“That’s why all the legends say he aged backward!” I stared at him. “There were two of you!”
“Well, of course there were.” Rosier sounded like that should have been obvious. “The stories became confused because I named him after me. I was too angry with his mother at the time to use the name she’d chosen, and—”
“And you look alike,” I said as things finally fell into place.
“He received his good looks from me,” Rosier agreed smugly. “Although I was hiding them somewhat at the time, to look less like a lusty rival and more like a valued counselor—”
“Rival for who? Rosier, who the hell did Uther promise you?”
He looked at me sardonically. “Who do you think? Who in the Arthurian legends is the only person to have the name le fey?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Morgana?”
“Igraine’s daughter with Gorlois,” Rosier agreed. “They had three, but she was the only one to inherit her mother’s abilities, hence the sobriquet.”
“But . . . Morgana?”
“Morgaine, in fact. Her name was also Latinized in the later—”
“But she was . . . she was some kind of evil sorceress! Or did the legends get that wrong, too?”
“No, they were pretty spot-on there.”
“But you . . . but she . . . and Pritkin—”
“Considering who your mother is, I don’t think throwing stones—”
“Morgana?”
“Stop saying it like that. It made sense at the time.”
“How? How on earth does marrying an evil fey sorceress—”
“Quarter fey. And we never actually got around to marriage—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“She was lovely, like her mother,” he said, ignoring me. “Only less cold, less distant. At least with everyone else. She didn’t seem too fond of me—”
“Imagine!”
“Which was a problem, since I was not Uther, and do not rape—”
“Of course not.”
“If I did, why spend all that time getting to know her?” he demanded. “Why teach her magic?”
“You taught her?”
“Who else? Genetics is an odd thing, and she’d ended up quite a bit more powerful than her mother. Naturally, it made her curious about her other relations—and their magic—but Igraine would never allow her to be taught. Afraid her daughter would run off to Faerie if she had the skill, and she wanted her on earth.”
“But Morgaine had other ideas.”
He nodded. “It was how I won her over in the end. I agreed to teach her magic as a seduction technique. It worked . . . in a manner of speaking.”
“What manner? It either works or it doesn’t.”
“Ah, to be young. No. It either works or she imprisons you in a tree using one of your own spells, then goes off to explore Faerie. Fortunately, by that time she was already pregnant with Emrys and, once she realized this, she returned to give birth on earth and give the child to me.”
“And you put him with a couple of guardians who thought he was some kind of freak!”
“Who told you— Oh, never mind.” Rosier scowled. “Well, what did you expect me to do? I couldn’t take him back with me, now, could I? What if he hadn’t received my power? How would he have fit in on earth after growing up in the demon realms? Not that he would have grown up there. That damn court—they attacked him when I finally brought him back with me, did you know? Almost killed him, and that was after he was an adult and able to defend himself. Can you imagine what they would have done to a child?”
“So you left him on earth.”
“It seemed the best way. I put him with a farmer’s family for a while, then arranged for him to go off with Taliesin when he was older to get a bit of experience. The bard, part fey, little teched.” Rosier tapped the side of his head. “But a good sort overall. Roamed about all over the place. Thought it would help with the transition to my realm if Emrys had seen more than a pigsty in this one.”
“Arranged? Then you didn’t visit him.” It wasn’t a question. The Pritkin of this time period and I had had a conversation about his childhood recently, and he’d never once mentioned his father.
He’d never mentioned him.
“It seemed the best way,” Rosier repeated.
“Why?” I could feel my face flushing. “Because if he didn’t get your abilities, he’d be useless to you? And you’d abandon him, like all those fey fathers did their unwanted children—”
“Don’t be absurd! I would have provided for him—”
“Physically. But he would never have known who he was, what he was—”
Rosier looked confused. “If he didn’t inherit my power, what would he have been?”
“Your son!”
Damn it, just when I began to think Rosier might have some redeeming qualities, he pulled something like this. And he wasn’t lying; it was all over his face. He would have left a powerless child on earth, alone, with no explanation for his existence or further contact. He’d have written him off and moved on to the next experiment, and God knew Pritkin might have been better off if he had! But I knew what it was like to grow up questioning. To search out any clues to who you were and where you came from. To always wonder—what had they been like? Had they loved you at all? Had they— Damn it!
“Did you even take him to see her grave?” I asked, after a moment.
“Whose?”
“Morgana’s. Morgaine’s.”
“What?”
“His mother’s grave. When you came back to claim him, did you—” I cut off. Because Rosier was suddenly looking . . . blank. Extremely blank. The kind of blank used by Vegas cardsharps and secretive vamps, which was a little odd on the face of someone whose coin in trade was emotion. “You didn’t, did you?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Her grave isn’t on earth.”
“Where is it, then?”
“I assume it’s in Faerie.”
“You assume? You didn’t bury her?”
Rosier found an expression. It was crabby. “No.”
“Who did?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea? She gave you this wonderful gift, the son you’d been wanting for centuries, and when she died, you didn’t even—”
I cut off.
“She . . . did die . . . right?” I asked slowly.
“Of course.”
“You saw the body?”
“Not . . . exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly? You told Pritkin his mother was dead.”
“She is.”
“How do you know that if you didn’t see her?”
“I was told she would almost certainly—”
“You were told? By who?”
“By Nimue, if you must know. Showed up with a whole cadre of fey. Wouldn’t even let me speak to her. Said they had to rush her off to die in Faerie, where her spirit could be absorbed and reborn—or whatever their bizarre religion is, I don’t know.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, quietly furious. “But you told him she was dead.”
“Because she is.”
“Because you wanted him with you! You made him think there was nothing for him in Faerie!”
“There isn’t!”
“His mother—”
“Is dead. And if she isn’t, she never came back to see her darling boy, did she?” Rosier asked spitefully. “He’s better off—”
“That’s not for you to decide! I don’t see—”