Divine Misdemeanors

Chapter Twenty-eight

Galen hit the corner of wall just to the side of the windows. The wall cracked with the impact of his body, crumbling around him like one of those cartoon moments where people go through walls. It wasn’t a perfect outline of his body, but as he sagged against the wall, I could see where his arm had flung out and back trying to take some of the impact.

He was shaking his head, trying to get up as Barinthus strode toward him. I tried to run forward, but Sholto held me back. Doyle moved faster than I ever could to put himself in the bigger man’s path. Frost went to Galen.

“Get out of my way, Darkness,” Barinthus said, and a wave rose against the glass, spilling across it. We were far too high for the sea to reach us without aid.

“Would you steal a guard from the princess?” Doyle asked. He was trying to look at ease, but even I could see his body tensed, one foot dug into the floor in preparation for a blow, or some other very physical action.

“He insulted me,” Barinthus said.

“Perhaps, but he is also the best of us at personal glamour. Only Meredith and Sholto can compare with him for disguise, and we need him to use his magic this day.”

Barinthus stood in the middle of the floor glaring down at Doyle. He took a deep breath, then let it out in one sharp gust. His shoulders lowered visibly, and he shook himself hard enough to make all that hair ruffle like feathers, though no bird I’d ever known could boast so many shades of blue on them.

He looked across the room at me with Sholto’s hand still holding my arm. “I am sorry, Meredith. That was childish. You need him today.” He took another deep breath and let it out again so that it was loud in the thick silence of the room.

Then he looked past Doyle’s still-ready form. Frost was helping Galen to his feet, though he seemed a little unsteady, as if without Frost’s hand he might have been unable to stand.

“Pixie,” Barinthus called out, and the ocean slapped against the windows higher and stronger this time.

Galen’s father had been a pixie who had gotten the queen’s lady-in-waiting pregnant. Galen stood a little straighter, the green of his eyes going from its usual rich green to something pale and edged with white. His eyes going pale was not a good sign. It meant that he was well and truly pissed. I had only seen his eyes that pale a handful of times.

He shook Frost’s hand off, and the other man let him go, though his face showed clearly that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

“I’m as sidhe as you are, Barinthus,” Galen said.

“Don’t ever try to use your pixie wiles on me again, Greenman, or the next time I won’t miss the windows.”

I realized in that moment that Rhys had been right. Barinthus was beginning to take on the role of king, because only a king would have been so bold to the father of my child. I could not let it stand unchallenged. I could not.

“It wasn’t the pixie in him that let him almost bespell the great Mannan Mac Lir,” I said.

Sholto’s hand squeezed my arm, as if trying to tell me that he wasn’t sure this was a good idea. It probably wasn’t, but I knew I had to say something. If I didn’t I might as well concede my “crown” to Barinthus now.

Barinthus turned those angry eyes on me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Galen has gained powerful magic through being one of my lovers, and one of my kings. He’d have never come so close to fogging the mind of Barinthus before.”

Barinthus gave a small nod. “He has grown in power. They all have.”

“All my lovers,” I said.

He nodded, wordlessly.

“You truly are angry that I have not taken you to my bed at least once, not because you want sex from me, but because you want to know if it would give you back everything you have lost.”

He would not look at me, and his hair washed around him again with that sense of underwater movement. “I waited until you came back into the room, Meredith. I wanted you to see Galen put in his place.” He looked at me then, but there was nothing I could understand on his face. My father’s best friend and one of the most frequent visitors to the house we had lived in in the human world was not the man before me now. It was as if his few weeks here by the sea had changed him. Was this arrogance and pettiness what he’d been like when he first came to the Unseelie Court? Or had he already been diminished in power even then?

“Why would you want me to see that?” I asked.

“I wanted you to know that I had enough control not to send him out the window, where I could use the sea to drown him. I wanted you to see that I chose to spare him.”

“To what purpose?” I asked. Sholto drew me in against his body so that I wrapped my arms around him almost absently. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to protect me or just to comfort me, or maybe even just to comfort himself, though touch is more comfort to the lesser fey than to the sidhe. Or maybe he was warning me. The question was, warning me about what?

“I wouldn’t drown,” Galen said.

We all looked at him.

He repeated it. “I am sidhe. Nothing of the natural world can kill me. You could shove me under the sea but you couldn’t drown me, and I wouldn’t explode from pressure changes either. Your ocean can’t kill me, Barinthus.”

