As a reward or a cure for the last several evenings at court, she got to spend the next couple of days free to wander the grounds and play in the woods as she liked. It would take him a couple of days to ponder the implications of what she had come up with, anyway, and keeping her rested and at ease kept the flow of information she gave to him as free from overwrought conclusions and faulty observations as possible. Nona stopped by towards the evening of the second day, as he sat out in the garden and watched her chasing will o' wisps.

"She looks healthy, at least," Nona commented. "I take it you put her through all of that."

All of that here included retelling and talking over at least one half-Sidhe murdered, a long list of strange children born first in the Isles and then on the continent, in a mortal country. Information gleaned from rumors, countless conversations with minor lords and small fae as well as court players who didn't know the value of what they had, and some just blind luck. All of the mortals involved were dead, died after a mortal lifespan, but there was still a pattern. There was some information, and he didn't have the means or the right sort of mind to put it together. He'd thought she had, only now he wasn't as sure.

"I did. To no result. All she came up with were things I could have discerned for myself." Except he hadn't, and that bothered him a little bit too.

She shook her head. "Maybe there isn't anything to discover. Have you ever considered that as a real possibility? Maybe all of them died, it's possible. He didn't take the best care to select mortal women with a likelihood of staying alive, after all. They bedded him."

Fergus snorted, covering his mouth with a hand as the girl came back for her cloak, wrapping it around herself and kissing his cheek before she skipped off again. He smiled, tight and bright-eyed, and waited until she was gone before he glared at Nona. "Thank you for that."

Nona only laughed. "You should have guessed it was coming. No, but it's still true, they bedded him, a stranger, and a dangerous one at that. Either they were weak enough that he could overpower them or they were stupid enough to, well, do something foolish that might result in not carrying the child to term, or worse. Besides that, how many mortal women have we as a people taken to bed? And how many half-breed children have resulted? Maybe none of them took. Maybe they did but all the children were mortal, it happens."

He turned the hand over his mouth to a hand scrubbing over his face, sighing. "It does. It happens more often than we might like, maybe that's what happened here, I don't know. There have been strange things happening, here and there, nothing ... nothing that tells me who it is or what they're doing, and there's none of our court missing, but someone is moving out there and I want to know who it is."

She sighed, reaching out and taking his hand down from his face, wrapping her slender fingers around his. "You can't find the answer to every mystery, you know. Especially not in the mortal world. And the answer to the succession and the problems at the court are not going to be found in any one person, and certainly not that creature's bastard son."

"Then where do you suggest we pin our hopes, Nona?" he sighed, throwing his hand off to one side in a gesture that pulled it out of her grasp and almost hitting her in the leg. "Where do you suggest we look for our salvation or our recovery? We are a dying people, we need to look somewhere."

"Look to ourselves," she shrugged. "Or maybe we don't need to be saved. Maybe our time..."

She knew better than to say it, and yet she still said it. His face crumpled, some mix between stricken and furious. He didn't like not being able to do something about a situation, even if he would prefer to do nothing at all. He liked the potential for action being there, and this wasn't in his control. Most of this wasn't in his control. "I can search for the heir, I can take the measure of the families and the courts and see who is still thriving. There are things I can still do. We are not a dying people yet, Nona."

She only nodded, apologetic and keeping her peace. No point in continuing the argument. So she picked another one, looking over her shoulder at the fading form of the young woman. "Is she everything that you hoped?"

"She is and she isn't," he frowned, relaxing a little. "There are parts of her that are still too young to understand as deeply as would help, especially..."

"Especially when you are putting her through her paces regarding our lord King and his various conquests. Have you thought about introducing her at court?"

He blinked. "At court? Why would... As herself or as someone else?"

Nona's face stilled, wiped of all emotion. Silence filled the space between them as she searched his face for some sign that he didn't mean what he had said, that he had exaggerated or made a mistake. They might posture and pretend to be more than what they were, they might claim authority that wasn't theirs or try to browbeat another or intimidate by a show of force, but they never outright lied about who and what they were. It was considered at best too declasse, at worst and among the oldest of them downright anathema.

