“Wait a second.” Kenzie’s voice broke in, bewildered and incredulous. “Keirran is your nephew? He’s the Iron Queen’s son? But…you’re the same age!” She gestured wildly. “How in the world does that work?”
“Ah, well.” Keirran shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Remember the screwy time differences in Faery? That’s part of it. Also, the fey mature at a faster rate than mortals—comes with living in a place as dangerous as the Nevernever, I guess. We grow up quickly until we hit a certain point, then we just…stop.” He gave another sheepish grin. “Trust me, you’re not the only ones to be shocked. It was a big surprise for Mom, too.”
I glared at Keirran, forgetting Kenzie and Leanansidhe for the moment. “Why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded.
Keirran sighed. “How?” he asked, lifting his hands away from his sides, before letting them drop. “When would it have come up? Oh, by the way, I’m the prince of the Iron Realm, and your nephew. Surprise!” He shrugged again, made a hopeless gesture. “It would’ve been weird. And…awkward. And I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me if you knew.”
“Why didn’t Meghan say anything? That’s kind of a big thing to keep from your family.”
“I don’t know, Ethan.” Keirran shook his head. “She never talks about you, never speaks about her human life. I didn’t even know I had another family until a few years ago.” He paused, ran his fingers through his silver hair. “I was shocked when I heard that the queen had a brother living in the mortal world. But when I asked her about it, she told me that we had to live separate lives, that mingling the two families would only bring trouble to us both. I disagreed—I wanted to meet you, but she forbade me to come and see you at all.”
He sounded sincere and genuinely sorry, that he hadn’t been able to introduce himself. My anger with him dissolved a little, only to switch to another target. Meghan, I thought, furious. How could you? How could you not tell us? What was the point?
“When I heard you were at the palace,” Keirran went on, his face earnest, as if he was willing me to believe him, “I couldn’t believe it. I had to see for myself. But when Razor told me what you said—that something was killing off exiles and half-breeds—I knew I had to get to Annwyl, make sure she was safe. So I thought, two birds with one stone, why not?” He offered a shrug and a wry grin, before sobering once more. “I didn’t tell you everything, and I’m sorry for that. But I had to make certain you would follow me out of the Iron Realm.”
My head was still reeling. Meghan’s son. My nephew. I could barely wrap my mind around it. I didn’t know if I should be disgusted, horrified, ecstatic or completely weirded out. I did know that I was going to have to talk to Meghan about this, ask why she felt it was important to keep us in the dark. Screw this “living separate lives” crap. She had a kid! Half-faery or no, you did not keep that sort of thing from your family.
“Well,” Leanansidhe interjected with a wave of her cigarette flute, “much as I’m enjoying this little drama, pets, I’m afraid we cannot sit around and argue the whole day. I have larger problems to attend to. I assume you boys did not see the abominations lurking around the fairgrounds?”
“We did, actually.”
It wasn’t Keirran who answered the Exile Queen. It was Kenzie. I grimaced and turned away from the Iron prince, vowing to deal with this later, when I had time to think it through. Right now, the Dark Muse had turned her attention on the girl who, up until this point, had been standing off to the side, watching the drama play out. Truthfully, I was happy for that; it was probably best that she avoid Leanansidhe’s notice as much as she could. But, of course, Kenzie could never stay silent for long.
“We did see them,” she repeated, and the Dark Muse blinked at her in surprise. “Well, they did,” she continued, jerking her head at me and Keirran. “I couldn’t see anything. But I do know something attacked us. They’re the ones killing off your people, right?”
“And, who are you again, dove?”
“Oh, sorry,” Kenzie went on, as Leanansidhe continued to stare as if she was seeing the girl for the first time. “I’m Mackenzie, Ethan’s classmate. We sort of got pulled into the Nevernever together.”
“How…tenacious,” Leanansidhe mused after a moment. And I didn’t know if she found Kenzie amusing or offensive. I hoped it was the former. “Well, if you must know, darling, yes, something out there is making exiles disappear. As you can see from the state of my living room, the exiled fey are practically tearing down my walls trying to get in. I haven’t had this much trouble since the war with the Iron fey.” She paused and leveled a piercing glare at Razor, humming on Keirran’s shoulder. The gremlin seemed happily oblivious.
“Any idea what’s causing it?” Kenzie asked, slipping into reporter mode like she had at the tournament. If she’d had a notebook, it would have been flipped open right now, pencil scribbling furiously. Leanansidhe sighed.
“Vague ideas, darling. Rumors of horrible monsters sucking the glamour out of their victims until they are lifeless husks. I’ve never seen the horrid things, of course, but there have been several disappearances from the fairgrounds, as well as all over the world.”
“All over the world?” I broke in. “Is it really that widespread?”
