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“Indeed, it’s true, my lady sorceress,” Larch chimed in. “It’s best that you look after yourself and your delicate cargo.”
I unclenched my teeth. “Yes, he does need rescuing. You all heard what Scourge and Marquise told me.”
Starling and Blackbird exchanged concerned glances. “Gwynn,” Starling said in a gentle tone, “they said they had no idea where Rogue had gone.”
I gaped at them. Athena shrugged a little and nodded, indicating she’d heard the same thing. Darling swiped at her dagger and she hissed at him. He flounced over to me and pictured Scourge talking with two faces.
Then I got it.
They’d deliberately spoken different words, knowing the others would hear one thing while I would understand the truth I’d compelled from them. Clever. And a nasty, undermining trick. One I’d have to remember.
“Okay.” I surveyed them. “All I can tell you is that I understood something different. Something I know to be absolutely true. Rogue is with the Queen Bitch and it’s due to a bargain he made to take care of me. I have to help him.”
“If he did it to take care of you,” Blackbird pointed out, “then you shouldn’t undo the effort by putting yourself in Titania’s clutches.”
“I don’t intend to be in her clutches. I plan to be smarter than that.”
“How?” Larch asked.
“I’ll know when I get there.” I said it with as much confidence as I could muster. Darling Hercules pictured himself huge again, me riding him while he knocked the walls down and I smiled at it. “Besides—all the trails I follow lead there. I believe she’s behind the baby-snatching game. It’s foolish to do anything else.”
“And what of your own child, Gwynn?” Blackbird demanded. “Will you risk its life so willfully also?”
“I am not pregnant.”
“How do you know?”
I rubbed my left temple, which had developed an annoying twitch.
“It’s not like I can drop by the drugstore and pick up an E.P.T. kit.” My voice sounded tired. “But I’m 99.9 percent sure that I’m not.”
They cocked their heads, not quite understanding. Interesting that none of them asked about my menstrual cycle and I wondered if any of them even had one. I hadn’t had my menses since I’d arrived in Faerie. If I hadn’t been assured in no uncertain terms that I would be fertile, I would have thought myself in sudden and abrupt, possibly magically caused, menopause. That could still be the answer, actually.
“I’m just…not,” I added lamely.
Athena tucked her dagger away. “I’m in. Wherever you want to go. Not like I have anything better to do.”
Blackbird shook her head. “No. After all this time, I must go after Fergus. That must take precedence for me. Starling, you’ll come with me.”
“No.” Starling replied, staring at me. Then shook herself, as if surprised by her answer. And her mother’s stern glare. “No, I won’t. I serve Gwynn and I made her a promise. I’m going with her.”
“Do you understand how impossibly dangerous this journey will be?” Blackbird asked in exasperation. “Do any of you? Nobody even knows where Titania’s castle is.”
“I do.” They all looked at me in surprise. I pointed at the staff, tucked securely by Athena’s feet. “That shows me.”
“And are you willing to pay the price the staff exacts from you, my lady sorceress?” Larch asked, peering at me with shrewd blueberry eyes. “Already you tire.”
“I’ll use it sparingly.”
“You have no supplies. No mode of transportation. No tributes for trade.” Blackbird ticked the points off on her fingers.
“I can arrange for a supply chain,” Larch told her.
“You can?” I hadn’t expected that and he looked hurt by the implied insult.
“I would be terribly remiss in my duties if I did not,” he reproached me. “Already I allowed you to be kidnapped. I can do this much.”
“A dragon carried us off—there wasn’t much you could do.”
