Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [36]
“She is my only child,” she said, in a voice that was not so sure of itself.
“And she has killed your only mother,” he said.
She turned and looked at her daughter, who was still pressed against the wall in a circle of the white mastiffs, with our horses at the front of the circle.
“Why, Cair?” Not “how could you?” but simply “why?”
Cair’s face showed a different kind of fear now. It wasn’t fear of the dogs pressing so closely. She looked at her mother’s face, almost desperately. “Mother.”
“Why?” her mother said.
“I have heard you deny her in this court day after day. You called her a useless brownie who had deserted her own court.”
“That was talk for the other nobles, Cair.”
“You never said differently in private with me, Mother. Aunt Besaba says the same. She is a traitor to this court for leaving, first to live with the Unseelie, then to live among the humans. I have heard you agree with such words all my life. You said you took me to visit her because it was duty. Once I was old enough to have a choice, we stopped going.”
“I visited her in private, Cair.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Because your heart is as cold as my sister’s, and your ambition as hot. You would have seen my care for our mother as a weakness.”
“It was a weakness,” she said.
Eluned shook her head, a look of deep sorrow on her face. She stepped back from the line of dogs, back from her daughter. She looked up at us. “Did she die knowing that Cair had betrayed her?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing that her own granddaughter betrayed her would have broken her heart.”
“She did not have the knowledge long,” I said. It was cold comfort, but it was all I had to give her. I rode with the wild hunt, and truth, harsh or kind, was the only thing I could speak this night.
“I will not stand in your way, niece.”
“Mother!” Cair reached out. The dogs closed in around her, giving that low bass growl that seemed to tiptoe up the spine and hit something low in the brain. If you heard that sound, you knew that it was bad.
Cair yelled again. “Mother, please!”
Eluned yelled back, “She was my mother!”
“I’m your daughter.”
Eluned moved backward in her long golden dress. “I have no daughter.” She walked away, and she did not look back. The nobles who had clustered by the door moved apart to let her pass. She did not stop until the far jeweled doors closed behind her. She would not fight us for her daughter’s life, but she would not watch us take it either. I could not blame her.
Cair looked around frantically. “Lord Finbar, help me!” she cried.
Most of the eyes in the room went to the far table, where the king was completely hidden behind a wall of guards and sparkling courtiers. One of those was Lord Finbar, tall and handsome with his yellow, almost human-colored hair. Only the feeling of power from him and the otherworldly handsome face marked him as more. Uar was still standing to one side watching the show, but not shielding his brother. Lord Finbar was planted in front of his monarch. He was an intimate of the king’s, but no friend to my aunt or my cousin, last I knew. Why would she appeal to him now?
The king was completely hidden behind the glittering, bejeweled throng that included Finbar. Maybe he was no longer even in the room, and the nobles were only using themselves as a stalking horse. But tonight, that did not matter. What did matter was why Cair would appeal to the tall blond noble who had never been her friend.
His high, sculpted-cheekboned face was set in arrogant lines, as cold as any I’d seen. It made me think of my lost Frost, when he was either at his most afraid, or most embarrassed. It was a face to hide behind, that arrogance.
Cair called out to him again, more frantically. “Lord Finbar, you promised.”
He spoke then. “The girl is clearly deranged. The killing of her own matriarch is proof of that.” His voice was as cold and clear as the pale line of his cheek. The words dripped surety and an arrogance bred from centuries, not of his ancestors’ ruling, but of he himself ruling. Immortal