A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THE THREE OF us, and then the five of us, talked for hours about everything that was worrying me. Doyle, Frost, Galen, Rhys, and Mistral had all had different points of view that helped me think and helped us all plan. Maeve had joined us in interviewing lesser fey for nanny duty. We thought we’d found some possible candidates. We’d done what we could to plan about the babies, especially about Bryluen’s powers. Aisling had helped reassure us that we did not need to veil her; he said her power did not come from her face. So she was still a concern, but that particular fear was gone. We’d gone back to the days when I had no hand of power and kept bags of antinightmare herbs tucked into our pillows; so far either it was working, or Taranis had not tried to invade anyone else’s dreams. It was odd that we really couldn’t know if the herbs worked, only if they didn’t. I realized that having real sidhe magic had made me arrogant like the rest of the nobles, and I’d thrown out almost all the anti-fey practices I’d used for years to keep me safer around my relatives. It seemed odd that I, of all people, would forget that there are so many more kinds of magic than just sidhe, but I had. I was part human and part lesser fey through my brownie heritage. I needed to remember all the parts of myself, not just one.

We planned, we talked to Sholto via mirror about our plans, and then two days later I was standing on a windswept beach waiting for him. One of his titles was Lord of That Which Passes Between, and that was why we were at the edge of the sea where the water met the sand in swirling, whooshing waves. The edge of the surf is one of the between places, neither dry land nor water, but both, and neither. The edge of a woods that bordered a meadow or a plowed field would probably be where he started, hundreds of miles away in Illinois, because that was a place that was neither wild nor tame, a place between. He was also able to control the recently dead, animating them until their bodies were well and truly dead, and he could call a taxi out of nowhere, or any kind of transport that spent its time going between places.

The wind was cold off the water—not winter cold, it was L. A., but still plenty cold as it whipped my short skirt around my thighs. I was happy for the thigh-high hose with their lace edges, because it was at least something between my legs and the wind. I was standing on the next-to-last step on the long stairs that led from the house on the cliff above to the pale sand. The high-heeled pumps would look awesome as I walked back up the stairs, but they weren’t meant for protection from the elements. I’d dressed for cute and sexy, not standing beside the ocean in the early-morning chill. Even in June, Southern California could have mornings that felt more like Midwestern fall.

“Princess Meredith, please take my jacket.” Becket, one of the human DSS guards, held out his suit jacket, which left most of his arsenal of weapons very visible against his white dress shirt. His tie was like a black stripe down his chest, held in place against the wind with a tie bar, so generic I wondered if it had come standard government issue. He was broad through the shoulders, and without the jacket on, the shirt sleeves seemed to strain just a touch over the muscles of his arms, which meant his jacket was going to be huge on me.

His partner, Cooper, said, “Let her have mine, Becket; yours will swallow her.”

Cooper was a few inches taller, a few years younger, and a lot more slender. If I hadn’t had so many sidhe to compare him to I’d have used words like willowy and graceful to describe Cooper, but he was only human, and that put more bulk on his thin frame, and meant that he’d never have the speed or dancing grace of the nonhuman guards. His hair was truly black, and he had the skin tone to match. Becket was one of those blonds with a ruddy complexion as if he’d burned years ago and never been able to get rid of all of it. He had his pale hair cut so close to his head that it was as if he had started to shave himself bald, but stopped most of the way through. Coop’s hair was thick, and longer on top than any of the other diplomatic specialists assigned to us. I wondered if he put hair gel in it and went out to clubs in his spare time.

He helped me slip into the jacket. It was still warm from his body, and smelled faintly of nice aftershave. I was betting he fought to keep his hair long enough to style. I didn’t blame him, but it was just interesting. He was also one of the few of the men who weren’t married or in a serious relationship.

Becket and most of the others had been eager to have a diplomatic assignment in the States so they could be with their loved ones more. It was hard to maintain a relationship from halfway around the world, and usually in a place too dangerous to bring your family. Los Angeles was dangerous, but not in the same way as Pakistan.

“We really appreciate you asking for us this morning, Princess Meredith,” Coop said.

“You’re welcome, Agent Cooper, Agent Becket.” I wrapped his jacket around me. It covered me to midcalf, as if I’d borrowed my father’s coat to wear, but I was warmer, and that seemed more important than looking sexy, for now.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Becket said, “but why us?”

I smiled at him, because I’d already learned that he could never quite leave well enough alone. He had to ask that one more question, take that one more small chance. Cooper would never have asked.

“I saw you practicing with the other guards.”

He looked embarrassed, rubbing his big blunt-fingered hands down his sides. “Yeah, that wasn’t such a great idea.”

