“Maybe whoever took her couldn’t get the spear or sword.”
That ruled out V’lane. He took it from me regularly, like now. Darroc did, too. Whoever had taken the queen captive had to have been powerful enough to take her but not powerful enough to get the spear or sword, two conditions that seemed mutually exclusive. Was it possible her kidnapper had a reason to want to kill her slowly?
“V’lane told me all the Seelie Princesses are dead,” I said. “There’s a Fae legend that says if all successors to the queen’s power are dead, the True Magic of their race would be forced to pass to their most powerful male. What if someone was trying to time taking possession of the Sinsar Dubh with killing all the female royalty, ending with Aoibheal herself, so when the queen died, he would end up with not only the power of the Unseelie King but the True Magic of the queen, making him the first patriarchal ruler of their race? Who is the most powerful male?”
All heads swiveled toward V’lane.
“What do you humans say? I have it: Oh, please,” he said drily. The look he gave me was equal parts anger and reproach. As if to say, I’m sitting on your secrets, don’t turn on me. “It is a legend, nothing more. I have served Aoibheal for my entire existence and I serve her now.”
“Why did you lie about her location?” Dageus demanded.
“I have been masking her absence for many human years to prevent a Fae civil war. With the princesses dead, there is no clear successor.”
Many human years? It was the second time he’d said as much, but the ramifications only now penetrated. I stared at him. He’d told me far more than just one lie. On Halloween, he’d told me he had been otherwise occupied, carrying his queen to safety. Where had he really been that night when I’d so desperately needed him? I wanted to know right now, demand answers, but there was already too much going on here, and when I interrogated him, it would be on my terms, my turf.
“And just how did they die?” Barrons said.
V’lane sighed. “They vanished when she did.” He looked at me again.
I blinked. His gaze held sorrow—and a promise that we would talk soon.
“Convenient for you, fairy.”
V’lane cut Barrons a look of disdain. “Look beyond the tip of your mortal nose. The Unseelie Princes are easily as powerful—if not more so—than I. And the Unseelie King himself is far stronger than us all. The magic would most certainly go to him, wherever he is. I have nothing to gain by harming my queen and everything to lose. You must let me have her. If she was in the Unseelie prison the entire time that she has been missing, she may be very close to death. You must permit me to take her to Faery, to regain her strength!”
“Never going to happen.”
“Then you will be responsible for killing our queen,” V’lane said bitterly.
“And how do I know that’s not what you’ve been after all along?”
“You despise us all. You would allow the queen to die to satisfy your own petty vengeances.”
I wanted to know what Barrons’ petty vengeances were. But I was feeling that damned duality again. What was unfolding here wasn’t remotely what anyone thought. Only I knew the truth.
This was not the queen they were fighting over. It was the concubine from hundreds of thousands of years ago, who’d somehow ended up becoming the Seelie Queen. Had the king finally gotten what he’d hoped for? Had protracted time in Faery made his beloved Fae? Had the balance that the world “listed” toward, as the dreamy-eyed guy proposed, turned a mortal into a replacement queen, as it would ultimately turn Christian into a replacement prince?
If I was the king, why didn’t that elate me? The concubine was finally Fae! I shook my head. I couldn’t think that way. It just didn’t work for me. “Mac,” I muttered. “Just be Mac.”
Barrons cut me a hard look that said, Shelve it for later, Ms. Concubine.
“Look, boys,” I said. Four ancient sets of eyes skewered me, and I blinked at the two Scotsmen. “Oh, you two aren’t at all what you seem to be, are you?”
“Is anyone in this room?” Barrons said irritably. “What’s your point?”
“She’s safest here,” I said succinctly.
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Barrons growled. “This level is warded the same way the bookstore is. Nothing can sift in—”
V’lane hissed.
“—or out. Nothing Seelie or Unseelie can get to her. We don’t let anyone enter the room clothed. Rainey is nursing—”
“You put her in with my parents?” I said incredulously. “People are visiting naked?”
“Where else would I put her?”
“The queen of the Faery is in that glass room with my mom and dad?” My voice was rising. I didn’t care.
He shrugged. His eyes said, Not really, and we both know that. You aren’t even from this world.
Mine said, I don’t give a shit who I might have been in another lifetime. I know who I am now.
“It takes time and resources to ward a place as well as the room where Jack and Rainey are. We’re not duplicating our efforts,” he said.
“Castle Keltar was warded by the queen herself,” Dageus said. “Far from Dublin, where the Sinsar Dubh seems inclined to prowl, ’tis the better choice.”
“She stays. Not open to discussion. You don’t like that, try to take her,” Barrons said flatly, and in his dark eyes I saw anticipation. He hoped they would. He was in the mood for a fight. Everyone in the room was. Even me, I was startled to realize. I had a sudden, unwanted appreciation of men. I had a problem I couldn’t fix. But if I could create a manageable problem, like a fistfight, and kick the shit out of it, it sure would make me feel better for a while.
“If she stays, we stay,” Dageus said flatly. “We guard her here or we guard her there. But we guard her.”
“And if they stay, I stay, too.” V’lane’s voice dripped ice. “No human will protect my queen so long as I exist.”
“Simple solution to that, fairy. I make you stop existing.”
“The Seelie are not our enemy. You touch him, you take us all on.”
“You think I couldn’t, Highlander?”
For a moment the tension in the room was unbearable, and in my mind’s eye I saw us all going for one another’s throats.
Barrons was the only one of us that couldn’t be killed. I needed the Scotsmen to perform the re-interment ritual and V’lane and his stone to help corner the Book. A fight right now was a very bad idea.
“And that’s settled,” I chirped brightly. “Everyone’s staying. Welcome to the Chester’s Hilton! Let’s get some beds made up.”
Barrons looked at me as if I’d gone mad.
“Then let’s go out and find some things to kill,” I added.
Dageus and Cian growled assent, and even V’lane looked relieved.