A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I LEFT MAEVE in the nursery to make sure Bryluen didn’t bespell the nannies, and went in search of the fathers who were doing the most baby duty. I wanted to know if they’d had any problems, or noticed that Rita was being manipulated by our baby daughter. The guards were doing weights, weapons practice, and hand-to-hand, in separate groups, so I went to the weight room first. It was easier to ask questions there.

I had two guards with me, because I went nowhere without them since Taranis had kidnapped me. I couldn’t complain about the extra security, but it meant that some of the guard had to miss the workouts at times. Saraid and Dogmaela paced just behind me and to each side. Saraid’s hair was as glitteringly gold as Frost’s hair was silver; her eyes were blue with a white starburst around the pupil, as if someone had drawn a shining white star in the middle of the blue of her iris. Dogmaela’s more ordinary yellow hair seemed pale compared to the glittering braids that Saraid could boast, and her eyes, three rings of green and gray, seemed almost human-normal, but they were both tall and slender with fine muscles showing in their bare arms. Saraid was six feet even, and Dogmaela two inches shorter at five-ten. Her yellow hair flowed free, held back from her face by a metal helmet that was so not modern, but if no one made her wear modern equipment Dogmaela had a habit of reverting back to more familiar things. She did keep her sidearm, a modern Beretta .45, and according to Doyle she was one of the most accurate with a pistol. She liked her helmet and her familiar sword at her side, but she’d embraced the modern weapons wholeheartedly. Except for the color of her hair and eyes, Saraid looked like a very modern Hollywood model/actress in skinny jeans tucked into knee-high boots, and a tailored mannish suit jacket that didn’t quite hide the sword she had strapped to her back, but distracted the eye from the two guns and extra ammunition that fit along her long, slender torso.

The women stayed outside the door, as the other guards had stayed outside the nursery. Rhys and other guards were inside the weight room, and that meant that the workout areas were one of the safest places in the house and grounds.

There was a big sign over the door to the weight room. It read, IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE A MACHINE, ASK FOR HELP. DO NOT BREAK THE MACHINES! THIS MEANS EVERYONE: SIDHE, RED CAPS, GOBLINS, DEMI-FEY, EVERYONE!

I knew Rhys had made the sign after one of the Red Caps had stripped all the cables out of one machine, and one of the newer sidhe guards had damaged another, all in the same week. I could hear his voice without even going through the doorway, not the words he was speaking, but the rhythm of his voice. The room had been a ballroom back in the day when houses had them, because it was the only room with ceilings tall enough for the Red Caps, since they averaged between seven and thirteen feet tall. Maeve had let us buy what Rhys felt was needed for training the guards, so the once-elegant ballroom was filled with state-of-the-art padding, enough free weights to make Mr. Universe happy, and a forest of machines. The latter were mostly mysterious to me, because they’d been purchased after I got pregnant. I’d never spent a lot of time with weights, but I’d been forbidden to use anything but the lightest hand weights for so long that it was like a foreign land to me now. The machines were all taller than me, with interchangeable handles, pulleys, and attachables, and I had no idea what most of them did. I wasn’t the only one overwhelmed by Rhys’s fully equipped room.

“How can you use all this cold iron?” a woman’s voice protested. I could glimpse Rhys through the maze of machines, but the woman was sitting down and I couldn’t tell from her voice who it was, over the machines’ mechanical clatter and the clink of the weights.

I nodded to the guards as I walked past. I’d learned that etiquette in the weight room meant you didn’t say hello when someone was lifting, unless they spoke first. If they were into the zone of their workout, just having to talk too much could throw them out of it. Rhys had explained all this to me. I’d never lifted weights seriously enough to experience a “zone,” but I trusted Rhys to know what he was talking about.

