"If I could keep you alive and safe, what would you risk?"
"Alive and safe? How?"
He just smiled, held his hand up, and yelled, "Taxi!" Three of them appeared within minutes on the empty street. Sholto just meant to call a taxi. He had no idea how impressive it was in Los Angeles to be able to call three taxis within minutes to an empty street. He could also reanimate corpses that hadn't grown cold yet, and that was impressive. But I'd lived for three years in the city, and a taxi when you wanted it was more impressive than a walking corpse. After all, I'd seen walking corpses before. A convenient taxi was a completely new animal.
Chapter 11
AN HOUR LATER SHOLTO AND I WERE SITTING IN TWO LOVELY BUT UNcomfortable chairs around a small white table. The room was elegant, if a little too pink and gold for my tastes. There'd been wine and a tray of hors d'oeuvres waiting on the table. The wine was a very sweet dessert wine. It complemented the cheese on the tray but clashed with the caviar. Of course, I'd never tasted anything that could make caviar palatable. No matter how expensive it was, it still tasted like fish eggs.
Sholto seemed to like the caviar and the wine. "Champagne would have been more appropriate, but I've never liked it," he said.
"Are we celebrating something?" I asked.
"An alliance, I hope."
I took a minute sip of the too-sweet wine and looked at him. "What sort of alliance?"
"Between the two of us."
"That much I'd assumed. The big question, Sholto, is why would you want an alliance with me?"
"You're third in line to the throne." His face had become very closed, very careful, as if he didn't want me to know what he was thinking.
"And?" I said.
He blinked those triple-golden eyes at me. "Why wouldn't a sidhe want to join himself to the woman who is only two steps away from the throne?"
"Normally, that would be fine reasoning, but you and I both know that the only reason I'm still third in line for the throne is that my father got the queen's oath before he died. She'd have had me disqualified on the grounds of my mortality alone, except for that. I have no standing at the court, Sholto. I am the first princess of the line who has no magic."
He sat his wineglass carefully on the table. "You are one of the best of all of us at personal glamour," he said.
"True, but it's the greatest of my powers. For Goddess sake, I am still called NicEssus, daughter of Essus. A title that I should have lost after childhood when I came into my power. Except I didn't come into my power. I may never come into my power, Sholto. That alone could have gotten me removed from the line of succession."
"Except for the oath the queen made to your father," Sholto said.
"Yes."
"I am aware how much your aunt loathes you, Meredith. Much the same way she loathes me."
I sat the wineglass down, tired of pretending to enjoy it. "You have magic enough for a court title. You're not mortal."
He looked at me, and it was a long, hard, almost harsh look. "Don't be coy, Meredith, you know exactly why the queen can't stand the sight of me."
I met that hard glance, but it was... uncomfortable. I did know, all the court knew.
"Say it, Meredith, say it out loud."
"The queen disapproves of your mixed blood."
He nodded. "Yes." He seemed almost relieved. The harshness in his eyes had been uneasy to see, but at least it had been genuine. For all I knew everything else was false. I wanted to see what truly lay behind that handsome face.
"But that's not why, Sholto. There's more mixed blood among the sidhe royals now than pure."
"Fine," he said, "she disapproves of my father's bloodline."
"It's not the fact that your father is a nightflyer, Sholto."
He frowned. "If you have a point, make it."
"Except for the odd pointy ear, until you came along sidhe genetics won out no matter what we mated with."
"Genetics," he said. "I forget that you are our first modern college graduate."
I smiled. "Father was hoping I'd be a doctor."
"You can't heal with your touch, what kind of doctor is that?" He took a big drink of wine, as if he were still agitated.
"Someday I must take you on a tour of a modern hospital," I said.
"Whatever you wish to show me would be a pleasure." Whatever real emotion had almost peeked through, vanished in a wave of double entendre.
I ignored the double meaning and went back to digging. I'd seen real emotion, I wanted to see more of it. If I was going to risk my life I needed to see Sholto without the masks that the court taught us to wear. "Until you, all the sidhe looked like sidhe no matter what we mated with. I think the queen sees you as proof that the sidhe blood is growing weak, just as my mortality shows the blood is thinning."
That handsome face grew tight with anger. "The Unseelie preach that all fey are beautiful, but some of us are only beautiful for a night. We are diversions, but nothing more."
I watched the anger eat across his shoulders, down his arms. His muscles tightened as the anger flowed over him. "My mother," and he spat that last word out, "thought she would have a night of pleasure and pay no price. I was that price." He bit off the words, rage intensifying the light in his eyes so that the rings of color in them blazed like yellow flame and molten running gold.
I'd broken through that so careful exterior and found a nerve. "I would say that you're the one that paid the price, not your mother," I said. "Once she gave birth to you, she went back to the court, to her life."