wee-fey do not have the goblins' fierce reputation to protect them from the slings and arrows of mischance."
For some reason mention of the goblins made it hard not to look at Kitto. He hadn't sat at the table but had crouched underneath. He'd eaten his stew, then crawled to his oversize doggie bed. He seemed shaken by the afternoon at Maeve Reed's pool. Too much sun and fresh air for a goblin.
"No one harms the demi-fey," Frost said. "They are the queen's spies. A butterfly, a moth, a tiny bird can all be demi-fey. Their glamour is almost undetectable even by the best of us."
Doyle nodded around a mouth full of stew. He sipped a little of his red wine, then said, "All that you say is true, but the demi-fey were once much more respected in the courts. They were not merely spying eyes, but truly allies."
"With the wee-ones," Rhys said. "Why?"
I answered, "If the demi-fey leave the Unseelie Court, then what remains of faerie will begin to fade."
"That is an old wives' tale," Rhys said. "Like if the ravens leave the Tower of London, Britain will fall. The British Empire has already fallen, and yet they still clip the poor ravens' wings and stuff them full of food. The damn things are as big as small turkeys."
"It is said that where the demi-fey travel, faerie follows," Doyle said.
"What does that mean?" Rhys asked.
"My father said that the demi-fey are the most closely allied with the rawness that is faerie, the very stuff that makes us different from the humans. The demi-fey are their magic more than any of the rest of us. They cannot be exiled from faerie because it travels with them wherever they go."
Galen leaned against the counter at the end of the kitchen, arms crossed over his now bare chest. He'd put the apron away, I think to save me embarrassment. I don't know why his bare chest wasn't as eyecatching as his chest peeking through all that sheer cloth, but I couldn't eat and sit across from him while he wore the apron. The second time I missed my mouth with the stew, Doyle asked him to take the apron off.
"That doesn't work for most of the rest of the smaller fey. The rule is, the smaller you are, the more dependent you are on faerie, and the more likely you are to die when away from it. My father was a pixie. I know what I'm talking about," Galen said.
"How big a pixie?" Rhys asked.
Galen actually smiled. "Big enough."
"There are many different kinds of pixies," Frost said, either missing the humor or ignoring it. I loved Frost, but his sense of humor wasn't his best feature. Of course, a girl doesn't always need to laugh.
"I've never known another pixie who wasn't a member of the Seelie Court," Rhys said. "Did you ever learn what your father did to earn exile from Taranis and his gang?"
"Only you would refer to the glittering throng as Taranis and his gang," Doyle said.
Rhys shrugged, grinned, and said, "What'd your daddy do?"
The smile faded, then grew, on Galen's face. "My uncles tell me that my father seduced one of the king's mistresses." His smile faded. Galen had never met his father, because Andais had had him executed for the audacity of seducing one of her ladies-in-waiting. She never would have done it if she'd known there was going to be a child. In fact, the pixie would have been elevated to noble rank and there would have been a marriage. It had happened with stranger mixes. But Andais's temper made her a little too quick on the death sentence, and thus Galen never met his father.
If any humans had been in the room, they would have apologized for bringing up such a painful subject, but there weren't any and we didn't bother. If Galen was in pain, he'd have said something, and we'd have taken care of it. He didn't ask and we didn't pry.
"Treat Niceven as a queen, an equal. It will please her and catch her off guard," Doyle said.
"She is a demi-fey. She can never be the equal of a sidhe princess." This from Frost, who sat on the other side of Galen's empty chair. His handsome face was as severe and haughty as I'd ever seen it.
"My great-grandmother was a brownie, Frost," I said. My voice was soft, so he wouldn't think I was chiding him. He didn't take well to that. Frost seemed