Except now, one of the oldest yet living among them was considering it. Had suggested it to her if to no one else, it was out there now, out loud in the air, and she couldn't deny that the girl was eminently suited to subterfuge. Fergus could take her and make her think she was the Sluagh King's daughter and she would believe it, and her conviction might sell the story to the court.

"You don't mean that," she told him. Didn't ask, didn't exclaim, shocked, but told. "You don't mean to do that."

Fergus kept his peace and looked down, avoiding the inevitable confrontation. He did mean it, but he wasn't going to push the issue in front of her, which left them both very little to talk about. They looked instead to his young charge, watching her chase animals and faff about, remembering when they had been so ignorant of the weight of the world.

"If..."

Fergus looked up. Nona was leaning against the frame of the door, arms folded under her breasts, watching him. Everyone else was in bed, he'd expected her to be in bed by now as well, especially after their argument earlier.

"If?"

"If you're going to put her through this, you might consider that this child, whoever he is, has been raised by mortals."

Raised by mortals. Fergus leaned back in his chair and stared at her, at once considering and annoyed that she expected he hadn't thought of that. "I know. I didn't imagine that any one of us had hied off to abscond with the child and raise him. For one thing, no one took note of anyone missing."

"If they'd taken note of them, it's possible they wouldn't have been missing for long, and anyone hiding a half-fae child related to the King wouldn't want that kind of notice taken of them." She came in, perched on the edge of his writing desk, gown and all. "He would have to have been raised by someone. Infants, you might not know this, but infants do require a certain amount of attention."

He made a face at her. "I did know that, yes. And I considered it, and I told her what would ..."

Nona's expression was not only smug, it was downright sharp. "And how do you know what would be required? From your breeding bitches? How do you know what a mortal woman would need?"

"How do you?"

She sighed, stared at him until he looked down and away from shame. No, she would know what a mortal woman would need, and a fae woman as well. She had been a mother, once, before the last coup. And that was a long time ago, so long ago that he forgot in the day to day chaos of things, that she had once had a family before they were killed and she retreated to the edges of court to protect both her life and her reputation. Or out of grief. Or for any other of half a dozen reasons, according to the wags at court, but he believed it was more self-preservation.

"All right," he sighed. "All right, what would a mortal woman need?"

"Food. Sustenance, the sort that she could have easily without much preparation or digging around in fields. If she's caring for an infant she won't have time to do the farming, she might have time to feed animals but not very many of them. And it would take her some time to butcher and prepare them as well, no, she'd need help to feed the boy. Unless she lived in a place rich in food."

"Such places exist?" Fergus asked, eyebrows arching and tone dry as an empty wine-glass. Nona shrugged, unperturbed.

"Such places do exist. Somewhere with an orchard or some like. That takes care of food, she would need shelter as well, but that's easier. She would need water, which means either a village with a well or near to a source of flowing water."

These were such basic things he hadn't even thought of them. Hadn't thought to look at a map of the isles where places with abundant food and water were. And the villages around there would show signs of being thieved of clothing... "She would need clothing, wouldn't she? She and the babe would need clothing, blankets."

"She would. They would." Nona frowned, considering. "Blankets and clothing to spare, or she would have to make them herself, and that would require keeping animals. Villages of a certain size near water and near abundant food?"

"How do we discern that, though, in the mortal world..."

He might have imagined the hope in her voice, or at least the enthusiasm, but he didn't imagine the speed with which she slid down from the desk and went over to the map of the Isles. "They build their kirks in every village. And the priests keep their books of who is born to the village, who dies. Not always, and the number of priests who keep their books goes down with every century we go back, but there might be something."

"And if they don't have a book?"

"A Domesday book, they call them. There are those records, there may be others. If they don't have a book..." She frowned.

