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“Excuse me, a Mother?” Mircea said.

Gillian spared him a glance. She liked looking at him considerably more than the queen. Not for the same reason that she liked looking at Kit, although he was arguably more attractive, but because there was a . . . normalcy about him, a stillness that soothed her frazzled nerves. He reminded her of a pool of deep water that was calm and quiet and refreshing on a hot day.

She felt herself relax slightly.

“Every coven has a leader,” she explained. “Called the Mother. She rules the coven in peace, and in war, she leads them in battle.”

Mircea took the sketch back, his face thoughtful.

“And the inscription?” he asked. “I think I have reproduced it faithfully.”

“Close enough,” Gillian agreed. “The symbol is fey; it stands for water. And denotes an alliance between the covens who favor that element.”

“Fey?” Kit said, sounding troubled. “What do those bastards have to do with anything?”

“Bastards?” Gillian repeated, surprised.

“They live for thousands of years, manipulate us lowly humans with their so-called wisdom, and use us for their aims. What else would you call them?”

Gillian spared a glance at the queen, whom that description could have also fit, and received bared teeth in return.

It might have been a smile.

Might.

Gillian cleared her throat. “Yes, well, the covens view them somewhat differently. We learned our magic from the fey originally, and our methods are still based on theirs. This is one of four rings given by the fey to coven leaders long ago. Each is keyed to a different element, and each came to represent an alliance of many covens. Senior members of the Oaken Council, known as Great Mothers, wore them to denote that they spoke with the voices of their entire alliance.”

“Oaken Council?” Mircea asked. He seemed the most interested in how everything worked, so Gillian spoke to him.

“Our chief governing body. Druid means Oak-Seer or Oak-Talker in the old tongue. The ancient ones learned to commune with the trees from the fey, to read their memories and to see through them. Both past and the present.”

“Trees,” Mircea repeated. “Some . . . stories are told, of men being consumed by trees. Captured there by a witch’s spell and held for hours.”

Gillian laughed, and then realized that she was the only one doing so and stopped. “Er, yes. But that is merely an animation spell, something used to slow up or kill an enemy who is foolish enough to follow you into a forest. The elders could do far more, or so it is said.” Her smiled faded. “Much is lost, now.”

“Odd,” the vampire queen’s voice suddenly rang out, making Gillian jump. “If the coven leaders held so much power, how did they lose to the Circle?”

Gillian felt herself stiffen, and Kit’s hands clench on her shoulders. She met the woman’s eyes for the first time, which were dark, rimmed in gold and accented with what looked like powdered lapis lazuli. It glimmered in the firelight from several nearby lanterns, like the burnished bronze skin tone and the red, red lips. And was enhanced by a river of dark hair, considered so scandalous to show uncovered, that was long enough for her to sit on.

She had ignored modern fashions where her clothes were concerned as well, what little there was of them. Instead, she wore a version of what the guards had on outside. Only it was a full dress, shot through with gold and beautifully pleated, yet the filmy white folds were almost transparent.

In fact, they may have been transparent, but Gillian was determinedly not noticing.

She was trying not to notice the insult, as well, telling herself that the woman was ignorant, that she didn’t understand. But it was hard. And while her mind told her one thing; her emotions told her another, and her emotions were winning.

“We ‘lost’ because we had a choice: either save England or ourselves,” she said tersely. “We chose England.”

“Save England . . . how?” Kit said. “You never told me this.”

She glanced at him, seeking reassurance and comfort, but didn’t find them there. His face was concerned enough, with the dark eyes sober, and the dark curls she loved so much backlit by one of the infernal lanterns. But the shadows etched his face with unease—for her, for himself, for this whole situation.

Gillian didn’t think he felt any more comfortable in the presence of his mistress than she did.

“I don’t speak of it,” she said briefly. “None of us do. Perhaps when Elinor is older, I’ll tell her the story of how her father died, of how her mother became a bandit, of how the Armada fell and England lived, but at the price of the lives of most of its covens. But not now.

“She is too young now.”

She left out that she didn’t want to speak of it, not ever, although it was probably clear enough in the roughness of her voice, in the stiffness of her spine, and in the expression that she couldn’t quite keep off her face. And how could she? The memories haunted her dreams, shadowed her eyes, hung like a weight around her neck.