I realized that Lucy had taken my rape more personally, because we were friends. It made me care for her even more, and say with real feeling, “Thank you, Lucy.”

She smiled a little wider. “I’ll leave you to get the little tykes ready to leave, and go join the cops helping to keep back the crowd.”

“I assume the press,” I said.

“And just people wanting to see the little prince and princess; it’s not every day that America gets newborn royals.”

“True,” I said, and smiled at her.

She smiled back and then left us with, “I’m not usually into babies, but she’s a cute one.”

We thanked her, and once the door closed behind her, Doyle and I looked at each other. He came to stand beside me, and we both looked down at Bryluen.

“Mustn’t bespell the humans,” I said to her.

She blinked those exotic-looking eyes at me. The little knit cap was tucked over most of her red curls and completely hid the horn buds. She was tiny and perfect, and already magical.

“Do you think she understands?” I asked.

“No, but that answers one question.”

I looked up at him. “What question?”

“Maeve Reed has a human nanny for her baby, but we cannot risk human caregivers.”

“You mean we can’t risk the human caregivers being ensorcelled by the babies.”

“Yes, that is what I mean.”

I looked down at our little bundle of joy. “She’s part demi-fey, or part sluagh, one has the best glamour in all faerie, and the other is some of the last of the wild magic left in faerie.”

“There is wild magic about, my Merry.” He motioned at the tree and the wild rose vines.

I smiled. “True, but I’ve never seen a baby bespell someone that quickly and that well. Lucy has a strong will, and was likely wearing some protections against faerie glamour just as a precaution. Most police that deal with us do.”

“Yet Bryluen clouded her mind and senses as if it were nothing,” Doyle said.

“It was very quick and well done. I’ve known sidhe with centuries of practice who couldn’t have done it.”

He placed his hand gently on top of her head, so very dark against the multicolored cap. Bryluen blinked up at us. “They are going to be very powerful, Merry.”

“How do we teach them to control their powers if they have them this early, Doyle? Bryluen can’t understand right from wrong yet.”

“We will have to protect the humans from them until they are old enough to learn control.”

“How long will that be?”

“I do not know, but we know now that they have come into the world with instinctive magic and there is no waiting until puberty for their powers to manifest.”

“It would have been easier if their magic had waited,” I said.

“It would, but I do not think our path was ever meant to be easy, my Merry; wondrous, beautiful, exciting, thrilling, even frightening, but not easy.”

I raised Bryluen to lay a kiss upon her cheek. I loved her already; she was mine, ours, but I was a little frightened now. If she could make humans like her, want to hold and rock her, what else could she make them do? Child psychologists say that children are born sociopaths and have to learn to have a conscience. It happens around the age of two, usually, but until then there’s no conscience to appeal to, no way to understand that something is wrong or right.

I held our beautiful little sociopath and prayed to the Goddess that she wouldn’t hurt anyone before we’d had time to teach her that it was wrong.

The scent of roses filled the room, and it wasn’t just the clean sweetness of the wild rose vine, but that richer musk that is more from cultivation than nature. It was a heady scent, and reassurance from the Goddess. Normally, it would have been enough to lay my fears to rest, but this time there was a kernel of unease that stayed inside my heart. How could I doubt her, after all she’d shown me, all she’d awakened around me? But it wasn’t the Goddess I doubted, it was more just worry. I was a new mother, and mothers worry.

CHAPTER

NINE

MAEVE REED, THE Golden Goddess of Hollywood since about 1950, came to the hospital to escort us home to her house. We’d lived in her guesthouse when we first moved in with her, but as more fey had flocked to us, Maeve had moved us into the main house with her and left the guesthouse to new exiles from faerie who weren’t as close to her. She was an exile herself, so she understood the confusion of being cast out from faerie and being thrust into the modern world.

Though very few exiles had succeeded as well as Maeve Reed at adapting to this brave, new world. The guard outside opened the door, and I heard Maeve’s voice. “So happy you loved my last movie. Congratulations on your baby, he is adorable.” Her voice was warm and utterly sincere, and in part it was the truth, but she had been a great actress for decades and could turn utter sincerity on and off like a well-oiled switch. I doubted I would ever be that skilled at being “on” for the public, and being merely mortal I wouldn’t live long enough for the centuries of practice that had helped her get so very good at it.

She came breezing into the room with a casual wave of her hand that was too big a gesture for the room but would have looked great in a photo, as would the brilliant smile on her face. She was dressed in an oyster-white pantsuit that flowed and moved with her; a silk shell in a deep but subdued blue helped her not look quite the six feet that she was, forcing the eye down once it had started up those long legs. She smiled at me and I had a moment of catching the edge of the smile she’d used on the fan outside. It was a good smile, and sincere in its way, because she was genuinely happy that the woman liked her film, and meant the congratulations, but … the moment the door closed behind her the smile vanished, and she had a moment where it was as if she laid down some invisible burden across her shoulders. Nothing could make her less than gorgeous with that perfect pale gold tan, the perfect blue eyes in subdued but equally perfect makeup, those cheekbones, those full, kissable lips, but she had a moment of looking tired. Then she straightened up and those high, tight breasts pressed against the blue shell, perky forever without any need for cosmetic surgery.

Her gaze went to the fruit tree that was shedding its blossoms like a pink snow, and the roses on the other side of the room. “Ah, the new wonders. The nurses asked me when the plants would be going away.”

“We aren’t sure,” Doyle said.

“Doyle, Frost, I stopped by the nursery first and the babies are beautiful.”

“They are,” Doyle said, as if to say, Of course.

“Welcome home, Maeve,” Frost said.

She wasted a few extra watts of smile on him, but she didn’t mean it. He wasn’t pure sidhe enough for her; most of my men weren’t. She’d made no secret about the fact that she’d have had sex with Rhys or Mistral, if they and I had been okay with it. Among humans it would have been an insult; among the fey if you found someone attractive and didn’t let them know, it was an insult. She was afraid of Doyle, not because he’d done anything to her, but because she’d spent too many centuries seeing him as my aunt’s assassin. She’d lost people she cared about to him long ago, so she never flirted with him. He was fine with that.