A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MAEVE REED STALKED around the main bedroom in a pair of cream slacks, cut wide so they swung enough to give glimpses of the pale taupe stiletto boots underneath. The boots matched her tailored suit jacket, the dress shirt buttoned up to her neck was almost pure white, and her thin man-style tie was metallic gold and cream to pick up the gold of her chain-link belt. The chain was tied into a loose knot to trail across her hip, swinging to cross her groin as she moved, more like jewelry for the waist than an actual belt.

“You look wonderful in this outfit,” I said.

She stopped stalking the white carpet and turned to look at me. “You think so?” She trailed long, slender hands down the chain links, which drew the eye down to her groin again. It wasn’t accidental, but it wasn’t exactly flirting with me either. Maeve had made her living in Hollywood for decades; sex appeal had been one of the commodities that had helped her stay at the top, especially back in the fifties, when she’d have been considered too tall, too thin, and not curvy enough to be a sex symbol. Now she was very chic and very in, but then Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, had been one of the reasons the fashion had changed from curvy to a thinness that was almost impossible for a human woman to duplicate without starving herself. The sidhe were built differently, like fashion models with a bit more body fat so they still had breasts and ass, but they could eat a Thanksgiving feast every day and not gain weight. Humans couldn’t, and yet they tried.

“I had to go into the studio today. I’m a movie star; people expect an effort.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me. You could have just dressed to be around the house. It’s your clothes, your house, wear what you want.”

She looked at me, blue eyes narrowing. She was using glamour to appear more human, hiding her very inhuman eyes with their tricolor blue and copper and gold lines that went out like miniature lightning bolts, changing her golden skin to a human tan, and even making her straight waist-length hair more yellow than her natural white-blond. I never understood why she darkened her hair; it was within human bounds either way. The skin and eyes she’d had to make more human, but the hair could have stayed.

“Why do you make your hair more yellow-blond than it is naturally? Humans have hair both colors.”

“The yellow-blond looks better on camera,” she said.

“Oh, that makes sense.” I sat on the edge of the bed, swinging my feet, because I was far too short to sit and reach the ground. I was still wearing the purple dress, though I’d changed to a pair of black low-heeled pumps. I might get back into the stilettos in a few weeks, but right now having to fight my body on heels that high and thin just took too much effort. I’d lost most of my weight in an almost magically short time, but I still wasn’t quite myself. The extra cup size in my breasts alone made me feel unbalanced. I’d been generously endowed before, but now it was a true embarrassment of riches.

“I’m sorry that you disagree about hiring lesser fey to work in the house, Meredith, but I just don’t see the point in it. There are plenty of humans in L. A. needing jobs. If we hire only fey, then the media will accuse us of racism.”

“Really?” I asked.

Maeve nodded. “Trust me on that.”

“I do trust you, but we can’t have human nannies around the triplets, or more specifically around Bryluen. Her ability to fascinate seems automatic; until she’s old enough for us to teach her to control it, humans are nearly helpless around her.”

“She’s a baby, it can’t be that bad.”

“Come to the nursery and see for yourself. Perhaps your more pure sidhe blood will keep you proof against Bryluen’s glamour.”

“I’m not just sidhe, Meredith; I was a goddess and I’m still worshipped in a way as a celebrity, so if your babe cannot bespell me it’s not really a good test.”

“But if she can, then it’s a very good test,” I said.

Maeve looked thoughtful and then said, “Good point. Who is taking care of her besides you?”

“Kitto …”

“A goblin has no resistance to sidhe magic; of course he would be ensnared by her.”

“Kitto is also half sidhe and has come into his hand of power.”

She waved it away. “He was raised goblin; he will never be as sidhe as he is goblin.”

“Why should that make a difference to his magic resistance?” I asked.

“You were taught certain skills from childhood, skills that your little man was not.”

I slid to my feet, settling the skirt in place. “Don’t call him a little man.”

“Why not? He is the smallest of your men.”

“If you were sidhe, yes, but you’ve lived with the humans long enough to understand it’s an insult.”

