“So the rumors are true, my Darkness and my Killing Frost are lovers,” she said.

I actually glanced behind me then, to see what was prompting her to say that, and found the men holding hands behind my chair.

Rhys said, “Once a man could hold the hand of his best friend and not be thought his lover.”

She looked at Rhys, eyes narrowing; it was a look that typically began something bad, a bad mood, a bad event, an order we would not want to follow.

“Are you saying that they are not lovers?” Andais said.

“I am saying, why does it matter, and you shouldn’t believe every rumor the human tabloids put out.”

Galen was still sitting at my feet, beside Kitto, who had stayed almost immobile. Galen was holding Gwenwyfar, so as he leaned back against my legs he had to brush against Kitto’s curls. The baby’s hand brushed the long hair, and though she was too young to do it, Gwenwyfar grabbed a tiny fistful of Kitto’s curls.

It couldn’t have hurt, because the baby didn’t have the strength for it yet, but it was probably the one thing that Kitto would have reacted to. He raised his face enough to gaze up at Gwenwyfar. I couldn’t see Kitto’s expression, but it was almost certainly a smile.

“So, little goblin, you make yourself useful, so the princess does not send you home.”

I felt Kitto’s reaction up through the soles of my feet on his back. It was a startle as bad as Frost’s had been, but Kitto had always been terrified of the queen. Frost had loved and hated Andais; Kitto simply feared her.

“It is against protocol to speak with the royal’s footstool,” Rhys said. Once he had hated all goblins because one took his eye, so the fact that he stepped up to distract her from Kitto made me love him more. He had come far to value Kitto enough to risk himself for the goblin.

She gave him a narrow look. “You have grown bold, Rhys. Where does this new bravery in the face of your queen come from?”

Rhys stepped closer to the mirror, drawing her eye and partially blocking her view, so Galen could pry Gwenwyfar’s tiny hand from Kitto’s hair and the goblin could go back to being an immobile piece of furniture, and hopefully beneath the queen’s notice.

“I don’t think I’m braver, my queen, just understanding the value of those around me more than I did before.”

“What does that mean, Rhys?”

“You know my hatred for the goblins.”

“I do, but this one seems to have won your favor; how?”

Eamon was utterly still beside her, as if he would have left if he thought it wouldn’t attract her attention. She had played sane, but her nearest and most dear love was acting like a rabbit in the grass hoping the fox won’t find it, if only it can be still enough.

“It was Kitto who shopped for an extra crib, blankets, toys, everything, when the news came that we were having triplets and not just twins. He made certain we came home to a house that was ready for all the children, and that Merry had everything she needed.”

“Any good servant will do as much,” Andais said.

“True, but Kitto helps tend the babies not out of duty, but out of love.”

“Love.” She made it sound distasteful. “Goblins don’t understand love for that which is small and helpless. Newborn sidhe are a delicacy among the goblins, you know that better than anyone standing here except for my Darkness. The others were not with me during the last Great War against the Goblins, but you and he know what they are capable of.”

He glanced back at Doyle and then back to the mirror. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was fierce and bitter, “Now, my queen, remember I was at your side. I remember that the atrocities weren’t all goblin work.”

“We didn’t eat their young,” she said. Her eyes had darkened and were beginning to have that first hint of shine, her power beginning to rise. It could also be a sign of anger, or even anxiety, but it usually meant magic was on the rise.

“No, most goblin flesh is too bitter to eat,” he said, and there was a finality in his voice. He’d left all pretense of placating her behind. It was simply the truth, and my joking Rhys had decided to leave humor for honesty, the kind of honesty that royals do not always welcome.

I was shocked enough myself, because I hadn’t known that my people, the sidhe, had tasted goblin flesh enough to know the bitter or sweet of it. I held Bryluen closer to my face, smelling the sweet clean scent of her to hide my face, because in that moment I wasn’t certain I could have kept it neutral.

Bryluen opened those huge almond-shaped eyes, all swimming blue, and I had a sensation like falling. I had to literally drag myself back from the brink. I lowered my baby away from my face and avoided direct eye contact with her. It wasn’t just glamour, she had power, did our little Cornish Rose. How much, and how did we teach her not to use it willy-nilly? How do you explain to a newborn the concept of abuse of power?

“We vowed never to speak of some things, Rhys,” Andais said, in a voice that crawled along the spine and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Alastair began to cry, high and piteous. He waved small fists as he did it. He couldn’t be hungry—we’d made sure that everyone had nursed or had a bottle before this call, so we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Sholto began to rock him side to side. Alastair didn’t like to be bounced the way Gwenwyfar did, and Bryluen liked to be held up on the shoulder and have her back rubbed while you rocked her. Three days and the babies were already so different, so individual. I’d been told that multiples were like each other, but I was beginning to wonder if that was just because most of them looked alike, so people expected it.