the floor. He had that serious look in his eyes again; it was partly tiredness maybe, but his eyes looked older than they had before, as if his near-eighty years of life were catching up with him.
"Results are what matter, Merry, not motives. I think our friend Detective Lucy would say, leave the motives to the lawyers and the psychiatrists."
"We are not police officers, just private detectives who help them out on crime involving our people."
"That's not what I mean, Merry," he said, turning more toward me with the baby nestled and sleeping in his arms.
Doyle said, "I think Galen means that you will not try to win the battle with flair, or by some chivalrous code. If forced, you simply destroy your enemy; there is no mercy in you when lives are at stake, though outside that you are very merciful."
"My father was six feet tall and muscled, and had centuries of training as a warrior, and one of his hands of power was usable over a distance. He could afford mercy in battle; I can't."
Bryluen moved against my shoulder, making a small sound. I started rubbing her upper shoulders in small circles, being careful of her wings lower down, though they seemed remarkably flexible. They were definitely more skin and reptile scales over bone than butterfly scales over exoskeleton. That strengthened Sholto's view that sluagh genetics had given her the wings. I was still reserving judgment until the genetic tests came back.
"But that's it exactly," Cathbodua said.
It made me turn back to her. "What do you mean?"
"Essus thought as of old, when we could afford battles and assassinations, but we are in modern-day America now, and we need a modern ruler to see us through this strange new land of technology and social issues. You are the future, Princess, and for the first time in centuries I think our race has a future."
"You mean the babies," I said.
"Not just yours, Princess, but Maeve's son, and Nicca and Biddy's little girl. We are fertile once more thanks to you."
"And all this because the queen cried," I said.
"No, because you made the queen cry."
"If I were as ruthless as you say, I would have sent Doyle to assassinate the queen months ago."
"You want him alive more than you want her dead; that's love, Princess."
"Doesn't that make me soft?"
"No," Galen said, "because I know I would do anything to keep our babies and you safe, anything. Holding Gwenwyfar in my arms, seeing you there with Bryluen, doesn't make me feel soft. It makes me feel fierce, as if for the first time I have things I'm willing to fight for, to kill for, if I have to, and it's love that's given me this new ... resolve. I will not fail you again through hesitation, or lack of will; I will be the man you and our children need me to be."
I could see that resolve in his face, so sure, so firm, so ... resolute. I was happy to see it, because I'd feared for my gentle Galen in this sea of brutal politics, but at the same time it made me a little afraid, because I wasn't sure that deciding to be harsher would automatically give you the skills to be that. I just didn't know.
"Take my oath, Princess; let me give you my vow," Cathbodua said.
"You wish to serve me until either your death or mine?"
"Yes, and if Goddess wills it, the babes in your arms will be as worthy of my oath as you and your father."
"I pray that it is so," Doyle said.
"So do I," Frost and Mistral said together.
Everyone agreed, and I said a silent prayer. "Please, Goddess, let our children be worthy of the loyalty and love of their people."
Rose petals began to fall from the air above my head like a sweet-scented yes. Guards moved from behind us to join Cathbodua where she knelt. The rose petals began to spread through the room as if the entire ceiling were raining roses.
I took their oaths, and I prayed to be worthy of them, because in the beginning most leaders mean well; it is later when the best of intentions twist into something darker. I knew that Andais, Taranis, and my grandfather, Uar the Cruel, were as much a part of my genetics as my father, Essus. There was more insanity than sanity in my family tree; I hoped that everyone kneeling in front of me remembered that.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
MOST OF THE guards went about their business, because otherwise the hallway outside the dining room wouldn't have been big enough for us to walk from there to the nursery. There were enough people in the house now that sometimes it felt claustrophobic, so I'd made it clear that outside of special circumstances, like impressing the queen or guarding me from her, less was more when it came to my retinue. So it was just me, the triplets, and their fathers, except for Mistral, who had gone off with the other guards to tend to something. He didn't really enjoy the nursery duties and often tried to be somewhere else when diapers, bottles, and the like came up. I'd been debating whether I should make him do more of it or let it go. The other men were more than enough, so he wasn't absolutely needed, but still, he was their father; shouldn't he help?
The door at the far end of the white marble hallway opened, and Liam Reed, all of thirteen months old, saw us and grinned. Suddenly the hallway didn't look stately, or cold, or like people in ball gowns should be gliding down it; it just looked like home.
