“Oh, darling, don’t be ridiculous,” Leanansidhe snapped, rolling her eyes. “And I thought I was the dramatic one. Do you honestly think I would turn the Iron Queen’s precious baby brother into a guitar? Permanently, anyway? No, dove.” She gave me a look of disgust. “If I wanted revenge, I would not be so crass and obvious as that. Not when there are a thousand other, more creative ways, to ruin someone’s life. So you can stop glaring at me, darling,” she went on, looking at Kenzie. “And Grimalkin can stop hiding. I am not turning anyone into anything today.”
“Please,” sniffed a familiar voice. Grimalkin’s, from the piano bench. The cat looked up from washing his tail, like he’d been sitting there all this time. “As if I have anything to fear from the lot of you,” he stated, and went back to grooming himself. I felt Kenzie slump in relief.
“Though, I am curious, darlings,” Leanansidhe went on, after a brief glare at the cat, who seemed oblivious. “What are you planning to do about the Iron Prince? Last I heard, he had declared war on all the courts, even his own Iron Realm, in front of every king and queen of Faery. Quite the treasonous offense, you know. Punishable by death. It seems our darling Iron Prince is entirely serious about destroying us all.” She shook her head. “Stupid, brazen boy. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“He doesn’t,” I said, making her blink. “He’s...not entirely himself. There’s this amulet that...uh...sort of sucked out his soul.”
The Exile Queen regarded me with those scary blue eyes, and the air around us went very still. “This amulet,” she said in a quiet voice, “is it around the neck of a certain Summer faery?”
I swallowed. “I take it you’ve seen Annwyl.”
“Not in a long time, darling.” Leanansidhe straightened with a sniff. “Nor do I ever want to see the girl again. That little harlot has caused me no end of trouble.” Reaching over her head, she pulled a cigarette flute out of thin air, stuck one end in her mouth and puffed out clouds of violet smoke. “I never should have agreed to take the girl in the first place,” she grumbled, “but you know our darling prince. Bats his eyes and gives you that wounded puppy-dog look, and it’s nearly impossible to tell him no. And if that doesn’t work, he’ll just pester you constantly until you give in. Impossible child.”
I almost smiled. Keirran had been like that, once. When I’d first met him. The prince of the Iron Realm had been chivalrous, soft-spoken and relentlessly polite even to his enemies. He was also stubborn, reckless and impossible, but at least he was civil about it, so it was hard to hold it against him. When I found out who he really was, I thought I would hate him. But my nephew had gone out of his way to treat me not only as family, but as a friend. And, shockingly, that’s what he had become. Once upon a time, not very long ago, Keirran had been my friend.
Nothing like the cold, emotionless stranger who’d shown up in Tir Na Nog that day, his eyes completely flat as he’d told the courts, his own family, that they were his enemies now.
“I knew something was wrong when she came back with that...thing...around her neck,” Leanansidhe continued, making my stomach twist. “Nasty bit of magic that was, darling. I don’t know where she got it, but I did know that I didn’t want it in my house. The wretched girl wouldn’t tell me where she got it, either, only that it connected her and the Iron Prince, and that she couldn’t take it off. I should have thrown her out then. But I let her stay, like the softhearted fool I am.”
“Where is Annwyl now?” asked Kenzie.
“The last time I saw the Summer girl,” Leanansidhe mused, “was a few nights after the Veil was torn away. She had been at the mansion when the Between disappeared. I don’t know how she survived, or what happened to all the exiles and half-breeds in the house when the Veil went down. I just know I came back from the mortal realm that night, and the Between was no longer there. When the Veil re-formed and I was able to go Between again, nothing was left of my mansion but the anchor. Everything and everyone else was gone.
“A few nights later,” Leanansidhe continued, “Annwyl came to me and announced that she was leaving. That something had happened with the prince, and she had to go before the amulet did anything else. Or something like that. I wasn’t really listening at the time.”
Kenzie blinked. “You didn’t care that Annwyl was leaving?”
“You’ll have to forgive me, darling. My home was gone, the Between no longer existed, and, to my mind, the girl had just told me she was partially responsible for its disappearance.” Leanansidhe’s eyes glittered as she twiddled her flute. “I wasn’t in the most reasonable mood at the time. She was lucky I was exhausted from renovating. Otherwise I might’ve decorated my office with Essence of Summer Girl.”
“What happened to her?”
The Exile Queen pursed her lips, blowing out a cloud of smoke that looked eerily like the Summer faery. The smoky image cringed back from some unseen terror, picked up her skirts and ran. “I told her to get out of my sight,” Leanansidhe said, watching it scamper away, “and that if I saw her again, I would separate her lovely head from her shoulders.”
She made a swift gesture with the cigarette flute, and the cloud faery’s head tumbled from her body before both parts writhed away into nothing. Kenzie wrinkled her nose. “So, no, darlings,” the Exile Queen finished. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen the Summer girl lately. Like I said, I’ve been busy reestablishing my home from nothing.”