Lust

“Are you certain?”

“Completely. No one would dare defy my orders or betray their queen.”

“What of Viviana? She has escaped our court. Perhaps she is aiding your Unseelie son now.”

His mother stopped pacing, paused to look out the window and steadied herself, while pondering the thought. “She is a mortal, born a hundred years ago. Of course, living in our court slows her aging, but once she leaves …” His mother turned to him, her violet gaze now steady and assured. “She’s been gone six months, which is three years in the mortal realm. If she’s still alive she’s an old woman, probably crippled and babbling away. But more likely she’s turned to ash and the wind has carried her far away.”

His mother was usually right, of course. But in this matter, she wasn’t thinking clearly or broadly enough. Viviana was the virtue of diligence. Persistence. She had been brought to the Seelie Court with the first seven virtues and mated to a fey who was domineering and harsh. She had not been treated like the other six virtues. No, Crom thought, remembering the painful cries of Viviana as her fey husband mated with her. No, if anyone had the will to see something through, it was her. If anyone had a reason to betray the queen and the court, it was Viviana.

“Absolutely not,” his mother murmured. “It is not Viviana. Besides, Sucellos had a firm hand on her. She was submissive and content at last with her lot in life.”

No, she hadn’t been. His mother was deluding herself if she truly believed it. Sucellos was the fey warrior who ruled over fertility and death. His magic was powerful and dark, and Viviana had feared him, the monster Sucellos was. Twisted by his power in the Seelie Court, and the darkness that seemed to simmer in him, Sucellos was cruel, depraved and commanding. Crom would bet his riches that Sucellos carried inside him the blood of a Dark Fey. A fact that Sucellos was scrupulous about keeping from the queen.

“If not Viviana,” he asked, “then who?”

“No one in my court,” she firmly replied. Crom flicked a piece of lint from his lace cuff and glanced at her. So blind, he thought wonderingly. When had it been that his mother’s desperation for justice had started to overshadow the well-being of her own court? She was consumed by the need to bring the Unseelie to their knees. To see them obliterated. Their destruction was her every waking thought, and no doubt, her nightly dream.

“Perhaps,” he suggested carefully, “you underestimate my brother’s mental fortitude. He is not a simpleton, but a powerful Unseelie king.”

“He is a bastard barbarian,” she spat. “Born of that brute who raped me.”

“You forget something elemental,” Crom said, knowing he was going to enrage her. “Your blood also flows through his veins.”

“Do not talk to me of that … that monster,” she roared. “He is a Dark Fey, an abomination. I need no reminders that he came from my womb.”

“Still, he is your son—with at least half of your powers.”

She blanched. The beautiful, imposing queen of the fey actually paled, and Crom hid his grin. He had finally figured out his mother’s greatest fear—his twin.

She recovered swiftly and resumed her pacing. “The Dark Fey are stupid creatures. They care more for sex than magic and politics. Their court is a cesspool of carnality, not influence or elegance. They’re not capable of unraveling the secret of my spell.”

“Regardless, Niall has discovered that the key to releasing his court from its fate is to breed with the virtues and infuse his dying court with the much-needed—and powerful—pure mortal blood.”

“They are to be ours!” his mother cried, her hand curling into a small fist. “The first seven came to this court a hundred years ago, and now the time is ripe for the next seven to mate with our princes. It’s been arranged. I’ve chosen well, not only for strength, but for a higher purpose for our court. Each Seelie that I’ve chosen will enhance the virtue, their offspring will infuse our court with every desirable quality. Those women are to be ours, gifts to my faithful courtiers. I will not allow it, my … creations to be tainted by the touch of a Dark Fey.”

“Calm yourself, Mother,” Crom drawled. “You forget that to end the curse these virtues must come willingly. Once they are exposed to the sins of the Dark Fey, these innocents will not follow them.”

“You do not know the power of the Dark Fey,” she murmured, wringing her hands. “Their glamour, it is the most beautiful in the world. Their seduction, the sweetest, most heady arousal you have ever felt. Even as your mind hates them, your body—” she trembled, then steeled herself “—your body desires them, craves them. These women, they may not have a chance to protect themselves if they fall prey to a Dark Fey’s glamour.”

An interesting and most informative little lesson. Had his mother forgotten that he was also part Dark Fey? His father had been their king. And although he looked like his golden Seelie mother, there were undeniable characteristics within him that were all Unseelie.

“Mother, you worry over naught. I’ve taken measures to protect the virtues.”