“What do you mean, if I were sidhe?”

“If Kitto’s goblin upbringing undermines his ability to be sidhe, then a similar argument can be made that your centuries of exile out among the humans have made you more human than you would have been had you stayed in faerie as a member of the Seelie Court.”

“I was the goddess Conchenn; how dare you compare me to some sidhe-sided goblin?”

“The goblins are every bit as fey as any sidhe, and this attitude of looking down on them because they have no magic, when it is the sidhe that stole their magic in the first place, really is racist, and arrogant. It’s like an abusive spouse who blames his wife for not being able to walk gracefully, when he’s the one who broke her leg.”

“That is not a fair comparison, Meredith. The goblins and the sidhe were at war; they would have won had we not done the spell that took their magic.”

“So I’m told by both sides, but that was a very long time ago, Maeve, a very long time ago.”

“You weren’t there, Meredith; you didn’t see your friends die at their hands.”

“No, but I have seen that the sidhe-sided goblins do fine magic once they’re brought into their power.”

“Your goblin twin lovers, Holly and Ash, are quite frightening. That you’ve armed them with your hand of flesh and blood respectively makes them very dangerous.”

“I did not share my hands of power with them, it just happened to be their latent magic.”

“Are you sure of that?” she asked, and gave me a very direct look out of those famous blue eyes.

“Kitto’s hand of power isn’t one of mine.”

“He can bring people through a mirror even against their will; that is almost useless as a hand of power.”

“It helped him and Rhys kill the goblin who tormented both of them,” I said.

“His hand of power is so useless there is no name for it.”

“It’s incredibly rare, but it has a name: the hand of reaching,” I said.

“The hand of reaching allowed small armies to be brought through a reflective surface. Your goblin cannot do that.”

“Perhaps not, but the name is for the ability, not the degree of power.”

“It needs a new name, something grand,” she said.

I shrugged.

She frowned at me. She frowned a lot, actually; if she’d been human she’d have had frown lines by now, but she was sidhe and would never truly wrinkle. She could get some lines here and there, but she’d never have the lines of her unhappiness carved into her face like most people would.

“It’s not just me who thinks the twins have only inherited your own magic, Meredith, nor am I the only one who thinks Kitto’s hand of power is weak.”

“I know that,” I said, “but the others don’t say it to my face as much.”

“You are their ruler; they dare not speak their minds to you.”

“And you are Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood, and you don’t plan on going back to faerie, even if Taranis lifted your exile.”

She looked startled for a second, and then smiled. “How did you know that? I wasn’t even certain myself until recently.”

“I may not be your ruler, but I try to be your friend, and friends notice things.”

She looked embarrassed then. “I am sorry, Meredith; I’ve been rude by human standards, and you’re right. I’ve been exiled long enough that human culture is more natural to me than any in faerie, so my apologies.”

“Please don’t treat Kitto as less than the others anymore. He is my lover and maybe one of the fathers of my children. I would ask that you respect him for that, if for no other reason.”

She gave a nod that was almost a bow, but not quite. “If you wish the goblins to be thought better of, then you do need to bring one into a power that isn’t one of yours, and is more impressive than mirror-whatever.”

“I’ve been discussing that with Doyle, Rhys, and the others. When I am able to have sex again, I will try to do just that.”

Maeve shuddered. “I honestly don’t know how you can have sex with Holly and Ash. Kitto, I sort of understand, he’s like this beautiful miniature man, and he’s kind to the point I’m amazed he survived among such a savage race, but the twins … they are savages, Meredith.”

“What they are, or are not, is my business. I’m not asking you to compromise your racial purity.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that, Meredith. You seem determined to take insult.”

“And you seem determined to give it.”

We stood there looking at each other, almost glaring at each other. I was tired of Maeve’s attitude issues. She hadn’t been like this before she went to Europe to make the last movie. I didn’t know if something had happened on the trip, or if it was something that had happened here, but something had changed, and not for the better.

“I do not mean to give offense,” she said.

“I’d believe that if you didn’t keep doing it. What happened in Europe, Maeve? Or what did you find here when you came home to make you angry with me, and my men?”

