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The first who’d spoken stepped forward. Falcon, maybe. Bright yellow eyes stared at me with raptorish intensity above a hooked nose. “Lady Gwynn, do you have a proposal for us?”
“You can’t expect her to make terms without hearing our bargaining points first,” Rogue said.
Falcon shot him an irritated glance. “Don’t assist your pet, Rogue. It makes you look weak. Or is that weakness why you want her?”
“Circumventing etiquette, even with a foreigner, is unworthy of you.”
“No point in waiting to break bread if she’s going to refuse.” The second one, wearing a dizzying ensemble of motley colors, tossed back waves of strawberry hair and grinned at me. This had to be Puck. “What say you, Lady Gwynn? Will you hold out? Yes? No? All of the Above?”
“Lady Gwynn looks forward to dining with us.” Rogue looked pointedly at me, replacing my hand on his forearm and covering it with his own.
“Oh, yes.” Mindful of Tinker Bell’s gaffe, I made an effort to be sincere when I said it. Actually food was sounding better all the time. I was getting a little lightheaded.
“Until the meal, then.” Falcon made it sound like my funeral. Puck tipped his small, cherry-red top hat, bowed and danced off. The ebony one remained, unmoving.
“Lord Scourge?” Rogue inquired, as if offering him another cup of tea. The fathomless eyes finally lifted from me, flicked to Rogue and then the man smiled, slow and feral, showing glistening pointed black teeth. He ambled off to join Falcon and Puck in a corner, where they talked, glancing in our direction occasionally.
“That guy gives me the serious creeps.”
Rogue glanced down at me, seemed about to say something, stopped himself. Fine—I didn’t want to talk about him either.
“Who’s in charge?” I whispered to Rogue.
“In charge?” He looked as puzzled as Blackbird had, as if the concept didn’t quite get through.
“You know, take me to your leader.”
“This is my place.”
“And who do you answer to—Queen Titania, maybe?”
“Titania?”
I wanted to pull my hair out. Instead I tried for the patient explanation.
“When I thought too loud at you, you said, ‘By Titania, woman, keep your voice down.’”
“Volume,” he corrected, scanning the room. People watched from various groupings, but no others approached yet.
“Whatever.”
“It’s an important distinction.”
“Okay, okay. But anyway, Blackbird said, ‘Thank Titania’ about something. To me, Titania is the name of the queen of the fairies and Oberon is the king—from stories. Now I understand these aren’t really their names, but if whatever you are saying is translating in my head as the name of the queen, that person must be logically the queen. The leader. The ruler. None of which words you seem to understand.”
“Titania isn’t a person. She’s…” He paused.
“Fictional?”
“No. Never that.”
“A goddess?”
“Ah, Lady Healer—your patient is doing admirably,” Rogue called out.
“Coward,” I muttered under my breath. He patted my hand.
Healer strolled up to us, Darling once more at her side. He blinked at me gravely. She was dolled up, still draped in green but in filmy slices, nothing as revealing as Tinker Bell’s seductive outfit. Her tumbled hair wound in complicated twirls and braids with ivy-like leaves intertwined. And she seemed to be wearing cosmetics. Come to think of it, Tinker Bell had been, too—I’d been so busy worrying about her nipples I hadn’t registered it at the time. Why hadn’t I gotten makeup?
