“I don’t know, and that is the honest answer; it just seemed time.”
I shook my head. “I wish I believed that.”
“I would never mean to make you doubt Doyle.”
I laughed then. “I don’t doubt Doyle; nothing you could say would make me do that.”
She controlled her face, but for just a moment I saw she was unhappy. Why would she want to divide me from Doyle? Out loud I said, “Do you have an old grudge against Doyle?”
“Why would you say that?”
“He’s been the left hand of the queen for centuries, and their court was often at war with yours, so just answer the question. Do you have a grudge against him?”
“If I had to choose a king to follow I would prefer the energy of sunlight and life, not darkness and death.”
“Doyle was who faerie crowned as my king.”
“Your Unseelie king,” she said.
I nodded. “And faerie crowned me Sholto’s Queen of the Sluagh.”
She couldn’t hide her distaste. “They are the stuff of nightmares.”
“True, but the Goddess saw fit to make me their queen all the same.”
“I would wonder who faerie would choose for you if it were the Seelie throne you were sitting upon, or a new throne of faerie. Who would be that king for you, Meredith?”
“Since we gave up the crowns that faerie offered us, and I can’t go back to visit Sholto’s kingdom for fear of Taranis, I don’t think it matters. I think I’ve turned down too many thrones for the Goddess to offer me another.”
The first pink rose petal fell from empty air and floated down between us. We watched it fall slowly to the floor.
“You are surrounded by miracles, Meredith.”
“The Goddess blesses me with Her presence.”
“I think She’s happy to have someone worth blessing again.”
Rose petals began to fall like a flurry of candy-colored snow. I stood in the center of it holding my hands up, raising my face toward the fall of petals. I thanked the Goddess for Her attention and Her blessing, and the rose petals fell faster until it was a blizzard of cotton candy petals.
Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, once the goddess Conchenn, fell to her knees and began to weep.
BY THE TIME
Maeve recovered herself, the rose petals had almost stopped falling. Only a few of them trailed me to the nursery, like pink snow flurries. Two of the new Diplomatic Security Services, or DSS, guards had trailed us from outside Maeve’s bedroom to here; now they stood at the door in bodyguard pose, one hand holding a wrist, or just arms free, but strangely at attention. They were on duty while all the rest of the guards were at blade and hand-to-hand training. The human guards had tried to participate, but the difference in strength and speed had made it … awkward. Though some of the humans had persisted.
It also meant that the only people left to tend the babies were human. Liam came running to us as we entered the triplets’ nursery. “Mommy! Come see, babies!” he yelled, and grabbed Maeve’s finger so he could drag her farther into the room.
Her whole face lit up, not with magic, but with happiness that he’d run to her, not me. She’d been spending as much time with him as she could in the last few days, and just like that, he was running to her more. A tightness I hadn’t realized was there eased as I watched him pull her forward.
One nanny was diapering Gwenwyfar on the changing table. Alastair was in his crib with most of the dogs crowded around it, and him. Liam’s nanny, Rita, was in one of the two rocking chairs, holding Bryluen, and that was where the little boy led Maeve. Rita’s dark head was bent low, giving only a glimpse of her smile, as she gazed down at the baby. Rita was short for Margarita, and she was a pretty, dark, older woman, very shy. She rarely spoke and when she did, she didn’t like to hold eye contact. I wasn’t sure if she was just naturally that shy, or if it was being in the presence of Hollywood stars and princes and princesses of faerie. Danika, the second nanny, was as tall as Maeve with thick blond hair that fell to the tops of her shoulders. She did a serious yoga workout every day, and used the weights when the guards weren’t in the room. She hadn’t bulked up, just made her curves more firm. She moved with a physicality that reminded me of the guards. Apparently she’d gone through college on an athletic scholarship, and the habit of it hadn’t left her. Rita was only a few inches taller than me, in her early forties, and had given up the fight for the gym a few years ago, so she was just comfortably round. She’d been a nanny when she was Danika’s age, but a divorce had forced her out to work again. It had also made her interested in live-in positions like this one.
How did I know all this? Galen had told me; he’d apparently won her confidence with all his time in the nursery. She’d never seen a man who loved his children so much, and she’d informed me I was a lucky woman.
Danika glanced up and said, with a smile, “Ms. Reed, Princess Meredith.”
“Hello, Danika. Hello, Rita,” I said.
Maeve said, “Rita, are you all right?”
