if they were listening.
Royal looked up at him. "Perhaps the word 'creature' is ill chosen, King Sholto. It was perverse of me to forget the queen's pet name for you."
Sholto was suddenly very still beside me. He had hated Queen Andais calling him "her Perverse Creature." He had confessed to me he feared one day being just that as the Killing Frost and the queen's Darkness. Feared one day he would simply be the queen's "Creature."
"You are like some winged bug I can smash with a careless swat. Your glamour can't change that, or give you the full-sized women you seem to prefer."
"My glamour has given me full-size, as you call it, more than once, King Sholto," Royal said. Then he smiled, and I knew just from his expression that whatever he was about to say I wouldn't like it. "Merry can speak to my glamour and just how much she enjoyed it."
Sholto's face showed just how unhappy that made him. He turned that scowl to me. "You didn't," he said.
"No," I said, "but if I hadn't been stopped I might have. If you've never had a demi-fey who carried sex magic try their wiles on you, then you don't understand. It's more powerful glamour than most of the sidhe still have."
"Remember, King, we hide in plain sight from the humans as real butterflies, moths, dragonflies, and flowers. They never see through our disguises, and that's not always true with sidhe glamour."
"Then why don't you help trail people for her detective agency?" Sholto asked.
"We could if they would stay in certain parts of the city, but they tend to go places with too much metal." Royal shivered, and it wasn't a good shiver.
Two of the tiny fey still riding in Sholto's hair took to the air as if the thought was too frightening even for listening. The three left in his hair hid like children hearing the monster under the bed.
"It is beyond most of us to travel through some parts of the city," Royal said.
"So your glamour is only good for soft things," Sholto said.
Royal looked at him, but a smile curved his delicate lips. "Our glamour is very, very good with soft things."
"I believe Merry when she says something, so if she says you are that good at it, then I believe her, but I also know she's forbidden you to try your wiles on her again."
"It's my week to take Queen Niceven's weekly donation. I think Merry will want me to use my glamour for that."
Sholto had only to move his eyes to come back to my face from the little man on my shoulder. "Why are you still donating blood to Niceven through her surrogates?"
"We need allies at the courts, Sholto."
"Why do you need them if you never plan to go back and rule?"
"Spies," Royal whispered. "The demi-fey are the proverbial flies on the wall, King Sholto. No one looks at us, no one notices how often we are about."
He looked from one to the other of us. "And I thought it was Doyle's spy network that was getting such accurate information."
"The Darkness has his sources, but none as sweet as Merry has," Royal said, and I knew he was playing it up to see if he could irritate the other man. Royal took great pleasure any time he could make one of my full-sized lovers jealous. It pleased him inordinately.
Sholto frowned at him, then laughed. The sound startled Royal and me. The little man on my shoulder jumped, while I was simply puzzled. The fey in Sholto's hair flew skyward and went over the house and away into the blue.
"What is so funny, oh King of the Sluagh?" Royal asked.
"Does your glamour make men jealous, too?"
"As for Merry's reaction to me, so your jealousy, King Sholto. Neither is magic."
Sholto's face sobered and he studied the little man, not unhappily, but he truly studied him. He did it long and hard enough that Royal hid his face in my hair. I'd noticed this was a social gesture for all the demi-fey. They did it when they were embarrassed, afraid, being coy, or even simply out of other things to do. Royal didn't like being the object of such concentration by Sholto.
Mungo bumped my hand and I petted his sleek head. For the dogs to react meant that it wasn't just Royal who was getting tension from Sholto's reaction to the demi-fey.
I stood and petted my dogs, letting some of the tension bleed off into the gesture.