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One of these days, I was going to have to work on my people skills.
“You think he’s here?” I asked, because that was just all
we needed.
“Caedmon doesn’t know,” Claire said distractedly, running a hand through already messy curls. “But he didn’t seem…He said he’d be more inclined to think that Æsubrand was back here if it didn’t look like he was.”
I tried to parse that, and failed utterly. “Come again?”
“You know his mother’s ability with glamourie?”
I nodded. Most fey could change their appearance to some degree, even without the potions they sometimes sold to us. But Efridís was said to be especially gifted, to the point of even being able to fool her fellow fey. She’d used her skills to impersonate her darling boy, helping him break out of the fey version of jail, last time I’d heard.
And then I finally realized what Claire was saying. “You think she’d be covering for him.”
“Caedmon thinks so,” she said, frowning. “He said the Svarestri know we spy on them, just like they do on us. And that if Æsubrand was here, his mother would be doing everything in her power to make it look like he was still at court. He’d be seen riding, hunting, hawking—anything to make him highly visible. But he isn’t.”
“Which means what?”
“That’s just it—I don’t know! Caedmon thinks Æsubrand probably is away from court, just not here. So he doesn’t need anyone to cover for him. He said he could be patrolling the border, or leading war games, or on a freaking trade mission—” She threw up her hands in disgust.
“But you’re assuming the worst.”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked wildly. “After everything?”
No. She really didn’t. Aiden’s talisman protected him, but only to a degree. It meant that someone might not be able to just walk up and kill him, as they’d tried once before. But it wouldn’t do a damned thing to stop a kidnapping. And if Æsubrand ever got Aiden into his elegant hands, I didn’t think it would be long before he’d find a way to dispose of the problem—permanently.
It was, I suspected, why Claire was still here instead of back in Faerie. She’d recovered the talisman two weeks ago but had shown no signs of leaving. Maybe because Æsubrand didn’t know Earth all that well, which put him at a disadvantage here.
Not that he hadn’t managed to compensate before, at least somewhat, but Faerie had proven no safer. Some of Caedmon’s own courtiers seemed to think that a full Light Fey king sounded better than a part-human, part–Dark Fey mutt. It was probably what had Claire looking like she was about to explode.
“There must be some way to verify—” I began.
“Heidar’s trying.” Her hands twisted in her apron, and for all her power, she was suddenly just another anxious mother, desperate to ensure her child’s safety. “That’s why he went back. He’s doing a reconnaissance into the Svarestri lands—”
“What?”
She nodded, frantically. “I begged him not to, but he said he used to do it for fun as a boy. That he knew some old trails, had some contacts. That he might be able to alleviate my fears…”
And instead he’d doubled them. Now Claire was left worrying about her son and her fiancé. No wonder she’d been going out of her mind.
And I really wasn’t helping, was I?
“What can I do?” I asked simply.
“You can let me return the favor you did me,” she said severely. “When I came here in the middle of the night with a baby on my hip and half of Faerie after me! The smart thing would have been to throw me out—”
“It’s your house.”
“—and leave me to handle my own problems, but you didn’t. You refused to let me run off and possibly get myself and my child killed. You did what friends do when other friends are acting stupid and panicked and you told me so. Like I’m telling you.”
“That was a completely different situation, and you know it. Your enemies were outside—”
“You’re not an enemy, Dory!”
“I’m not an enemy now.”
Claire didn’t like that. “Last night, the only person in danger was you! Louis-Cesare—”