“My son treats you and your men as his parents, more than me. That hurts, Meredith.”

“I am sorry for that, and we are willing to take the reality show offer to help you afford to stay home more.”

“I told you at the hospital what I made on my last film, Meredith; there is no way that a reality TV contract will come close to that. We will be giving up our privacy for nothing. If anything, the cameras will record that Liam doesn’t think of me as his mommy except as an empty word. Do you think I want to be humiliated like that on national television?”

“You’re making it sound like Liam is dumping you for someone else. He’s a baby, he doesn’t understand.”

“I am Maeve Reed, the Golden Goddess of Hollywood; I can’t be seen as losing to anyone, not even the first American-born faerie princess.”

“You aren’t talking about Liam now, are you?”

“I’ve been a sex symbol since the early sixties, Meredith, and yet you have all the attention of the most desirable men in the household. I understand why, but my image is everything for my job. My agent and my publicist think that a reality show here could harm the image that I’ve built up over decades. I’m one of the most desirable, and desired, women in Hollywood, but I can’t compare to you in my own home.”

“Is that your agent and publicist talking, or just you?”

“All three of us.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, Meredith, perception is everything in this town. If people believe that someone like you is this much more desirable than me, it will hurt my earning power, and maybe my box office draw.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

She blinked those big, beautiful eyes at me and did an expression I’d seen her do in a dozen films. I’d learned that was one of the ways she hid her true feelings in the real world. I didn’t know if other actors did it, but she did; she acted to hide. It was her version of a cop face: actor face.

“Answer me, Maeve; what did you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

“Someone who isn’t a movie sex symbol,” she said.

I shook my head. “That’s not what you meant.”

“Now you’re telling me what I mean, as if I don’t know my own mind?”

“Do you think the reason that Bryluen can bespell my mind so easily is because I’m not pure enough sidhe, just like Kitto?”

“I did not say that.”

“And that is you avoiding answering the question; very sidhe of you, because we don’t lie outright. We just prevaricate until the listener reads into our words whatever they want to hear, and we let them believe it.”

“You’re overthinking this, Meredith.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, and that was a clear answer,” she said.

“The one you just gave, yes, it was, but it’s not the answer to my question, is it?”

“Drop this, Meredith, please. I’m sorry if I implied anything.”

“What if I don’t drop it?”

“What is wrong with you today, Meredith?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I had a meeting at the studio and they’re already trying to pressure me to go right back to filming. I told them I wanted some time with my son, but I’m one of their solid moneymakers and any year without a Maeve Reed film hits their profits.”

“You haven’t been home a week yet,” I said.

“If I leave again, Liam is going to just forget who I am.”

I went to her then and touched her arm. “Can you say no?”

“I can always say no.”

“Will it hurt your career, or put you in breach of a contract?”

She smiled and put her hand over mine where I was touching her arm. “You understand more than most people do about what really goes on at this level of ‘stardom.’” She raised her hand to do one set of quote marks.

“I’ve watched what you’ve been through in the last year. I’m amazed at how badly you get treated sometimes.”

“I have true power in this town; imagine what happens to actors who don’t.”

“It must be brutal,” I said.

“Hollywood will eat you, if you let it.”

“I wonder if reality TV stars have as big a challenge?”

“I don’t know, honestly; I only meet them after they’ve become stars and then it’s about their publicists trying to keep them in the news. I don’t know how different it is in the beginning, but you wouldn’t be like most reality stars. You’re already famous.”

“And that fame, like all my noble titles, doesn’t pay the bills.”

“You could go back to being a private detective.”

“That won’t help you say no to the studio. For that, we need more money than a detective makes.”

“Thirty million dollars, Meredith; that is what I made for my last film. Nothing you can do will bring that kind of money in. I’m sorry, but it just won’t.”

“We have offers for a million here, a few hundred thousand there.”

“What’s the million dollars for?”

“They’ve been after me for a while to be a centerfold.”