Most of the guards in the room were the newer ones who had only come from faerie in the last few months, but they were all tall and slender, with a play of muscles under their mostly pale arms, long legs moving the leg press machine easily. I didn’t usually still feel like the short ugly duckling, but seeing them in the tank tops and shorts, or even just sports bras for some of the women, I suddenly felt far too round, and much too short, and just awkward as I walked across the special padded floor in my three-inch heels. I’d felt pretty good about myself until that moment, and then it was as if all the childhood years of being told I wasn’t sidhe enough came spilling back. No one had said anything, or even lifted an eyebrow at me; sometimes it’s just the inside of your own head that is the problem.

I squared my shoulders, made sure my posture was perfect, and kept walking toward Rhys with a smile on my face. My insecurities in that moment were my own.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t look like everyone else. There were three Red Caps in the room, too. They were all between seven feet, short for a Red Cap, and thirteen feet, which was almost as tall as they got. The tallest and the shortest were shades of gray, but the middle one was the yellow of aged ivory. I wasn’t close enough to see their true red eyes, but they were Red Caps; the eyes would be scarlet. The yellow-skinned one was Clesek, but I couldn’t recall the names of the other two. They all wore the short, round caps that gave them their name, but right now the caps weren’t red, more brown, the color of dried blood. They were all stuffed into sweat suits that strained to fit over their bodies. It was like trying to find workout clothes for the Incredible Hulk. They’d originally worked out in their undergarments, but Maeve had too many humans working in the house and they were uncomfortable with nearly nude giants striding through the hallways. They were in the far corner using the special free-weight bars that we’d had to get, so they could carry more weight than regular barbells without breaking; I hadn’t even known that there were special bars to hold weights once you got up to four to five hundred pounds and more. The fact that human beings with no fey ancestry needed special bars like that amazed me a little, and made me feel even weaker. I was so not the strongest person in this room, not in any way.

I heard Rhys say, “The metal makes us have to work harder, because not all our magic works.”

The woman’s voice: “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

“Good,” he said.

The Red Caps saw me and dropped their weights with a clang that vibrated the room as they went down on one knee. They didn’t have to do that during exercise, I’d told them all that, but the Red Caps were very devoted.

I stopped and called out to them. “It’s all right, you don’t have to bow in the weight room, remember?”

“You are our queen, we must show proper respect,” Clesek said. He gave a narrow-eyed stare at the sidhe. “They should show it, too.”

“It’s dangerous in the weight room, Clesek; we discussed this,” I said.

“Which of you dropped it?” Rhys yelled it, as he came striding through the machines wearing midthigh-length compression shorts and a tank top that was more straps than shirt so that the muscled beauty of his upper body was more revealed than hidden by it. The shorts showed off assets, too, but in the gym you were supposed to be paying attention to other things. His hair was back in a ponytail held by multiple hair ties spaced a few inches apart along its length so that it was almost a braid, but not quite.

Since he was six inches taller than me, I didn’t think of him as short, but as he went for the Red Caps, he looked small. It made me wonder how tiny I looked standing next to the biggest of the goblins.

His voice boomed out, filling the room. One of the visiting human soldiers had called it a drill sergeant voice. “You do not drop the weights! If you have to drop the weights, then it’s too heavy for you, and you do what?” He was pressed nearly into the Red Cap’s chest, but his voice thundered through the suddenly quiet room. Everyone had stopped exercising to see someone else get dressed down.

The Red Cap mumbled something.

Rhys did that big voice again. “I can’t hear you!”

“Lower the weights. But it wasn’t too heavy for me. We needed to show respect to Queen Meredith,” the Red Cap said. He looked sullen. His scarlet eyes narrowed in an unfriendly manner, though part of it was the color. Bloodred eyes with no whites in them could make the Red Caps look angry, or at least unfriendly, easily and often.

“But the humans on TV just let the heaviest barbells drop,” one of the other Red Caps said. This one was a gray so pale that he was almost white. He also had one of the most human of faces, not exactly handsome, but not the frightening fanged expression that most of them had once had.

Rhys turned and got up in the face of the second Red Cap. It was almost funny to see the huge Red Cap’s shoulders slump, head ducking, shame-faced at the much smaller man’s angry rant.

