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“Well…I think she lived in that tower for a really long time.”
“Right. But before that?”
“I mean, areallylong time.”
“Gotcha.” I moved back to my bench and picked up the grimoire.
“The fae nobles are like that.” She sat up and tucked her feet under her. “All immortal—youknow. So you can pretty much lock one up in a tower and leave her there for a long time.”
“And you?”
She shrugged. “I’d starve and die. Or at least, grow old and die. I think. It’s not like I have a lot of half-breed friends to ask.”
That got my attention. “How many do you have?”
“Um, none?” She gave me an impish grin, which faded as she looked out the carriage window, the breeze ruffling her sunny bangs. “I wanted it to sound good. You’re my only friend, Gwynn. Before you I had no one.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Tis true.” She blew me a kiss. “Except for Mom, who doesn’t count.”
“Have you heard of a Lord Fafnir?” I thought the seeming change of subject might be too abrupt, but Starling nodded.
“Lady Incandescence’s old lover, before she became Lord Rogue’s. I never met him though.”
“Why not?”
“Before my time. I guess he was all the thing, back in the day, but then he met his final comeuppance.”
“What happened?”
“He was defeated and went over to the enemy.”
“Falcon’s enemy in the war?”
“Is there another?” She sounded all irritated and flopped onto her back, staring up at the sky through the glass ceiling. “What do you care? Lord Rogue is a far better catch.”
I didn’t point out the obvious, that Rogue wasn’t around. And certainly not caught. At least not by me, at the moment.
“I care,” I explained with great patience, I hoped, “because I’m thinking about our quest and the pattern of missing firstborn children, not about romance. There are more important things in life than figuring out which man you want to land.” I added a couple of notes about Fafnir to his section in Flora and Fauna.
“Easy for you to say—you have them panting after you. You’re not a tainted half-breed who’ll end up a virgin spinster and laughingstock of the entire countryside.”
“Isn’t that a little dramatic?”
When she didn’t answer, I glanced over at her in time to see her wipe a tear from her cheek.
“Ah, I’m sorry. What happened? Officer Sean?”
She looked miserable. “He has girls at home.Humangirls. He’d never soil himself with a dirty half-breed.”
I put down my pen. “He said that?”
“He wanted to, you know, do the deed, and I said, ‘No! I’m a good girl and I’m saving myself for true love’ and he says, ‘Maybe I am your true love’ and I say, ‘Maybe you are but I don’t know for sure yet but we have time to find out’ and then—” She paused to draw in a breath and wipe her nose with the back of her hand. “Andthen, he laughs at me! He laughed and said I wasn’t worth the wait. That he has his pick of human girls and I’d saved him from contaminating himself with fae twat.”
I flinched at the ugly word. “That was a horrible, ugly thing to say to you.”
“But it’s true.”
