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Chapter 3

I&039;D SEEN MORE VIOLENCE IN THE COURTS THAN IN ALL MY YEARS as a private detective in Los Angeles, but I&039;d seen more death in LA Not because I was included in murder cases - private dicks don&039;t do murder cases, at least not fresh ones - but because s that live in faerie land are immortal By definition, the immortal don&039;t die very often I could count on one hand how many fresh criers left over Even those cases were because the Grey Detective Agency could boast soic is like everything else; if you can do good with it, soency specialized in Supernatural probleical solutions It was on the business cards and everything

I&039;d also learned that all bodies are an it, not he, not she - it Because if you think of the dead body as a he or a she, they begin to be real for you They begin to be people, and they aren&039;t people, not anymore They&039;re dead, and outside of very special circumstances they are just inert matter You can have sympathy for the victim later, but at the crime scene, especially in the firstSympathy steals your ability to think Eic, those are your salvation at a freshelse leads to hysterics, and I was not only the most experienced detective in the hallway, I was also Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, Besaba&039;s Bane Besaba was my mother, and my conception had forced her to wed my father and live, for a tiht one day be queen Future queens do not have hysterics Future queens who are also trained detectives aren&039;t allowed hysterics

The problem was that I knew one of these bodies I&039;d known her alive and walking around I knew that she liked classical literature When she was cast out of the Seelie Court and had to coed her naed their names so they wouldn&039;t be reminded daily of who and what they had once been, and how far they had fallen She called herself Beatrice, after the love interest in Dante&039;s Divine Coht as well have a name to match" I&039;d taken world literature as one of ave most of my books to Beatrice, because she would read them and I wouldn&039;t I could always buy extra copies of the handful of books that I actually enjoyed Beatrice couldn&039;t She couldn&039;t pass for hu stared at

I stared at her now, but she wouldn&039;t ain Beatrice looked like a delicate hu to Rhys&039;s hair Once Beatrice had been able to be that s she would never talk about, and she lost the ability to change sizes She&039;d been trapped at around four foot two, and the delicate dragonfly wings on her back had been useless The deer size, their wings can&039;t lift them

Blood had formed a wide, dark pool around her body Soet that close to her, it had to have been soic to sneak up on her Of course, they had also needed enough ate her is in faerie that could do both

"What happened, Beatrice?" I said softly "Who did this to you?"

Galen came up beside me "Merry"

I looked up at hiht?"

I shook my head, and looked down the hallway to our second body Out loud I said, "I&039;ll be fine"

"Liar," he said softly, and he tried to bend over me, tried to hold me I didn&039;t push hi to so souards that had coency for a few months I&039;d been there a few years You didn&039;t huddle at crime scenes You didn&039;t comfort yourself You did your job

Galen&039;s face fell a little, as if I&039;d hurt his feelings I didn&039;t want to hurt him, but we had a crisis here Surely he could see that So why, as so often happened, was I having to waste energy worrying about Galen&039;s feelings when I should have been doing nothing but concentrating on the job? There were moments, no matter how dear he was to me, that I understood all too hy my father had not chosen Galen for my fiance

I walked toward the second body The man lay just short of the hallway&039;s intersection with another, larger hallway He was on his stoe stain of blood on his back, andthe side of his body

Rhys was squatting by the corpse He looked up as I approached The deh Rhys&039;s thick white hair, then hid her tiny face, as if she were afraid The deroups like flocks of birds or butterflies Some of them were shy when on their own

"Do we knohat killed him yet?" I asked

Rhys pointed to the narrow hole in the man&039;s back "Knife, I think"

I nodded "But they took the blade with the special about the knife that ive theood blade," Frost said He took the two steps thatcorridor to the suards ere keeping everyone away frouards with me to close off both ends of the hallway, and I&039;d done it

When we&039;d arrived, the hallway had been protected by floating pots and pans, courtesy of Maggie May, the chief cook for the Unseelie Court Brownies can levitate objects, but not theone with Doyle to see if she could get any more sense out of the sculleryhysterics, and Maggie couldn&039;t decide whether the wohtened her, or was si to try to find out He was hoping the woman would react to him as if he were still the Queen&039;s Darkness, her assassin, and tell him the truth out of fear and habit If she were just scared, he would probably frighten her into having a fit, but I let hiood cop after he&039;d played bad