“I told you that before we did it,” Cooper said.

Becket shrugged those big shoulders. “Hey, how do we tell the princess here that we can take care of her, if we don’t know how we stack up against her main guards?”

“That was the reasoning that made me agree to it,” Cooper said, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“You both acquitted yourselves well,” I said.

“Acquitted ourselves well; if that means got our asses handed to us, then I’ll agree,” Becket said.

I laughed, and a distant flight of seagulls seemed to laugh back at me, as they arched their wings and let the wind carry them closer to us.

“Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing,” Cooper said.

“Becket’s turn of phrase was what made me laugh. You both did well in practice—Doyle said as much, and he never gives praise unless it’s earned.”

“Yeah, your … main … person,” Becket stopped and looked across me at his partner.

Cooper said, “Captain Doyle is reserved about a lot of things when we’re around.”

“And by ‘we,’ he means humans,” Becket said.

Cooper frowned at him. “I said what I meant, Beck.”

Becket shrugged. “We’re the odd people out here, Cooper. The princess knows that; why not say so?”

I smiled again and let the banter go on around me. Doyle hadn’t liked me coming out to the beach house without him or Frost, but our shared man was still healing, and I’d felt that we needed to use the human guards more, at least the ones who had braved hand-to-hand practice with Doyle and the others. I had brought Saraid and Dogmaela with me, but they were inside the house. One of the other female guards needed a word with them. The shared abuse had made many of the guards more comfortable talking to each other, so I’d let them handle it. I’d also reminded Doyle that there were other sidhe guards at the beach house. We’d started putting anyone we weren’t sure was entirely trustworthy here first. The main estate was building more rooms, but there were still more sidhe than rooms. The other sidhe had been very insulted that I’d come down to the beach with only the human guards, until I’d asked them if they thought humans were lesser beings, bearing in mind that I was part human. To that they’d said the only thing they could—“Of course not,” which was a lie, but a political lie. When everybody knows it’s a lie, it isn’t like lying at all, just doing what I wanted them to do, and we could all live with that. The sidhe had been impressed that Becket and Cooper had joined practice at the main house. That the men had even tried to hold their own with the fey had earned them points with me and with Doyle. He’d said, “They aren’t bad, and for humans they are really quite good.” If Becket only knew what high praise that was from him, he’d have been happier about it.

“It’s okay, Agent Cooper, you and the rest of the human guards are the outsiders at the house.”

“See, told you so,” Becket said.

“But it’s not just because you’re human, it’s because you’re new. We don’t know you yet, and you don’t know us; that makes you all the odd people out. There’s a learning curve when new sidhe join the guards, too,” I said.

“You usually give very good eye contact, but you’re staring at the horizon while we’re talking. What are you looking for, Princess Meredith?” Cooper asked.

“King Sholto.”

“What?”

“You asked what I was looking for, and I answered the question.”

“I thought his title was Lord Sholto,” Becket said.

“He’s the only sidhe noble with a different title in another court,” I said.

“Is Lord, or King, Sholto coming in by boat?” Cooper asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then why are you looking out at the ocean for him?”

“He is coming from the ocean, just not by boat,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll bite; if he’s not coming by boat, how is he getting here?” Becket asked.

“He’ll walk,” I said.

“Princess, you don’t do this often, but when you do, it’s like pulling teeth to get you to answer a straight question.”

I turned and looked at Cooper, and thought about it. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’ve spent the last few months with just other fey, and we aren’t always known for straightforward information sharing.”

Becket gave a snorting laugh. “That’s an understatement.”

“Becket,” Cooper said, voice sharp.

“It’s all right, Agent Cooper, truth is truth.”

“All right, then if King Sholto isn’t coming by boat, how is he going to walk here?”

“Magic,” I said, and went back to staring at the edge of the water.

“Can you elaborate, please?”

I smiled, and thought about it. “Do you know what his title is as lord among the sidhe?”

“He’s the Lord of That Which Passes Between,” Cooper said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“What does that mean, Princess?” Becket asked, and he sounded impatient now.

I sighed, and shivered for a minute even in the borrowed jacket. “The edge of sea and shore is a place between, which means he can use it to travel to me.”

“You said he was going to walk; do you mean he’s going to walk onto the beach like magic?” Cooper asked.

“Not like magic, it is magic.”

“You mean literally ‘oooh’ magic?” Becket said, making a finger-waving gesture when he said “oooh.”