Fergus looked on the map, narrow fingers tracing the lines of the rivers and the coastlines. "If they don't have a book we won't have an idea of the size of the village, but the walls will be there. The stones, the places where mortals once lived, it leaves a trace. We may be able to discover if they were large enough to have mislaid a few blankets or cloaks and not thought much of it or if they were small enough to know where every scrap of cloth is."

"Woods," she murmured.

"Hmm?"

"Woods. Swamps. Other rough terrain. If there is rough terrain with small places where a woman and child might live, it might protect them from unwanted visitors."

His mouth twisted in something that might have been a smile, under other circumstances. "You know they call those places between places. Some of the time, they're right."

"All the more reason a half-fae child might have thrived in such a place. It would have to be remote enough to escape our notice as well, though." She frowned, too. "I don't understand how he could have lived this long and escaped notice."

"Ah-hah, so you admit there is a possibility that a child might have survived to grow up." He laughed, pointed a finger at her. "You'll come around to my way of thinking yet."

"I'll allow there is a possibility that there is someone's child out there, someone stirring up trouble as a Sluagh might do, but also as a troubled half-fae with no guidance in a world of mortals might do," she added, before he could catch her up in his enthusiasm. "I'll allow as there might be something to this mad plan of yours. And I'll allow as I don't like the thought of one of our people out there on their own, with no notion of what he is or what's happening to him."

Fergus nodded, didn't push it any further, but nodded. Whatever her reasons for coming around to his side, he would take her help, and welcome.

Court had once filled the entire palace with conversation, music, entertainments of different sorts, all of it then spilling out into the surrounding gardens, fields, and smaller neighboring estates. The pathways of the old gardens were large enough for ten to march abreast, the monuments had been as tall as the great oaks. Now everything had drawn back to the palace and the only gardens they could maintain were the smaller ones adjoining the suites with high stone walls and few blooming things. There were private rooms for private meetings and larger rooms for more public ones, indoor hothouses with other greenery where folk wandered in and out at their leisure, studies with books that would be brought out and examined to settle some point or another of history, philosophy, magic.

There had been ballrooms and great dances, garden parties and celebrations in the waters beneath the great palace. There had been entire forests contained in those green spaces, buoyed by indoor rain and sun, a long time ago.

Now court was limited to a selection of small rooms into which the people crowded far too many to a room, weary and bored expressions on their faces when they weren't twisted in outright bitterness and scorn, giving them ugly lines around their mouth, nose and eyes. The lights were muted and reflected off dulled surfaces of brass and copper, the gowns were threadbare from reuse. The most powerful of them maintained magical illusions to keep the idea that they were all packed in like mortals because they chose it, but there were fewer of those every new turn of the seasons. If the court was not fading, it did a damn good impression of it.

Catriona, as she called herself now after the fashion of the court to take more mortal names, wound her way through the crowd with a studied show of indifference. For whatever reason, perhaps her brief encounter with the outlander Lady Oona the other day, she was in a less patient mood than usual. The walls grated, the company of endless chatter and repeating circles of conversation pricked every last brittle nerve, and she wanted an estate of her own where she could escape. This was, by now, impossible.

"Lord Fergus," the Redcap General nodded as the younger lord passed by them both. He nodded back, inclining his head a little deeper in a gesture of respect to one of the few fae leaders everyone still had respect for. Lord Fergus also had his own estates. Her gaze turned murderous at his back, and the Redcap General caught it and stared at her until she looked away.

The Redcaps weren't a strong presence at court. They were too blunt and bloodthirsty for the Sidhe to be comfortable around them for very long, and the Sidhe were too smiling and simpering for the Redcaps' tastes. But the General, perhaps for the way he had acquitted himself on behalf of their court in the last great fae war, was welcome at court and conducted himself according to the habits of the People more than his own kind, and Catriona could never shake the feeling that he was playing some sort of long game, that he wanted something. She hadn't yet discovered what, although she did now and again entertain the thought of trying to ferret it out and give it to him. The allegiance would have fortified her position incredibly.