“No, no, because I know some of your publicity offers are from family-oriented things. You can be the sexy young thing, or the beautiful mother with babies, but you can’t do both in the media, not in this country anyway.”

“I’d appreciate your advice on the offers coming in, then, because I’m tempted to go for the most money. I hadn’t thought about building an image.”

“I’d be happy to help, but you will have to choose what kind of image you want to project.”

I laughed. “Isn’t it a little late for me to be the perfect mother since I’ve just given birth to triplets out of wedlock?”

“It’s not that making the mother image hard to sell, it’s the multiple fathers, and the fact that rumor has it that Frost and Doyle are lovers, too, that has really hurt their image in the mainstream media.”

“Very homophobic,” I said.

“Yes, it is, but it’s still the truth.”

“Can I be the sexy young thing having just given birth to triplets?” I asked.

It was her turn to laugh. “I don’t know; I’ve never seen anyone recover their figure as fast as you who wasn’t full-blooded sidhe. You’re built human, but you’re certainly getting your figure back more like a sidhe.”

“Especially with triplets,” I said.

She laughed again. “Yes, especially with triplets. The human media will want to know your secret for postbaby weight loss.”

“There’s no secret; apparently it’s just good genetics.”

“They won’t want to hear that, Meredith. They want some exercise plan, or better yet some magic food, or pill, that will make them all pre-baby thin without any effort on their part.”

“I’m getting my figure back without much effort, but every other good thing in my life has come with a lot of effort.”

Her face sobered, and she hugged me. “I know that, and I’m sorry that I’ve been taking my mood out on you.”

I hugged her back. “Now I’m supposed to say, ‘That’s all right,’ but it’s not. I will never again be anyone’s whipping girl for their issues.” I hugged her tighter and looked up into the face that had launched a thousand blockbuster movies. “Not even the most beautiful movie star in Hollywood.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked, looking down from all that six-plus feet height in her high heels.

I smiled. “Of course I do.”

She leaned down, and I went up on tiptoe to meet her kiss. It was a chaste kiss by fey standards, though if some paparazzi had gotten a picture they’d have sold it for a bundle, and the rumor would have been that Maeve and I were lovers. We had made wonderful magical love once, but it wasn’t what we were to each other. I wasn’t sure if we were extended family, or if she was a member of my inner circle of courtiers. Once such things had been more formalized, and they still were at the Seelie Court, but less so at the Unseelie, and if this was a court then it was the most informal of all.

She smiled down at me, her pinkish lipstick slightly smeared. I wasn’t wearing lipstick, just not bothering with glamour so my lips looked red. Humans would assume I was wearing something, but the proof was in the kissing, and the only lipstick smeared was hers.

I pulled out of the embrace with a smile.

“I appreciate you letting me choose lovers from among the new sidhe guards,” she said.

“They are free to choose and so are you.”

“It’s been a long time since I was surrounded by people who truly felt that way. Among humans and the Seelie there is always a price to pay, or strings attached.”

“The Unseelie who are not under the queen’s direct control are more like the rest of the fey. Sex is another need, like food.”

“Yes, but your steak doesn’t have feelings and emotional baggage; people, even the sidhe, do.”

I nodded. “I can’t argue that. The lesser fey treat it more sensibly.”

“I think you’ll find, Princess, that the lesser fey treat sex with the sidhe sensibly, because they expect it to be a onetime thing, or a fling. Very few non-sidhe ever become a marrying match for the sidhe.”

“My grandmother did,” I said.

“Your grandfather wanted to end his curse, and only willing marriage to another fey would do that.”

“At least the curse didn’t demand a love match. My grandfather wasn’t called Uar the Cruel for nothing; he’d have never found someone to love him.”

“How are his sons, your uncles?”

“They’ve seen modern doctors and nothing seems to be able to stop the venom from dripping out of the pores of their fingers, but modern plastic gloves have helped. They don’t accidentally poison people now.”

“Good, they did nothing to earn their curse. I always thought it was unfair that Uar’s curse manifested in all his children being born with that birth defect,” she said.