I walked farther into the room so I could see Rita more clearly around Maeve’s tall form. Rita kept smiling and rocking Bryluen but never looked up at Maeve. In fact, she didn’t react at all, as if she hadn’t noticed us come into the room.
“Rita, Rita!” Maeve raised her voice a little.
“Bree likes ’ita to rock her,” Liam said.
Maeve waved her hand between Rita’s face and Bryluen’s gaze. The nanny didn’t react. Maeve kept her hand above the baby’s face, completely blocking them both from looking at each other.
“Rita, can you hear us?” I asked.
Danika walked toward us holding Gwenwyfar. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Rita!” Maeve said sharply, her hand still held between them.
Rita startled, almost as if she’d been asleep, her arms starting to unfold as if to drop Bryluen, but she recovered instantly and held the baby closer. The baby started to fuss.
“What’s wrong? Did I doze off? I’m so sorry, Ms. Reed, I’ve never done that before.”
Maeve straightened up. “It’s okay, Rita, I know … it’s not your fault.”
“But I fell asleep with the baby in my arms.” She looked at me. “I am so sorry, Princess, so sorry, I would never …”
“It’s okay, Rita, honestly,” I said.
She was completely beside herself, thinking she’d nearly dropped Bryluen because she fell asleep. I waited for Maeve to explain, but she didn’t, and I didn’t either. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, and I definitely didn’t want the media to know that one of the triplets was already so magically powerful that she could bespell people with her gaze. No, that bit of information was not something I wanted in the tabloids.
Maeve told Danika to take Rita to her room and make her take a short nap. Maeve took Bryluen from her. I took Gwenwyfar from her, so she could escort the still-apologizing Rita away.
Liam said, “Bree likes ’ita.”
We looked down at the little boy. “Does Bryluen like Rita better than Danika?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Why does she like her better?”
He looked very serious, as if he were thinking hard, then said, “’ita plays.”
“Rita plays more than Danika,” I said.
He nodded, smiling.
“Do you and Bryluen tell Rita what to play?”
“Bree does,” he said, smiling.
“And does Rita always play the way Bree wants?”
He nodded solemnly.
Maeve looked down at the baby in her arms. “Her gaze has a weight to it, Meredith.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can resist it, but she just seems such a beautiful child. It’s peaceful to look at her.”
“It’s a compulsion, isn’t it?”
Maeve nodded, face very serious, as she looked at me. “We’ll interview some nonhuman nannies. I’ll call the agency and see if they have any available. If they don’t have any, then we should ask in the larger fey community.”
“Agreed, and until we find someone, Rita shouldn’t help take care of the triplets anymore,” I said.
Bryluen started to fuss, and Maeve rocked her back and forth. The baby quieted almost immediately, big eyes growing sleepy. “None of the humans should be around her much, Meredith.”
“How did you know that Bryluen likes to be rocked that way, side to side, not up and down?”
Maeve stared down at the tiny baby. “I … I don’t know. I just knew that’s what she wanted.”
“Can you stop rocking her?” I asked.
Maeve stopped, and Bree started to fuss; more rocking and the fussing stopped again. “She cries every time I stop.”
“Try stopping anyway,” I said.
Maeve tried, but eventually she started again. “No, I can’t stop, not for long.”
We stared at each other and for the first time I was afraid of Bryluen, because magic usually gets more powerful with age. She was only a week old; what would she be like in a few years?
“Maybe none of us should take care of Bree by ourselves,” I said, softly.
Maeve went to the crib with the most pink on it. It had been purchased while I was in the hospital, and Kitto had let the clerk talk him into pink ribbons and little lambs. She was able to lay Bree down, but the moment she started fussing Maeve moved to pick her up.
“Don’t pick her up,” I said, and I held Gwenwyfar closer to me.
Maeve turned away, but the baby began to cry and she turned back.
Liam was at the crib now. “Pick her up, Mommy, she wants up.”
Maeve picked Liam up and held him so he could see into the crib better. She was able to walk away with the toddler in her arms, but he wasn’t happy.
“Mommy, pick Bree up, not me!” He started to push to be put down. She let him down and he ran to the crying baby. She turned to go in that direction, too.
“Pick Alastair up,” I said.
She went to my quietly sleeping son and lifted him slowly. He slept through it, though the dogs began to whine around her feet, especially his puppy.
Maeve turned to me. “I can resist her demands now.”
Liam had his tiny hand through the crib bars and had her hand in his. “Up, Bree. Up, Mommy!”
Maeve and I looked at each other. “She’s only a week old, Meredith.”
“I know.”