I heard one of the sidhe closest to me say, “She’s not our queen yet.”

I turned and found one of the very newest refugees from faerie. Our policy had been to take in any fey who wanted to leave faerie and come to the Western Lands, but a few of the recent sidhe were making me doubt the wisdom of that.

Fenella was just a fraction under six feet tall, with hair that fell like a gold and yellow cloak to her ankles when it was unbound; now it was in two long braids that had been looped back in upon themselves so they glittered as she moved, one moment more gold, the next like sunshine spun into rope, with the beauty of her face shining through the light and jewel-bright glory of her hair. She wasn’t called Fenella of the Shining Hair for nothing. She blinked her tricolored eyes at me. At first you thought her eyes were white with two circles of yellow shades, until you realized that the white around her pupil was actually an incredibly light yellow like winter sunlight, then butter, and the brighter yellow autumn leaves. I’d always thought that her eyes would have looked better with less spectacular hair, or that she needed eyes that were as amazing as the hair.

“Do you have something to say to me, Fenella?” I asked.

“No, Princess, I do not.”

“If you will not say it to my face, then please refrain from saying it behind my back.”

She startled, as if too caught off guard to hide it under centuries of courtly manners, or maybe I wasn’t worth the effort.

“Will you not allow us any privacy, even to our own thoughts?”

“Your thoughts are your own, but when they spill out your lips and I can hear, they are no longer private.”

“Very well, Princess Meredith. I find it disquieting that the goblins bow to you and call you queen when you are not a queen … yet.”

“I am not the official goblin queen, that is true, but I am Queen of the Sluagh.”

A look of distaste flitted across her face. “There was a rumor that you were Shadowspawn’s queen, but those of us in the Seelie Court had not believed it.”

“First, never call King Sholto by that name again; you know it is an insult. Second, why not believe it?”

“You are of the same bloodline as our king. It is a pure sidhe line, and even your mother’s lineage speaks to the light, but I suppose you cannot help the corruption of your father’s blood.”

“Are you trying to be insulting?” I asked.

She looked surprised, and I was almost certain it was genuine. She just didn’t understand the insult. “I have given offense; I am sorry, Princess, but your mother speaks endlessly of the corruption and vileness of your father, so I assumed that you felt the same.”

“And if I did, then why would I have stayed at my father’s vile and corrupt court, when I could have been with my mother at the Seelie Court?”

Fenella seemed to think about that, and watching her eyes while she did it, I realized something I hadn’t before. She wasn’t that bright, not stupid by any means, but not a deep thinker. Sometimes I thought that Taranis wasn’t that deep a thinker either; maybe his court reflected that?

Then a smooth voice came from the other side of the tall machine. “Most of us never blamed you for preferring to rule in hell, rather than serve in heaven, Princess.”

Trancer was inches above six feet, maybe six-five, and thin, even by sidhe standards, as if he’d been stretched just a little too much. His arms looked firm, but not muscled. If he’d been human you could have taken it to mean he wasn’t very strong, but among the fey, even the sidhe, what you saw was not what you got.

“My father loved me, my mother didn’t; a child goes where she’s loved,” I said.

“Love. What do the Unseelie know about love?” Fenella said.

Trancer touched her arm, and I watched her think about why he’d just cautioned her with that touch. I looked up into his tri-blue eyes. His hair was a more ordinary golden brown, waving just below his shoulders. The Seelie men let the women have the longer hair.

How many times had Trancer had to save his wife from speaking out of turn, or too boldly? How many centuries had he minded her, protected her from herself? I spoke to him, as I said, “Love is very important to most of us, don’t you agree, Lord Trancer?”

He gave me a long look. “Yes, Princess Meredith, we do.”

“I just don’t see why we have to exercise,” Fenella said, and there was a childish whine to her voice that went along with the lack of understanding I’d seen in her eyes.

Rhys said, “Because all of the guards exercise, that’s the rule.”

“But we were never guards,” she protested.

“Now, dearest,” Trancer said, “you know that we have to find a way to be useful.”

