The Prince of Secrets Page 2
“Then forgive my rudeness, but I must be off. Time is short.” And he slipped away from the library, leaving Marius staring bemusedly after him.
2
Midwinter Kittens
Wyn hadn’t wanted to involve Hetta in this affair, but time was running out and he could wrangle no further help from Stariel. The faeland grew obstinate when pressed, holding the leylines to ransom, and he was reluctant to summon more power and try to force the issue with Stariel being so belligerent.
Hetta was much easier to find than the cat. He was always aware, to some degree, where she was, the taste of her magic so familiar that he could swing towards her as unerringly as to due north. Human magic didn’t generally have individualised signatures, but the Valstars had fae blood in their ancestry. It had been enough to give Hetta’s magic distinctive notes of coffee pricked lightly with chilli even before she’d succeeded to the lordship of Stariel. Since her ascension, her magic had mingled with Stariel’s, deepening in complexity. In this season, crushed pine and frost dominated, and Wyn followed the shape of it through the house. Hetta’s signature was brighter than old Lord Valstar’s had ever been. Was it simply the difference between Hetta and her father, or a sign of some deeper change in the land now that the ways between Faerie and Mortal were open once more?
Hetta was in the stillroom with her grandmother. Wyn opened the door and crashed into its characteristic wall of scent, the pungency of lavender and rosemary interlaced with a thousand other herbs. He always found the room disorienting, impossible to distinguish the smell of magic from the mundane. It tended to give him a headache if he stayed too long.
Pausing on the threshold, he took the opportunity to drink in the sight of Henrietta Valstar, Lord of Stariel, in the moment before she noticed his presence. She was bent over a tray of jars filled with one of her grandmother’s remedies, carefully screwing on lids. A small crease formed between her brows as she concentrated, and the sleek ends of her auburn bob slipped forward, shadowing her face.
Everything that she was—fiercely loyal, deeply pragmatic, often impulsive, occasionally whimsical—shone from her like starlight, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Hetta had returned to Stariel two months ago after a six-year absence. A faked Choosing Ceremony had made her lord-in-name shortly after her arrival, but it had not yet been a fortnight since she’d become lord-in-fact. This thing between them now, deeper than their long friendship, was newer still. Wyn had never intended for it to happen. But apparently my ability to resist temptation could use work, he reflected as he watched Hetta’s deft motions.
The thought that was never far from his mind these days rose without prompting, as did its accompanying silent vow in response. The wrath of two fae courts would descend on him, sooner or later; he had to keep that from affecting Stariel and Hetta, whatever it took. Ice twisted in his chest.
Hetta looked up and saw him. Happiness lit her grey eyes and splintered the ice into something soft and painful. How did I ever think I could resist her? Her lips were painted the same colour as spring roses, her eyelashes blacker and longer than usual. She’d been out for most of today, meeting with the village council, and she was still dressed to impress.
“My Star,” he said. It was an old address for the lord, and his preferred one for Hetta when others were present. “I would ask for your assistance.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Grandmamma Philomena said cheerfully from the end of the stillroom. “I don’t know who you two think you’re fooling.” The elderly but spry matriarch wandered over to Hetta and patted her arm. “Leave those to me, m’dear. You’d better go ‘assist’ your boy.” She twinkled at Wyn.
“Thank you, Grandmamma,” Hetta said, ignoring the comment. She came around the worktable towards Wyn, and he followed her out into the hallway.
He shut the door. “Clearly, we’re doing a terrible job at being discreet.”
Hetta shrugged, but her eyes danced. “I said nothing. You know how Grandmamma is.”
“I do,” he acknowledged. Fortunately, Lady Philomena was inclined to keep her secrets; she liked having something over her less-observant descendants.
Hetta plucked at his lapel. “I’m assuming you pulled me away for a reason?” Her lips curved mischievously. “Though if you want to find a private corner somewhere and…talk, I have no objections.”
Her eyes had darkened to the deep grey that heralds storms. One hand rested above his collar, against his pulse, and he drew in a deep breath, caught by the intimacy. The warmth of her called to him, even through all the layers of clothing separating them, and his body hummed a note of pure yearning.
The cat. Remember the cat! The cat seemed entirely beside the point at this exact moment, but he managed to shake his head. “Another time.”
“All right.” Hetta let her hand drop. She looked slightly disappointed, which provided a small, smug bolster to his vanity. “What did you want me for, then?”
“I’m looking for a cat. I need to locate her as soon as possible. Can you ask Stariel where she is? A long-haired calico. The children call her Plumpuff.”
Hetta’s expression echoed her oldest brother’s recent one. The two siblings had a similar bone structure and the same way of arching their narrow eyebrows when they thought you were being ridiculous. Amusement twitched at the corners of Hetta’s mouth, but she merely closed her eyes and reached without demanding an explanation.
The nuances of magic around her changed, and he knew she was immersing herself in Stariel. She opened her eyes, her expression blank, and when she spoke, there were echoes of the faeland in her voice, deep and alien: “The cat is in the room of paper ways.”