I&039;d sent Barinthus to tell the queen what had happened, because of all of thea bearer of such terrible news The queen did have a tendency to blaer

"Possibly," Rhys said, "just habit You use the blade, you retrieve, clean it, and put it back in its sheath" He pointed to a smear on the man&039;s jacket

"He wiped the blade off," I said

Rhys looked at ed "You&039;re right, it could be a she"

I didn&039;t hear Doyle come down the hallway, but I kneas there a second before he spoke "He was running when they threw the blade"

I actually agreed, but I wanted his reasoning Truthfully, I wanted not to be in charge of this mess, but I had the most experience That ?"

He started to touch the man&039;s coat, and I said, "Don&039;t touch hiave me a look, but said, "You can see where his coat is raised on this side, that the wound in his shirt does not line up with the coat as it lies I believe he was running, then, when they retrieved the knife, they went through his pockets, moved his coat around"

"I&039;ll bet they didn&039;t wear gloves"

"Most would not think about fingerprints and DNA Most here will be ic will find them than science"

I nodded "Exactly"

"He saw so up "He took off down this way to try and outrun it But what did he see? What s loose in the corridors of our sithen," Frost said

"Yes," I said, "but he was a reporter He ca"

"Perhaps he saw the lesser fey&039;s death," Frost said

"You mean he witnessed Beatrice&039;s murder," I said

Frost nodded

"Okay, say he witnessed it He ran, they threw a blade, killed him" I shook my head "Almost everyone carries a knife Most of them can pin a fly to the ith one It doesn&039;t limit our suspect pool much"

"But Beatrice&039;s death liave me a look that was eloquent Should this be discussed where the new guards, e didn&039;t entirely trust, could hear us?

"There&039;s no reason to hide it, Rhys You can&039;t kill the immortal with a knife, but she&039;s dead It needed a spell, a powerful spell, and only a sidhe, or soh could have done it"

"The queen forbid the sluagh to be out this night Simply to be seen while the reporters are in our sithen would raise suspicion"

The sluagh were the least huhtmares that even the Unseelie fear They are the only wild hunt that is left to us The only frightening group that can hunt the fey, even the sidhe, until they are caught Sometimes they kill, sometimes they only fetch you back for the queen The sidhe fear the sluagh, and its threat was one of the reasons to fear the queen I&039;d agreed to bed the King of the Sluagh to ceainst my enemies It was not widely known in the court that I had ain There were sidhe, even lesser fey, ould think it a perversion I thought of it as a political necessity Beyond that, I tried not to dwell too , the Lord of That Which Passes Between, was half-sidhe, but the other half hadn&039;t been even close to humanoid

I shook h could have hidden theht Not with all the spells we had on the corridors to keep everyone boxed into that one tiny section"

"Just as the reporter should not have been able to leave the area," Frost said He had a point

"Let uards who don&039;t want to think it A sidhe killed Beatrice and the reporter"

"That still leaves us with several hundred suspects," Rhys said

"The scullery htened," Doyle said "I cannot tell if she is afraid in general or about so specific"

"So you scared her," I said

He gave a s "I did not do it on purpose"

I looked at him

"I did not, Meredith, but Peasblossom took it ill that the Queen&039;s Darkness had come She seemed to think I&039;d come to kill her"

"Why would she think the queen wanted her dead?" Rhys asked

I had an idea, an awful idea, because Queen Andais would hate it I didn&039;t say it out loud, because though the new guards kneell as we did that a sidhe had done this, they probably wouldn&039;t be thinking what I was thinking in that moment Andais had saddled ht didn&039;t trust The awful thought was, What if it had been Prince Cel&039;s people? What if thethe scene of a double homicide? She&039;d never believe that the queen would want her to tell anyone

The trouble was that I couldn&039;t see what Cel, or anyone serving his interests, would gain fro Beatrice The reporter see ti," Rhys said

"Later," I said, and let my eyes flick to the backs of the men just a foot away from us

"Yes," Doyle said, "yes, we do need some privacy"

"We should hide the body," said one of the ht coppery red French braids, left his face bare, but nothing could leave it unadorned, for his eyes were layered petals of red, blue, yellow, and green, like some multicolored flower It often aze, as ifout at the world with flower-petal eyes His face was square-jawed but slender, so that he uely delicate at the same time Almost as if his face, like his eyes, couldn&039;t quite decide what it wanted to be

"The reporter will be missed, Amatheon," I said "We can&039;t just hide his body and hope this will all go away"

"Why can we not? Why can we not sione? Or that one of the lesser fey saw him leave the sithen"

"Those are all lies," Rhys said "The sidhe don&039;t lie, or did you forget that in all those years you hung around with Cel?"

