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Wearing my kickboxing mouth guard during our little stroll also sounds good. I brought it with me ‘cause Darwin said there’s a full gym here somewhere so I figured Charlie and I could spar. Offset some stress. Let’s see her try to shove goblin fruit down my gullet while I’m wearing a mouth guard.
“I’ll leave you to settle in,” Tyr says, moving toward the door, which happily doesn’t bring her any closer to me. “Don’t hesitate to send the girls away if they get to be too much. Cousin?”
Phoebe gives me a right nasty smile before she follows the Princess.
Cousins, fuck. No wonder Phoebe thinks she should be with Darwin. She’s following in the family tradition.
She tries to challenge me and she won’t get the same result as her cousin.
Chapter55
On Castle Walls
First formal dinner with the fam.
I see why Stuffiness on the Seine was Darwin’s idea of a good time. Formal dinner means formal clothes, formal seating, formal manners. It’s a yawner.
I’ve got nowt against dressing up. I’m more used to wearing body-con sheaths when we go out-out, but the black satin ball gown from Orlaith’s wardrobe is a surprisingly good fit. The poufy tulle skirt hides the fact I’m wearing fishnets and Docs. The bodice is corset-laced in the back, which is a cool detail, and it pushes up my boobs in the front so it looks like I got some. I wouldn’t wear it to eat by choice, since the bodice is tight across my belly, but formal dinner also means formal food. There are seven courses but each is bird-sized. Two involve some sort of “foam.” Charlie’s gonna be growling around all night if we don’t order a pizza later.
Wonder if Dominos delivers to Faery?
Before the yawning began, I had some nice girly bonding time with the twins, as well as Darwin’s older sister, Kathleen, who could be Dar’s cross-gendered clone.
Kathleen brought her five-year-old son, who broke two of the fussy little ornaments decorating the Ember Palace within ten minutes of arriving, earning him a permanent place in my heart. He’s currently the youngest Dùbhghlas, although he’s a duke rather than a prince. I didn’t really follow Kathleen’s complex explanation for why she and her son aren’t in line for the throne. But, then, I never paid much attention to the British royal family, neither. I liked Queen Bess ‘cause she was a woman of strong convictions. But I never much cared how she got the throne or who followed her. They’re all much of a muchness, the royals, in my estimation.
Whatever makes Kathleen’s little ‘un a duke rather than a prince, it ain’t because fae women can’t take the throne. There are four current fae Queens. They have their own Courts and are recognized as Queens, unlike Callan, who is the Oak King’s Regent. Darwin explained the history of it, which is complicated and has sommat to do with the Oak King promising to return to Thistlemist at “the end of the beginning,” whatever that is, and retake the Thistle Throne.
So the big, carved chair in the throne room we passed on the way to the feast hall sits empty. Callan doesn’t have a throne, which Darwin says suits him, but his reign is unquestionable, since he only answers to the Oak King. Callan inherited the Regency from his father, who inherited it from his father, so it’s a hereditary monarchy just like the British royalty, any way you look at it.
Which normally would mean that Darwin couldn’t inherit, since Callan and Noinin weren’t married, or the fae equivalent. Lords said Callan claimed Darwin. But from what I heard from Kathleen as she was doing my hair, which she managed to coax into long curls, and makeup—a deep red eye with a pale lip that I’d never have tried on my own but I’ll admit looks fucking fierce—it wasn’t Callan’s doing. Noinin made a deal with the Oak King himself that any boys she bore to Callan would be recognized as Callan’s heirs.
Since being part of the line of succession seems more a curse than a blessing, I’m not sure she did her son any favors.
As the deadly dinner drags to an end, music strikes up at the other end of the feast hall. Predictably from a string quartet. They really need a DJ or two in Faery. And a different decorator. Where the outside was all gray stone walls, inside the court is like being trapped in one of those Faberge eggs. The walls are enameled in shades of pearl and blue. The windows cast slivers of dancing colors over every surface from Faery’s golden summer light shining through the stained glass. The spindly antiques are draped with royal purple everywhere they’re not gilded. They provide fitting frames for the hundred-plus fae that turned up for the “family” dinner.
Callan’s immediate family is so big we take up a dozen tables on our own. But “extended” family are evidently invited as well and there are another two dozen tables where courtiers like Phoebe and Tyr’s family are sitting. A lot of them get up and move toward the musicians once the music starts, which I take as a sign the dancing’s about to begin and we can escape.
Since I’m pretty sure I see Darwin’s friend Loyal get up with Phoebe, I am more than ready to get back to the Ember Palace.
No such luck. As the waiters clear the seventh course, a man creaks his way over to me, leaning heavily on a carved staff that reminds me of Gandalf’s. He couldbethe White Wizard, he looks so old. Although buried in wrinkles, his eyes are the trademark Dùbhghlas silver, and he still has his family’s luxuriant hair, although his is pure white.
Darwin scrapes his chair back, stands, and bows as the man draws close.
“Grandfather.” Darwin doesn’t rise from his bow until the old man taps him on the shoulder. I start to get up, but the old man waves me back.
“A gentleman helps a lady to her feet,” he says, offering me his gnarled hand.
I take it carefully, not wanting to risk bruising his paper-thin skin, and get to my feet. I curtsey. “Theodora Nowak,” I tell the old man. “My friends call me Teddy.”
“Do they, now?” he says with a croaky wheeze. “Annadark Dùbhghlas. My friends, may they rest in peace, called me Dark. Come dance with an old man, Teddy, and make my century.”
I like him already. I take the elbow he offers me, although he leans into me, so I’m supporting him more than he’s escorting me.
“Grandfather, ar-are you sure you should be dancing?” Darwin asks.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Princely stutter. It’s cute.
“He doesn’t trust me not to steal you,” Dark says to me in an aside the whole room’s meant to hear.
