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“I mean on the fey side,” she said, as if it were obvious that her own people would be trying to prevent her from leaving.
“Okay, back up. You came through the portal in the basement—”
“Because nobody knows about it. Uncle used it to bring in his bootlegging supplies, so he kept it quiet.”
“And you needed to slip away unnoticed because…?”
“I told you, I don’t want—”
“I’m already involved,” I pointed out. “You’re here. You’re obviously in some kind of trouble. I’m going to help whether you like it or not, so you may as well tell me.”
“I don’t want your help!”
“I don’t care.”
Claire glared at me. She had one of those faces that could really only be appreciated when she was animated. Ivory pale, with an aquiline nose humanized by a wash of freckles and a strong chin, it was pretty enough in repose. But with emerald eyes flashing, color high and that glorious mop of hair blowing around her face, she was beautiful.
She was also one of the few people I knew with more of a hair-trigger temper than me. It was always possible to get the truth out of her, if you made her mad enough. “I’m here to save the life of my son. All right?” she snapped.
CHAPTER 4
I focused on the little boy. He was the usual pink-cheeked, chubby-limbed baby as far as I could tell. He was currently poking at a couple of chess pieces, trying to get them to fight each other.
He had taken them out of the game and put them in the circle made by the round wicker bottom of the table. He was watching them avidly through the open side of his makeshift combat ring, waiting for some mayhem, but they weren’t obliging. One had hunched down to clean his sword, and the other was having a smoke. Tiny rings wreathed its head for a moment, before the wind pulled them away.
“They’re friends,” I told him. He’d accidentally picked up two trolls instead of one of each.
Puzzled blue eyes looked up at me.
“They’re allies,” Claire said harshly, and a flash of comprehension crossed his features.
A chubby hand rooted around in the game and plucked out an ogre, its small tusks gleaming behind a metal faceplate. He put it into the ring and immediately both trolls fell on it. He frowned and pulled one of them off, making it an even contest.
“He doesn’t know the word ‘friend’?” I asked, a little appalled.
“In Faerie, you have allies and enemies,” Claire said, getting up to get a refill. “Friends are a lot more rare.”
Stinky had joined the little prince, and they had their heads together, one shining blond, one fuzzy brown with pieces of egg roll in it. I picked them out as Claire came back with what looked like a double. “He looks healthy enough to me,” I commented. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing! And it’s going to stay that way.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because he had the bad luck to be born a boy,” she said bitterly.
“Come again?”
“The fey don’t allow women to rule—at least, our branch doesn’t—so a girl wouldn’t have been a threat.”
“A threat to who?”
“Take your pick! Everyone at court has had hundreds of years to make plans based on the idea of the king being childless. Then, a century ago, he had Heidar, but no one cared because he can’t inherit.”
I nodded. Heidar’s mother had been human, and he’d inherited his heavier bone structure and more substantial musculature from her. It was the same blood that ensured he could never take the throne. The law said that the king had to be more than half fey, and Heidar was a flat fifty percent.
“But then I came along,” Claire said, after taking a healthy swallow of her drink. “And I’m slightly more than half fey. So when Heidar and I announced that I was pregnant, everyone did the math and freaked out. Courtiers who’d hoped their daughters would snag the king realized that Caedmon had no more need to marry now that h
e had an heir through his son. The daughters in question, the male relatives who’d hoped to inherit if he died with no legitimate heir, the people who had spent a fortune sucking up to said relatives—they were all furious.”