“Agreed, but then are curses ever fair? I mean, most of the fairy tales have a grain of truth, and so many of them talk about a curse on the prince, or princess, spreading to everyone in the castle, or kingdom.”

“I’ve never actually known that to happen. I think the human fairy tales were supposed to be a warning to rulers to be fair and just, or their kingdom suffered, but most kings didn’t see themselves in such stories.”

“Really, so there’s no truth to ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ or ‘Beauty and the Beast’?”

“‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the old sleeping warrior idea, and that’s real enough, but ‘Beauty and the Beast’ isn’t based on anything that I’m aware of.”

“There are Raven warriors asleep under the Tower of London,” I said.

She looked at me, eyes narrowing. “How do you know that? The queen did not tell you, and I know Taranis didn’t. She felt it unjust that only her people were used, and he was too cowardly to offer up his own guard as sacrifice at the end of the last great human and fey war.”

“The Goddess showed me in a vision that some of the Queen’s Ravens sleep an enchanted rest underneath the human tower. They’re the ravens the legend refers to, not the birds.”

“When the last Raven leaves the tower, then England will fall,” Maeve said.

I nodded.

“If England is ever in danger of truly being conquered, then the Ravens are to wake and defend the country, that’s really what it means.”

“Why didn’t they wake during World War Two?”

“If the Germans had touched English soil they might have.”

“Who is trapped under there?”

“You mean names?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and all her smiles were gone as she looked at nothing, her eyes full of remembering. “We do not speak their names, and will not until they rise again to fulfill a bargain that should have been shared between the two high courts of faerie. That our king refused to sacrifice any of his golden throng should have told us all what kind of man he was. Instead the story was put about that the warriors sealed up were all monsters that even the dark court was happy to be rid of, when in truth they were some of the best warriors among the sidhe, and no worse men than the rest.”

“But you will not speak their names?”

“I will not, for Taranis made all of us at the Seelie Court vow never to speak their names until they rise to complete the treaty between human and fey.”

“Was it very hard to pretend to be a starlet back in the fifties when you had all those centuries behind you, inside you?”

She gave me a look, a considering look, and let me glimpse the fine burning intelligence that she usually hid. She didn’t pretend to be stupid, but she didn’t show everything either.

“That is a very good question. One that in all the decades of interviews I’ve never been asked.”

“I found it hard to pretend I wasn’t Princess Meredith when I came to L. A. Even I found all my secrets hard to keep, hard not to share with someone.”

“I told some of my secrets to Gordon. I wish he’d lived to see Liam. I think he’s going to grow up to look like that handsome man I first met.”

By the time I’d met Maeve’s late husband he’d been riddled with the cancer that would claim his life, and the man who had been young in the sixties wasn’t young three, almost four decades later. He had been a dying shell of the handsome director who had won Maeve’s heart, but her dearest wish had been to have his child. Galen and I had done a fertility rite and the Goddess had blessed us with the energy to give Maeve and Gordon Reed their last wish as a couple. He’d died months before Liam was born, but he’d gotten to hear the heartbeat, see sonograms, and know for certain he had a son.

“I’m sorry that you lost Gordon.”

“You gave us our son, Meredith; you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Shall we visit the nursery and the children?”

She smiled. “Yes, let’s. If I’m going to remind Liam that I’m Mommy, I need to see him more.”

“Am I supposed to apologize again for Liam’s behavior?”

“If you had been raised in faerie courts and never left them, you would never have said that.”

“Not apologized, or not felt like I should apologize for something that isn’t my fault?” I asked.

“Both,” she said, and smiled softly, but it was sad around the edges and left her eyes almost haunted.

I took her hand in mine, squeezed it. “I am sorry that you have had to spend so much time away from your son.”

“If you hadn’t said that, and meant it, I probably wouldn’t say this: The movie I just finished filming is an amazing chance for me to stretch myself as an actress. If you and the others hadn’t been here for Liam I wouldn’t have taken it, or I might have tried to take him and a nanny with me, but he was better here at his home with his family. I just need to figure out how to be a bigger part of that family.”

