“She mentioned she’d been turned on by her own court. Betrayed. I’m assuming she didn’t mean the alchemist. Blayne?” I asked, guessing.
Now it was Falin’s turn to wince, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the wound he was cleaning.
“Dead,” he finally said, shutting the first-aid kit.
I was not expecting that response. “A duel? He challenged the queen for her throne?”
Falin sighed. “He did not intend to. But the queen is, as you said, not herself. By the time she’d twisted everything, he had little choice but to challenge her.”
“And he lost.” I wondered if he’d been the one to deliver the worst of Falin’s wounds. “I don’t suppose he was the alchemist by any chance?”
“No.” Falin closed the glove box and slid stiffly into the driver’s seat. “He did not die in the dueling ring, but after his defeat was treated to the queen’s hospitality in Rath. He knew nothing of the alchemist.”
I shivered. Rath was the name of the queen’s dungeons. I doubted Blayne had a pleasant death. Or afterlife. Whatever she’d done to him, if his body was still in Faerie, his soul was trapped.
Falin stared straight ahead as he drove, his lips pressed into a tight line and the muscle over his jaw bulging.
“You liked him?” And he’d had to duel him, and whether he struck the final blow or not, he likely now wore the stain of Blayne’s blood on his hands.
Falin nodded. “I respected him. But I think when the queen considers her actions later, she will regret them. He’d been with her a long time.” He paused. “He was also Ryese’s father.”
Well, that explained why Ryese hadn’t been his normal, leering self during my visit. The queen had tortured her own brother-in-law to death? Of course, as marriages expired among fae, maybe he wasn’t her in-law anymore, but still. That was harsh. And very scary.
If Ryese and his father were both on the queen’s council, was his mother as well? “Is Maeve the queen’s sister?”
“No. Maeve was the consort of the last Winter King.”
I twisted in the seat and stared at him. “You mean Maeve was queen until the current Winter Queen challenged and killed the king?”
Falin shook his head. “She was never powerful enough to be queen. She was the king’s wife at the time of his fall, and from the whispers I’ve heard, she’d been close to losing that position to our queen as well, even if the throne hadn’t been usurped.”
So the Winter Queen had challenged and killed her own lover? Somehow that didn’t shock me. “And the queen keeps Maeve on her council? Why? Hell, for that matter, why did Maeve stay in the winter court?”
He gave a tight half shrug. “I believe the queen is of the mind to keep her potential enemies where she can keep an eye on them.”
And here I thought she simply eliminated potential threats.
“Besides,” he said as he pulled into the parking lot in front of a nondescript gray building, “all of that happened hundreds of years ago. Most of the nobles have messy, intertwined pasts.”
Not a surprising complication with being near-immortals. Live long enough and I suppose you’d have a lot of complicated history. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that because we’d arrived at our destination: FIB headquarters.
The building squatted on the very edge of the Magic Quarter, nearly backing up to the river that separated the main part of the city from the more witchy and fae districts. The building had a sign, but it was a small one, easily missed if you weren’t looking for it. Clearly it wasn’t a place the public was welcome to stop by and file reports or check up on a case.
Falin parked behind the building and turned off the engine. Then he sat there, frowning at his steering wheel. I paused, my hand on the door.
“If you say you don’t want me to come in, I might strangle you,” I warned him.
His gaze tore away from the steering wheel slowly, the frown not moving as his eyes refocused.
Crap. Judging by his expression, that had been exactly what he’d been thinking.
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have everything at stake here. I don’t care what secrets the FIB might have in there—in fact I promise to try to forget anything not relevant for this case—but I need all the intel I can get right now, and I need it sooner rather than later.”
For a long moment he just stared at me. I swear, he didn’t even blink. His gaze moved over my face, no doubt taking in the bruiselike circles I’d noticed under my eyes or the fact the mirror had reflected back a face slightly paler and gaunter than I’d worn a few days earlier. His frown tightened, and then he nodded, pocketed his keys, and climbed out of the car.