If you've ever wondered why toddlers are called toddlers, all you had to do was watch one who was new at walking. Liam toddled toward us with one of the human nannies chasing behind. He was still unsteady after a month of walking, but he was getting quicker at it. He came staggering toward us as fast as he could, saying, "Babies, babies, babies!" He had a huge grin on his face and was just so excited. He'd been that way since we brought the triplets home. Kadyi, Nicca and Biddy's daughter, who had just started sitting up last week, was apparently not "baby" enough for Liam anymore, because he was fascinated with the newborns.
Li
am was as blond and blue-eyed as his mother, Maeve Reed, pretended to be for the human media, and so far he was just a really pretty baby with straight golden blond hair and big, pretty, very human-looking blue eyes. His skin was the pale constant gold of Maeve's, like a pale but perfect suntan, easily passing for human.
Rhys scooped him up and said, "You want to see the babies?"
"Babies!" Liam said, at the top of his voice.
Gwenwyfar and Bryluen both protested with tiny cries. Galen and I started patting and rocking them automatically. It had been only a few days, but for a chance to sleep I'd learned to do what I could to soothe them. Only Alastair stayed quiet and deeply asleep in Sholto's arms as we walked toward the nursery.
Rhys held Liam up so he could see Gwenwyfar first. "Baby!" Liam said, again at the top of his voice.
Gwenwyfar started to cry.
"Shhh," Rhys said, "remember use your quiet voice."
Liam turned a solemn face to Rhys, then leaned over Bryluen and said much more softly, "Baby."
I smiled and moved her so that Bryluen could look back at Liam. He reached out very gently and touched her curls, tracing the tiny horn buds, which he seemed fascinated with, and almost-whispered, "Pitty." Which meant pretty.
"Yes, Bryluen is very pretty."
"Bree-lu," he said, trying to wrap his toddler words around her name. He'd been trying for three days and that was the closest he'd managed.
I smiled at him. "That's right, Liam. This is Bryluen."
"Bree-lu-non."
"Bryluen," I said.
He screwed his face up into a picture of concentration and then blurted out, "Bree!"
We all laughed, and I said, "Bree will do."
Liam smiled up at all of us, and then gazed back down at Bryluen, and said, happily and still a little too loud, "Bree!"
She stared up at him with those big, solemn eyes. He reached down and tried to pat her cheek but missed and poked her in the eye. Bryluen started to cry.
Liam yelled, "Sorry, baby!"
Alastair finally woke up and joined the girls crying. Liam's nursemaid offered to take him from Rhys, but Liam wrapped his arms around Rhys's neck and started to cry. "No, don't want to go!"
Maeve glided gracefully into the hallway, calling above the crying, "What happened?"
Galen said, "Liam poked Bryluen in the eye, by accident." He had to raise his voice, too.
Maeve went up to Rhys and he started to hand the boy to her, but Liam clung to Rhys, screaming, "No! No!"
Maeve stopped trying to get him from Rhys, and once he settled back into Rhys's arms he stopped yelling, tears still wet on his face as he gave a petulant face to his mother. She had been in Europe filming for most of the last five months and had been home for only three days. Liam called her Mommy, but he didn't always act like she was Mommy.
Maeve couldn't keep the hurt out of her face for a moment, and then she smiled brightly.
Rhys said, "Liam, go to your mommy."
"No, baby room," Liam said, very serious, very certain of what he wanted and what he didn't.
"I think he wants to go to the nursery and watch the babies," I said.
"It's okay," Maeve said. "I flew in for his first birthday and then had to leave again."
"You shouldn't have to support us all, if it means you're apart from your son," Doyle said.
"For centuries we were just like the human nobility; no one saw their own children. They were all raised by nannies and caretakers," Maeve said.
"But you are not content with that," Frost said.
Maeve shook her head, and tears sparkled in her eyes. She shook her head a little more vigorously, and then managed a voice that held nothing but good cheer. "I'll join you in the nursery in a few minutes." Then she walked back out the way she'd come and left us with Liam and the babies. At least they'd quieted, and we weren't listening to high-pitched newborn cries echoing off the marble walls.
"It's not right that she's sacrificing her time with Liam for us," Galen said.
"Agreed," Frost said.
"Yes," Doyle said.
Rhys was drying the tears off Liam's face. "He doesn't mean to hurt her feelings."
"I know," I said. Liam had spent much of the last few months falling asleep across my ever-growing stomach, so that at the end he'd looked like the arch of a rainbow, but his nannies couldn't get him to settle down like I could. He'd put his little hand on my stomach and say, "Babies," as if he'd been waiting for them to finally come outside and be able to play.