“But my ocean can make you long for death, Greenman. Trapped forever in the blackest depths, the water made near solid around you as secure as any prison, and more torturous. The rest of the sidhe cannot drown, but it still hurts to have the water go down your lungs. Your body still craves air and tries to breathe the water. The pressure of the depths cannot crush your body, but it still presses down. You would be forever in pain, never dying, never aging, but always in torment.”

“Barinthus,” I said, and that one word held the shock I felt. I clung to Sholto now, because I needed the comfort. It was a fate truly worse than death that he threatened Galen with, my Galen.

Barinthus looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face didn’t please him. “Don’t you see, Meredith, that I am more powerful than many of your men?”

“Are you doing this in some twisted bid to make me respect you?” I asked.

“Think how powerful I could be at your side if I had my full powers.”

“You’d be able to destroy this house and everyone in it. You said as much in the other room,” I said.

“I would never harm you,” he said.

I shook my head, and pulled away from Sholto. He held on to me for a moment, then he let me stand on my own. It was how this next part had to be done.

“You would never hurt my person, but if you had done that terrible thing to Galen, stolen him as husband and father for me, it would be harming me, Barinthus. Surely you see that?”

His face fell back into that handsome unreadable mask.

“You don’t understand that, do you?” I asked, and the first trickle of real fear wormed its way up my spine.

“We could form your court into a force to be feared, Meredith.”

“Why would we need it to be feared?”

“People only follow out of love or fear, Meredith.”

“Don’t go all Machiavellian on me, Barinthus.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean by any of the things you’ve done in the last hour, but I do know that if you ever harm any of my people and condemn them to such a terrible fate, I will cast you out. If one of my people vanishes and we can’t find them, I will have to assume that you’ve done what you threatened, and if that happens, if you do that to any of them, then you will have to free them, and then …”

“And then what?” he asked.

“Death, Barinthus. You would have to die or we would never be safe, especially not here on the shores of the Western sea. You’re too powerful.”

“So, Doyle is the Queen’s Darkness, still to be sent out to kill on command like the well-trained dog he is.”

“No, Barinthus, I will do it myself.”

“You cannot stand against me and win, Meredith,” he said, but his voice was softer now.

“I have the full hands of flesh and blood, Barinthus. Even my father didn’t have the full hand of flesh, and Cel didn’t have the full hand of blood, but I have both. It’s how I killed Cel.”

“You would not do such a thing to me, Meredith.”

“And moments ago I would have said that you, Barinthus, would never have threatened people I loved. I was wrong about you; do not make the same mistake.”

We stared at each other across the room, and the world narrowed down to just the two of us. I met his gaze, and I let him see in my face that I meant what I’d said, every word of it.

He finally nodded. “I see my death in your eyes, Meredith.”

“I feel your death in my heart,” I replied. It was a way of saying that my heart would be happy to have his death, or at least not sad.

“Am I not allowed to challenge those who insult me? Would you make a different kind of eunuch out of me than Andais did?”

“You can protect your honor, but no duel is to the death, or to anything that will destroy a man’s usefulness to me.”

“That leaves little that I can do to protect my honor, Meredith.”

“Maybe, but it’s not your honor I’m worried about, it’s mine.”

“What does that mean? I have done nothing to besmirch your honor, only the pixie brat.”

“First, never call him that again. Second, I am the royal here. I am the leader here. I have been crowned by faerie and Goddess to rule. Not you, me.” My voice was low and careful. I didn’t want it to break with emotion. I needed control in this moment. “By attacking the father of my child, my consort, in front of me, you proved that you have no respect for me as a ruler. You do not honor me as your ruler.”

“If you had taken the crown as it was offered, I would have honored what Goddess chose.”

“She gave me a choice, Barinthus, and I have faith that she wouldn’t have done that if the choice offered was a bad one.”

“The Goddess has always allowed us to choose our own ruin, Meredith. Surely you know that.”

“If by saving Frost I chose ruin, then it was my choice, and you will either abide by that choice or you can get out of my sight, and stay out of it.”

“You would exile me?”

“I would send you back to Andais. I hear she has been in a blood-lust since we left faerie. She mourns her only child’s death in the flesh and blood of her people.”

“You know what she is doing to them?” He sounded shocked.

“We still have our sources at court,” Doyle said.

“Then how can you stand there, Darkness, and not want us all brought back into our power so we can stop the slaughter of our people?”

“She has killed no one,” Doyle said.

“It is worse than death what she does to them,” Barinthus said.

“They are all free to join us here,” I said.

“If you bring us all into our power then we can go back and free them from her dungeon.”

“If we rescued her torture victims we’d have to kill her,” I said.

“You freed me and everyone else in her Hallway of Mortality when you left this last time.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” I said. “That was Galen’s doing. His magic freed you and the others.”