“Exactly,” I said, smiling. I liked Becket. He made me remember that I missed being around people who weren’t sidhe, or fey, or familiar with the high courts. It was a more formal world, and I’d been surrounded by people who had lived in it for centuries, and it had made me lose some sense of myself that wasn’t sidhe, or even brownie. I’d forgotten that being human could be fun, and that though I’d hated being exiled to Los Angeles without any way to interact with another sidhe, and losing all of faerie had been like a living death, I’d found a part of my humanity that had gotten lost at the Unseelie Court. I’d grown up with a house full of sidhe and other fey, but I’d gone to school with humans—American humans—and our neighbors had been the same. I hadn’t realized until this last year that being raised outside faerie had given me more of a connection to my human grandfather’s culture, and having the ambassador and his men in the house had made me realize I’d gotten sucked right back into the culture of the courts. It was a different culture than either the Seelie or Unseelie, but it was still not a human way of looking at things. The soldiers who had visited hadn’t helped me understand that, because they’d come more as priests and priestesses seeking answers. That hadn’t been normal enough to make me realize that I was in danger of losing something important. My human great-grandfather had been a good man, from every story I’d ever heard. He’d been a Scottish farmer who had been special enough to fall in love with the family brownie, not a type of fey known for their beauty. I didn’t want to lose that part of my heritage again. I’d actually begun to wonder if I needed to work at the Grey and Hart Detective Agency just to remember that I was more than a faerie princess. I was a person, I was Merry Gentry, or had been for three years until the queen had sent Doyle to these Western Lands to find me and bring me home. Now I had sidhe lovers, and faerie had come to us. I had almost everything I’d been homesick for, plus three children, and the magic of the Goddess returned, but in all that wonder I didn’t want to forget that I was part human, too, and part brownie. I wanted to find a way to honor all those parts of me, and share that with our children.

“You look very serious all of a sudden, Princess; what ya thinkin’ about?”

I glanced at Becket and smiled. “That I’m part human, not just sidhe, and I need to be reminded of that.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Are you saying we remind you what it’s like to be human?” Cooper asked.

“No, you remind me that I am human.”

He gave me a look, one dark eyebrow rising. “Forgive me, princess, but you aren’t exactly human.”

“My great-grandfather was.”

“And your grandfather is Uar the Cruel, one of the high nobles of the Seelie Court, who is mentioned in myth and folklore going back hundreds of years.”

“My great-grandmother was a brownie.”

“And your father was Essus, Prince of Flesh and Fire. He was worshipped as a god before the Romans conquered Britain.”

“Agent Cooper, are you saying that the noble side of my heritage is more important than the non-noble side?”

He looked startled. “I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I didn’t … I didn’t mean that.”

“She so got you, Coop,” Becket said.

“I didn’t mean to insult you, Princess, but you can’t just say you’re human with the pedigree you have.”

“I didn’t say I’m just human, but I’m not just sidhe either, and I want my children to understand that they’re more than just sidhe. Through me they’re brownie, and through Galen they’re pixie, and Doyle gives them phouka. I want them to understand that they are more than just sidhe of either court. I want them to value all parts of their heritage.”

“It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this,” Cooper said.

I nodded. “For a few days, yes.”

“So you want your kids to grow up being more human?” Becket asked.

“Yes,” I said. A shimmering caught my eye at the edge of the sea. One moment it was just the waves and the sand, and the next Sholto just stepped out of nowhere and started walking up the beach toward us.

“Holy shit!” Becket said.

Cooper had started to reach for his gun, and then forced himself to relax, or at least pretend.

The wind caught Sholto’s hair, streaming it out around him in a pale blond halo that intermingled with the black of his cloak, so that he strode toward me in a cloud of silken hair and dark cloth. The three yellow rings of his eyes had already begun to shine as if they were carved of gold, citrine, and topaz. It almost distracted from the beauty of his face, the broad shoulders, the sheer physicality of him as he strode toward me.

“You can try to be human, Princess, but that’s not human,” Becket said.

“Oh, Agent Becket, you have no idea how not human he is.” Then Sholto was there, sweeping me into his arms, kissing me as if he hadn’t seen me in months, instead of just days. I wrapped myself around him, and he put his hands under my ass and started up the stairs, his mouth still married to mine. He climbed smoothly, easily, as if he could keep kissing me forever, whether he was climbing a set of stairs, or a mountain.

Becket called after us, “I don’t know, Princess, I think the glowing eyes give it away.”

I broke from the kissing long enough to look over Sholto’s shoulder and let the men see that my own eyes had started to burn.

They looked startled, but it didn’t stop Becket from saying, “Humans don’t glow, just so you know.”

I might have said something pithy back, but Sholto ran his hand through my hair and kissed me again, and nothing seemed more important than giving all my attention to the man in my arms.