A Shiver of Light
Page 28

“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your eyes are unfocused; you look almost drugged.”
“Bryluen did have a very strong effect on a human friend of ours, so much so that we’ve decided no human nannies or babysitters for her,” I said.
“Perhaps my great-niece’s glamour affects more than just humans, Meredith. You would not knowingly let yourself become this distracted in front of me.”
“No, Aunt Andais, I would not.”
She had a thoughtful look on her face, and laid a hand on Eamon’s thigh where it was hidden under his own silk robe. “Do I dare attribute some of my worst mistakes to magic? Was my own son able to throw glamour over my eyes as … Bryluen just did to you?”
“I do not know, Aunt Andais, I cannot speak to it.”
“Nor I with any certainty,” she said, but she kept touching Eamon, stroking his thigh not in a sexual way, but more for comfort. I knew that touch helped keep our minds free of glamour from the King of Light and Illusion, Taranis, and I wondered if she was touching Eamon for comfort, or because there was glamour coming through the mirror from Bryluen and me.
Doyle put his hand back on my shoulder, and I could think even more clearly. It was a sharpening of focus that let me know I hadn’t been at my best just seconds before, and the fact that I hadn’t realized that was not good. We would have serious negotiations today and later with other relatives, allies, and enemies. I couldn’t be besotted with baby glamour while dealing with all of it. How powerful was Bryluen’s effect on the people around her?
“For the idea that my mother’s blindness to my son’s machinations was magic, I thank you, Meredith, and Bryluen. It’s Cornish for ‘rose,’ a sweet name for a little girl.”
“It was a compromise between the men,” I said.
She looked past me to one of the men at my back and said, “So, Killing Frost, you wished to name your new daughter after the love you lost centuries ago, Rose?”
I felt him tense without need of touching him, so his startle reflex must have shown over the mirror to her. Rose had been the name of the woman and her daughter he had loved centuries ago when he was merely Jackul Frosti, Little Jackie Frost. It was love for them, desire to protect them that had made Frost grow from a minor player in the procession of winter into the tall, commanding warrior, because little Jack Frost couldn’t protect his Roses. The Killing Frost could, but in the end, time had taken them away from him. They’d been human and mortal and died as all mortal flesh is doomed to do.
Andais laughed, a high, delighted, wicked peal of laughter. Perhaps it was actually a pleasant laugh, but we’d all heard it so many times when she was enjoying cruelty that it could be nothing but unpleasant to our ears.
Doyle reached across with his free hand to touch Frost and steady him. His reaction must have been even worse than I’d thought for Doyle to show such weakness before the queen. It wasn’t always wise to show how much you truly cared about anyone in front of her.
“So the rumors are true, my Darkness and my Killing Frost are lovers,” she said.
I actually glanced behind me then, to see what was prompting her to say that, and found the men holding hands behind my chair.
Rhys said, “Once a man could hold the hand of his best friend and not be thought his lover.”
She looked at Rhys, eyes narrowing; it was a look that typically began something bad, a bad mood, a bad event, an order we would not want to follow.
“Are you saying that they are not lovers?” Andais said.
“I am saying, why does it matter, and you shouldn’t believe every rumor the human tabloids put out.”
Galen was still sitting at my feet, beside Kitto, who had stayed almost immobile. Galen was holding Gwenwyfar, so as he leaned back against my legs he had to brush against Kitto’s curls. The baby’s hand brushed the long hair, and though she was too young to do it, Gwenwyfar grabbed a tiny fistful of Kitto’s curls.
It couldn’t have hurt, because the baby didn’t have the strength for it yet, but it was probably the one thing that Kitto would have reacted to. He raised his face enough to gaze up at Gwenwyfar. I couldn’t see Kitto’s expression, but it was almost certainly a smile.
“So, little goblin, you make yourself useful, so the princess does not send you home.”
I felt Kitto’s reaction up through the soles of my feet on his back. It was a startle as bad as Frost’s had been, but Kitto had always been terrified of the queen. Frost had loved and hated Andais; Kitto simply feared her.
“It is against protocol to speak with the royal’s footstool,” Rhys said. Once he had hated all goblins because one took his eye, so the fact that he stepped up to distract her from Kitto made me love him more. He had come far to value Kitto enough to risk himself for the goblin.
She gave him a narrow look. “You have grown bold, Rhys. Where does this new bravery in the face of your queen come from?”
Rhys stepped closer to the mirror, drawing her eye and partially blocking her view, so Galen could pry Gwenwyfar’s tiny hand from Kitto’s hair and the goblin could go back to being an immobile piece of furniture, and hopefully beneath the queen’s notice.
“I don’t think I’m braver, my queen, just understanding the value of those around me more than I did before.”
“What does that mean, Rhys?”
“You know my hatred for the goblins.”
“I do, but this one seems to have won your favor; how?”
Eamon was utterly still beside her, as if he would have left if he thought it wouldn’t attract her attention. She had played sane, but her nearest and most dear love was acting like a rabbit in the grass hoping the fox won’t find it, if only it can be still enough.
“It was Kitto who shopped for an extra crib, blankets, toys, everything, when the news came that we were having triplets and not just twins. He made certain we came home to a house that was ready for all the children, and that Merry had everything she needed.”
“Any good servant will do as much,” Andais said.
“True, but Kitto helps tend the babies not out of duty, but out of love.”
“Love.” She made it sound distasteful. “Goblins don’t understand love for that which is small and helpless. Newborn sidhe are a delicacy among the goblins, you know that better than anyone standing here except for my Darkness. The others were not with me during the last Great War against the Goblins, but you and he know what they are capable of.”
He glanced back at Doyle and then back to the mirror. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was fierce and bitter, “Now, my queen, remember I was at your side. I remember that the atrocities weren’t all goblin work.”
“We didn’t eat their young,” she said. Her eyes had darkened and were beginning to have that first hint of shine, her power beginning to rise. It could also be a sign of anger, or even anxiety, but it usually meant magic was on the rise.
“No, most goblin flesh is too bitter to eat,” he said, and there was a finality in his voice. He’d left all pretense of placating her behind. It was simply the truth, and my joking Rhys had decided to leave humor for honesty, the kind of honesty that royals do not always welcome.
I was shocked enough myself, because I hadn’t known that my people, the sidhe, had tasted goblin flesh enough to know the bitter or sweet of it. I held Bryluen closer to my face, smelling the sweet clean scent of her to hide my face, because in that moment I wasn’t certain I could have kept it neutral.