“I am very glad you think of us as family, Maeve.”

“You have brought me back to faerie, or brought faerie back to me, after centuries of thinking I had lost it forever.”

“I can’t imagine losing it for so long. Three years of exile was hard enough for me,” I said.

“But you truly are an American faerie princess, Meredith, so very American in your ideals. Like letting your guards have a choice when it comes to their lovers.”

“I think that was what my father hoped when he sent me to public school and encouraged me to have friends outside the fey community.”

“I never really knew Prince Essus, but he seems very wise. Not a single guard will say a bad thing about him.”

“Have you tried to get them to?” I asked.

She made a waffling gesture halfway between a nod and a shrug. “A bit. I wanted to see if they were just speaking nicely for his daughter, but it seems as if he truly was as good as his press.”

“Why would you care if my father was as good as he seemed?”

“Honestly?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Your uncle on your grandfather’s side beat me and exiled me for refusing to marry him. Your grandfather was Uar the Cruel, and he earned that name. Your mother is narcissistic to the point of being delusional, and your uncle is the same. Your aunt on your father’s side is a sexual sadist and a sociopath, or maybe even a psychopath; her son, your first cousin, was worse than his mother. He’d have been a sexual serial killer if the women of his bodyguards hadn’t been immortal and able to heal nearly any injury. I’ve taken more lovers from among them than you have, and they hate the late Prince Cel with a fine and burning passion.”

“We all knew that Andais was tormenting her guards and others of the court. She was very public about most of it, but I didn’t know what Cel was doing with his guards. He was much more private about it.”

“I think he hid it from his mother.”

“She enjoys torturing people,” I said.

“I’ve had more pillow talk about some of the horrors he did to the women, and I believe he was discreet because Andais might have stepped in and interfered with his fun.”

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, Meredith, what Cel did to some of his private harem … I’m so glad you’ve found them a therapist.”

“I’m glad they were willing to go.”

“They didn’t think they had a choice when they started.”

“What?”

She smiled. “They thought you ordered them to go to therapy, and by the time they realized you hadn’t meant it that way, most of them were benefiting from it, so they kept going.”

“I would never order someone to go to therapy. I mean, you can order them to go the appointment, but you can’t make them actually work their issues.”

“You ordered them to talk to the therapist, and after what Cel did to them if they disobeyed him, or Andais did to anyone who disobeyed her, they worked their therapy as if their lives depended on it.”

I shook my head and sighed. “They are all so much more damaged than I knew. Wait, is that why some of the female guards stopped going to therapy a few weeks ago?”

“Yes, they finally realized that you hadn’t meant it as an order. A few of them tested to see if you meant it as a suggestion and when you didn’t get angry about it, a few more stopped going.”

“Most of them haven’t stopped going,” I said.

“As I said, Meredith, they worked hard at their therapy for fear of what you’d do to them if they didn’t, and it worked strangely well for many of them.”

“I didn’t think you could force someone to do therapy like that.”

“Neither did I, but it seems to be working for them.”

I frowned, puzzling, and finally shook my head. “If it’s working, it’s working.”

“You are surprisingly practical about very impractical things.”

“Do I say thank you, or is that a problem?”

She smiled. “Neither, but the same guards who speak of Cel in hate-filled tones say wonderful things about your father. I think most of them are still in love with him, both as a good leader and as a man.”

“I was actually thinking earlier that my family has more crazy than sane in it. Though you forgot that my grandmother was wonderful and caring, as were her parents, my great-grandmother and -grandfather.”

“You’re right, I did forget. Because your grandmother was half human and half brownie I counted her as less, but I shouldn’t have, because it seems like the insanity comes from the sidhe side of things.”

“We’re not the most stable people,” I said.

“I think it’s living for so long, Meredith. Our bodies don’t age, but maybe our minds do.”

“Are you saying that Taranis and Andais have a version of dementia?”

“Maybe, though Cel wasn’t that old by sidhe standards.”

“I think Cel was always weak and twisted, but his mother indulged him, let him think he could do no wrong, and that cemented his crazy.”