Leanansidhe gave me an eerie stare. “You have no idea, darling,” she said softly. “And neither do the courts. Your sister remains happily ignorant to the threat in the mortal realm, and Summer and Winter do not even care. But…let me show you something.”
She strode to a table in the corner of the room, where a huge map of the world lay spread across the wood. Red dots marked the surface, some isolated, some clumped together. There were a fair number spread across North America, but also a bunch in England, Ireland and Great Britain. Scattered, perhaps. It wasn’t as though a whole area was covered with red. No continent was unmarked, however. North America, Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, South America. They all had their share of red dots.
“I’ve been tracking disappearances,” Leanansidhe said into the stunned silence. “Exiles and half-breeds alike. As you can see, darlings, it’s quite widespread. And each time I send someone out to investigate, they do not return. It’s becoming—” Leanansidhe pursed her lips “—annoying.”
I gazed at the map, my fingers hovering over a spot in the United States. Two bright red dots in the state of Louisiana, near my home town.
Todd.
Keirran scanned the table, his expression grave. “And the other courts do nothing?” he murmured. “Mab and Oberon and Titania don’t know what’s going on?”
“They’ve been informed, darling,” Leanansidhe said, waving her cigarette flute in a dismissive manner. “However, the Summer and Winter courts do not think it important enough to intervene. What do they care about the lives of a few exiles and half-breeds? As long as the problem remains in the mortal realm, they are content to do nothing.”
“Why didn’t you tell Meghan?” I broke in. “She would’ve done something. She’s trying to do something now.”
Leanansidhe frowned at me. “That might be true, pet. But sadly, I have no way to get a message to the Iron Queen without my informants dropping dead from iron sickness. It is very difficult to contact the Iron Realm when no one is willing to set foot there. In fact, I was waiting for this one—” she waved her flute at Keirran “—to come sniffing around after Annwyl again, so that I could give him a message to bring back to Mag Tuiredh.”
Keirran blushed slightly but didn’t reply. Razor giggled on his shoulder.
I looked down at the map again, my thoughts whirling. So many gone. A part of me said not to care, that the fey were finally getting what they deserved after centuries of making humans disappear.
But there was more at stake now. Todd was still missing, and I’d promised to find him. Meghan would be getting involved soon. And now, there was Keirran.
I didn’t want to think about Keirran right now.
“Then,” I muttered, continuing to gaze at the map, “you’re going to need someone who can investigate these things, someone who isn’t a half-breed or an exile, who doesn’t have any glamour they can suck dry.” Someone who’s human.
“Exactly, darling.” Leanansidhe stared down with a chilling gleam in her eyes. I could feel it on the back of my neck without even seeing her. “So…are you volunteering, pet?”
I sighed.
“Yeah,” I muttered and straightened to face her. “I am. I have a friend I’ve got to find, but this has become even bigger than that. I don’t know what freaks are out there, and I don’t like it. If these glamour-sucking things are so widespread, it’s only a matter of time before all the exiles are gone, and then they might start on the Nevernever.”
Where Meghan is.
“Excellent, darling, excellent.” Leanansidhe beamed, looking pleased. “And what about you two?” she asked, gesturing to Kenzie and Keirran, on opposite ends of the table. “What will the son of the Iron Queen do, now that he’s aware of the danger? You can always go home, you know, warn the kingdom. Though I can’t imagine the Iron Queen will be pleased when she finds out what you’ve been doing.”
“I’m going with Ethan,” Keirran said softly. “I have to. Whatever these things are, I won’t stand by while they kill off any more of our kind, exiled or not.”
“Including Annwyl, is that right, pet?”
Keirran faced the Exile Queen directly, raising his chin. “Especially her.”
“I’m going, too,” Kenzie piped in, and frowned at me, as if guessing I was just about to suggest she go home. Which I was, but she didn’t need to know.
“Kenzie, this isn’t your fight anymore.” I looked at Keirran, hoping he would back me on this. He just shrugged unhelpfully. “You don’t have a stake in this,” I continued, trying to be reasonable. “You have no family or siblings or—” I looked at Keirran “—girlfriends to worry about. You didn’t even know Todd very well. We’re closer to the mortal world than we’ve ever been now, and you can go home anytime. Why are you still here?”
“Because I want to be!” she snapped, like that was the end of it. We glared at each other, and she threw up her hands. “Jeez, Ethan, we’ve been over this already. Get it through your stubborn head, okay? Do you think, with everything I’ve seen, I can just go home and forget it all? I’m not here because of family or siblings or friends—I’m here because of you! And because I want to see this! I want to know what’s out there.”
“You can’t even see them,” I argued. “These things exist in the real world, remember? You don’t have the Sight, so how are you going to help us when you won’t even know where they are?”