Tonight, she suspected he was only here to make sure the Sidhe weren't pressing beyond their means and dragging the rest of the fae into some sort of mess. Among the other kin, the Redcaps enjoyed a position better than the Sidhe and the Puca, not quite as good as the Selkie and the small fae, but close. Their brutal and warlike nature mingled nicely with the humans. There were rumors that they would only get stronger with time.

There were others at court she would rather have talked to, but they were all embroiled in their own messes. The Leanan, the Love-Talkers, as the mortals named them, flirted around the edges of mortal society and brought the trappings of it back with them; they were here tonight in force. They were also the only ones in new clothes in any significant number, no doubt purchased for them by their mortal lovers. Everyone knew they had pushed the fashions of the Sidhe to mortal tastes, though no one cared to say anything. The Sluagh hovered around the edges, bolder ever since one of their own had overtaken the throne but still unwilling to tolerate the press of so many people. It put them at a disadvantage where societal machinations were concerned, and put them in a bad light. Most of the Sidhe considered them suspicious for that reason. Catriona considered them suspicious for a whole other set of reasons.

For one thing, few of them seemed to back the king, at least overtly. Given that the politics of the fae tended to be unfriendly towards them at best, she would have thought that they would welcome one of their own rising to power. Instead it seemed to slide around them without effect. She would even have understood if they had rejected their monarch, if it had been some sort of betrayal of some obscure Sluagh principle, but they just didn't seem to care one way or the other and before his ascension to power they had been as friendly and welcoming of him as they had of all their kind. The current apathy struck a wrong note in her, made her wonder if it was contrived to distract from something.

She glanced over at a knot of three of them who were talking by a pillar. They didn't look up when she passed. Whatever they were conspiring it didn't bother them to have a Sidhe in proximity. She heard whispers, at least.

"... in need of some sort of assistance, at least."

"He won't accept it. You've seen him, you know how proud he is."

"And finding ..." She passed out of eavesdropping range.

No, nothing conspiring against the throne, but something. They were looking for something too, maybe the same thing the King was looking for, if they were going to offer assistance. So perhaps the air of apathy was a contrived one after all.

Too little information. She needed a spy among them better than the one she had, a mortal who had fallen in with their company a century and a half ago. Mortals still counted for little in this world, though. They were talked around, but even the Sluagh did not discuss certain business in front of them. But a mortal she could seduce and discard when he became too old was the best she could do, anymore.

A bell rang. Everyone looked towards the main room where the doors to the inner palace opened, the King strode out with his impassive, benevolent expression that Catriona had particular and detailed reason to know was carefully crafted. At his side was his usual retainer, Roland, and behind him as well as fanning out through the crowd ahead of him were his royal guards. No consort followed to his side, she noted, against her better judgment.

By the time the King had entered the first ring of court attendees she had slipped back behind a cluster of pixies and sprites, stepping into their atmosphere of invisibility. No one noticed the small fae; even she took little notice of their individual names or natures. She would sit out this evening's bickering and watch unhindered and unmolested.

"My lady Oona." The King seemed unperturbed, answering questions, greeting those who greeted him and otherwise passing around the room in the customary circle. Catriona stomped on a twinge of vicious irritation at the depth of his bow and the duration in which he lingered over her hand. Oona smiled a little too long, too. Only those who were prominent or in favor were greeted by name and got a few minutes' brief audience with the king, a personal touch or a moment of private attention as much as anything could be private in the ballrooms. Those who weren't were acknowledged with a glance or a nod if they were acknowledged at all.

She wondered what the landed woman had done for the King to gain such favor from him. Aided in some endeavor, promised her support in a future conflict, carried on a secret affair or enabled one? Not that an affair had to be secret, necessarily, the King could lay his favors where he wished. Not that she cared. When the old Sluagh finally made his way around to her she gave him a polite and empty smile and held herself stiff and apart from him until he moved on. Better than engaging when her mood was like this.

Eamon came around behind him, having followed the old bastard and engaged himself in conversation with the guard. She didn't hold out much hope that her son would join their ranks, but it cost her nothing to indulge him and gained her some of the gossip from within the King's suite, which she did covet. Tonight, though, he had nothing new. Nothing useful. Just more of the same. She nodded absently and brushed him off to entertain himself in the circling masses of the people.