She studied me again as if looking for a flaw, or a hint, or something I couldn’t guess at. “You are your father’s daughter, and that is a good thing.”

“I am my grandmother’s, too, and that’s a good thing as well.”

“Yes, yes it is.” She brushed off her hands as if brushing the topic away. “Let’s go see the newest babies—though with Nicca and Biddy’s daughter, Kadyi, and Liam, there are a lot of babies.”

“Did you hear that Cathbodua and Usna are expecting?”

She looked startled, and then she laughed again. “No, I hadn’t heard; that’s wonderful and just fun, that the cat and the bird are having a baby.”

“Andais said something similar, the cat and the crow.”

Maeve’s face sobered. “I would not be compared to the Queen of Air and Darkness in any way.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “It’s all right, you didn’t … it’s just so many of us seem to go mad as the centuries pass, it makes me worry.”

“Worry about what?” I asked.

“About my own sanity, I suppose.”

“You have never shown any sign of the madness that haunts some of the noble lines of faerie.”

“Oh, it’s not just the noble lines, Meredith; some of the lesser fey are just as unpredictable, they just don’t have the power of life and death to indulge their insanity.”

It was my turn to study her. “What makes you say that?”

“The Fear Dearg, for one; you know we have one of them living here in Los Angeles.”

“I’ve met him,” I said.

She shuddered. “I remember the wars against them. It was like their entire race was as bad as Andais, Taranis, and Cel combined. It’s why we took their magic away.”

“The Fir Dhaeg said the sidhe also took their females, so though they live forever they’re dead as a race.”

She nodded, rubbing her arms again. “We could not work a spell to kill them, or destroy their evil entirely, but we destroyed what we could of them.”

“The Fir Dhaeg said that I could give him back his name. That the curse the sidhe placed upon them could be cured by a royal chosen by Goddess and faerie.”

“I do not know the details of the curse, but all curses must have a cure; it’s part of the balance. Nothing is truly forever, nothing is that is made cannot be unmade, and that which is unmade has the possibility of being reborn.”

“What happened to the Fir Dhaeg females? Doyle would not tell me details after we met the one here in L. A.”

“We could not destroy them, Meredith, for they were as much a part of faerie as the sidhe, but we were able to kill them at a price.”

“What price?” I asked.

“That we would take in their essence, absorb them. We would tie the Fir Dhaeg to the sidhe forever, so that if they reincarnated they would come back as one of us. The hope was that our bright blessings from the Goddess and Her Consort would cleanse their evil, but I wonder sometimes if the opposite happened.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I wonder sometimes if the Fir Dhaeg contaminated the sidhe with their darkness.”

“Taranis and Andais were already king and queen by then; you can’t blame their evil on the Fir Dhaeg.”

“I suppose not, but I remember the day that it was done. The females didn’t die; they faded and the energy went somewhere, Meredith. What if it went not into the land, or sky, or plants, or water, but into the ones that did the cursing? Andais was part of that spell; your father was not.”

“You’re saying that in cursing the Fir Dhaeg, Andais may have … what, become one herself?”

Maeve shrugged. “Maybe, or maybe she was mad even then and we just hadn’t realized it.”

“Faerie chose her to be queen of the Unseelie Court, so she was fit to rule once,” I said.

“She was a great war leader, so yes, she was fit once.”

“Have you discussed your theory with anyone else?”

“No, by the time I thought of it I was in exile. I had a lot of time to think upon old things while I was alone.”

“I’ll share your theory with Doyle and see what he thinks.”

“Remember that he was a part of the spell, too.”

“Doyle is not evil,” I said.

“I didn’t say he was, but being around evil changes a person, even if you’re killing it on the battlefield.”

I tried to read her face and couldn’t. “Why tell me this?”

“I don’t know; perhaps I’ve wanted to tell someone my idea for a very long time.”

“You lived in the high court of faerie for centuries, Maeve, and then in Hollywood for decades; you don’t say things without understanding how it will affect people, or how you hope it will affect people, so what’s your point? Why tell me? Why now?”

“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.