She shook her head, the blankness fading. “She’s in the map room. Of course she is,” she said in a more normal tone of voice. She gave a sigh of resignation. Hetta, Wyn, and her cousin Jack had covered practically every surface in the map room with paper yesterday, trying to translate Hetta’s instinctive knowledge of the estate into one that other people could also read. Likely Plumpuff had made a nest of it.
“Are you all right?” He hadn’t liked the way Stariel had dominated over her momentarily.
She waved his concern aside. “It’s more difficult, searching the house. It seems to occupy more dimensions than the rest of the estate. And I’m always worried I’ll concentrate too hard on the wrong part of it and find out something about one or other of my relatives that I’d rather not know.” She smoothed down her skirts. “Right, shall we go find your lost cat then?”
“You do not need—”
“Oh, but I do. And you can explain to me why you’re fretting over this feline while we walk. And also what you did to make Stariel so grumpy with you.”
The map room was on the third floor and in the north-east corner, which meant the quickest way to get there was to go down to the ground floor, cut across the courtyard outside, and then climb the internal staircase of the northern tower. Stariel House had been built and added to by a succession of Valstars, and it showed in the inconvenient layout. The chaotic nature of the house reminded Wyn a little of the court where he’d grown up, though the actual architectural style of ThousandSpire was utterly different, built to accommodate both greater extremes of climate, especially the scorching hot dry season, and the winged nature of its inhabitants, the stormdancers.
Giving in to temptation, he took Hetta’s hand as they crossed the dark courtyard, safe from prying eyes, Hetta’s small, soft hand at odds with the strong-willed woman beside him. The night was black as pitch, and the air sank bitter teeth into them, the promise of ice on the wind. Hetta huddled against the shelter of his taller form as they hurried across. Above them loomed Stariel House’s three towers of varying heights, one of which pre-dated the rest of the house. Again, he recalled the spires of his homeland; he couldn’t seem to escape reminders of his nature tonight.
“Well?” she prompted when they’d reached the bottom of the northern stairwell and he still hadn’t spoken.
“The cat is about to have kittens. In fact, she may already have had them.”
“Kittens in midwinter,” Hetta mused, then frowned. “Is that usual?”
“No. That is just one of the several reasons why I believe the father may have been catshee.”
“A fae cat?” she asked. “Those are real?”
Of course Hetta would have heard of catshee; they were common enough in Northern folk tales.
“Yes. They’re a type of lowfae and usually wyldfae as well—swearing allegiance to no court. They go where they will.”
“Do they usually mate with normal cats? I mean, I assume all our other cats aren’t secretly fae?”
He grinned as he held open the door at the top of the stairwell. “They go,” he emphasised, “where they will.” Hetta laughed, and he clarified. “A lot of mortal cats have a bit of catshee in their lineage somewhere. They’re one of the more fecund kinds of fae.”
“There’s some problem with all of this you’re not telling me, though,” she said as they rounded the last corner in the corridor that led to the map room. “Stariel’s native wyldfae have never worried you before; why should half-fae kittens throw you into such a dither now?”
“I’m wondering if it’s merely coincidence that led one of the catshee here at this time.” It wasn’t the whole truth, and Hetta’s raised eyebrow as she pushed the map room door open said she knew it, but she didn’t press.
The map room was a round corner chamber in the north-eastern tower, part of the oldest section of Stariel House. He quickly scanned the room, which was lined with shallow shelving units and dominated by a central table, and found the cat on the windowseat. Hetta drew back the curtain that separated the windowseat from the room and revealed Plumpuff amidst a nest of what had until very recently been neat stacks of paper.
She gave a small sigh. “The dratted creatures always know precisely how to cause the most trouble.” But her expression was tender as she took in the three tiny kittens, all black as soot. Plumpuff was entirely pleased with herself, washing her progeny calmly as they wriggled. She looked up placidly and meowed.
Hetta quirked an eyebrow at him. “Well?”
He tasted the kittens’ nature. “Catshee indeed,” he said, wishing it were otherwise.
“Well, fae cats or not, they can’t live in my map room,” Hetta said firmly. “I’m pretty sure Marius left a crate here somewhere that I can transport them in. Where would be best to relocate them to?”
“The kitchen,” he suggested absently.
Hetta went to the other side of the room, looking for the crate. Wyn bent to study the kittens. Their eyes were screwed tightly shut, features soft and indistinct. They nuzzled at their mother, the instinctive drive of new life towards that which will sustain it. To his leysight, they glowed, though more dimly than they should.
It was because they were dying, of course.
Even as he watched, the energy of them faded a little more. The power of the spell he’d set to repel housefae bore down on the tiny lives with inexorable force. The spell kept wyldfae from entering Stariel House, but the kittens had bypassed it, transported in their mother’s womb. Now they were trapped within the spell’s bounds, and it was killing them.
It could be a coincidence, finding that loophole in his spell. After all, what would three half-fae kittens gain anyone? But he hadn’t survived his upbringing in a brutal fae court by believing in coincidence.
He should let the kittens die and keep his spell intact. Stariel’s native lowfae and any roaming wyldfae would remain excluded from the house and so would any spies amongst them. The spies would be for him, of course, now that the fae knew he was here. He balled his hands into fists. Who was he trying to protect? These kittens had been born here, in Stariel. They were Hetta’s. They had more right to be here than he did.
