I folded one hand across my lap, watching my father’s face. He looked as relaxed as ever, but I caught the slight glint in his crystalline eyes.
“As you say,” Daigh sipped his drink again as if he had no real interest in the suggestion. “I merely point out that now the Briarwood coven are at their weakest. If we combine our forces, we will be able to overpower the spell that keeps us here. My fae have consulted the auguries. We believe this is our time, our chance. And with the girl arriving?—”
“I tire of this conversation.” The Queen waved her hand dismissively. She picked up one of the honey-coated fruits and slid it into her mouth, her tongue flicking around her green-tinged lips. “Your idea is foolish, and I cannot see you giving up the throne of the Unseelie Court for a human girl, especially not anAmerican?—”
Daigh smiled. The Queen didn’t catch the menace in that smile, but I did.
As the Queen reached for another fruit, he flicked out his wrist. His bone knife soared across the table, burying itself in the Seelie Queen’s neck.
Her mouth hung open in shock. She grabbed for the knife, but it was too late.
The blade exited between her shoulder blades, burying its tip into the back of her wooden chair and pinning her upright. Her hands groped uselessly at the air and a gurgling sound came from her ruined throat. Blood bubbled from her mouth, streaming down the front of her gossamer gown.
Her attendees gasped. Several sprites darted forward, their tiny hands grabbing at the knife handle, trying to wrench it free. One of our soldiers kicked them away.
“You are correct,” Daigh grinned, as the life drained from the Queen’s eyes. “The witch will not be taking over my throne. She will be takingyours.”
He rose and, with the elegant strides so ubiquitous of the fae, approached her chair. Sprites and brownies leapt out of his wayas he leaned over the table and yanked the knife from her chest. An arc of blood splattered across the table, drenching the food.
The Queen slumped forward, her face smashing into the plate in front of her. Sticky fruit and pale green blood splattered across the tablecloth.
Daigh wiped the blade of his knife with the edge of the tablecloth, and slid it back into his belt. “Send word across our realm,” he addressed the courts. “Tell all that the Seelie and Unseelie Courts are now united as one. There is to be no more fighting amongst ourselves. We are unified by a common goal – to reclaim our ancestral lands and rid them of the human scourge, once and for all.”
The Court broke out into rapturous applause – some of it genuine, some of it tinged with fear. Seelie sprites leapt into the air, dancing around their dead Queen’s corpse, lifting her wildflower crown from her head and placing it atop Daigh’s thorny circlet. The boggarts and warriors of the Unseelie Court rapped their claws against their weapons and cheered.
I cheered loudest of all. But not for the reason Dear Father believed – I had no interest in returning the fae to the human realm. I had my own plot involving the indomitable Maeve Moore, and the first part of it had just fallen perfectly into place.
CHAPTER SIX
MAEVE
What the hell am I doing here?
The question bounced around inside my head as the taxi bumped along a narrow road edged on both sides by towering bushes bursting with bright white flowers in bulbous clusters. The taxi driver chattered on about the bushes – he called themhydrangeas,which I knew I’d forget tomorrow because I hardly knew anything about plants – explaining how the flowers bloom green but soon burst into white before fading to green again and dropping their leaves all over the road like an end-of-summer snowfall.
“They’re a devil of a thing to wash off your car,” he said.
I nodded, staring out the window as we clattered past. In the warm sunlight that was so unlike the harsh heat of Arizona, the hydrangea bushes looked pretty alien to me, like everything in this place – fences made of neatly-clipped gorse tangled together into thorny lines, rolling hills that looked like something from the front of a chocolate box, and houses and walls made of beautiful shaped stones or Tudor wattle-and-daub.
I’m in England.
Why the hell am I in England?
Nerves swirled in my stomach. When I bought the plane ticket and packed my clothes and books, I’d been high on Kelly’s enthusiasm and too distracted by my absence of grief for my parents to really think about what I was doing. Now that I touched down in Heathrow and had several conversations with people who talked like Harry Potter characters and was heading out to my very own castle, the full weight of the decision pressed down on me.
I’d really come to a foreign country to live in a castle with four strangers all by myself. If nothing, this little excursion proved to me that Kelly was right – I really hadn’t taken enough risks in my life, because this one was freaking me the hell out.
Here we are, luv.” The driver turned down a wide driveway flanked by tall oak trees. I pressed my nose to the window to admire the carefully sculpted beds and espaliered fruit trees spread along a crenulated garden wall. We passed under a stone gatehouse with a sign bearing the English Heritage logo along with opening hours and a ticket booth. I gathered from the website that we have visitors to one wing of the castle, which helped pay for its upkeep. Thankfully, the castle wasn’t open on Mondays, so at least when I met my tenants for the first time there was no risk we’d get poleaxed by a selfie stick.
The driveway wound on and on through a forested area and then rolling green hills where tiny sheep munched on lush grass. I expected them to be fluffy like cumulus clouds, but they were all scraggly and skinny and covered with tufts of wool.
The driver explained that they were Wiltshire sheep, and their wool fell off during the summer to help keep them cool. “The farmers love them because they’re self-shearing.”
This taxi driver was such a fount of knowledge, I wished I could keep him.
We rose over the crest of a hill, and I got my first glimpse of Briarwood House.
And what a house it is!