“You say that to make me think better of him.”

“I say it because it is true,” I said.

He looked at Galen, who was glaring at him. Frost was just a little behind the other man, his own face the arrogant mask he wore when he didn’t want anyone to read his thoughts. Doyle moved out from between Barinthus and Galen, but he didn’t go far. Ivi, Brii, and Saraid were all standing a little apart from each other, the better to draw weapons. I remembered Barinthus’s words that I’d left a vacuum of power and the guards at the beach house had turned to him because I neglected them, and seemed not to trust the women at all. I had a moment to wonder where their loyalty would lie, with me or Barinthus.

“Your magic filled the Hallway of Immortality with plants and flowers?” Barinthus asked.

Galen simply nodded.

“I owe you my freedom then.”

Galen nodded again. He wasn’t one for silence. The fact that he wasn’t talking was a bad sign. It meant he didn’t trust what he might say.

Rhys came in from the opposite hallway. He took one look at all of us, and said, “I see what the noise was that I heard. That was Jeremy. He needs us at the crime scene soon if we’re coming. Are we?”

“We’re coming,” I said. I looked away from Barinthus to Saraid. “I’m told your personal glamour is good enough to hide in plain sight.”

She looked startled, then nodded and even bowed. “It is.”

“Then you, Galen, Rhys, and Sholto, come with me. We need to look human so the press doesn’t interfere again.” My voice sounded so sure of itself. The pit of my stomach was still clenched tight, but it didn’t show, and that was what it meant to be in charge. You kept your panic to yourself.

I went to Hafwyn and Dogmaela still on the couch. Dogmaela had stopped crying, but she was pale and still shaken. I sat down beside her, but was careful not to touch. She’d had enough touching for one day apparently.

“I’m told your glamour would be up to the job, too, but I’ll leave you here to recuperate.”

“Please, let me come. I want to be useful to you.”

I smiled at her. “I don’t know what kind of crime scene this is, Dogmaela. It could be one that would remind you strongly of something that Cel did. For today, stay here, but in future you and Saraid will be part of my guard rotation.”

Her blue eyes went a little wide, and then under the drying tears she looked pleased. Saraid came to us and dropped to one knee, head bowed low. “We will not fail you, Princess,” she said.

“You don’t have to bow like that,” I said.

Saraid raised her head enough to give me those blue eyes with their white starbursts. “How would you like us to bow? You have but to ask and we will do as you prefer.”

“In public don’t do any of that, okay?”

Rhys walked wide around Barinthus, but was careful not to give his back to the other man. He was nonchalant about it, but if I noticed, I knew the other man did, too. “If you keep dropping to one knee in public, all the glamour in the world won’t hide the fact that she’s the princess and you’re her guards.”

Saraid nodded, then asked, “May I rise, your highness?”

I sighed. “Yes, please.”

Dogmaela dropped to one knee in front of me as the other woman stood. “I am sorry, Princess, I did not give you the honor due your station.”

“Please, stop that,” I said.

She looked up, clearly puzzled. I stood and offered her my hand. She took it, frowning. “Have you noticed that the men don’t kneel for me?”

The women exchanged glances. “The queen did not insist upon it always, but our prince did,” Saraid said. “Just tell us which greeting you prefer and we will give it to you.”

“A hello will be fine.”

“No,” Barinthus said, “it will not.”

I turned and gave him a less-than-friendly look. “This is not your business, Barinthus.”

“If you do not have their respect then you have no control over the sidhe,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I said.

He actually looked shocked, as if it wasn’t a term he’d thought to hear from me. “Meredith …”

“No, I’ve had all I’m taking from you today. All the bowing and scraping in the world didn’t make any of them respect Cel or Andais. It made them afraid of them, and that is not respect, that is fear.”

“You threatened me with the full hands of flesh and blood. You want me to fear you.”

“I’d prefer your respect, but I think you will always see me as the daughter of Essus, and no matter how much you might care for me you can’t see me as fit to rule.”

“That is not true,” he said.

“The fact that I gave up the crown to save Frost’s life has made you doubt me.”

He turned so I couldn’t see his face, which was answer enough. “It was the choice of a romantic, not a queen.”

“And am I a romantic, and not a king?” Doyle asked, moving a little toward the other man.

He looked from one to the other of us, and then said, “It was most unexpected that you, Darkness, would make such a choice. I thought you would help make her into the queen we needed. Instead she has made you into something soft.”

“Are you calling me weak?” Doyle asked, and I didn’t like the tone in his voice at all.

“Enough!” I didn’t mean to shout it, but that’s how it came out.

