Beauty (A Faery Story 3)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Your Highness. I have no

idea what this thing called coffee is.” The goblin flashed a mouthful of sharp teeth before trying to hide a silvery flask behind his back.

A girl dressed in simple but expensive clothes walked up behind the queen. She was pretty, a slender, innocent-looking thing. Then she started sniffing the air. There was something almost feral about her when she scented the world around her. “He is lying. He has the coffee.”

Queen Meg threw her an affectionate look. “Yes, I believe so, Kaja, since he’s drinking it right in front of me.”

She drank goblin whiskey? Most sidhe avoided it, but Shim rather liked the stuff. He preferred it the way the goblins prepared it. Hot and sweet. Someone, a gnome if he remembered correctly, had cooled the liquor, but Shim had thought it vile in that form.

A Seelie queen who drank goblin liquor? And whose handmaiden appeared to be a bit feral? The slender woman was again scenting the air.

“The food here smells good. And the small ones look easy to catch.”

“Kaj, Dante told you not to eat the brownies.”

Kaja wrinkled her nose. “Dante tells me not to eat anything. It’s sad. Don’t eat the brownies. Don’t eat the pixies. Don’t eat the trolls. He would not even allow me to eat our enemies.”

Queen Meg shrugged. “Well, he was definitely right about the troll. It smelled bad. You would have had a tummy ache for days.” Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward. “What did Dante say about eating selfish little goblins who won’t even share a drop of their coffee?”

The goblin took another drink. “I ain’t scared of no Seelie women. Seelie women are trophies, nothing more.”

Kaja growled, a low, menacing sound that seemed to come from the back of her throat, and Shim could have sworn she suddenly had a mouth full of sharp teeth. “I am not Seelie.”

Damn, he was going to lose a few goblins if he didn’t start to fix this.

“Is that the queen?” Lach asked, walking up behind him.

At least he had an answer for this particular question. So often he didn’t. So often he drifted away, his mind seeking Bronwyn’s and melding in an odd way. He was really the plane’s worst peeper. He shook it off. It was always there, that slight invisible tie that bound him to his wife. Well, the woman who didn’t even know she was his wife. Years had passed since the single act that had bound them together, and as far as he could tell, Bronwyn hadn’t gotten the message that she was a married woman. Not that she was playing around. Shim always managed to fix those little problems. A nice fire bolt tended to make would-be suitors think twice about fucking around with his bride.

“Are you still with me?” Lach asked.

Shim groaned a little. “Sorry. I was thinking about her. Yes, I think that’s the queen, and she’s not what we thought she would be. And the one named Kaja mentioned Dante. Gods, did Julian really bring Dante Dellacourt here? Shouldn’t he be in a strip club on the Vampire plane?”

“I think she heard you.” Lach nodded toward the women.

The slim one was watching him with narrowed eyes. “Explain this stripping club to me. I do not like the sound of it. It sounds like a place my husband should stay far from.”

Queen Meg smiled. “It sounds like a place Dante more than likely used to frequent before he got married.”

“Bloody hell, Dante Dellacourt is married?” Duffy walked up, two big mugs of goblin whiskey steaming in his hands. The little gnome belched a bit. “Is it one of the crazy women from the DL we all watched? That was fun. We made it into a drinking game. Every time that idiot would say ‘hey, baby,’ we would all drink. I never been so drunk in all me life.”

Shim was just about to apologize when the queen’s laughter rang through the hall. The goblin she’d been accosting ran like a demon was on his heels. Queen Meg laughed it off. “We drank every time he took off his shirt or got into a hot tub. I got pretty drunk myself. And yes, Dante Dellacourt took a consort. This is Kaja Dellacourt. I would tread carefully, Your Highnesses. She’s a little bitter. We passed many an interesting creature on the road here, and her husband would let her feast on nothing.” She got down on one knee. The Seelie queen was dressed in informal clothes, but there was no doubt she was a queen. There was an air of authority to the woman. But there was also a pleasant smile on her face. “Hello, wee one. What’s your name? I can make a guess as to who those two are, but I was unaware there were gnomes on this plane.”

Duffy stepped forward. She’d gotten down to his level. It was an unexpected sign of respect. Shim was starting to like the Seelie queen. “Me name is Duffy, Your Highness. I was a foundling. Me mum left me on the road, and the Unseelie queen, rest her soul, took pity on me. She brought me to the palace, and I was raised here.”

“A third brother.” Queen Meg nodded his way. “It is good to meet you. I was wondering, Duffy, if you might have a bit more of that delicious brew?”

Duffy shoved that mug in the queen’s hand quicker than Shim had ever seen him move before. He looked back at Shim, apologies on his small face. “Sorry, Shim. I meant that for you, but she’s prettier.”

Queen Meg winked at the gnome and then took a shockingly long drink of the goblin brew. “Thank god. We’ve been on the run. I haven’t been able to find any. Don’t worry, I’ll trade for it. Anyone here ever heard of cupcakes?”

The doors to the king’s room opened, and a silence fell across the hall. King Fergus entered, followed by their cousin, Julian Lodge, the Seelie kings, his father’s chief advisor, a vampire Shim didn’t recognize, and the infamous Dante Dellacourt.

None of them looked happy, and it gave Shim a damn good idea of what his place was. He’d been left outside of the meeting. He’d been left with the women.

Queen Meg gave him a wisp of a smile. “If it helps at all, we were a bit earlier than we expected. I don’t think your father intended to leave you out.”

But his father was overly protective. His father still thought they were children, not thirty years old. Shim understood why. His father was still waiting for them to fade, to die because they refused to take a bondmate. King Fergus of the Unseelie didn’t believe it was possible that his sons had bonded with a woman on another plane. No one believed they had bonded with Bronwyn Finn as she lay dying.