Page 22 of Cathmoir’s Sons (Bad Boys of Bevington #5)

Chapter 22

Fairy Cake and Faery Kings

LAW

T hree surrogate grandchildren and a blood grandchild on the way. Surely that will appease my father enough for him to overlook me gnawing off the Holly King’s head.

The fae king gives Caileán yet another long, assessing look from under dark lashes. His hair is blacker than Luca’s human’s today, his eyes greener than the grass in the meadow outside the room’s open doors. I hate it. I can shapeshift, too, of course. My hair is blue today because I’ve noticed Kellan likes it. But I despise him for doing it. It’s fake when he does it. Deceptive.

As soon as the Holly King arrived, Caileán awakened. One moment my mate was warm and soft in my arms as we fed one of Princess Teddy’s rather adorable children. The next moment her spine was steel and her claws so long I had to pluck the spoon out of her hand before she scratched the toddler’s cheek. Her pretty gray dress gained a metallic blue sheen; fabric and buttons unfurled up her throat. I’m sorry to lose my view of her tempting breasts, but not sorry the Holly King lacks that view. From bantering with her friends, Caileán went nearly silent. I sense she’s watching. Listening. Weighing each word.

The Holly King’s the only one around the dinner table unaware of the change in my mate. Teddy exchanged glances with her husbands and the pink-haired Darkswerd before steering the conversation to sports. Luca stopped questioning the Thistle prince about ley lines. The intense conversation Evan Lords was having with Luca’s human petered out and the Capricorn fell silent.

The demon’s reaction was the most interesting. Before the Holly King arrived, the demon was out in the meadow with the other twin, showing her how to skip rocks in the stream. It involved very little skipping and a lot of plopping; I’ll admit to becoming a little wistful about the day I might play games with my own kit as I watched them.

As soon as the door opened to admit the King and Regent, the demon’s head lifted. His horns unfurled above his crimson mane. He returned to the dinner table, keeping the girl-twin on his lap, feeding her and speaking to her in a language I don’t recognize. She and her brother answered him, switching back and forth seamlessly from English to his language. Caileán also spoke to the demon in his language. Just a word here and there, but enough to be clear she’s following the conversation.

They are on alert. It makes my fur bristle and my tongue catch on my fangs.

I could snap off the king’s horns in two bites. And then his head.

The Holly King tries to draw Caileán into conversation. Evidently, he’s been doing his homework. He asks about her Winter Study class, questions which make my brother eye him. Caileán answers politely but without elaboration. Luca steps in more than once to expand on her answers, allowing our mate to lapse into her observant silence.

Finally, the Holly King works up to the question that brought him to this family dinner, I sense, uninvited. “The Unbloodied Prince has announced a carnival for the Wolf Moon. Would you do me the honor of attending with me?”

Caileán watches the fae for a long, spine-ruffling moment. Her eyes have never been icier. She might beat me to snapping his head off.

Then she nods. “It would be my pleasure.”

There’s not a drop of enthusiasm in her voice.

“My invitation extends to your Cait and human, of course,” he says.

“Of course,” she responds.

He reaches into his green robes and withdraws a slim box. He offers it across the table with a small flare.

Caileán’s smile grows fangs almost as sharp as my own.

“You’ll forgive me,” she says. “High fae offering me gifts has not always gone well. Luca?”

My twin’s surprise flares between our minds, but he keeps his expression neutral. He reaches out and paints a sigil in the Air above the proffered box with his fingertip. I’m familiar enough with his magic to know that’s deru , a rune of seeing and revelation.

When nothing happens, Luca takes the box from the Holly King’s hand and lays it on the table in front of Caileán.

She opens it with her claws.

A circle of starlight lies on a bed of black velvet.

“To crown your midnight mane,” the Holly King says.

She closes the box slowly. “I’ll be honored to wear it at the carnival,” she says. “So long as that’s appropriate.”

“It’s always appropriate to wear my gifts,” the Holly King answers. “I hope to give you many more.”

Caileán nods distantly.