Frustrating. Disgustingly so.

He surveyed his court from the safety of the corridor before venturing into that pack of gossiping savages, unimpressed by what he saw and impatient as always. He had been unimpressed by them for a century or more, watching the people around him slip through complacency into obsolescence for a lack of willingness to change and a willful dismissal of the changes happening around them. The court needed revitalization. It needed something, that was for sure. He wasn't entirely sure how to go about it and he didn't want to risk moving with the kind of drastic abruptness that shaking up the place would require without knowing what he was going to do and when and having some clearer idea of the reactions.

But that didn't stop him from wanting to take most of the people in the room and shake them by their shirt fronts until they stopped simpering at him.

"Lord Regan," he nodded his head to the first man, a ruthless cutthroat bastard with an eye towards treating with the other courts, at least for new and fancy things. His willingness to overlook centuries of dislike at best and downright enmity at worst had gained him few allies at least. He had the feeling that if Lord Regan ever got a greater degree of support he might be in real trouble.

"Your majesty." The man made an unctuous, fatuous bow, face almost parallel to the floor. The King swept past before it was completed, irritable.

"My lady Oona." She, now, she was better than most. She learned better, had learned to survive before a human settlement swallowed her estates and now maintained two identities, her fae self and a mysterious human noblewoman who changed names every so often and kept to herself except for brief excursions into the local villages. And the occasional festival, of course, to establish her personality and her largesse.

She swept a curtsy and smiled at him over their joined hands, knowing but unassuming. Her place was well consolidated; she had no need to seek additional favor with him or anyone else in the court. Another thing he liked about her. "Your Majesty."

"I trust you're enjoying yourself well this evening, in exchange for the gracious favor of your company?"

Her smile broadened. "It certainly does show the promise of a fascinating time."

He chuckled, making his way past her and to the next kiss-ass in the line. Roland trailed behind him with a barely concealed sigh of exasperation. Despite his liking for some over others, of all the people in this room, he still trusted the mortal the most. Which should have been a sign to someone at least, him or the rest of them. His own people were unlikely to want to help him, he hadn't spoken to them so much since taking the throne, and the Sidhe were liars, every one of them. Despite their pretensions and their open secrets and their illusions of truth-telling.

The rest of the fae kept to their own domains for the most part, those who had them. Those who didn't kept to the demesnes of those nearest or those who would protect them. It wasn't ideal. It wasn't how it had been in his youth, the memories he had of wandering over the world as they pleased, but it had to suffice for now. He didn't have the means to revitalize the court.

But occasionally, he did have the means to liven it up a bit. That was as much as anyone could hope for, livening.

And tonight it seemed as though someone intended to do it for him.

The Sluagh King, eyebrows raised in mild inquiry, made his way through the crowd. The fact that it did not part automatically before him was a subject of intrigue to begin with, but then he came into view of the fuss. One of the younger lordlings had taken issue with someone's face, no doubt. Or the way he parted his hair, or the color of his waistcoat, or something equally nonsensical. Perhaps the other had jostled him. Still, they were now arguing in loud tones, and catching the attention of everyone around with the way the first lordling's hand hovered over his weapon. He looked from the young man's hand over his weapon to the cut of his doublet, to the look in his eyes. Familiar.

He waited until he was more certain they were going to come to blows. No one else seemed interested in stopping the conflict, either, which further disgusted him.

"And what have we here?" he strode in, stepping casually in front of and between the two would-be combatants, to the irritation, no doubt, of his bodyguards and his retainers who were not so sanguine about his ability to block an incoming strike meant for someone else. "What cause or occasion gives us this disruption to a peace we have all worked so tirelessly to maintain? Is there an issue here?"

Silence spread out from between the three of them, rippling through the assembly as they listened to his words and remembered what they were supposed to be doing. Getting along. Behaving at least as if they liked each other, even if most of them did not.

