how confused she was. I was betting it was an act. "You are Unseelie Court, and all manner of temptations are open to you."
It was my turn to be confused. "What does my court have to do with anything? You have insulted me and mine."
"You are Unseelie Court," she said again.
I shook my head. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"You would not try on the swimsuits," she said, voice soft, eyes downcast.
"What?" I asked.
"If Marie had seen him nude, then she would have known his body was pure, except for the scars."
I frowned harder. "What in the name of the Lord and Lady are you babbling about?"
"You are all Unseelie Court, Meredith. I have to be sure you are not... unclean."
"You mean deformed," I said, and I didn't even try to keep the anger out of my voice.
She gave a small nod.
"Why should our bodies, whatever they look like, make any difference to you?"
"I told you what I want, Meredith."
I nodded, and I was nice enough not to blurt out her secret in front of everyone, though heaven knows she hadn't earned the courtesy.
"If anyone who aids me in such an endeavor is impure, then..." She sort of nodded at me, trying to get me to finish the sentence in my head.
I leaned into her and hissed, more than whispered, "The child will be deformed."
No amount of glamour could hide the smell of cocoa butter, liquor, and cigarette smoke in her hair and skin. A sudden wave of nausea rushed over me.
I backed away from her and would have fallen if Rhys hadn't caught me, steadied me. "What's wrong?" he whispered.
I shook my head. "I'm tired of being here with this woman."
"Then we leave," Doyle said.
I shook my head again. "Not yet." I half clutched Rhys's arm and turned back to Maeve. "You tell me why you were exiled. You tell me the whole truth here and now or we walk away from you forever."
"If he knew I told anyone, he would kill me."
"If he finds out I was here, talking to you, do you really believe he'll wait to find out if you told me?"
She looked frightened now. But I didn't care.
"Tell me, Maeve, tell me or we walk, and you'll never find anyone else outside of faerie who can help you."
"Meredith, please..."
"No," I said. "The great pure Seelie Court, how they look down on us. If a child is born deformed, then it is killed, or was, until you all stopped having children. Then even the monsters were precious. Do you know what happened to the babies after a while, Maeve? Do you know what happened in the last four hundred years or so to deformed Seelie children? Because, make no mistake, inbreeding catches up, even with the immortal."
"I don't... know."
"Yes, you do. All that bright, shining throng know. My own cousin was kept because she was part brownie. You didn't throw her out, because brownies are Seelie -- not court, but creatures of light. But when the sidhe themselves breed monsters, the pure, shining, Seelie sidhe, breed deformities, monstrosities, then what happens, where do they go?"
She was crying now, soft, silver tears. "I don't know."
"Yes, you do. The babies go to the Unseelie Court. We take in the monsters, those pure Seelie monsters. We take them in, because we welcome everyone. No one, no one is turned away from the Unseelie Court, especially not tiny, newborn babies whose only crime was to be born to parents who can't study a genealogical chart well enough to avoid marrying their own fucking siblings." I was crying, too, now, but it was anger, not sorrow.
"I give you my oath that I and Frost and Rhys are pure of body. Does that make it easier? Does that help? If you just wanted to sleep with the men, you wouldn't have cared if you saw me in a swimsuit, but you did care. You want a fertility rite, Maeve. You need me, and at least one man."
I was too angry to know if anyone besides Maeve had heard what I said, or understood what I'd said. I just didn't care.
I pushed away from Rhys, my anger carrying me forward to spit the words in her face. "Tell me why you were exiled, Maeve, tell me now, or we leave you as we found you. Alone."
She nodded, still crying. "All right, all right, Lady guard me, but all right. I'll tell you what you want to know, if you swear to