If she showed the faintest enthusiasm for the Holly King’s present, I’d have to find a forge to melt the thing in. But she’s utterly impassive. She’s given him a few cool smiles, answered his questions, and listened attentively to him. He can’t complain that she’s ignoring him, but he can’t possibly be encouraged, either. I’d be sulking and breaking things if she was this stony with me. Yes, her anger and hurt were hard to bear, but I always knew beneath them was a deep well of emotion. Caileán regards the Holly King as though he’s one of the revenants she and Luca did unspeakable things to during Fall semester. She’s waiting for him to do something interesting, or perhaps dangerous, but she has no emotional investment in him at all.

For his part, the Holly King seems unfazed. Perhaps this is what he expects from a political courtship.

I feel a surge of gratitude that my parents always insisted Luca and I marry for love. Yes, Dad demanded I put my duty to our people over my pursuit of our mate until I came of age. But he never suggested I court a woman for political reasons rather than emotional ones.

It really would upset him if I bit the Holly King’s head off.

I resign myself to wait for another day.

Good call , Luca thinks to me. Dad really wants grandbabies before you plunge us into a war with the high fae.

Caileán may do that before I do .

True, but Dad already likes her better. He’ll forgive her faster than he’ll forgive you .

Luca’s probably right about that.

I want to give her something better than the Holly King’s diamonds , I tell him.

You just gave her a villa in Italy, idiot , Luca responds. Trust me, that beats a couple of diamonds. Have you ever seen Kellan wear anything in her hair but a hair tie or clips? She’s not a diamond circlet kind of girl .

With a grunt, I concede his point. I still want to give my queen jewelry. But it will be better, more thoughtful, jewelry than the Holly King’s.

Did you understand the language she was speaking to the demon? I ask, since I have my brother’s attention while the conversation continues around us.

No. I’m sure it’s Dan-Enochian. Same language as some of Rho’s glyphs. I was able to translate those but I didn’t learn the language. I’ll need to study it .

I rest my chin on Caileán’s shoulder. Maybe I should take a crash course in Dan-Enochian, too.

The Holly King, evidently unperturbed by Caileán’s coolness, asks to escort her on a walk after dinner. I nearly lunge at him when he offers her his arm. She’s been sandwiched between me and Luca, safe between her Cait, for the entirety of the meal. I don’t want her to leave our enclosure. She kisses my cheek, then turns and kisses Luca’s, then stretches back and kisses Rhodes’. We stare at her in surprise, since she hasn’t been demonstrably affectionate with any of us in front of the Holly King before. She rises from the table, her full raven cloak rippling from her shoulders to her feet. Before she takes the Holly King’s arm, she leans over and kisses my other cheek.

“I promised myself I’d never miss an opportunity to kiss you goodbye again,” she breathes in my ear, her claws curling around my nape and prickling my skin. “I love you. I want you to be secure in my love, no matter what comes against us. I won’t go far. Not out of your sight. I’m just going to count my sheep.”

My mind does a guilty canter. There might be fewer sheep than her last count.

Luca chuckles. “Busted.”

“Fairly sure you ate one or two.”

“Not how I remember it,” Luca says.

Caileán narrows her eyes at both of us as she lets the Holly King escort her out into the meadow with the Ivywhile knight trailing them.

“How soon can we kill him?” the demon asks me in Cait.

Darwin and his father, who barely said anything through the meal, choke. Evan Lords looks from one to the other before glaring at the demon.

“What did you say?” Lords demands.

The demon laces his clawed fingers together and rests his chin on them. “Who, me?”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for the whole spider thing,” Lords points out.

“Thought savin’ your ass at Jedburgh Abbey made us even?” The demon sounds genuinely surprised.

“Not even close,” Lords says. “I wasn’t anywhere near death at Jedburgh Abbey. You died in front of three of my students.”

“I was only a little dead,” the demon drawls.

“Not even a little funny,” Lords says. “Are you plotting with the Cait to kill a monarch of Faery?”

The demon scratches his chin with a black claw. “Plottin’s a strong word. We haven’t done any plottin’ yet.”

“Yet?” Lords sputters.

“We’re at the pre-plottin’ stage.”

Teddy chokes back a laugh and puts her hands over her face.

