Then he launched himself skyward, and he was a goose. The other nightflyers launched skyward too, and suddenly the huge domed ceiling was full of geese, calling out. Then they landed on the sand, by the dozens, and were nightflyers when they touched ground.
Tarlach said, "We will not need the glamour of the king to hide us when we hunt. We can hide ourselves." He bowed in his liquid way, and the other nightflyers followed him. They knelt like a hundred giant manta rays kneeling without knees, but somehow all the more graceful for it.
There was movement in the benches around us, then I realized that everyone was bowing. They were dropping to their knees, or their equivalent, in a mass of devotion.
Tarlach began it. "King Sholto. Queen Meredith!" The other throats took it up, until we stood in the midst of the sound of it. "King Sholto, Queen Meredith!"
I stood in the only kingdom in all of faerie where you could be voted queen, and the sluagh had spoken. I was queen in faerie at last, just not the kingdom I'd planned on running.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sholto's office was full of rich, polished wood, stained as dark a brown as it was possible to do and not ruin the wood. The walls were even paneled wood. There was a wall hanging behind the main desk. It was faded, but the threads still showed a scene of the sky boiling with clouds that held tentacles and sights best left to horror movies. There were tiny figures on the ground of people running in terror. One figure, a woman with long yellow hair, gazed up at the clouds while everyone else ran or hid their eyes. As a child I had gazed at the hanging while my father and Sholto did business. I knew from asking that the hanging was almost as old as the Bayeux tapestry, and that the blond woman was Glenna the Mad. She had made a series of tapestries of what she'd seen when the wild hunt had come through her countryside. The tapestries gradually became more bizarre as her senses left her.
I'd stared into what had driven Glenna insane, and I hadn't flinched. Had it been shock? Had it been the blessing of the God and Goddesses? Or had all the losses finally caught up with me?
Doyle was standing behind me, his arms around my waist, holding me against the front of his body. The weight and reality of him were like a lifeline. I was fleeing faerie for good reasons, the right reasons, but I could admit in my head that one of the main reasons was this man. Maybe it was Gran's death, but I think I'd decided that for Doyle and the children inside me I'd trade a throne.
A man's voice on the other end of the phone made me jump. I'd been waiting on hold for a long time. I think they hadn't believed that I was who I said I was.
Doyle hugged me a little more tightly, while my pulse calmed a little.
"This is Major Walters. Is that really you, Princess?"
"It's me."
"They're telling me you need a police escort out of faerie." A tendril of the roses in my crown curled downward to touch the phone receiver.
"I do."
"You do know that the walls of your hospital room melted. Witnesses say you and King Sholto flew out of the room on flying horses, but somehow the Mobile Reserve Team that was watching the outside of your room didn't see any of this until you were far enough away, then the holes in the walls just appeared to them." He didn't sound happy.
"Major Walters, I am sorry that I upset your Mobile Reserve and anyone else, but I've had a hell of a night myself, okay?" There was the tiniest catch in my voice. I took a few deep, even breaths. I would not break down. Queens didn't do that.
Doyle kissed the top of my head, laying his cheek between the roses and the mistletoe of the crown.
The rose tendril wrapped tightly around the phone, and tugged.
"Are you hurt?"
"Not physically."
"What happened, Princess?" His voice was gentler now.
"It's time for me to get out of faerie, Major Walters. It's time for me to get out of your jurisdiction. I'm too close to my relatives in St. Louis." The tendril pulled harder, as if it were trying to pull the phone out of my hand. Faerie had crowned me the queen of this mound. It didn't want to lose me to the human world.
I whispered, "Stop it."
"What was that, Princess?"
"Nothing, sorry."
"What do you need from us?"
Doyle touched the tendril and began to uncurl it from the phone. He tried to take both of his hands away to do it, but I put one arm back around my waist, so he was forced to do it one-handed.
I explained that my uncle's people were outside my refuge and were threatening war on the sluagh unless they handed me over. "My uncle is absolute ruler of the Seelie Court. He's convinced them that the twins I carry are somehow his, and he's their king. He claims that the sluagh stole me away, and the Seelies want me back." I didn't try to fight the catch in my voice now. "They want to give me back to my uncle. Do you understand?"
Doyle finally had the tendril unwrapped. I felt it move back up with the rest of the living crown.
"I heard what he's accused of, and I am sorrier than I know how to say, Princess Meredith."
"Accused of, Walters? Nice that you don't admit that you believe me."
Doyle held me more tightly.
Major Walters started to protest.
I cut him off. "It's okay, Walters. Just escort me back to reality. Get us all on a plane and back to L.A."
The tendril slid back toward the phone.
"You should have a doctor look at you before you get on a plane."
I put a hand over the receiver and hissed, "Stop!" The vine stopped in mid-motion like a child caught with its hand going for cookies.
"Princess, we'll come and get you, but on the condition that you let a doctor look you over before we put you on the plane."
"We melted the walls of the room I was in. Do you really think the hospital wants me back?"
"They're a hospital, and they want you safe. We all want you safe."
"You don't want me dying on your watch is what you mean."
Doyle sighed, and kissed my cheek. I wasn't sure if he was warning me not to be too harsh with the humans, or if he was simply comforting me.
"Princess, that is not what I mean," he said and he sounded like he meant it.
"Fine, I'm sorry. Please, come get us."
"It will take a little while to get things round, but we'll get there."
"Why a while?" I asked.
"After what happened last time, Princess, we've been given permission, or orders, depending on how you want to look at it, to have the National Guard with us. Just in case the sky boils and monsters come out again.