She’d considered running away to another country, but the fae operated in a reality outside of human space and time. Where she was wouldn’t matter to them; they would always find her. She’d also briefly considered having the baby adopted, but her heart screamedno. No, she wouldn’t give the baby away. It was hers. And who was to say that Levantiana wouldn’t just take the baby away if it was adopted by someone else, anyway?
As she lay there, her phone screen lit up. It was a text from Annie.
How are you? I’m worried about you.
I’m fine, Faye replied quickly.Don’t worry. The midwife is keeping a close eye on me, and so are the old wives in the village.She added a smiley face at the end and pressed send, guilty that she was lying to her best friend. She wasn’t okay, but she didn’t want to worry Annie.
Annie replied with a sad emoji face, and Faye put her phone back on her bedside table, guilt gnawing at her. She’d expected something, some entreaty, a visit or message from one of the queens, both of whom thought they were the child’s rightful guardian. Or, at least a dream – Faye had communed with Finn in dream many times before now. But Faye’s dreams of late had been quiet and strangely unremarkable, even though she had been practising the faerie magic, and even though she had been thinking about Morgana and the Crystal Castle, trying to unravel the prayer she had found in the reverend’s book.
Yet, something waited at the edge of things. Something was coming like a cloud over the sea. It wasn’t just the arrival of the baby.
She had to be ready for Levantiana and Moronoe, and whatever fae powers they chose to use to wrest her baby from her.
Over my dead body, she thought grimly.
And maybe it would come to that.
42
That night, Faye dreamed of Finn Beatha.
In the dream, Finn stood before her on the beach. Even though she knew him well – every dip and rise of his perfectly sculpted body, what his smooth honey-brown skin smelled like, how it tasted – it was as though she was seeing him for the first time. He wore the kilt he’d worn on stage when she’d gone to see his band, Dal Riada, play at a bar in Edinburgh with Aisha. Yet, even in the dream, the memory of Aisha made her step back from the faerie king; he had as good as murdered her. Faye had to resist him. He was dangerous.
‘I have nothing to say to you!’ she shouted. ‘Leave me alone!’
‘Sidhe-leth. Please.’ Finn stepped slowly towards her, his hands open and raised up in a submissive gesture. ‘I know you are with child. My child. You cannot ignore me.’
Faye felt an uncontrolled hilarity threaten to take her over. It wasn’t amusement, but shock that pushed the laugh out of her mouth. She felt consciousness tug at her, as if it rejected what Finn had said.
‘Your child? Are you mad?’ She heard her own voice. It was high-pitched, not like herself.
Finn reached out to touch her belly.
‘You know it is,’ he said softly.
She pushed his hand away. ‘Don’t you dare touch me. This is Rav’s baby.’
‘It is mine,’ Finn insisted.
‘How do you know?’
He was barefoot and wore a soft black T-shirt on top of a kilt; his dirty blonde hair had grown a little and touched his shoulders. Why he’d chosen to wear human clothes to see her instead of his faerie robes, she wasn’t sure: perhaps to make her forget what he was. She had to keep Finn’s identity straight in her mind. Faye made herself recall his sudden temper, his selfish pout, like a child denied a toy.He has no human morality. He takes what he wants, uses it and discards it. Uses people.
‘I know,’ he replied, reaching for her. ‘Faye. You know it too.’
‘It’s Rav’s baby,’ she insisted. ‘Moronoe told me.’
‘You believe a faerie queen over me. Why?’
‘Because she has no reason to lie. Because she is my aunt,’ Faye argued back hotly. ‘Because she has never betrayed me and murdered my friends.’
‘The fact she is your aunt is nothing to do with anything. She is the High Queen of Falias, and I am at war with her realm. She will have offered to take the baby, yes? Told you that she must have it, otherwise great evil will befall you and the child? Am I right?’ He searched her expression, but Faye turned her face away. ‘Yes. I am.’ He nodded.
‘She didn’t lie,’ Faye insisted doggedly, but she realised Finn was right in questioning whether she should trust Moronoe over anyone else. ‘She said she has nothing to do with the war. She is not speaking to Lyr because of it. Her…her palace is not even connected to his. She said the prophecy that you believe in is wrong.’ Faye stammered, searching for something that would explain why she believed Moronoe.
Finn sighed. ‘She played on your weaknesses. She knows you have a desire to belong to something now that your mother and grandmother are gone. She made you believe you had some kind of family bond with her.’ He stroked her arm, gently; she pulled it away. ‘And she also knew that your relationship with the human – who I tried to protect you from, but who you insisted on learning the hard way what manner of man he was – was one fraught with tension. If she could make you believe your baby was his, you would be more likely to give it up, given his treatment of you.’ He continued.
‘You’re saying that Lyr and Moronoe have plotted all along to take this baby. Because it’s yours.’