“I can set a fine table, and host a banquet, but I don’t think I will be very good at guarding anyone with strength of arms. Magic has always been enough in the past.”

Secretly I agreed with her, but I was letting Rhys and Doyle handle what to do with the fey who were seeking refuge with us. We had so many now that we did need them to pull their weight, but I doubted sincerely if I would ever trust Fenella to guard me or mine from anything. I would reserve judgment on Trancer, but … I wondered how well Fenella had done at weapons practice. What do you do with immortal beings whose major talents were being beautiful courtiers and toadies? What use were they in modern Los Angeles? I suppose that there were Hollywood equivalents of the job description, but Lady Fenella and Lord Trancer wouldn’t know the modern world enough to adapt, and I wasn’t a big one for sycophants, maybe because I’d never been powerful enough to have any, and now I didn’t trust them.

“Then think of it as getting into practice for losing the baby weight.”

“I won’t need that,” Fenella said.

“I thought you came into exile in the Western Lands so that you could get pregnant,” Rhys said. He put an arm across my shoulders, drawing me in against his body. I slid my arm around his waist automatically, and just holding and being held helped me feel less short, less round, less bad about the changes in my body since the babies. The circle of Rhys’s arms eased most of the anxiety that had started. Was it baby hormones still? It wasn’t like me to allow anyone to make me feel that unhappy with myself.

“We did,” Trancer said, beginning to rub his hand in small circles on his wife’s back.

“Then getting a habit of exercise will help her get her girlish figure back afterward,” Rhys said, smiling.

“But I will not need to exercise to lose my weight. It will just go.”

“I may have lost my weight faster than most human women, but I’ll still have to exercise when the doctor clears me for it.”

“But you’re much shorter than me, and I’m told that makes it much harder to lose weight.”

“I don’t think it’s just about height,” a voice said. It was Biddy just coming into the gym. She was six feet of broad shoulders and muscles, even after having her baby only two months ahead of my triplets. She was built more like a very tall human, and she put on muscle better than most of the sidhe, even the men, but then she was half human. Her hair was cut very short in a mass of brown curls. She’d chosen to cut it when she refused the late Prince Cel, and had been warrior enough and willing to do enough damage to make her no stick. She’d told me she’d keep her hair short to remind herself that she was stronger than she knew, and that no one would ever hurt her again.

“I’m having to work to get back to my fighting weight. I guess after three hundred years the metabolism slows down,” she said with a grin.

“You’re half human; I’m not,” Fenella said.

“You know, Fenella, I’m beginning to wonder why you left faerie,” I said.

Those yellow eyes narrowed. “I came here to get with child, not to sweat and guard … you.”

Trancer’s hand stopped moving in those small useless circles on her back. His smile looked frozen. “Now, dearest …”

“Merry had triplets. The last set of triplets among the sidhe was at least eight hundred years ago,” Biddy said. Her solid brown eyes, so very human, were darkening with the beginnings of anger. She would get angry for me.

“Yes, triplets, like a litter of dogs,” Fenella said.

Biddy said, “Bitch.”

“Exactly,” Fenella said.

Rhys made a small movement forward, but I held him tighter around the waist.

I didn’t need to be protected; I had the power to do it myself now. “You know, Fenella, if you don’t want to be one of my guard, that’s fine; I don’t think you’re suited to the position.”

“I can stop lifting these things?” She motioned at the weights.

“Yes, and in fact pack your bags and go back to the beach house.”

“There is no fairyland at the beach house. It’s just ordinary land.”

“Princess Meredith, my wife didn’t mean …” Trancer began.

I held up a hand and stopped him midsentence. “The beach house is lovely all year round, and maybe going back there will remind your wife that all the fairyland around this house is here because of me.”

“The Goddess returned Her blessing to us,” Fenella said.

“No,” Biddy said, “the Goddess returned Her blessing to Merry, and Merry shares it with the rest of us.” She stood very tall, looking down at the other woman from where she still sat on the front of the weight machine.

