The boat sliced through the water without a sound. I wasn’t fond of water travel, but visiting Eorla had become complicated. Old Northern Avenue had become a shooting gallery, and I had become the big prize. A little nausea was better than a lot of bullets. Melusine had offered the services of a merrow to tow me across the channel. He kept underwater, his white skin a ripple beneath the surface. As bodyguards went, I couldn’t ask for someone tougher and scarier.
In the bow, a kobold hunched, his flat, suspicious face intent on the dock behind the Rowes Wharf Hotel. Apparently, everybody thought I needed some bad-ass protection. Kobolds were another species of fey it wasn’t a good idea to get on the wrong side of. Prone to anger and poor impulse control, they liked to make their points physically more often than verbally. The kobold didn’t offer his name. I’d probably never see him again.
I couldn’t walk across the Old Northern Avenue bridge without official sanction at the moment. Too much hysteria—a lot of it promoted through the Guild by Ryan macGoren—made anything as controversial as walking the street difficult for me. When Eorla sent word that she needed to see me, she made the clandestine arrangements.
I clutched the gunwales. Boats were not my favorite mode of transportation. I crouched on the little seat and stared into the damp bottom of the boat. I kept my hood pulled far down over my eyes, as much to avoid seeing the bobbing dock ahead as to hide my face.
Midway through the channel, my stomach calmed enough for me to lift my head. The inner harbor was quiet at that time of night, ships rising and falling in place like they were dozing. A few smaller boats moved among them, but nothing like the frenzied activity of daytime.
Toward the middle of the harbor, a thick, muddy haze wavered, green with essence. It resonated like a druid fog, a protection barrier meant to confuse and subdue anyone who ventured near. I suspected it was intended to keep Eorla hemmed in—the National Guard and the Consortium holding the front of the hotel while the Guild controlled harbor access. As far as I knew, Eorla didn’t have enough water fey to consider a naval force, so the barrier seemed a bit of overkill. But then, Maeve liked to use the threat of overwhelming force to intimidate her enemies.
We reached the dock. The merrow rose far enough out of the water to reveal the top half of his head. Dark eyes peered from either side of a hatchetlike nose, his black hair plastered to his bulbous gray forehead. As I stepped onto the dock, he slipped beneath the surface, a faint swirling wake trailing away through the pilings.
“Use the service entrance beyond the gazebo like you do it all the time. Someone will meet you inside,” the kobold said. Gazebo was an understatement. The hotel’s most popular function room stood like a giant cupcake detached from the main building on the dock overlooking the marina.
The kobold secured the boat, then busied himself among some crates on the dock, keeping his back to me and head down. His business with me was done, though I assumed he would jump in and help if anything happened to me. I hoped.
I understood my role. We all were acting out a scene designed to look inconsequential, another boat pulling up with supplies or workers. No one shot me as I walked away, so that was nice. Rand waited for me inside the door.
“You look a little green around the gills,” he said as he led me down an empty corridor.
“Yeah, boats,” I said.
We waited for a service elevator. “We might not have that option left for long,” he said.
“I noticed some kind of barrier going up in the harbor,” I said.
“We’re looking into it. So far, no one’s claiming it as their own, but it’s probably the Guild,” he said.
The elevator opened on a residential floor. Rand led me through more empty corridors to a private suite. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
Inside the modest suite, Eorla stared out the window, thick protection shields blurring the view of the harbor to random smears of red and gold lights. She held her hands out at the waist as she crossed the room. We clasped hands, and I kissed her offered cheek. Her skin glowed a pale green. “How fares my fellow fugitive?” she asked.
“I don’t mind using the back entrance, but I prefer walking,”
“The channel has been the safest way for people to come and go. I’ve been thinking of moving operations into the Weird to ease things,” she said.
“I can’t picture you living in the Weird,” I said.
She tilted her head, amused and proud. “No? Would it surprise you to know I lived in a forest camp for years?”
I helped myself to bottled water from the minibar. “Nothing about you surprises me. Why the change in location?”
“The National Guard has guns and tanks out front. The Guild has snipers on nearby buildings, and the Consortium has set up a command center on the elevated highway outside the conference-room level,” she said.
I slouched into a chair. “And that’s a problem because?”
“I don’t like the view.” Few knew that in private, Eorla Elvendottir had a sense of humor. She wasn’t going to be doing stand-up anytime soon, but she appreciated sarcasm and a good joke.
“Rand hinted at something. What’s going on?”
Eorla settled onto the couch and lifted a glass of wine from the coffee table. Circumspect, she sipped. “I’ve received a communiqué from Maeve. She said she will not interfere with me if I do not interfere with her. I am assuming it’s a stalling tactic.”
I grunted. “Maeve doesn’t make equal alliances. She’s asking you to accept a truce until she can eliminate the Consortium. Then it will be your turn.”
Eorla rolled her glass, watching the light color the wine. “I agree. She’s massing her forces as we speak.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” I said. From my parents, I knew she had emptied Tara and closed the shield wall around it. No one was allowed in. Across Europe, Celtic fairy warriors were appearing in greater numbers.
“Civilians have been evacuated from the demilitarized zone around Consortium territory in Germany. She’s on the move,” Eorla said.
“Sounds like war,” I said.
Eorla nodded. “Without Donor, the Elven Court will tear itself apart in a fight over succession.”
“Giving Maeve the perfect moment to strike,” I said.
Eorla had struck out on her own as a means to force Donor and Maeve to negotiate. In the months since she founded what had become known as the Unseelie Court, unaligned fey the world over had committed to her cause and her leadership. The threat of aligning with one court or the other had kept Maeve and Donor at bay for a brief period.
“While Donor lived, the Seelie Court and the Consortium were at equilibrium. A destroyed elven court is not to anyone’s advantage,” she said.
“Except Maeve’s,” I said.
“Precisely. Thus, my dilemma,” she said.
“Are you going to remain neutral?” I asked.
“I do not think I can accept her offer, but I cannot allow the Elven Court to fail for lack of an uncontested monarch,” she said.
Eorla walked a fine line between supporting monarchy and the will of the ruled. More than any other royal I had met, she recognized that Convergence had changed the way of life for those born in Faerie. Absolute monarchies were a thing of the past, for good or ill, and adjustments had to be made for the modern world. While Donor and Maeve clung to their old ways, Eorla saw that new paths needed to be considered. At the same time, she saw the need for transition, that a people conditioned to accept royal rule needed something familiar to guide them to something new. That was the primary motivator for establishing her new court.
“Support for the elven monarchy seems strange coming from you,” I said.
“Not if the alternative is accepting a foreign monarchy. That’s what’s at stake, Connor. Civil war among the elves will mean nothing if the end result is fealty to Tara,” she said.
“Who’s officially in line for Donor’s crown?” I asked.
“A few cousins with competing claims. No one everyone will agree on. I have a stronger claim and a larger