Aer, but he fought it off "What I did, or did not do, with Prince Cel is not your business But I know that the queen would want to hide this from the press To have a huood publicity she has ed to acquire for us in the last few decades"

He was probably right on that last part The queen would not want to admit what had happened If she even suspected that I suspected that one of Cel&039;s people was responsible, she&039;d want to hide it even deeper She loved Cel too much, and always had

The fact that A of the body made me wonder even more if Cel&039;s interests were somehow behind this Amatheon had always been one of Cel&039;s supporters Cel was the last pure-blood sidhe of a house that had ruled this court for three thousand years Arel and a disgrace to the throne So as he here to compete to bed me and make me queen? Because Queen Andais had ordered it When he refused the honor, she ot her point, her painful point, that she was ruler here, not Cel, and Amatheon would do as he was told or else Part of the "or else" had been to cut his knee-length hair to his shoulders, still long by hureat shas more painful to his body than to his pride, but he hadn&039;t shared details and I didn&039;t really want to know

"If Beatrice were the only one dead, then I ree," I said "But a human is dead in our land We can&039;t hide that"

"Yes," he said, "we can"

"You haven&039;t dealt with the press as directly as I have, Amatheon Was this reporter alone when he caroup that will ht away? Even if he came alone, he will be known to other members of the press If one of us had killed hiht be able to hide who did it, and let it be just another unsolved crime But he was killed here on our land, and that we cannot hide"

"You sound as if you are going to tell the press of his death"

I looked away fro eyes

He reached out to touch my arm, but Frost siesture "You will announce it to the press?" He sounded astonished

"No, but we have to contact the police"

"Meredith," Doyle started to say

I cut him off "No, Doyle, he was stabbed with a knife We&039;ll never figure out whose blade did it But a good forensics tea a wound to the weapon that made it," Doyle said

"Yes, and you tried those spells when you found my father&039;s body in the meadow You did your spells, yet you never found the weapons that killed hi in my head with them My father&039;s death, like the capital of Spain Just a fact, nothing more

Doyle drew a deep breath "I failed Prince Essus that day, Princess Meredith, and you"

"You failed because it was sidhe that killed hiic to thwart your spells Don&039;t you see, Doyle, whoever did this is as good at ic as we are But they won&039;t know modern forensics They won&039;t be able to protect theainst science"

Onilwyn stepped away frouards He was blockier than any of the other sidhe, tall but stocky, and yet he always race, as if he&039;d borrowed hiswavy ponytail over the back of his black suit and white shirt Black, the queen&039;s color, and Prince Cel&039;s color A very popular color here at the Unseelie Court His hair was a green so dark it had black highlights His eyes were pale green with a starburst in the center around his pupil

"You cannothuman warriors into our land?"

"If you mean human policeman, yes, that is exactly what I mean to do"

"You will open us up to that over the death of one human and the death of a cook?"

"Do you think the death of a human is less iht in the face and was happy to see that he realized his faux pas I watched him remember that I was part hue it will do to our court in the eyes of the world?" He tried to recover, and it wasn&039;t a bad job of it

"Do you think the death of a cook is less i his attes

He sant, and so very Onilwyn "Of course, I believe that the life of a noble-born sidhe is worth more than the life of a servant, or a human So would you if you were pure sidhe"

"Then I&039;ry now, and I fought not to have it translate to power, not to start to glow, and raise the stakes of this fight "This servant, whose name happens to be Beatrice, showed me more kindness than most of the nobles of either faerie court Beatrice wasmore helpful to add than class prejudice, then I&039; her guards"

His skin went froreen to just white I felt a swift burst of satisfaction at his fear Andais had given him to me to bed, and if I didn&039;t bed him, he would suffer So would I, but in that moment, I wasn&039;t sure I cared

"Hoas I to know sheto you, Princess Meredith?"

