Pouting, she smiles over at the men, blowing them a kiss from her raspberry-tinted lips, which look good against her auburn hair and green eyes.
‘But if they’re going to be married, shouldn’t you at least try to be… friends? I mean, you’ll see her at family events, right?’
‘No one needs a friend like her, Niamh. She’s a fuckingm?—’
She stops short, blinks at herself and takes a deep breath to get her anger under control. Not for the first time, I wonder how she’s going to manage as a lawyer with that temper. Her gaze shifts back to the men.
‘Time?’ she demands. I check my watch.
‘Twelve-fifteen.’
‘Okay,’ she says clapping her hands together, gleefully. ‘Three hours and forty-five minutes left to drink, dance and see what else the night brings.’ She winks at me.
‘Rose…’ I sigh.
‘Oh, don’t be such a prude. You know sex isfun, right? You’ll end up a dried-up old maid, living with a houseful of cats, or even worse, settling for dull, predictable sex with some nice but boring guy who doesn’t even know that a clit exists let alone where to find one.’
I stay silent, not wanting to have this conversation with her. It’s hard to argue, in one way– she might be right about the cats, and honestly, I would be okay with that. But I’ve also witnessed every one of Rose’s highs and lows over the past four years.
Since Matt died, she’s not had a serious relationship, but has more than made up for that with casual ones. I’ve hugged her, held her hand, binged nineties and noughties romcoms and talked to her for hours and hours after she’s been dumped or ghosted or ignored. Not to mention that twice I’ve had to buy pregnancy tests when her period was late and she practically stopped functioning until we had the negative result in front of us.
And it’s not like I don’t ever date… it’s just… not a priority right now. Not until I’ve secured my first job and have a decent salary. And yes, preferably find a guy who knows where a clitoris is. Someone who is able to distract me from Cillian. Not to mention someone who sticks around for a second date.
Once I’m settled, there’ll be time to have fun. With the added advantage that I won’t have to deal with immaturity. Supposedly. Maybe that’s part of the appeal of my recurrent fantasies about Cillian. He’s definitely mature, and far from boring, in a dark and dangerous kind of way. I’d happily bet that he could find the clitoris on a first attempt.
‘Come on!’ Rose yells, hooking her elbow through mine and steering me towards the dancefloor. ‘Let’s see if we can find at least two guys who look like they’re capable of giving decent orgasms.’
I sigh and allow her to drag me out onto the dancefloor.
Chapter2
Cillian
‘Atoast,’ Vincenzo Riali declares, standing up with a glass of Cristal in his hand, pointedly ignoring the empty seat between myself and Alec Carruth. ‘To my beautiful daughter, Vittoria, and my future son-in-law, Cillian. May the Rialis and the Hunters thrive once more under your combined leadership. Although, let’s hope that happens later rather than sooner.’
We’re in an elegantly decorated private dining room in The Angel’s Share, one of Vincenzo’s Michelin-starred restaurants, and no expense has been spared. Alongside the Rialis and my family, Vincenzo has taken it upon himself to invite the six other Kennards who, like Vincenzo and myself, are the heads of the ruling Kinfolk families. We are all who remain of the original twelve that formed The Unseelie Court, thanks to the Blight.
Two Unseelie Kin disappeared in the first wave of the Blight which also destroyed the whole Seelie Court, and a further two have since disappeared, all of their homes,businessesand seats at The Unseelie Court choked by the creeping, fungal Blight. Although the fact that this happened directly after them challenging Vincenzo has not gone unnoticed.
Soon, the number will become seven once the Hunter and Riali Kin are brought together with my marriage. I glance at the others around the table. Alec Carruth, whose Kin work predominantly with stone, has come alone. Beside him– representing smiths of all kinds– his rival, Thomas MacGowan, sits with his silent wife. At the far end, I’ve already heard Robert McLoughlin trying to persuade Duncan Webster to invest in his latest start-up, but no one here is foolish enough to trust anything that a representative of Lugh suggests– they’ve all been caught out by the trickster once too often in the past. The final two Kin, the Kelsos and the Macphersons, refuse to even speak to McLoughlin and Vincenzo has wisely placed them all as far away from each other as possible.
With the exception of myself and my fiancée, everyone around the table stands and raises their glasses to us, their expressions falsely congratulatory– I hate Court politics but it’s a game that must be played if I’m to restore the Court to its former glory. I paste on a smile and glance down at my phone, wondering where the fuck my sister has got to. Surely, she isn’t planning to not turn up tonight of all nights? This is a historic union, not to mention it being the next step in my campaign to replace Vincenzo as King of The Unseelie Court as soon as I possibly can. Unfortunately, the only option is to do this with his daughter, Vittoria, as my queen. A dark price I will have to pay.
‘Will this marriage mean that another root of the Tree of Life is killed by Blight?’ Carruth asks.
‘Both bloodlines will survive,’ Vincenzo insists, refusing to face the underlying issue, as usual.
Thomas MacGowan shrugs. ‘So much is gone already. Only our eight twisted roots remain. The tree itself is long dead. I doubt anything we do will help.’
‘We shouldn’t be simply accepting this. We should be fighting it, trying to restore our world to what it was,’ I say.
But Vincenzo laughs. ‘You will learn what battles to fight, Cillian. Once you are king, you too will see that the Underworld is dying. But we have done well in the human world. That is where our future lies. Why fight it?’
‘Surely theCraobh na Beathais worth saving?’ I argue. ‘Our power lies within it. As the years pass our powers fade, our people fade. Fewer are born, more die. And the Blight destroys more and more of the Underworld itself.’
The Kelsos shrug and look away, taking long draughts from their glasses, and I can’t decide if they have ceased caring or if it’s guilt about their own inaction. They’re the largest of the families, but also the most secretive, living their lives in the shadows of the Underworld.
But not even they know why the Blight happened and how it started. There are few alive today who witnessed it, but a hundred years ago something poisoned theCraobh na Beatha– the Tree of Life that grew in Glasgow’s Necropolis– the city of the dead, east of the city centre which is the most important site that links the Underworld of the Kinfolk and the human world. As well as linking the two worlds, the Tree also housed both The Seelie and The Unseelie Courtchambers. Now only The Unseelie Court remains, housed in the partially withered roots of the great tree. And where the tree itself should be, there’s simply nothing.
