Shadowfever

“But how did you get Cruce’s cuff?”

“My queen gave it to me.”

“How did she get it?”

“I assume it was taken from Cruce when he was killed, then passed from queen to queen to be protected.”

“So, while the king was trusting Cruce with everything he knew, the prince decided to overthrow him and steal his concubine?” I said. I couldn’t keep the note of condemnation out of my voice.

“From whom did you hear that?”

I hesitated.

“Trust must be reciprocal, MacKayla,” he chided.

“I saw Christian in the Silvers. He said he’d learned that Cruce hated the king, wanted his concubine, and cursed the Silvers to keep the king away from her. He told me Cruce planned to take the king’s woman and all the worlds inside the Silvers for himself.”

V’lane shook his head, tawny hair shimmering in the sun. “It was not so simple. Things rarely are. To use a human word, Cruce loved the king, first and above all. The creator of the Unseelie is a being of unbearable perfection. If he is indeed Fae, he is from the most ancient, most pure line that ever existed. Some say he is the Father of All. Some say he had outlived hundreds of queens before the time of the queen he slew. Many of the forms he can take are beyond even Fae ability to absorb. He has been described as having enormous black wings that can enfold the entire Unseelie Court. Were he to attempt to take human form, he would have to occupy multiple bodies and divide facets of himself. He is too vast to be contained in a single mortal vessel.”

I shivered again. I’d seen the hint of those wings in the White Mansion. I’d felt the concubine’s awareness of them, had empathically shared her fascination with their feathery touch on her naked skin. “I thought the queen was the most powerful of your race.”

“The queen is heir to the magic of our people. It is a different thing. That magic has never accepted a male of the True Race, although …”

“Although what?”

He gave me a sideways look from beneath his lids. “I tell you too many things.” He sighed. “And enjoy it too much. It has been a long time since I knew another worthy of confidences. There is an ancient myth that, should all the contenders for the matriarchal throne be no more, the magic would likely gravitate toward the most dominant male of our race. Some say our rulers are your Janus head, your yin and yang: The king is the strength of our people; the queen is wisdom. Strength draws from brute force, wisdom draws from true power. In harmony, the king and queen lead a united court. Opposed, we war. We have been opposed since the day the king killed the queen.”

“But other queens came along. Couldn’t the king make peace?”

“He did not try. Again, he abandoned his children. Upon finding his concubine dead, through his act of atonement he did what he had sworn never to do. By pouring all his dark knowledge into the pages of an ensorcelled tome, he inadvertently created his most powerful ‘child’ yet. Then he vanished. It is rumored among Seelie and Unseelie alike that he has been trying to—as you humans would say about a lame horse—put it down ever since. The Hunter that killed Darroc was allegedly the king’s own for hundreds of thousands of years. It carried him from world to world, hunting his nemesis. The king, like any Fae, loves nothing so much as his own existence. As long as the Book is free, he knows no peace. I suspect the Sinsar Dubh was amused to take the king’s steed. I also suspect that if the king is no longer using that Hunter, and that Hunter is here in your city, then the king is, too.”

I gasped. “You mean in Dublin?”

V’lane nodded.

“In human form?”

“Who could say? There is no predicting one such as he.”

He would have to occupy multiple bodies. I thought of Barrons and his eight. I shook my head, rejecting the thought. “Back to Cruce,” I said hastily.

“Why this fascination with Cruce?”

“I’m trying to understand the chronology. So the king trusted Cruce, worked with him, taught him, and Cruce betrayed him. Why?”

V’lane’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared with cool disdain. “The king’s devotion to his concubine was unnatural. It is an aberration in our race. Humans prize monogamy because they have a mere blink of an eye to suffer each other. You are born beneath the shadow of death. It makes you crave unnatural bondage. We do not spend more than a century, perhaps two, with a partner. We drink from the cauldron. We change. We go on. The king did not.”

“Speaking of which, how do you know any of this?”

“We have scribes and written histories. As one of the queen’s High Council, it is my duty to recount our past, on those occasions she passes an edict. She insists I be able to recite any part at any time.”

“So the king was faithful, and fairies don’t like that.”

He gave me a look. “Spend a thousand years with another and tell me it is not unnatural. At the very least, tedious.”

“Apparently the king didn’t think so.” I liked the king for that. I liked the idea of true love. Maybe, just maybe, some people were lucky enough to find their other half, the one that completed them, like a Janus head.

“The king had become a danger to his children. His court began to talk. They decided to test him. Cruce would seduce the king, turn his obsession from the concubine, make him abandon his singleminded focus on the mortal.”

“Is the king bisexual?”

V’lane gave me a blank look.

“I thought the Fae were gender-specific.”

“Ah, you refer to who fucks whom and are we—how do you say it—monosexual?”

“Heterosexual,” I said. Hearing V’lane say the word “fuck,” in his musical, sensual voice, was foreplay in and of itself. I took a sip of my drink, hung my leg over my chair, and cooled a toe into the surf.

“When I speak of Fae seduction, it is different from human lust. It is the captivation of another’s …” He seemed to be struggling for words. “Humans do not have an appropriate word. Very psyche? That which is all one is? Cruce was to become the king’s favored, replacing the mortal with whom he’d so long been obsessed, who was not even of our kind. Cruce was to make the king once again enamored of our race. When the king returned his attention to the Court of Shadows, he would raise them to their rightful place in the light with the others of their race. His halflings were weary of hiding. They wanted to meet their brethren. They wanted to taste the life their counterparts enjoyed. They wanted the king to fight for them, make the queen accept them, to unify the courts into one. They felt all was as it should be. The queen was the wise and true leader of the Seelie, the king was the strong and proud leader of the Unseelie. They were a Janus head, complete, if only the king and queen would let them live together as one.”