CHAPTER TWELVE
WELL, THAT WAS unexpected,” Rhys said.
“Merry made her cry,” Cathbodua said, and came to drop to her knees in front of me, her raven-feathered cloak spilling around her like shiny black water. The cloak always moved as if it were made of different things than it appeared to be, as if it were more liquid than solid sometimes, but then once it had given her the gift of shapeshifting, so maybe that was it.
I felt Galen shift where he sat by my legs. He didn’t always like Cathbodua. I felt Kitto flex underneath my slippers; he would have flinched if he’d not still been pretending to be an object. He was afraid of Cathbodua, though she’d not done anything to him to make him afraid; it just seemed to be an on-principle sort of thing for him. It seemed to be the same reason Galen didn’t like her.
Cathbodua wasn’t that close to either of them. She’d knelt far enough away from me to keep everyone in the room in view. Battle goddesses, even fallen ones, always seem to remember that you never look away from anyone who could hurt you, and that meant everyone in the room.
“I have only seen one other person who could move the queen as you just did, and that was your father, Prince Essus. Him I would have followed forever, and today I see that you are your father’s daughter.”
“Thank you, Cathbodua; that makes me happy to hear, for I loved and respected my father.”
“As well you should have, Princess, but I will offer my oath to you.”
“I have not asked an oath of service from anyone,” I said.
“No, you have not; it was the queen who forced Prince Essus to take our oath to him. He would have trusted to our loyalty and love of him.”
Bryluen fussed in her sleep and I raised her to put her against my shoulder. She liked to be upright sometimes. I said, “Andais doesn’t trust love, only fear.”
“Essus understood that those who follow out of love are more powerful than those who follow out of fear.”
“There is no loyalty in fear, only resentment,” I said.
“You have been fair and gentle with those of us who would allow it, and fierce and ruthless with those who would not. I ask that you would take my oath so that I may serve you, Princess Meredith, daughter of Essus.”
“Once you give oath you are bound to me forever, or until my death, and I may not be as much my father’s daughter as you think.”
“You are more ruthless than he was, and if you fight, you kill your enemy. I have never seen you offer mercy to anyone who tried to kill you or those dear to you.”
“Shouldn’t that give you pause, before you tie yourself to me, Cathbodua?”
“No, because if your father had held your edge of harshness he would have slain his assassin and not let love stay his hand. He would have been forced to kill his sister and become king, and so much pain, death, and useless bloodletting would have been avoided.”
“Are you saying my father was weak?”
“Never, but he was softer than you are, Princess.”
I laughed. “I think most of the nobles would not agree with you.”
“Then they have not been paying attention since your hands of power manifested, Princess Meredith.”
“I kill because I am not the warrior my father was, and I never will be. I am too small to fight as he could.”
“Does it matter why someone has the will to win?” Cathbodua asked.
“I think it does,” I said.
“I agree with Cathbodua,” Galen said.
I looked down at him holding Gwenwyfar, sitting close enough to touch Kitto, his long leg close to the edge of the raven cloak as it pooled on the floor. He had that serious look in his eyes again; it was partly tiredness maybe, but his eyes looked older than they had before, as if his near-eighty years of life were catching up with him.
“Results are what matter, Merry, not motives. I think our friend Detective Lucy would say, leave the motives to the lawyers and the psychiatrists.”
“We are not police officers, just private detectives who help them out on crime involving our people.”
“That’s not what I mean, Merry,” he said, turning more toward me with the baby nestled and sleeping in his arms.
Doyle said, “I think Galen means that you will not try to win the battle with flair, or by some chivalrous code. If forced, you simply destroy your enemy; there is no mercy in you when lives are at stake, though outside that you are very merciful.”
“My father was six feet tall and muscled, and had centuries of training as a warrior, and one of his hands of power was usable over a distance. He could afford mercy in battle; I can’t.”
Bryluen moved against my shoulder, making a small sound. I started rubbing her upper shoulders in small circles, being careful of her wings lower down, though they seemed remarkably flexible. They were definitely more skin and reptile scales over bone than butterfly scales over exoskeleton. That strengthened Sholto’s view that sluagh genetics had given her the wings. I was still reserving judgment until the genetic tests came back.
“But that’s it exactly,” Cathbodua said.
It made me turn back to her. “What do you mean?”
“Essus thought as of old, when we could afford battles and assassinations, but we are in modern-day America now, and we need a modern ruler to see us through this strange new land of technology and social issues. You are the future, Princess, and for the first time in centuries I think our race has a future.”
“You mean the babies,” I said.
“Not just yours, Princess, but Maeve’s son, and Nicca and Biddy’s little girl. We are fertile once more thanks to you.”
“And all this because the queen cried,” I said.
“No, because you made the queen cry.”
“If I were as ruthless as you say, I would have sent Doyle to assassinate the queen months ago.”
“You want him alive more than you want her dead; that’s love, Princess.”
“Doesn’t that make me soft?”
“No,” Galen said, “because I know I would do anything to keep our babies and you safe, anything. Holding Gwenwyfar in my arms, seeing you there with Bryluen, doesn’t make me feel soft. It makes me feel fierce, as if for the first time I have things I’m willing to fight for, to kill for, if I have to, and it’s love that’s given me this new … resolve. I will not fail you again through hesitation, or lack of will; I will be the man you and our children need me to be.”
I could see that resolve in his face, so sure, so firm, so … resolute. I was happy to see it, because I’d feared for my gentle Galen in this sea of brutal politics, but at the same time it made me a little afraid, because I wasn’t sure that deciding to be harsher would automatically give you the skills to be that. I just didn’t know.
“Take my oath, Princess; let me give you my vow,” Cathbodua said.
“You wish to serve me until either your death or mine?”
“Yes, and if Goddess wills it, the babes in your arms will be as worthy of my oath as you and your father.”
“I pray that it is so,” Doyle said.
“So do I,” Frost and Mistral said together.
Everyone agreed, and I said a silent prayer. “Please, Goddess, let our children be worthy of the loyalty and love of their people.”
Rose petals began to fall from the air above my head like a sweet-scented yes. Guards moved from behind us to join Cathbodua where she knelt. The rose petals began to spread through the room as if the entire ceiling were raining roses.
I took their oaths, and I prayed to be worthy of them, because in the beginning most leaders mean well; it is later when the best of intentions twist into something darker. I knew that Andais, Taranis, and my grandfather, Uar the Cruel, were as much a part of my genetics as my father, Essus. There was more insanity than sanity in my family tree; I hoped that everyone kneeling in front of me remembered that.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MOST OF THE guards went about their business, because otherwise the hallway outside the dining room wouldn’t have been big enough for us to walk from there to the nursery. There were enough people in the house now that sometimes it felt claustrophobic, so I’d made it clear that outside of special circumstances, like impressing the queen or guarding me from her, less was more when it came to my retinue. So it was just me, the triplets, and their fathers, except for Mistral, who had gone off with the other guards to tend to something. He didn’t really enjoy the nursery duties and often tried to be somewhere else when diapers, bottles, and the like came up. I’d been debating whether I should make him do more of it or let it go. The other men were more than enough, so he wasn’t absolutely needed, but still, he was their father; shouldn’t he help?