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“Yes.” Relda held it out for me.
Jade snorted. “I think she’s saying it’s tea. It tastes like wet leaves and sadness.”
Tea was probably sad it wasn’t beer.
“Tea is delicious.” Evan accepted her cup, and I wondered who’d taught her manners because they were perfect. Someone had worked hard to teach her how to comport herself in society, and it wouldn’t have been my husband. “And yours is well known to be superlative, Relda. Thank you for your hospitality. You’ll have to forgive my friend. She’s a wolf, and I would bet she’s sad that tea isn’t beer.”
Hah. Truth. “I’m simply not a fan, and didn’t that happen to Zoey…I mean the queen in Faery? I wasn’t aware that was widely known on this plane.”
I only knew because Marcus liked to gossip. I mean he called it writing shit down for historical purposes, but I say gossip is gossip.
Jade perked up. “Oh, everything about the queen is known. Did you know that when she was young she stole the Essence of Tor? Like right out from under the owner.”
I liked the queen, but I didn’t know her every move, and I definitely didn’t want to hear about her stealing essences. That usually means some form of bodily fluid, and I’d had enough of that today. “Very cool.”
“Jade has been working on a biography of my mother for the last couple of years,” Evan explained.
“A biography?” I was wondering if the queen knew someone was writing about her.
I was also wondering how detailed it would get about her and the king and Quinn. Marcus would have written about the whole horny threesome-marriage part by saying something like “and then the king took a companion and the prince of Faery joined them.” I was hoping for a little more elaboration when it came to the “joining” part. Because I would read that book.
“Oh, yes.” Jade suddenly seemed way more interested in what was going on. “It’s not the first, of course. That was done by Callum O’Dowd. He’s an academic from Ireland. He wrote the first book about the king’s political rise and how the queen aided him. The King’s Companion. And then there’s The King’s Man. Now that was written by a Fae, and it way outsold the other one.”
“It had a lot of sex in it.” Evan’s nose wrinkled. “Or so I’ve heard.”
I was going to need to read that book. But only when Evan wasn’t around.
Relda shook her head. “It was over-the-top graphic, and he couldn’t possibly have known what happened between the king and the high priest.”
Evan shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. His cited source is a pixie, and they did tend to hang around my papa. They’re also famous gossips. One could be around him often and he wouldn’t have noticed.”
Not even if he’d been having some raucous sex. Of course Quinn was Fae and a sex god, so he likely wouldn’t have cared and would probably read the book and shrug it off. Or maybe offer to narrate the audio version. “So someone’s writing a bunch of books about the royals?”
The quiet made me stop. All eyes were on me, and all those eyes had that look that told me they knew something I didn’t. And I wouldn’t like it.
“Just the royals, right? Like no one else.” Horror was starting to creep along my spine. “I get it. The royals were gone, and they were really important to the resistance. You needed to keep that history alive. But just the royals. The rest of us don’t need a book. Nope. Not at all.”
“If it helps, Trent did not authorize it,” Evan said with sympathy. “And it mostly doesn’t talk about your sex life.”
I was going to kill someone.
“And the play was excellent.” Jade clapped her hands together. “I hope when I finish my bio that a group of roaming shifter actors adapt it to a three-hour musical.”
“It was a musical?” I was not going to do what I wanted to do—run from the room screaming and murder anyone who’d had anything to do with this humiliation.
“‘The Hunter is in Love’ is my favorite song ever.” Jade put a hand to her heart. “I’m serious. It’s beautiful. And the wolf call at the end of act two. So romantic.”
I would have to change that title to “The Hunter Tears Someone’s Heart Out.” Starting with whoever wrote that shit.
I needed to turn this convo around. Fast. So I could get back to Trent and ask him why he’d left out the part where my life had been turned into a fucking musical. He was supposed to protect me, and that included my dignity. Honestly, I could protect my body. I did need someone to guard that dignity thing, though.
“So do you know anyone who might want to harm Alvis?” I decided to get back on track. I would need to figure out who had written that damn book, and more importantly, who’d written the fucking songs.
“Never,” Relda claimed.
Jade made a little sound. You know. That “eh” that really means “well, yes.”
I turned to the young woman. “What do you know?”