Lords shakes his finger at her. “You should cover your face.”

Beside her, Gabe chortles. “Definitely not why she’s covering her face. Are we actually killing him? He doesn’t seem that bad.”

“You only like him because he brought good wine,” Kellan’s pink-haired friend, Rachel, chimes in.

Gabe picks up his wine glass and swirls the deep claret liquid within. “It is good wine.”

Darwin tinks his glass against Gabe’s.

“Why are you four so cavalier about this?” Lords demands. “Do you have any idea what would happen to the ley lines if Kellan and her consorts kill the Oak or Holly Kings?”

Teddy lifts her head from her hands. “Ev, I got nothin’ but respect for you with this Capricorn Primus gig. Honest. But Darwin and I created a ley line just from shagging. You can’t ask us to treat them like sommat sacred. They’re not. Magic’s fluid. It grows, contracts, shifts. Right now, it’s concentrated at Ivywhile. But you’re gonna have to work hard to convince me that’s a good thing. It’s fueling the Oak King. And I’m not sold on his arse. Jury’s still out on the Holly King. If Kells and the Cait have a good reason to want him dead, I’m inclined to listen to them.”

Lords gapes at her, his mouth working like a landed fish.

Teddy turns her glare on me. “Notice I said a good reason. More’n just you don’t like him makin’ a play for your girl.”

“I don’t like him making a play for our girl,” I acknowledge. “But I’m also distrustful of his motives. Why would the most-recently-crowned monarch of the high fae be interested in Caileán? She’s wild fae. There are other, powerful high fae the Holly King could court. Why our girl?”

Teddy’s brown eyes track over my shoulder to where the trio are making their way through the wildflowers toward a distant group of sheep. “Good question,” she acknowledges. She turns to look at the demon. “Why d’you want to kill him?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” The demon picks his teeth with a sharp claw. “I’ve paid my seggurach’s debt to him. We’re even. I hate the Twittering Throng, present company excepted. One less airy fairy in the world? Not somethin’ I’ll lose sleep over.”

“This is why you’re not allowed unsupervised time with the babies,” Teddy says, rubbing her forehead. “Okay, I get we may have concerns about his motives and loyalties. Giving him the benefit of the doubt for a minute, and not ignoring the fact that the Mother resurrected him herself , if his motives are sommat we can live with, does he get to live?”

“Not as part of Caileán’s ... court,” I say with what I consider to be remarkable restraint.

No one remarks on it, disappointingly.

“He could just be looking for an alliance with the side he thinks will win,” Luca’s human offers.

“Are we picking sides?” Lords asks.

“Yes,” I tell him.

He scrubs his hand through his hair. His Darkswerd rubs his shoulder comfortingly.

“I hate to interrupt the assassination pre-planning,” the Thistle Regent says, while rocking Carrie Prince’s namesake. “But I’ll remind you that I’m sworn to the Oak King. Since you’re still in the pre-planning stage , I have nothing to report to my liege. But he won’t simply ignore the wild fae rising against Ivywhile.”

“I h’aint forgot,” Teddy says, watching her father-in-law with a cool, steady gaze.

Her father-in-law looks back at her. I have a sense they’ve shared many such looks. They may be family but I suspect they’re not always on the same side of the table.

“There’s no renegotiation on that point, Teddy,” Callan says.

I’m not sure what point he’s referring to. His allegiance to the Oak King? Reporting our plans? Does the Oak King even know his fellow king is courting a Crow Queen? The Oak King is sunk so far in woody thoughts, bound so deep in his form, he barely acknowledged his closest advisors the last time Luca and I were at court. I can’t imagine it’s gotten better in the years since.

I’m a hundred percent behind my mate. If she wants to end the Oak King, I’ll tear him apart with my teeth and claws and burn his stump. But the truth is, if she leaves him alone, the Mother will do the work for her. He can’t have more than another century or two before he’ll no longer be able to communicate through his own bark.

That’s a long time for him to haunt us, though. I won’t subject my mate to that. I want her to live free and easy. That means eliminating any threat to her. Particularly before she bears our kits.