I wasn't sure what to do with the fact that Liam had bonded with our little family group while Maeve was away. I wasn't even sure there was anything to be done, but it seemed like a topic for a family discussion. We actually had family meetings to discuss the complicated intricacies of our happy home. Most of the time it really was happy, but with this many people involved it didn't just stay happily-ever-after without a lot of discussion and work. I was learning that happily-ever-after was the beginning of the next chapter, not the end of the story.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
THAT NIGHT I dreamed. It seemed to be just a dream, not Goddess-sent or prophetic, but a dream like millions of people everywhere have every night. It began well, with my father getting to meet my babies, his grandchildren, but in the way of dreams, what is comforting begins to disturb. It's nothing you can put a finger upon, but the wonderful begins to unsettle you, and you know something is wrong with what you're seeing, you just don't know what yet ... but you will.
In all the long years since my father's death I had never once dreamed of him, and yet there he stood, tall and handsome with his fall of black hair loose around his legs like a curtain of black water, flowing and moving as he held Bryluen in his arms. The wind played in his hair but didn't tangle it, the way it did for Doyle and Frost. They'd said the wind liked them, and the wind in my dream liked my father.
It was strange, but I never forgot he was dead, even in a dream with him smiling down at me. He was dead and this wasn't real, could never be real again.
"Meredith," he said, smiling, "she is beautiful, my little girl."
"I wish you were here to hold your grandchildren for real, Father."
He laid a gentle kiss on Bryluen's forehead and then raised his face, frowning slightly. "What is in her hair?"
I came closer, and he lowered the baby enough for me to spread her red curls and show the tiny horn buds. He startled, and if I hadn't been standing close he might have dropped her, but I took Bryluen in my arms and moved back. I thought, I need to put her in her cradle, and one appeared.
"I thought she was the one, she looks so like us, but if she has horns she can't be ours."
I laid Bryluen in the cradle and looked up at my raven-haired father with his tricolored eyes, completely different from Bryluen's large blue ones. He looked nothing like me, or the baby. It had saddened me as a child that I hadn't looked more like my father.
"What do you mean she looks like us? She looks nothing like you, Father."
He held Alastair in his arms now. The black hair did look more like my father, and all newborns look slightly unfinished so that people can see what they want to see in their features. I think it's a way of making everyone feel included, like the baby belongs to everyone.
He leaned over Alastair and frowned. "Is he spotted like a puppy?"
"Yes," I said, and went to take my son from his arms. He didn't fight when I took Alastair. I put him in the cradle behind me. Bryluen wasn't there, she was safely away, and even as I thought it, Alastair vanished from the cradle, too.
I knew he would be holding Gwenwyfar when I turned back, and he was; he was unwrapping her from the blanket she was swaddled in, but she hadn't been swaddled when we put her down for the night. She hated to be confined like that, and as if my thinking it had caused it, she started to cry, flailing small sturdy arms, tiny hands in fists as if she would fight the world.
He ran his big fingers through her hair.
r /> "She doesn't have horns, if that's what you're looking for," I said.
He lifted Gwenwyfar free of the blanket and looked at the skin that the onesie left bare. "She looks sidhe," he said.
My pulse was beating too fast as I moved to take my daughter from him. He let me do it, I think because she was crying. She quieted in my arms, and I moved back to lay her in the crib. She vanished, and I knew that they were safe. I didn't think they'd been in the dream for real, but just in case I'd wanted them safely away, because I knew that whoever this man looked like, he wasn't my father.
I thought, This isn't real, it's just a dream. That should have been enough to shatter the dream. I waited for it to unravel and to wake up in my bed sandwiched between Frost and Doyle, but the dream held.
I had never tried to break a dream with magic, but now I reached outward, tentatively, and found that I could feel the edges of the dream almost like a plastic film that I could press against. Press against, but not break.
"So it is true, you are able to travel through dream."
"I don't know what you mean," I said, but my pulse was in my throat. Something was terribly wrong.
"You travel in your dreams to help your soldiers," he said.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You cannot lie to me in dream, Meredith. Your soldiers wear your sign."
In the final battle with my cousin, Prince Cel, I had been protected by the National Guard, and all of them who had been wounded, or had been touched by my blood, seemed to be able to call upon me when I slept. If they were in danger of their lives they could call me to them, and the Goddess gave me the means to show them to safety or bring them the help they needed. Some of them wore the nails that had been part of the shrapnel in the bomb my cousin had set to kill me. They had tied leather cords around the nails and wore them like a talisman, and through those nails they could call me. The black coach of faerie that had been a limousine when I was first called home was now in the desert, a black armored vehicle of whatever kind was needed. It traveled without a driver and went where it was needed, because I had told it to help them, and somehow it did. The coach had always been wild magic, never fully understood or fully controlled by anyone, but it had listened to me.
"Who are you?" I asked.