"Consider thisto you, Onilwyn" - I raised my voice so that it carried down the hallway - "and for the rest of you who don&039;t knowto me" Some of the reat deal of time with the lesser fey while I was at court Most ofthe sidhe You h for most of you You have only yourselves to blame, then, that my attitude is a little more democratic than usual for a noble Think upon that before you say so as foolish to uard in question, and let o lower "Bear all that in ain, and say so else equally stupid"

He actually dropped to one knee and bowed his head, though I think that was to hide the anger on his face "As o stand somewhere farther away froo to the other end of the hallway, and he went, without another word, though the starbursts in his eyes were glittering with his rage

"I do not agree with Onilwyn," A to bring in the human police?"

I nodded

"The queen will not like it"

"No, she won&039;t"

"Why would you risk her anger, Princess?" He seeer again for anything, or anyone Not even my honor"

He had been one of the sidhe who had made my childhood hellish, but lately I&039;d seen another side to Ahtened, and vulnerable, and helpless I always had trouble hating people who showed me they could feel pain, too "Beatrice was my friend, but more than that she was one of my people To rule a people is to protect theht and I want the it to anyone else The reporter was our guest, and to kill him like this is an insult to the honor of the court itself"

"You don&039;t care about the honor of the court," he said, and I watched hile to understand me

"No, not really"

He sed hard enough for me to hear it "There is no one&039;s death that I fear, not eventhe human policemen down into our home"

"Why do you fear the police?"

"I do not fear the theets to kill people I have sworn to protect, Amatheon, no one"

"You are not sworn, not yet You have taken no oath for this court, you sit on no throne"

"If I do not do my utmost to solve these deaths, to protect everyone in this sithen, froreatest to least, then I do not deserve to sit on any throne"

"You are mad," he said, and his eyes were very wide "The queen will kill you for this"

I glanced back at Beatrice&039;s body, and I thought of another body so o The only reason she hadn&039;t hidden my father&039;s body from the press is that they found him first Miles away from the faerie mounds, cut to pieces They found hiuards too late to save his life, they were too late to save his dignity, orbecause he was killed off our lands, but no one had helped them They had not been allowed inside any of the faerie mounds They had been forbidden to question anyone They had been stopped before they began because the queen was convinced ould find who had done this terrible thing, but we never did

"I will remind my aunt what she said when my father, her brother, was murdered"

"What did she say?" he asked

It was Doyle who answered, "That ould find who had killed Prince Essus, that the humans would only hinder us in our search"

I looked at hiaze "This tis the sidhe cannot hide from That the only reason to keep the police out is if she does not want these murders solved"

"Merry," Rhys said, "I&039;d put it a different away, if I were telling her" He looked a little pale himself

I shook my head "But you aren&039;t princess, Rhys, I am"

He smiled, still pale "I don&039;t know, I think I&039;d look cute in a tiara"

I laughed, I couldn&039;t help it I hugged hiedthe press or contacting the police, right?"

"Yes, and just the police We&039;re going to try to get the press out of here first"

He hugged hter "Thank the Consort"

I drew back fro, and said, "I&039;m deter she loved her brother enough to feel guilty," Arasped thatlike that," I said

"She cares for no one except Prince Cel," he said

I thought about that "You "

"Will you wager your life on that?" he asked

"Not wager, no, but I&039;ll risk it"

"Are you so certain that you are right?"

"About the queen, no, but I aht about e need to do to find ourto tell the queen so"

He shuddered "I would rather stay here and guard the hallway, if you do not mind"

"I don&039;t want anyone withwhat&039;s right"

"Oh, hell, Merry, then none of us can come," Rhys said

I looked at hied "All of us fear her"

"But I will go with you," Frost said

"And me," Galen said

"Do you need to ask?" Doyle said

It was Adair who finally spoke for h honorable foolishness, but it does not matter You are our ameraudur, and that is a title that I have not let pass my lips for many years"

Ameraudur meant a war leader as chosen for love, not bloodline Aive his own life before he saw yours fail It was the word that the Welsh had used for Arthur, yes, that Arthur It was the term that some of my father&039;s men had used for him