"
"What are you asking, Meredith?" Doyle asked.
"I just find it curious that he used a spell so much different than his usual ones on me. He's nearly rolled over me with his attractive illusions all the way to Los Angeles in a mirror call. But this time he raped me almost as any man might. It doesn't seem like him."
"You've told us that you saw through his illusion when he first found you in faerie," Doyle said.
"Yes, he looked like Amatheon but I touched him and he didn't feel like him. Amatheon is clean-shaven, and I felt beard."
"But you shouldn't have felt it," Mistral said. "Taranis is the King of Light and Illusion. It means that his glamour stands up to almost anything. He should have been able to bed you without you ever knowing that he was not who he pretended to be."
"I had not thought," Doyle said.
"Thought what?" I asked.
"That his illusion was not as good as it should have been."
We all thought about that. "His magic is fading," Sholto said at last.
"And he knows it," I said.
"That would make the old ego-hound completely desperate," Mistral said.
"And completely dangerous," Sholto said.
We could only agree with him, unfortunately. We did the last-minute preparations for the mirror call with my mother and the other Seelie outside our gates.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Besaba was tall, slender, and very sidhe in her body build. But her hair was only a thick, wavy brown, bound on her head in a complicated hairdo that left her thin face too bare for my taste. She had her mother's hair, and brown eyes, very human eyes. It had only been in the last few months that I'd realized one of the reasons she had always hated me. I might be short, and too curvy, but I couldn't have passed for human with my hair, eyes, and skin. She could have.
She was wearing a dress of deep orange, decorated with gold embroidery. It was a dress to please Taranis, who was very fond of fire colors.
She was in a tent that they had set up on the ground outside. She looked to be alone, but I knew better. Taranis's allies would never have trusted her to make the call without watchers to "guide" her.
I was sitting in Sholto's official calling room, which meant it was richly appointed, and had a throne for a chair. It wasn't "the" throne of the sluagh court. That was made of bone and ancient wood. This one was a gold and purple throne, probably found in some human court long, long ago. But it served its purpose. It looked impressive, though not as impressive as the men around me, or the writhing mass of nightflyers who clung to the wall behind us like a living tapestry from some nightmare you'd rather forget.
Sholto sat on the throne, as befitted the king. I sat on his lap, which lacked a certain dignity, but we thought it might get the point across that I was having a good time. Of course, when someone doesn't want to understand, nothing you can do will make them see the truth. My mother had always been excellent at seeing only what she wished to see.
Doyle was on one side of the throne, Mistral on the other. If we hadn't had the nightflyers behind us, we'd have looked very sidhe. But we wanted whoever was with my mother, just out of sight of the mirror, to understand that they would not be fighting only the four of us, if they pressed. They needed to understand that above all else.
I had settled myself comfortably on Sholto's lap. His arm curved around my waist, putting his hand on my thigh in a very familiar way. He hadn't actually earned such a familiar gesture. Of the three men with me, he had been with me the least, but we were putting on a show, and one point of that show was to prove that I was their lover. When trying to prove something like that, a little hand on the thigh can say volumes.
"I do not need rescuing, Mother, as you well know."
"How can you say that? You are Seelie sidhe, and they have taken you from us."
"They have taken nothing that the Seelie valued. If you speak of the chalice, then all who can hear my voice know that chalice goes where the Goddess wills it, and she has willed it to me."
"It is a sign of great favor among the Seelie, Meredith. You must come home and bring the chalice, and you will be queen."
"Taranis's queen, you mean?" I asked.
She smiled happily. "Of course."
"He raped me, Mother." Doyle moved a little closer to me, though he was quite close to begin with. I reached out to him without thinking so that he held my hand, even while I sat in Sholto's lap.
"How can you say such things? You bear his twins."
"They are not his children. I am with the fathers of my twins."
Mistral moved nearer the chair. He did not reach out for me, because I was out of hands, one in Doyle's hand, and one on Sholto's arm. He simply moved closer, to help me emphasize my point, I think.
"Lies. Unseelie lies."
"I am not queen of the Unseelie yet, Mother. I am queen of the sluagh."
She settled the stiff, rich sleeves of her gown, and harrumphed at me. "Again, falsehoods," she said.
I had a moment when I wished I could conjure the crowns of faerie to me, but such magic came and went when it would. Though, frankly, seeing Sholto and me in the crowns might just make her more convinced that we were Seelie. It was all flowers and herbs, after all.
"Call it what you will, but I am content in the company I keep. Can you say as much?"
"I love my court and my king," she said, and I knew she meant it.
"Even after some of that court conspired to kill your mother, my grandmother, just days ago?"
Her face clouded for a moment, then she stood straight again and faced me. "It was not Cair who slew my mother. I am told that it was one of your guards who struck the blow."
"To save my life, yes."
She looked shocked then, and I think it was real. "Our mother would never have harmed you. She loved you."
"She did, and I her, but Cair's magic turned her against me, and my people. It was an evil spell, Mother, and the fact that she used her own grandmother to carry it was worse."
"You lie."
"I led the wild hunt to get my revenge. If it had not been the absolute truth, the hunt would either have not answered my call, or when it arrived the hounds of the hunt would have torn me limb from limb. They did not. They helped me hunt Cair down. They helped me kill her, and save the fathers of my children, who were still being attacked."
She shook her head, but looked a little less sure of herself. A bit, but I knew her. Her certainty would return. It always did.