They all looked at me. “I’ve seen our courts ruled by fear my whole lifetime. I say that we will rule here out of fairness and love, but if there are those among my sidhe who will not take fair treatment or love from me, then there are other options.” I walked toward Barinthus. It was hard to be tough when I had to crane my neck so far up to meet his eyes, but I’d been tiny among them all my life and I managed.

“You say you want me to be queen. You say you want me to be harsh, and you want Doyle to be harsh. You want us to rule the way the sidhe need to be ruled, correct?”

He hesitated, and then nodded.

“Thank the Goddess and the consort that I am not that kind of ruler, because if I was I would kill you as you stand there so arrogant, so full of your power from only a month beside the sea. I should kill you now, before you gain more power, and that is exactly what my aunt and my cousin would do.”

“Andais would send her Darkness to kill me.”

“I already told you I am too much my father’s daughter for that.”

“You would try to kill me yourself,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you could only defend yourself,” Rhys said, “by killing both Essus’s daughter and his grandchildren. I think you’d let her kill you before you’d do that.”

Barinthus turned on Rhys. “Stay out of this, Cromm Cruach, or did you forget that I know your first name, a much older name?”

Rhys laughed and it startled Barinthus. “Oh, no, Mannan Mac Lir, you can’t play true naming with me. I am no longer that name, and haven’t been in so long that it is no longer a true name at all.”

“Enough of this,” I said, my voice calmer this time. “We are leaving, and I want you, Barinthus, at the main house tonight.”

“I will be glad of dinner with my princess.”

“Pack an overnight bag. You’re going to be at the main house for a while.”

“I would prefer to remain near the sea,” he said.

“And I don’t care what you would prefer. I say that you will move into the main house with the rest of us.”

He looked almost pained. “It has been so long since I lived near the sea, Meredith.”

“I know. I’ve seen you swimming in the water of it happier than I’d ever seen you and I would have let you stay here by your element, but today you proved that it goes to your head like some rich liquor. You are drunk with the nearness of wave and sand, and I say that you will go to the main house and sober up.”

Anger filled his eyes, and his hair did that odd underwater movement in the air again. “And if I refuse to move to the main house?”

“Are you saying that you will disobey a direct order from your ruler?”

“I am asking what you will do if I do not comply,” he said.

“I will exile you from this coast. I will send you back to the Unseelie Court and you can find out firsthand how Andais sacrifices the blood of all the fey to try to control the magic that remakes her kingdom. She thought that if I left, the magic would stop and she would be able to control it again, but the Goddess herself is moving again. Faerie is alive again, and I think all you old ones have forgotten what that means.”

“I have forgotten nothing,” he said.

“That is a lie,” I said.

“I would never lie to you,” he said.

“Then you lie to yourself,” I said. I turned to the others. “Come on, everybody. We have a crime scene to visit.”

I started for the door and most of the people in the room followed me out. I called back over my shoulder. “Be at the main house tonight in time for dinner, Barinthus, or be on a plane back to St. Louis.”

“She will torture me forever if I go back,” he said.

I stopped in the doorway and the crowd of guards had to make an opening so I could see him. “And isn’t that exactly what you threatened to do to Galen just minutes ago?”

He looked at me, just looked at me. “You are still moved by your heart and not your head, Meredith.”

“You know what they say. Never come between a woman and what she loves. Well, don’t threaten what I love, for I will move the Summerlands themselves to protect what is mine.” The Summerlands was one of our words for Heaven.

“I will be there for dinner,” he said, and he bowed. “My Queen.”

“I look forward to it,” I said, and that last I didn’t mean at all. The last thing I wanted at the main house was an egotistical, angry ex-deity, but sometimes decisions aren’t about what you want, but about necessity. Right now, we needed to go to a crime scene and try to earn the paychecks that helped support the mass of people we’d become. If only my title had come with more money, more houses, and less trouble, but I’d yet to meet a princess of faerie who wasn’t in trouble of some kind. Fairy tales are true in one respect. Before you get to the story’s end, bad things and hard choices are lived through. In a way I’d come to my happily ever after ending, but unlike fairy tales, in real life there’s no ending, happy or otherwise. Your story, like your life, goes on. One minute you think you have your life relatively under control, and then the next minute you realize that all that control was just an illusion.

I prayed to the Goddess that Barinthus wouldn’t force me to kill him. It would hurt my heart to do it, but as we walked out into the California sunshine and I slid my sunglasses on, there was something hard and cold inside me. It was a surety that if he pushed hard enough I would do exactly what I’d threatened. Maybe I was more my aunt’s niece than I cared to think about.