The kittens mewled; tiny, feeble things rustling softly in their paper nest. He could read distress in the currents around them. They were only kittens. What did it matter if they died, if it made him safer? It was the rational choice. He should be strong enough to make it.
His father’s voice echoed in his ears: “You are weak, Hallowyn.”
There was no greater weakness than sentiment, for the fae.
He reached out and stroked a single finger over one small black kitten. Its fur was thin and velvet-soft, but it shivered away from the touch, no doubt connecting his scent with the spell that was killing it. He pulled his hand back. “You are weak.” His father’s words beat at him as he extended his will.
The tension around the kittens, that slow and deadly drain of life, abruptly snapped free. Plumpuff started to purr, and Wyn patted her on the head before rising. The kittens began to nurse, the tiny sparks of their life-forces steadying.
Hetta stared at him from across the room, the crate dangling from one slender hand.
“What,” she said in a low voice that had hints of Stariel in it, “did you just do, Wyn?”
3
The Map Room
Hetta stared hard at Wyn as rain and spice permeated the air, as if the map room were suddenly at the centre of a bizarre thunderstorm. The magic he’d worked had altered the atmosphere of the house on some fundamental level, and Stariel bristled with hostility towards him.
Stariel didn’t answer in words. It was too big and too old and too complicated for that. Instead, she felt it muttering, a guard dog reluctantly standing down. It worried her. Had she inadvertently caused this new aggression? There was so much she didn’t know about being lord!
“I’m trying very hard to keep my temper at your apparently incurable tendency to hoard secrets,” she said to Wyn as he knelt next to the kittens.
Sometimes Hetta could read him as clearly as a neatly typed play script, but other times, like now, he went still and blank and showed no emotion at all. Going fae, she’d mentally dubbed it, though he kept his human shape. She’d seen him in his true fae form only once.
Even through her exasperation, she couldn’t help appreciating the graceful way he rose to his feet, fluid as a stag. The warm brown of his skin gleamed in the light from the room’s central lamp—the house hadn’t yet had elektricity installed—and made strange shadows in his white-blond hair.
“I deactivated a long-running spell of mine,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “It was to repel lowfae and keep them from entering the house. It was killing the kittens.”
Hetta frowned. “How long has this spell been in place? Since Gwendelfear?” Gwendelfear had been a fae from one of the two warring courts out for Wyn’s blood. She’d smuggled herself into the house in disguise and been responsible for both courts learning of Wyn’s residence at Stariel.
“No,” Wyn said. “That would have been a much more useful spell. This one, I’m afraid, only worked on lowfae. Gwendelfear is lesser fae—my spell was never designed to keep her out. Lowfae are small things, largely without much intelligence, although they can be powerful in some cases. Many of the lowfae are also wyldfae and owe allegiance to no court.”
Hetta came towards him, stopping to place the crate down on the windowseat beside the kittens. “So fae cats are lowfae; Gwendelfear was lesser fae; and you are greater fae. Are there any additional flavours I should know of?”
“I am royal fae,” he corrected. “Though ‘flavours’ makes us sound like types of ice cream.” He paused, lips twitching. His face was all spare angles, beautiful and remote. The only bit of him with any visible softness was his lips, a sensual promise that Hetta knew first-hand held good. “You look about to make some remark regarding ‘tasting’.”
“I do not!” But of course, now h
e’d said it, her attention drifted to his mouth again. When she hastily raised her gaze, his russet eyes were brimming with laughter. It woke an answering fondness in her, saccharine as candy-floss. How could she resist him like this, full of warm irreverence that transformed his alien beauty into something infinitely more attractive? But she knew how Wyn worked; if she let him, he’d only slide away from her questions. So she prodded him sharply in the chest. “Stop trying to distract me. How long has this spell been in place?”
The laughter faded from his eyes, and he straightened. “A little less than ten years. Since I arrived at Stariel.” He hurried on before she’d fully absorbed the ramifications of that statement. “That was part of my rationale for removing it. It was originally intended to reduce the risk that one of Stariel’s wyldfae would discover my identity and spread the news to those who might bring it to my father’s ears. Obviously, that is no longer a risk. My father knows I’m here now.” He looked past her to the uncurtained windows, though there was nothing to see in the darkness. He’d gone very fae again, the prince briefly replacing the steward.
Part of his rationale, he’d said. It wasn’t hard to guess what else might have influenced him, not when he reached out absently to pet Plumpuff’s ears. The three tiny bundles of black fur squirmed next to their mother. Hetta could hardly be angry at him for saving them, though she still wished he’d told her earlier about this spell of his.
“How is it that you always manage to find a way to turn these things about so it’s impossible to be properly angry with you by the time you’ve explained yourself?” she complained.
“My excellent kissing skills? My dark and tortured soul, which makes you long to comfort me?”
She laughed but grumbled, “You aren’t as winsome as you think.” Some of her earlier anger began to return as she thought of the length of time he’d been holding this secret close. Ten years!