"Your majesty." Both of the young men stepped back and bowed, neither of them looking happy about it. They bowed and stayed down, heads lowered for any judgment he might decide upon, up to and including severing those heads from their necks. He was, after all, something of a barbarian king.

A humble gesture, if a bit sharp in its visible displeasure. The tension stood out all along their backs, more so in his left-hand combatant than the right. The right-hand one seemed more convinced of the authority of the king, and he dismissed the young man with a nod and a few brief words. To his credit, he didn't leave, not when his supposed enemy was still under scrutiny. The left-hand combatant, still ducked with his head between his shoulders, displayed an unpleasantly familiar temper, and that was more problematic.

He turned to young man with a raised eyebrow. "Would anyone like to tell me what transpired here to bring these two almost to blows?"

No one spoke. A few murmured in the background about not having seen anything, which might be true in this press of people and might be deliberate ignorance.

"No one?" His voice sharpened. "No one saw this grave and most injurious insult? I'm disappointed." His smile was full of teeth. "The lot of you never miss a chance to comment on the insults you do each other daily, always seize upon the chance for more, why would you stop now? Is it because I am present?" his hands pressed to his chest, eyebrows lifting again in an expression of innocence that would have been more convincing had it been on a face less creased with cunning. "Because if you prefer, I can remove myself and leave you to gossip among my spies."

The murmur increased. Not that they didn't know he had spies among them, informers who kept him appraised of all developments in the court, they had to know. But it wasn't done to comment on his own or another person's spies. Everyone assumed that the other powers in the court kept their own watch on things, no one questioned it or made open discussion of it. But then, a Sluagh barbarian could hardly be expected to conform to the niceties of the people. And he wasn't above exploiting that, for all purposes.

"No? Nothing? If there is no insult, as I must assume has taken place, then this might be some entertainment for us all to marvel at their skill with their own weapons."

"I think..."

The intervention startled everyone; that it was carried out by an older woman of no great standing and no recognition as a current power was even more surprising. The King turned to her, giving her his full attention plus a little extra clench to the jaw when he saw to whom the familiar voice belonged. She didn't bow under the weight, nor did they pull in together to conduct the argument with public cause in more private manner.

"... your Majesty, that this is more an entertainment in the style of a comedy of errors. They are young men, after all, and young men are prone to exaggeration and ego, as you well know yourself. Perhaps it would be best if we took it simply as a display of pride, and let it go at that with no wounds done on either side?"

Both young men flushed, he noticed, but one of them considerably more ashamed than the other. Geoffrey knew the bait was meant for him to react, and refrained from giving her the satisfaction. Besides, it had been too long for that passion to come burbling to the surface over that small a barb.

"Young men have their foolishness," he drawled, continuing to stare at the two until they fought the urge to squirm under his gaze. "Why not. It serves nothing to punish them for actions they only thought of taking."

The tension and the crowd dissipated soon after that declaration of clemency. Nothing else of so much interest happened that night, although he kept a weather eye on the son's mother for the rest of the evening. And the son himself, who sulked on the fringes of the court until he stomped off to his suite for the night. Still a mystery, and therefore a complication, and an unwelcome one at that. In the end, the King retired to his chambers early to storm about and berate the air where his retainer happened to listen and eventually withdrew to his bedroom to sleep, discontent and uneasy.

"He had no right to do that!"

Everyone in the vicinity heard the door slam as Eamon stormed into their suite and straight through to his bed. Catriona rolled her eyes and let him storm about in his room for a little while. He had been affronted in some way, she was certain. She hadn't been with him when it happened, but it was enough that the pressure of the King's displeasure only put the lid on the boiling and made it all the worse when it finally turned over.

After a little while the storming around noises stopped, and she looked up from her harp. He leaned in the doorway, arms folded, watching her.

"He had every right, darling dear, he is the King. And you were rude and out of line to begin a duel, of all things, in the middle of court. You know that." As infuriating as Geoffrey could be, he was at least a fair-handed king. His lips thinned, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before accepting her words. She was his mother. He did believe her.

