“But you will not speak their names?”
“I will not, for Taranis made all of us at the Seelie Court vow never to speak their names until they rise to complete the treaty between human and fey.”
“Was it very hard to pretend to be a starlet back in the fifties when you had all those centuries behind you, inside you?”
She gave me a look, a considering look, and let me glimpse the fine burning intelligence that she usually hid. She didn’t pretend to be stupid, but she didn’t show everything either.
“That is a very good question. One that in all the decades of interviews I’ve never been asked.”
“I found it hard to pretend I wasn’t Princess Meredith when I came to L. A. Even I found all my secrets hard to keep, hard not to share with someone.”
“I told some of my secrets to Gordon. I wish he’d lived to see Liam. I think he’s going to grow up to look like that handsome man I first met.”
By the time I’d met Maeve’s late husband he’d been riddled with the cancer that would claim his life, and the man who had been young in the sixties wasn’t young three, almost four decades later. He had been a dying shell of the handsome director who had won Maeve’s heart, but her dearest wish had been to have his child. Galen and I had done a fertility rite and the Goddess had blessed us with the energy to give Maeve and Gordon Reed their last wish as a couple. He’d died months before Liam was born, but he’d gotten to hear the heartbeat, see sonograms, and know for certain he had a son.
“I’m sorry that you lost Gordon.”
“You gave us our son, Meredith; you have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Shall we visit the nursery and the children?”
She smiled. “Yes, let’s. If I’m going to remind Liam that I’m Mommy, I need to see him more.”
“Am I supposed to apologize again for Liam’s behavior?”
“If you had been raised in faerie courts and never left them, you would never have said that.”
“Not apologized, or not felt like I should apologize for something that isn’t my fault?” I asked.
“Both,” she said, and smiled softly, but it was sad around the edges and left her eyes almost haunted.
I took her hand in mine, squeezed it. “I am sorry that you have had to spend so much time away from your son.”
“If you hadn’t said that, and meant it, I probably wouldn’t say this: The movie I just finished filming is an amazing chance for me to stretch myself as an actress. If you and the others hadn’t been here for Liam I wouldn’t have taken it, or I might have tried to take him and a nanny with me, but he was better here at his home with his family. I just need to figure out how to be a bigger part of that family.”
“I am very glad you think of us as family, Maeve.”
“You have brought me back to faerie, or brought faerie back to me, after centuries of thinking I had lost it forever.”
“I can’t imagine losing it for so long. Three years of exile was hard enough for me,” I said.
“But you truly are an American faerie princess, Meredith, so very American in your ideals. Like letting your guards have a choice when it comes to their lovers.”
“I think that was what my father hoped when he sent me to public school and encouraged me to have friends outside the fey community.”
“I never really knew Prince Essus, but he seems very wise. Not a single guard will say a bad thing about him.”
“Have you tried to get them to?” I asked.
She made a waffling gesture halfway between a nod and a shrug. “A bit. I wanted to see if they were just speaking nicely for his daughter, but it seems as if he truly was as good as his press.”
“Why would you care if my father was as good as he seemed?”
“Honestly?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Your uncle on your grandfather’s side beat me and exiled me for refusing to marry him. Your grandfather was Uar the Cruel, and he earned that name. Your mother is narcissistic to the point of being delusional, and your uncle is the same. Your aunt on your father’s side is a sexual sadist and a sociopath, or maybe even a psychopath; her son, your first cousin, was worse than his mother. He’d have been a sexual serial killer if the women of his bodyguards hadn’t been immortal and able to heal nearly any injury. I’ve taken more lovers from among them than you have, and they hate the late Prince Cel with a fine and burning passion.”
“We all knew that Andais was tormenting her guards and others of the court. She was very public about most of it, but I didn’t know what Cel was doing with his guards. He was much more private about it.”
“I think he hid it from his mother.”
“She enjoys torturing people,” I said.
“I’ve had more pillow talk about some of the horrors he did to the women, and I believe he was discreet because Andais might have stepped in and interfered with his fun.”
“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, Meredith, what Cel did to some of his private harem … I’m so glad you’ve found them a therapist.”
“I’m glad they were willing to go.”
“They didn’t think they had a choice when they started.”
“What?”
She smiled. “They thought you ordered them to go to therapy, and by the time they realized you hadn’t meant it that way, most of them were benefiting from it, so they kept going.”
“I would never order someone to go to therapy. I mean, you can order them to go the appointment, but you can’t make them actually work their issues.”
“You ordered them to talk to the therapist, and after what Cel did to them if they disobeyed him, or Andais did to anyone who disobeyed her, they worked their therapy as if their lives depended on it.”
I shook my head and sighed. “They are all so much more damaged than I knew. Wait, is that why some of the female guards stopped going to therapy a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, they finally realized that you hadn’t meant it as an order. A few of them tested to see if you meant it as a suggestion and when you didn’t get angry about it, a few more stopped going.”
“Most of them haven’t stopped going,” I said.
“As I said, Meredith, they worked hard at their therapy for fear of what you’d do to them if they didn’t, and it worked strangely well for many of them.”
“I didn’t think you could force someone to do therapy like that.”
“Neither did I, but it seems to be working for them.”
I frowned, puzzling, and finally shook my head. “If it’s working, it’s working.”
“You are surprisingly practical about very impractical things.”
“Do I say thank you, or is that a problem?”
She smiled. “Neither, but the same guards who speak of Cel in hate-filled tones say wonderful things about your father. I think most of them are still in love with him, both as a good leader and as a man.”
“I was actually thinking earlier that my family has more crazy than sane in it. Though you forgot that my grandmother was wonderful and caring, as were her parents, my great-grandmother and -grandfather.”
“You’re right, I did forget. Because your grandmother was half human and half brownie I counted her as less, but I shouldn’t have, because it seems like the insanity comes from the sidhe side of things.”
“We’re not the most stable people,” I said.
“I think it’s living for so long, Meredith. Our bodies don’t age, but maybe our minds do.”
“Are you saying that Taranis and Andais have a version of dementia?”
“Maybe, though Cel wasn’t that old by sidhe standards.”
“I think Cel was always weak and twisted, but his mother indulged him, let him think he could do no wrong, and that cemented his crazy.”
She studied me again as if looking for a flaw, or a hint, or something I couldn’t guess at. “You are your father’s daughter, and that is a good thing.”
“I am my grandmother’s, too, and that’s a good thing as well.”
“Yes, yes it is.” She brushed off her hands as if brushing the topic away. “Let’s go see the newest babies—though with Nicca and Biddy’s daughter, Kadyi, and Liam, there are a lot of babies.”