I glanced at the bedside table. Somebody had gifted me a small violet in a pot—one guess who—about a week ago, which had been a charming thing with three shy little blooms. But Caedmon must have had some more excess energy, because the table was no longer visible, being draped in a mass of purple flowers that spilled down from the surface and were spreading across the floor.
There was nothing else to do, so I watched them for a little while. Fortunately, they seemed to be slowing down, so maybe we wouldn’t be smothered in violet exuberance in our sleep. That was good, I decided.
Then I was out again.
The next time I woke up, it was because of food. A wonderful, earthy smell turned out to be coming from a bowl of soup somebody had shoved under my nose. Thankfully, that somebody was Olga, who had a proper notion of what a portion size is.
I sat up, my bed warmers having gone off somewhere, probably to get their own soup. And, in the case of Stinky, had left a couple handfuls of coarse gray hair behind. “I think he’s shedding,” I told Olga blearily, which of course got no response. Trolls don’t care about such things.
Fortunately, they do care—passionately—about food. Which was why the tray she was setting over me contained not only what looked like a whole tureen of homemade vegetable soup, but also half a loaf of fresh-baked bread, about a stick of butter crammed into a little pot, a couple of longnecks—hallelujah, somebody had bought beer—and some soft cheese that went great on the bread I’d already slathered with butter. There was no meat, but I didn’t mind.
I dug in.
Olga sat on the end of the bed, causing me to go almost perpendicular due to mattress sag. I managed to rescue the tray, while she scowled at the flimsy human furniture, then went out again. A few moments later she was back, carrying a sturdy wooden chair from the dining room. She put it down by the bed, and took a moment getting comfortable.
I watched her over my bread-and-butter-and-cheese feast, which was seriously good. The bread wasn’t long out of the oven, the butter was melting into all the little cracks, and the cheese sat on top, being silky smooth and warm and—God. I was starting to sound like a troll. I certainly had the appetite of one, and Olga didn’t interrupt.
Food time is sacred time to her people.
I don’t know how long it took me to clear the tray—maybe twenty minutes, despite the fact that I had my head down, shoveling it in the whole time. I finally fell back against the pillows, utterly replete, and noticed that Claire had come in while I was busy. “My compliments to the chef,” I told her, and got a small smile.
I started to set the tray on the bedside table before remembering the floral profusion. Which was gone now, I realized, with just a few well-shorn lilacs peering at me over the top of the pot, looking properly chastened. I completed the movement, wincing when pain shot through my shoulder.
But it was a little pain, and didn’t seem to be echoed in too many more places. For once, I felt pretty good. “Hey,” I said. “I feel pretty good!”
I started to throw back the covers, and, once again, was stopped.
This time, by two fierce looks from two fierce women, which had me sliding back onto the pillows meekly.
I didn’t feel that good.
“So,” I said, looking between the two of them, “is there a reason I can’t get up?”
“You can get up whenever you want,” Claire said, frowning.
“Of course,” Olga agreed.
I reached a hand toward the covers, and I swear somebody growled at me.
The fact that I wasn’t sure which of them had done it was kind of concerning.
“We just want to talk, and downstairs is still”—Claire looked like she was reaching for the right word—“messy.”
“It a pit,” Olga agreed, which made Claire tear up, because it was her house. And because she usually ran a tight ship. And because she looked like just about anything could set her off right now.
But she didn’t argue the word choice, so it was probably bad.
“Maybe I could help,” I offered, but didn’t try getting up again.
I’m reckless, not stupid.
“Oh, it’s fine, Dory!” Claire said. “The guards are helping—”
“The guards? What guards?”
She blinked at me. “The royal guards. Who else?”
I grinned. “You have the royal guards cleaning up? Since when?”
The fey had this whole hierarchy I didn’t understand, because I didn’t care, about who could do what and when. It was familiar to me since it was the sort of thing vamps did, making up a hugely complex system of rules because, when you live hundreds or even thousands of years, what else are you going to do to pass the time? But I did understand enough to know that royal fey guards didn’t do the mopping up.
Or anything else, as far as I could tell. Except hunt and laze about, polishing their weapons and waiting to accomplish deeds of derring-do. Of course, last night they’d pretty much managed that, so I guessed I should cut them some slack.
“They do when Caedmon tells them to!” Claire said, and got up, but not to leave. Just to pace around, because she looked like she was about to come out of her skin. And considering what that looked like, I was all for the pacing. “I had my hands full with our patients—and the boys, who were scared out of their minds!”
“They seemed okay earlier,” I said, “unless I was dreaming them being in here.”
“No.” She turned around, looking apologetic. “I hope they didn’t keep you up, but there was nowhere else. My room was taken up with injured fey, and Gessa and the little troll were in the boys’ beds, and I was constantly back and forth and would have woken them anyway—”
No wonder she looked tired, I thought.
And then what she’d said registered.
“The little troll? You mean he’s not dead?”
“Not yet,” Olga said darkly.
“I was up with him all night,” Claire told me. “And with Gessa, who had a slight concussion after Ymsi—”
She broke off, biting her lip.
“Wait.” I sat up and shoved another pillow behind me. My thoughts were still a jumble, but there was some stuff that I remembered clearly. Like a knife sticking out of a kid’s chest.
“Caedmon was with me,” I said. “And that knife was through the heart. So how is he alive again?”
“Troll heart on other side,” Olga told me simply.
I blinked, and filed it away for future reference. “I didn’t know that.”
“Someone else not know, either.”
“Or maybe they weren’t aiming for him!” Claire said heatedly.
“Aiden not stab,” Olga pointed out, with the tone of someone who had said it before.
“Aiden?” I looked at Claire. “You think this is about your son?”
“Who else?” She shoved extra-frizzy hair out of her face, because I guess she hadn’t had time to do anything with it today. “Gessa said those things went straight for the stairs, not once but numerous times. If you hadn’t been there—”
“They’d have met an angry mother dragon a floor up. They were better off with me.”
“Stone doesn’t burn, Dory,” Claire said, her arms tight around her, her face white. “It’s how the goddamned Svarestri win against the Dark Fey—how they’ve always won! Our element is fire; theirs is earth. And earth smothers fire. . . .”
Leaving you armed only with a maw of daggerlike teeth, ten-inch claws, and a tail that can crush a man in one sweep, I thought, but kept my mouth shut because this wasn’t the time.
“Aiden is probably the best-protected little boy on the planet,” I said instead. “Plus, he’s wearing that thing, isn’t he? That rune we spent so much time tracking down?”
It had been an ugly, discolored item, old and cracked and strangely heavy. Not something you’d expect the heir to one of the major thrones of Faerie to have in his possession. Or on his person, because it melted into the skin once on the body, becoming invisible—and making the wearer virtually invulnerable.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t be hurt; if Aiden had been stabbed, he’d have definitely felt the pain, and borne the wound until it healed. But it would have healed. Because wearing one of the last remaining Runes of Langgarn granted certain privileges.
So whatever had happened to the rest of us last night, Aiden had not been in danger.