The Autumn Prince

23. Détente

"Why?" I asked. I wanted to be angry. I knew she'd kept secrets from me, but the revelation that I had more than one fairy in my ancestry—and that the mix was so potentially dangerous that two organized groups of beings with superpowers, which included at least two immortals, were afraid of it—seemed like a pretty huge one. I'd have liked to say I was stoically calm, but the truth was It had been a long, stressful day and I simply didn't have the energy for an outburst.

"Please be more specific." Miss Gold replied, eyeing her phone impatiently, her voice restored to its cool formality.

"Why would you give me the tea if you knew I might become," I stumbled over the word she had used, "an abomination."

"Your great-grandmother's seed passed through ten generations without surfacing, and I took far more caution in approaching you than the most stringent prudence would have advised. What greater care would you have recommended?"

I didn't have a good reply. I still didn't like it.

"He isn't going to turn into anything now though, is he?" Katherine said, holding tightly to my arm.

Miss Gold's displeasure with Katherine had either abated or she'd expertly tucked it out of sight. "Thomas should not exist at all. Nearly all changelings born of more than one Fae die before they reach puberty, and most of those that live retain their humanity. A scarce few will become Fae after one of their ancestry. Only three that I am aware of, across many thousands of years, were ever marked as Chthonian."

"You used that word for the things that came through the Veil," Becca said.

"It is a term for creatures born of chaos, not only those that originate from the outer worlds."

"And I'm one of them," I said, detached.

"You are something unforeseen. You have retained your humanity, but have traits from both your father and your grandmother, which are not merely manifest—they have become simpatico."

"And that's rare?" Katherine asked.

"No, Katherine, it is not rare, it is impossible. If my judgment is correct, Thomas may be the first of his kind, and that means we have traveled where there are no roads. It also means he will be hunted. No living child of three worlds will be tolerated by either court." The weight of her attention was suddenly on me. "So you see why secrets are, at times, necessary."

Becca spoke into the following silence, "The boy, the one in the other room, he was a fairy, wasn't he? He was after Tom."

"Yes," Miss Gold said, "It is an agent of the Winter Court. Their hunters are abroad, and I have been laying false trails far to the west. The satyr was cleverer than I anticipated. It very nearly discovered your presence here, and it will not be the last. This apartment may not be safe much longer." She checked her phone again and tucked it back into her red handbag. "It is time for me to go," she said and opened the door.

We followed her into the living room and stopped in surprise. The body was gone along with my clothes and any evidence that the floor had been a bloody mess not fifteen minutes earlier. The front door and its frame might never have been broken.

"How—" I began.

"That is a question for another time," Miss Gold said briskly, "I must now act, but I will not again leave you on your own for long." She strode quickly to the door and began carefully examining the frame.

"Is that a promise?" Katherine's voice had left fear behind but held onto a little of its determined anger.

"I do not lie, Katherine. Inasmuch as I am able to make it so, it shall be as I have said."