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And for a flicker of a moment, I had to wonder if the larger goal had been war betweendraugrand fae. Was this a political plot to eliminate or greater decrease the number of both? Had some faction of the American government decided that they wanted to create bloodshed, so humans were once more the apex creature?
I wanted, suddenly, to send both Beatrice and Eli to safety, to handle this on my own—but I couldn’t swear that I could defeat Daphne.
I thought back to her fear in the cemetery, and I had the thread of a plan.Army of the dead. I could give them that, but I doubted they’d appreciate it.
“Grandmother?”
Beatrice glanced at me.
“Can you trust me?” I took her hand. “I would ask to handle this.”
“She isdraugr,” Beatrice began.
“And what would happen to the city without you ruling them?” Eli met her gaze.
For a flicker of a moment, I was shocked that he would go along with my idea here. Yes, he trusted me, but I was asking to absorb danger that could kill us both. I looked at him. “You could—”
“If you die, I die.” He put a hand to my chest, covering my heart with his palm. “One pulse. One life.”
I paused. The gravity of our marriage slammed into me. Every time I fought from tonight forward, I was riskinghislife.
“The fae do not wed without considering that.” Eli gave me a look that was fraught with things I couldn’t process tonight. “Warriors do not often wed for this reason.”
I shoved that terror deep down inside. “I would ask that you let no one out of the cemetery. I will handle those inside, but to do that . . . no one who intends to survive can be in there with me.”
“Geneviève?” Eli took my hand. “We can try other—”
“She’s right.” Beatrice gave me an appraising look. “We shall go there, lead them to the trap, and then. . .”
“You willflow. Both of you.” I met Beatrice’s gaze. “He can. I think. He did once before.”
“I can carry him if not,” she said with a small shrug.
A part of me thought that the plan I was building was more awful, more monstrous, more horrible than anything they’d done. It was certainly as bloody as a war.
But this was a war. This was a fight to protect my people—and the list of people I now had to defend was larger by the moment. I couldn’t think on my grandmother’s passing remark to me as her heir. I knew, though, with a horrible clarity that if I died, they would raise me as their queen. Witch-draugrwas a rare thing. To my knowledge, we were the only two.
But dying would mean losing Eli, losing the throne ofElphame.They were, as of this marriage, my people. My responsibility. My subjects.
And any government slaughter of me and mine would not exclude my friends. Best case scenario, they were imprisoned. Worst case, they were “collateral damage.”
I’d gone from collecting strays, as Eli said, to full-out mother bear. My cubs. Mine to protect. And after years of patrolling New Orleans, Mama Bear was a status I was fine with embracing. Daphne and her handlers had pissed off the wrong person.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Once we hadthe larger plan in place, Beatrice had argued that they knew they’d injured me, so believing I was locked away was not a hard sell.
“Daphne is patriarchal,” Beatrice muttered as we returned to Bill’s Tavern. “I can tell her that Eli locked you in his home.”
To make that believable, Beatrice had paid a large sum to a drunken tourist in the bar to switch clothes with me and be swooped away to safety. The woman, of course, would not be injured. She was accompanied by my closest friends.
As we waited, Eli and Christy cleared the bar.
“Don’t want to be here when NOPD shows up.” Christy shooed the patrons out, recommending other bars as they filed past her.
More than a few glanced at my grandmother, who was dressed like a medieval warrior but sprouting fangs that looked very real, or at me with my halberd, blue-hair, and scowl.
“I believe they might find you scarier, bonbon,” Eli murmured as he came to see me.