“If it gets worse, stronger …”
“I know,” I said.
“Why does holding the other babies act as charm against it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“There have been stories of some being so beautiful from babyhood on that all that saw them were entranced, but I thought that was an exaggeration; now I’m not so sure.”
“Do we have anyone here who was that compelling, this young?”
She held Alastair close, and thought. “Aisling. Stories tell how people loved him even as a baby.”
“I saw one of our women claw her own eyes out, so he couldn’t control her with his beauty.”
“A human woman?”
“No.”
“Lesser fey?”
“No, sidhe.”
Maeve shivered, so violently that Alastair protested with a small cry. His puppy came and whimpered at her feet. “Did it work?” she asked.
“Did what work?”
“Did scratching out her own eyes stop him from having power over her?”
“She was able to stop answering questions truthfully, but she was still besotted with him, still magically infatuated. He told her the last sight she would ever see, ever remember, was his face, and she wept. She wept into her hands all blood and gore.” I raised Gwenwyfar so I could smell the top of her head, that clean, pure smell that seemed to make everything all right.
“He was forbidden to use his charms in battle; it was deemed too horrible to make your enemy love you,” Maeve said.
“I didn’t really understand what his power was. I mean, I knew the stories, why he was veiled, but I didn’t really understand until it was too late. I agree, some things are too terrible to use.”
“You wield the hands of flesh and blood, Meredith. They are two of the most horrifying powers the sidhe have ever commanded. How can it be more terrible than that?”
“It’s not lust, but love, obsession that he causes. She screamed when she saw him, when they kissed, as if it were the most horrible sight in the world. I never want to order anything done that causes that sound from another person.”
“She was part of a group that was trying to kill you and the men you love, Meredith; you had no choice.”
“It’s pretty to think so, but in the end there are always choices, Maeve. People decide what lines they will not cross, I just found another one, that’s all.”
“You look haunted, Meredith.”
I nodded. “I don’t feel bad about much that I’ve done, or had others do, but that one bothers me.”
Maeve came and used one arm to hug me to her, so that she encircled the babies and me in her arms. “I am sorry for that then, Meredith, truly sorry.”
I realized I was crying, and wasn’t sure why; maybe it was postbaby hormones, or maybe the thought that my wonderful babies, my children, might have frightening magic hadn’t occurred to me. Most magic didn’t manifest in the sidhe until puberty, but both girls had already shown power. Gwenwyfar with her lightning birthmark that actually caused a sort of static shock sometimes, and Bree with this, whatever this was. I held Gwenwyfar and pressed my head against the sweetness of Alastair’s dark hair, and wept while Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, held me. In the end, faerie princess or box office queen didn’t matter as much as being two women, two mothers, two friends. Maeve joined me in the tears, and I doubted she could have said why she was crying either.
I LEFT MAEVE
in the nursery to make sure Bryluen didn’t bespell the nannies, and went in search of the fathers who were doing the most baby duty. I wanted to know if they’d had any problems, or noticed that Rita was being manipulated by our baby daughter. The guards were doing weights, weapons practice, and hand-to-hand, in separate groups, so I went to the weight room first. It was easier to ask questions there.
I had two guards with me, because I went nowhere without them since Taranis had kidnapped me. I couldn’t complain about the extra security, but it meant that some of the guard had to miss the workouts at times. Saraid and Dogmaela paced just behind me and to each side. Saraid’s hair was as glitteringly gold as Frost’s hair was silver; her eyes were blue with a white starburst around the pupil, as if someone had drawn a shining white star in the middle of the blue of her iris. Dogmaela’s more ordinary yellow hair seemed pale compared to the glittering braids that Saraid could boast, and her eyes, three rings of green and gray, seemed almost human-normal, but they were both tall and slender with fine muscles showing in their bare arms. Saraid was six feet even, and Dogmaela two inches shorter at five-ten. Her yellow hair flowed free, held back from her face by a metal helmet that was so not modern, but if no one made her wear modern equipment Dogmaela had a habit of reverting back to more familiar things. She did keep her sidearm, a modern Beretta .45, and according to Doyle she was one of the most accurate with a pistol. She liked her helmet and her familiar sword at her side, but she’d embraced the modern weapons wholeheartedly. Except for the color of her hair and eyes, Saraid looked like a very modern Hollywood model/actress in skinny jeans tucked into knee-high boots, and a tailored mannish suit jacket that didn’t quite hide the sword she had strapped to her back, but distracted the eye from the two guns and extra ammunition that fit along her long, slender torso.