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“I want to hear the rest of the reasons,” I whispered.
“Remember your promise to me.” A caution and warning both. An omen of the juicy stuff. He’d hoped to avoid telling me, judging by the tension in his body. If I could have, I would have run my hands over his chest, to soothe him.
“I remember.” I reinforced the promise with a caress of my mind. He twined a thought around it, as if holding my hand.
“For the ninth—” he dropped his voice, as if we could be overheard, “—with your human blood, you could be vulnerable to athingthat may happen. If you’re married to me, that will protect you.”
Each time he spoke the word, what I heard as “married” seemed to carry a more profound resonance, almost a sense of a magic spell. Which, given how everything else worked in Faerie, made sense. The ultimate vow. “Whatthing?”
“I’ve told you as much as I can. More than I should. More than I would have, outside this space.”
Titania then. I turned it over in my head, while he watched me with that coiled tension, hands gripping my hips almost too tightly for comfort, as I absorbed the implications, growing more horrified by the moment. No wonder he’d worried about confiding this. Starling, Fergus, Walter—hell, all the humans in Faerie would be vulnerable. She could wipe them out. All except for me. I hated that, as Rogue had known I would. Then another thought occurred to me.
“What about the other side of the Veil? Could my world be affected, too?”
He lowered his gaze, not denying it.
Chapter 7
In Which I Agree to Something I Never Thought I Would
‡
Oaths and agreements manifest much like spells and wishes—the weight of a far greater force binds them intoreality.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules ofMagic”
My head spunwith the awfulness of it. “You can’t let that happen!”
“I can hardly marry all of them, foolish Gwynn.”
“Don’t toy with me,” I snapped, trying to lift myself off his lap, but he held me firm, even though I levered the heels of my hands on his shoulders. “I can’t stand by when there’s the possibility of annihilation of the human race. I won’t allow it.”
“All I care about right now is protecting you,” he returned with ferocity.
“I’m one person and my children—even if I refused to marry you and had fully human ones, which I don’t think they would be because the ‘humans’ in Faerie are still contaminated with magic—wouldn’t be enough to carry on the race. Titania must be stopped!”
“Believe me, I’ve been trying.” He gritted his teeth, looking pained.
I realized I’d dug the claws into his shoulders, and blood was running in bright rivers down his chest. “Oh God! I’m so sorry.” I lifted out the claws and gripped the ledge again, pushing away from him in earnest. “I’m awful. Just let me—”
“No, Gwynn. I won’t die and you are not going anywhere until we finish this conversation. Stop reacting and think.”
Think? Usually he told me to stop thinking. His canny gaze focused on mine, a slight cock to his head. A clue in what he’d told me then. Something he couldn’t say directly. I rewound the conversation in my mind, searching for something salient in what he’d said.Believe me, I’ve been trying.
“You’ve been trying to stop Titania?” I’d hoped, but hadn’t been sure enough to count on it.
He just regarded me, lips pressed together.Score.
“That’s what the baby thing is about,” I mused. I needed my grimoire, all of my notes and theories on why Rogue wanted my firstborn child, what Titania did with them, why they had to be half-human, half-fae. It was all tied up with how I’d been drawn into Faerie in the first place and with changelings and I didn’t know what all. Then it crystallized.
“Oh. My. God.” I breathed the words, very nearly a prayer, though I’d never been religious.
“That’s why she’s courting the Wild Hunt. They are her ticket through the Veil somehow.” That realization severely irritated me because I’d been toying with the same idea, dammit. “And the Black Dog—no wonder she wanted you under her control. And the babies, she’s using them as changelings, right? They’re something like her secret agents on the other side, so she can, what? Conquer—”
He pulled me in for a kiss, stopping my words. “Even here it’s best not to say too much aloud, my brilliant Gwynn.”
I leaned my forehead against his. “I don’t know what to make of this all.”
