A Shiver of Light
Page 11

Sholto walked over to Royal. He offered, “Do you want to feed her?”
“No,” Sholto said, and knelt beside them. His hair pooled around his legs so that he was lost in a cloak of it, except for the black of his boots. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but Rhys was watching him closely.
“I think they are horns,” Sholto said.
I could see his shoulders moving even through the mask of his hair. He exclaimed, “Blood and fire, it can’t be!”
I hugged Gwenwyfar tighter and asked, “It can’t be what?”
Sholto turned, still on his knees, so that I got a just a glimpse of that handsome face framed by all that hair. “The wings do not feel like butterfly scales, or moth.”
“They’re like butterfly wings fresh out of a chrysalis, before blood pumps them into full shape,” I said.
“They may look like pink and crystal gossamer, but they feel leathery, more like bat, or reptile,” Sholto said.
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled, and it was that rare one that made his face look younger, as if it were a glimpse of what he might have been like if his life had not made him so hard.
“Horns and leathery wings are sluagh, Merry.”
In my head I thought, Goblins have horns, but I didn’t say it out loud. The horns and wings could be his genetics; we really didn’t know. If his throne hadn’t been potentially on the line, it wouldn’t have mattered, but to rule the sluagh you had to be part sluagh, just as to rule the Unseelie and Seelie courts you had to be descended from their bloodline. Every court in faerie was like that; you had to be the type of fey to rule that type of fey. Since I’d thought we’d given up all plans for any of our children to be on any throne, I hadn’t worried about it.
Sholto’s throne was not normally an inherited one. You were elected to it, chosen by the people. It was the only rulership in all of our lands that was democratic. I hadn’t known he would look down at our babies and begin to dream of a royal bloodline for his people. Funny, what fatherhood means to different men.
“If it’s sluagh, then it can’t be demi-fey,” Royal said, and he looked sad.
“We have a geneticist who’s going to be testing the babies. We won’t really know without that,” I said.
The men all did another of those looks, almost looking at each other, and avoiding my eyes.
I hugged Gwenwyfar to me, for my comfort this time. “What were those looks about? You told me my aunt wants to see the babies and we’re guarding them and the hospital, because she’s still insane and too dangerous to come, but that look just now says there’s more you haven’t told me.”
“Have you always been able to read us this easily, or have you grown more observant?” Sholto asked.
“I love you all in my way; a woman pays attention to the men she loves.”
“You love us,” Rhys said, “but you’re not in love with all of us.”
“I said what I meant, Rhys.”
He nodded. “It was diplomatically worded.” His tone was mild, but his face unhappy.
“Rhys,” Galen said.
The two men exchanged a long look, both their faces serious. Rhys looked away first. “You’re right, you are so right.”
Since Galen hadn’t said anything out loud, I wasn’t sure what he was so right about. It was as if the men had had a conversation that I hadn’t heard and were still saying bits of it. I could ask, or …
“I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with me, but you aren’t going to distract me from my question. What else has gone wrong, besides my aunt?”
“Some of us love you more than you love us; it’s an old topic,” Rhys said.
“Stop changing the subject, and trying to distract me with emotional issues we’ve already discussed. It must be something bad for you to bring this back up again, Rhys,” I said.
He nodded, and sighed. “Bad enough.”
Sholto stood up, brushing the knees of his pants automatically. “I’m not in love with Merry, nor do I expect her to be with me. We care for each other, which is more than you usually get out of a royal marriage.”
“Then you tell me what the three of you, four of you, are keeping from me,” I said.
Galen held Alastair closer, much as I had with Gwenwyfar. “It’s the other side of your family.”
“The other side, you mean the Seelie Court?”
He nodded, resting his cheek against the top of the baby’s thick black hair.
Sholto came to stand beside the bed and laid a hand over my arm and half cradled Gwenwyfar, because his hand was that big in comparison to the baby. “Your uncle, the King of the Seelie Court, is trying to get permission to see the babies, also.”
I stared up at him. “My aunt wants to see the potential heirs to Unseelie thrones and her beloved brother’s grandchildren. I understand that, and if she weren’t a sexual sadist and serial killer we’d allow it, but what in the name of all that is holy makes Taranis think he has the right to see our children?”
Rhys came nearer the bed. “He’s still claiming that one or all of them are his, Merry.”
I shook my head. “I was pregnant when he raped me. They are not his.”
“But you were only weeks pregnant, not showing at all. He’s maintaining that you were with child only after he … was with you,” Rhys said, but I didn’t like the long hesitation before he finished his sentence.
“What is he really saying, Rhys?”
“He’s made it a ‘he said, she said’ sort of thing.”
“We knew he’d deny the rape, but we have forensic evidence that he did it. The rape kit came back …” I couldn’t even say it. Taranis, the King of Light and Illusion, ruler of the Seelie Court, the golden court of faerie, was my uncle. Technically he was my great-uncle, brother of my grandfather, but since the sidhe do not age, he didn’t look like a grandfather.
“He’s saying that it was consensual, but we all knew he would.”
“He’s probably come to believe his own lie,” I said.
“Taranis will not believe that you refused him in favor of the monsters of the Unseelie Court,” Sholto said.
“He’s the monster,” I said.
Sholto smiled, and bent and laid a gentle kiss on my forehead. “That you mean that, when speaking to me, means a great deal to me, our Merry.”
I looked at his face as he stood back upright. “He raped me while I was unconscious, Sholto, and he’s my uncle. That was monstrous.”
“I’m sorry, Merry, but one of the reasons that Taranis is making a case is that you don’t remember. He’s saying that you consented and then passed out, but he didn’t realize you were unconscious until it was too late,” Rhys said.
“Too late to stop? Too late to not have sex with his own niece? Too late for what, Rhys?” I was almost yelling.
Gwenwyfar stopped nursing and started to fuss, as if she hadn’t liked me yelling. I spoke in a calmer voice, but I couldn’t control how I felt. “Rhys, you said ‘make a case’; is he actually trying to get legal visitation with the babies?”
“He was, but our lawyers countered, and now Taranis is pushing for genetic testing of the babies. He’s so sure that one or all of them will be his, I think he believes his own delusion now.”