Antonio bumped his shoulder to Declan’s, silent acknowledgement, and it made the world feel all the moresolid.
Zyr looked between the two of them, his mostly impassive expression turning thoughtful.Almost curious, for a second.Then he picked up his book, flicking back to his page with careful talons.Human and sluagh exchanged a glance, quiet, until he stopped flipping and raised his gaze again.
“Why did Aisling send you to me?”
“Precedent,” Declan replied.“I’ve records on human and fae bonds, but nothing in depth on what theydid.It’s easier to find information on changeling prophecies than whether or not a human-fae bond ever had a seat of relative influence.”
There had to besomeway to make an entry onto the Council, after all.Short of reestablishing the courts, there was only the Council.
“Dangerous questions,” was the answer, as thunder rolled in the distance.Or perhaps only in the beithir’s voice.“And stupid ones.Tell me what youwant, hound.And don’t play games.I dislike being fucked with.”
“We need a seat on the Council.It’s as simple and complicated as that.”Declan raised his hands, palm up, at Zyr’s bone-shaking growl.“We have no voice on the Council.They’re looking into making that permanent by requiring a majority vote of the entire Council for new appointments.”
Zyr looked back to his book, the very picture of disinterest save for the agitated flick of his tail.He curled it around the foot of his chair after the second flick.
“You intend to speak for all of ‘us,’ do you?”
“Someone bloody has to.There’s talk of humans corrupting the unseelie.The Council attempted to tell the head of a House their bond wasn’t valid due to him having been previously bonded, and the new bond a human.Precedentwas needed.And yet, they put an oathbreaker in a seat after he attempted to damage the mortal’s mind.It’s bleeding into everything.”Declan let out a sharp, harsh breath, head shaking.
Antonio’s warm affection hit like a freighter on the heels of Declan’s little tantrum.Impassioned, emotional dramatics were apparently the way to his heart.Declan would … He would feel a lot of things about it.Later.Soon.
“What he said,” Antonio added, stubborn.“With a side of, ‘sticking with the guy who asked instead of the one who tried to kidnap me.’”
“Something needs to change.The unseelie need a voice before the whole thing blows up again.”
“Unseelie?”Zyr asked, no longer pretending to read.Challenge lurked in his tone, too front and center to be anything but intentional.“We’re all one court now, I’m told.”
“So say the people making the rules,” Declan agreed, no less edged.“All of them would belong to the same court if there were two.Theywere allowed to keep what they were.‘Seelie’ isn’t treated as a curse.Isn’t synonymous withmonster.”
“Hard to fight for something you’re not supposed to name,” Antonio added, a bitter sort of humor to the words.“‘Word-we-don’t-say pride’ isn’t exactly catchy.”
Declan laughed, quiet and quick and near soundless.Antonio was a rough, morbid man, swimming in dark humor.And Declan would never stop being grateful thatthiswas his bond.
Zyr bared his teeth.A smile?Perhaps, if one were to be both very generous and optimistic.His teeth were nearly identical to Declan’s, and Declan typically didn’t smile that way with goodness and light in his heart.
“The other you mentioned with a human bond.Seelie or unseelie?”
“Kelpie.”That, from Antonio, his voice short but with another nudge at Declan’s shoulder for it.
“And the Council attempted to dissolve their bond?”
Antonio glanced at Declan.Declan returned the look with a thin smile, then turned back to Zyr.“Aye.Trials, then coercion, when the trial failed to prove their bond invalid.It seems that while being unseelie is distasteful, bonding to a human, beyond propriety.The heirs to your House were a great help in the attempted coercion, I hear.”
“I fail to be surprised.No long view.”The words said absently, Zyr’s scaled fingertips tapping his book with care.“Idiots.Drive all the unseelie to seek human bonds, and they’d be rid of us in a few hundred years.More efficient than breeding us out.”
“Fat chance.That’d mean letting however many humans cross the veil.”
“Most with access to magic,” Declan added.“Fair to presume the few hundred years lifespan was well known?”
“Of course.People hadeyes, pup.And the ability to count.But short-lived or not, the Monarchs aren’t fond of your kind.”A beat, and something that was, once again, not quite a smile.“Any of our kind.”
Our kind.
Something in those words, at least.In the chill of them, too, ofbreeding us out, and the inevitable fate of fae bonded to humans.Their lifespan.The fact therewasone, and the Monarchs knew of it.
Declan had resolved to do more in those four hundred years bonded than in an eternity without.He’d all but promised Antonio as much.Four hundred years, and then they’d be dead, but with something to bloody well show for it.
“You mentioned breeding us out,” he heard himself say, cursed curious in the way that always got him in trouble.Sent him down the rabbit hole, not in Aisling’s library, but in the mortal realm.Dark cruelties, there in the mortal history books.“A sudden surge in seelie-unseelie pairings after the convergence?”