His mother sank onto a velvet chair. She looked fatigued and old, almost as old as her two hundred and fifty years. “Tell me.”

“They are close at hand and are being guarded by some of my men who are posing as footmen.”

His mother brightened. “London?”

Crom smiled. “Indeed. I’ve warded off the Lennox town house. Naught but mortals shall enter their domain—at least until we have decided what is to be done about my brother and his band of cursed princes.”

“I need to speak to Lennox,” his mother demanded.

“Four mornings from now,” he announced. “It’s all arranged. He will meet you at the gates of Richmond Park. I assumed that would be beneficial to you, since the park incorporates your court. You will be safe on your warded ground if the Dark Fey decide to follow Lennox.”

His mother’s smile widened, making her expression beam with loveliness. “You are very much my protégé, are you not?”

Crom inclined his head. “You have been both mother and father to me. Naturally, I have followed in your footsteps.”

“And what do you want, Crom? I sense that this interest in the virtues is not merely to keep your mama happy and the curse against your bastard brother alive.”

Ah, at last they had arrived at the crux of the matter. He needed to be cautious, for his mother was as shrewd as she was beautiful. Every move, every decision was made for the greater good of the Seelie Court. The damn court was all his mother lived for, thrived for. Her vengeance against the Unseelie had never wavered, only grown since she had fled his monster of a father’s court a little more than two hundred years before.

In mortal terms, it was an unfathomable length of time for vengeance to perpetuate. In the world of the fey, it was nothing. But Crom felt as though it was aeons. He was tired of it. Sick of being treated as a youngling by his mother. It was time to take over the helm. The Seelie needed a king, and never more so than now, with the Unseelie coming out of their dark court to wreak retribution upon them.

“Crom?” his mother prompted, her voice full of suspicion.

There was no need to rile her, to make her suspect that he planned to throw her over and build a new Seelie Court. No, he needed to play his hand wisely.

“I would request, Mother, that you consider bestowing one of the virtues to me.”

“To you?” She laughed as she picked up a silver mirror and gazed into it. “Whatever would you do with a virtue?”

It annoyed him, the way she thought of him as an ineffective courtier. Well, what did she know? He had been gathering his little mutinous army beneath her nose for the past three years. With the promise of fairness, and a mating with a virtue to strengthen their Seelie powers, the six fey he had chosen to help usurp his mother’s throne were more than eager to set his plan into place.

His mother had ruled too long. Her only care was for the utter destruction of the Unseelie Court—a vision he shared. But he had many more ideas of making their court thrive, something his mother had long ago abandoned. There were alliances to be made with other fey in other countries. Fortunes to be created, both with fey and mortals alike. The world was advancing, and more and more the mortals who inhabited the earth failed to believe the stories of the Daoine Side the way their ancestors once had. No, times were changing, and if the Seelie were to survive, they must change with it. There were millions of mortals in need of fey gifts, and millions more to use as pawns.

His mother didn’t see that. She only saw the destruction of the court that had turned her into an embittered woman.

There was nothing he would have enjoyed more than informing her that her days of ruling the Seelie were numbered. But one thing he had learned being her son was that one needed to be certain that one had the upper hand—fully. Crom was not quite convinced he had that yet. So, he pretended that his motivation was far more benign.

“I would like a wife, Mother. I believe I am entitled one. And younglings. Wouldn’t you enjoy that, playing the part of doting grandmama to lovely little fey-virtue children?”

She waved her pale hand, dismissing him. “Pick one of my ladies-in-waiting, or a courtier’s daughter.”

“I want a virtue,” he said, grinding his teeth together. His mother arched her brow, replaced the mirror atop the table and glared at him.

“And what would you do with a virtue?”

His mother would not believe it if he told her. For three years he had been fantasizing about Chastity Lennox. Her innocence, her purity would be the perfect symbolism for his new court. As queen, she would emulate everything he was trying to achieve. And in bed … he felt himself grow aroused as the image of the voluptuous Chastity Lennox formed in his mind. In bed he could be as wicked as he wanted to with her. She would belong to him—only him. Oh, he kept his Dark Fey blood well hidden from his mother, but the appetite of a virile Dark Fey was there, simmering deep within him. He wanted to dominate the virtuous Chastity, and hide her away in his bedchamber, corrupting her through the night, and purifying her by day.

“Mother?”

“I suppose I can think on it.” Which meant she wouldn’t give the matter a passing thought.

“After you meet with Lennox?”

“Yes, yes,” she replied absently as she reached for the decanter and poured herself some faery mead.