Fenella opened her mouth again, but Trancer actually put a fingertip against her lower lip. “My love, we will go to the beach house, as the princess bids. She is, after all, the ruler here in the Western Lands.”

Fenella pouted with her lips still against his finger, but she didn’t try to talk again, which was a relief at this point. She was the perfect example of exactly why I hadn’t tried to stay at the Seelie Court. Yes, she was less astute than some of the nobles, but her attitude was about average. I wasn’t pure enough, sidhe enough, and more than the Unseelie, the Seelie put great stock in physical purity.

“Pack and go, now,” Rhys said, voice low. His skin began to hum with power, and about the time I noticed that, I could see the white glow of his power sliding almost cloudlike under his skin. I glanced upward and saw that the three circles of blue had begun to swirl, as his magic began to unsheathe itself.

“We will, my lord,” Trancer said. He got his wife to her feet and began to ease out from among the machines and us. I realized that “us” didn’t just include Biddy. The three Red Caps were looming behind us like the mountains were on our side, my side. I reached my free hand out and touched the closest Red Cap, who happened to be Clesek. I wanted them to know how much I valued them, and had since the night they risked themselves in battle to help me save the men I loved.

Clesek’s cap was suddenly a bright scarlet instead of the dried brown it had been. The first thin trickle of blood began to drip down the side of his face from his round skullcap. The Red Caps had once dipped their caps in fresh blood often enough to keep them scarlet, but random slaughter for dipping purposes had been forbidden since the fey immigrated to America. I’d known that to be a war leader among them you had to have enough magic to cause your cap to bleed on its own, but what I hadn’t known was that a sidhe with the hand of blood could give them back that ability and make all their caps bleed. That was why they called me their queen, and why they bowed, and why they had risked everything to help me, and had joined me in exile here.

Fenella hissed, “Unclean, Unseelie magic that.”

I stopped touching Clesek, because I didn’t want him to bleed enough to get the new padded floor bloody, but I’d had enough of the Seelie for today. “Yes, yes it is Unseelie magic, Fenella, and you might want to remember that the next time you insult me.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Trancer tried to pull her toward the door, saying, “Hush, my dearest.”

“Yes, yes, I think I am. I can come to you as a goddess of fertility and joy, or I can come as the dark goddess who brings the winter and kills the crops. That was the face of the goddess that the Seelie brought down upon themselves, centuries ago. You have learned nothing.” And that last sentence echoed in the room in a way that human voices did not. Pink and white rose petals began to fall from thin air around me, Rhys, Biddy, and the Red Caps, but the fall of flowers stopped short of the two Seelie nobles.

Their eyes went wide and I saw fear on their faces. “She meant nothing by it, Princess, please.”

“She meant everything by it, Trancer.” My voice was almost mine, just the faintest echo of the Goddess around the edges of my words.

“We will pack and we will go to the edge of the sea, and await your pleasure to bid us return to this new bit of faerie,” he said, pulling his wife backward toward the doorway.

“You do that,” I said. The petals were thick as a snowstorm, but spring warm, so that I watched their frightened faces leave through a pink snowfall.

“It is not our place to say so, but they do not deserve your blessing,” Clesek said.

Rhys hugged me. “I love you, our Merry, just as you are.” And just like that, I started to cry again; stupid baby hormones. The rose petals fell so fast it was like being inside some magical snow globe that had been shaken by a giant. What did the Christians say—if God be with me, then who can be against me? That was true, but it still hurt to know that no matter how many wonders I performed, I would always and forever be too short, too human, too Unseelie for the most of the Golden Court to ever accept me. But then hadn’t six out of sixteen of the Unseelie noble houses been against me the last time I stood in open court there, too? If the Goddess herself could not make them see their own bigotry, then there was no cure for it.

There was a soft kiss on my cheek. I looked up and found that Rhys’s face was pressed to the top of my hair, and no one else was close. The Goddess had kissed my tears like my own mother never had. I whispered my thanks, and the petals began to slow. I was almost ankle deep in petals now; that was enough.