It made the whole thing only a little more tolerable, she was certain. "Come, sit." She patted the seat next to her. "Keep me company while I play."

Not that she played for anyone's pleasure but her own these days, but it didn't do to fall out of practice. And it seemed to soothe poor Eamon, whose temper was well known to most of the young folk at court.

He did come and sit beside her after another moment or two of sulking, sat stiff at first and then leaned forward, arms folded between his knees. Not sulking, but not happy, either. She plucked the strings in tune and then began an old air from before the mortals had taken over the island, one she still played for her son now and again when he was restless and in need of respite from his own frothing energy.

"What happened, Eamon?" she asked as she played, keeping her words light and soft and not interfering with the music. "What turned you against Daire like that? I thought you two were friends."

"We were. Are." He frowned, confused, his brow knit up in very real consternation. "I thought we were. He came after me, Mother, I didn't mean to."

And the thing of it was, he meant that. Eamon was her dear son, her life and her joy, but he did not have the best judgment at any point. He never had. It was one reason why she had never fostered him out, why she had kept him by her, there was something simply not quite right about him, not safe to let out on his own. She took care of him, made sure he didn't make too many enemies. Though she was starting to wonder how much longer that could go on.

"How did he come after you, darling dear?" Pluck the strings and play the tune. His forehead began to smooth, his head began to droop a little more.

"He jostled me. His sword touched my wrist. He was trying to cut me."

Catriona sighed. He could take these fits, her son, where everything seemed allied against him and even the smallest mischance was a malicious act designed to hurt him in some way. "Perhaps he didn't realize it was you. Perhaps he was trying to cut someone else." It was closer to what he would accept than saying the other young Sidhe had simply jostled him by accident. She kept playing, too, and Eamon only grumbled instead of flying into a rage again.

"I don't like him anymore, Mother. He's wicked, and he doesn't like me."

She threw him a level look. "You don't like him because you believe he doesn't like you, and yet he has done nothing to say or show this. Give it time. Go back to him in a few days, at the next evening, and see what he says."

His teeth ground together for a moment, then he shook his head. "Perhaps." Eamon rose from the cushioned stool and started to pace the room, but his strides were longer and more even. He was restless but not angry anymore, not dangerous. Catriona finished the song she had been playing and let the harp fall back to its base again, watching him.

After a little while he had worked the fidgets out, or he had grown tired of the rooms and didn't want to roam the halls. He came to her and knelt at her feet, leaning against the harp until she moved it out of the way and resting his head on her knee. "Mother, why do we stay here? Why can't we go back to the country?"

He didn't know the country, not truly, though he kept wanting to go back there. Because he had some hazy memory of when they had had their own estates, when their people had had the run of the isles and when they had had mortals to do their bidding, always. Then her husband had died and the mortals had come and overrun the lands and now all they had were a few country estates and a few thin places in all the wilderness. Eamon didn't understand that. He didn't understand why the world had deprived him of the freedom he craved.

"We have to remain here so that we are taken care of. After your father died, we were left very much weakened." Not with very little, not her, not really. She had been wealthy even before she married. With her own estates and her own power, but they had been swallowed up by the mortal blight, and so it was true after all, in a way.

Eamon pouted. "I don't see why we can't go back. Live on the old estate, fend for ourselves."

She laughed. "Would you know how to fend for yourself, my son? Would you know how to make food without a brownie to hold your hand along the way? Would you want to?" By the face he made, no, he would not. "We do not have the resources to keep a full household as you are accustomed to. You would like it far less, and we would only come back to the palace, in some disgrace for having attempted it on our own and failed."

Disgrace was the word of power there, he hated disgrace, hated to lose his pride like that. Eamon still grumbled, but he buried his face in her skirt when he did so to avoid being taken seriously. She sighed, running her fingers through his hair and letting him grumble so that he didn't take it out on the next poor bastard who jostled him in the hall. Eamon didn't have the best judgment at times. But he was still her son, and all she had left.