Epilogue Long Live the Queen
CAILEáN
Evan takes the burbling baby from me, tucks him into the curve of his arm, and walks away.
“Evaaaan,” I call after him.
“Still not talking to you,” he says over his shoulder.
I follow him out of the kitchen where I was warming the baby’s bottle, through the Small Gallery hung with colorful finger paintings, and into the ground floor Library. The scents of pine and juniper, red berries and mistletoe, replace the milky sweetness of the baby Evan just stole from me. Teddy and Rachel are hosting Yule this year, but with everything that’s happened with Darwin being chosen by the Thistle Throne and Callan being exiled, we’re spending most of the holiday at their home in Bevington and returning to Thistlemist just for Oath Night.
Carline Hall is the first of Teddy’s homes that I think she and Rachel have had free rein to design and decorate. Everything’s earthy, comfortable, filled with sturdy furniture Charlie’s made and padded with cushions embroidered by Teddy’s Scottish aunt. Although there are three designated libraries, nearly every room has at least one floor-to-ceiling bookcase. There are also two designated playrooms, but when you have six children of your own and are co-fostering another five, every room is really a playroom.
Evan steps over a pair of branching horns that are sticking out of the thick carpet near a leather couch where Luca’s reading to Honour, Gallant, Ash, Joie, Nothe, and Mordeh’s littlest, Bowie. Luca twirls his fingers over the pages of the book spread in his lap and dusky figures rise out of the pages to act out the scene he’s reading. Evan plonks down beside Rhodes—to whom Evan is speaking—and cradles baby Morgan against the arm of the couch. He glares at me, even when I meekly offer him the warmed bottle.
Rhodes takes the bottle with a pathetic attempt at keeping a straight face.
“Make sure it doesn’t sing, or run,” Evan grumbles.
Rhodes makes a show of checking the bottle—which has neither mouth nor feet—before passing it to Evan.
I hold up my hands innocently.
A snigger draws my attention to the other couch, where Teddy and toddler Carrie Prince are curled up against Gabe, sleeping peacefully. Charlie, the source of the snigger, sits at the end of the couch with Gabe’s feet in his lap. He’s rubbing Gabe’s feet through socks printed with green and purple thistles while Gabe sings softly to Teddy and the baby.
Teddy and her husbands are getting a great deal of amusement out of Evan’s grudge.
I’m about to whisper something insulting, but accurate, about Charlie’s propensity for pranks of his own when a wail like the screech of steel on steel destroys the peaceful scene.
And that would be my baby.
I wink at Rhodes and Luca, pat Joie between her little horns, step over the much larger horns sticking out of the floor that indicate the demons’ nursemaid is watching them, and pad down the hallway to the Nursery.
By the time I get there, twin sirens have joined my boy’s shrilling.
The crowned and throned Thistle King has one red-faced twin in his arms as he paces around the twilit Nursery. Rachel has another twin, hiccupping, on her shoulder.
My baby, who I’m sure woke everyone, is in his father’s arms. Law looks adorably panicked as he rocks our howling infant.
I saunter over to him, rolling my hips. Do I have a bet going with Rachel over who will be the first of us to get pregnant again? Yes, I do. Am I in it to win it? Yes, I am.
Law’s eyes narrow as he watches me cross the room. “My queen?”
“My wonderful, virile king.”
His eyes heat. “I am, aren’t I?”
Rachel snorts.
“I, uh, would be happy to worship my queen as she deserves but our prince requires attention,” Law says.
I hold my arms out. My son immediately quiets when Law passes him to me. It’s not mommy magic. Bran knows where he gets fed.
I smile down into his cherubic, if red, little face. He blinks round, white eyes up at me, as white as the tufty little curls plastered to his head from his nap. As he looks up at me, his hair shades to black and his eyes shift to brilliant blue. I flubble his pouty lower lip and croon to him. “Hello, my baby, my little raven, my darling crowson.”
“Cait,” Law grumbles.
I’m sure we will have children who take more after my Cait, but magickally, Bran is all mine. He already levitates when he dreams, so much so Luca and I had to create an Air cocoon for his cradle so he doesn’t levitate his baby butt right out of it and onto the floor.
Someday, my children will fly with me.
But today, my baby is fussy and hungry and waking up everyone else’s babies.
I take Bran over to the rocking couch that’s another of Charlie’s creations, making sure to wiggle my ass at Law as I walk away. Sinking into the soft cushions, I settle Bran on my left side where he likes to start and get him latched on. Rachel plops down with Hollie or Hayden—I can’t tell the twins apart yet since they’re both hairless and have brown eyes; Charlie’s penchant for dressing them in identical, miniature Bevington Swingers onesies doesn’t help—on the other end of the couch and sets it rocking. I tuck my stockinged feet up under me and smile at her.
“Your husband’s still not talking to me,” I say.
“No one holds a grudge like a Capricorn,” Rachel responds breezily.
“It was a joke ,” I emphasize. “A fortieth birthday joke.”
She shrugs. “He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, so the cake with forty candles was already a bit much. When it began singing to him as he tried to blow out the candles, and then chased him around, burning and singing, when he tried to put the candles out with his Element, well ...”
“How was I supposed to know that your husband has a cake phobia?”
Law leans against the stationary arm of the couch and sniggers. “If he didn’t have a cake phobia before, he’s got one now.”
“You and Luca helped me enchant the cake and Evan’s not holding a grudge against either of you,” I point out.
“Cait,” Law says smugly.
I huff at him.
He strokes a finger over our baby’s soft head. My irritation melts into something soft, gooey, and, yes, horny. I thought my mates were irresistible before they became fathers. Watching them fall for our son has doubled my affection for them. And my attraction to them.
“He wouldn’t take a bottle, huh?” I ask Law once our son’s nursing happily and the twins have quieted down. Charlie’s angels—a name which stuck after Hollie and Hayden were born and, for all the trouble they gave Teddy while she was carrying them, are the easiest babies known to man or fae—will probably go back to sleep now that Bran’s not screaming the house down. I swear they’re more like cats than my Cait. They sleep twenty hours a day and when they’re awake, they just want to cuddle. Unlike my little crow who wants to explore everything and thinks sleep is something he can do when he’s dead.
My little crowson already has an agenda. Didrane says he’s gunning for her throne.
She’s also said she’s happy to give it to him.
Law shakes his head; a fringe of blue hair falls across his eyes. My mates have all let their hair and beards grow since November for some kind of men’s health fundraising and awareness effort. Rhodes’ thick mahogany beard filled in handsomely on his strong jaw. I’ve tried to convince him to keep it. I’ve not made the same effort for the pathetic blond sprouts Law and Luca have grown.
Unfortunately for my hopes of a bearded mate, the three of them are meeting up with the Holly and Oak Kings at Cait House to shear themselves for Oath Night. Teddy’s husbands and a number of Cait from as far away as the Scilla den are joining them. They’ve coopted some of my bwg, who are bartending and DJing. I’m not sure why it’s become such a production, but they’ve put more effort and attention into “The Shearing” than the Mother’s Night party we hosted.
At least it’s not my piskie sheep they’re shearing.
I push the blue strands back into place with my fingertip. “It’s not a reflection on you, my love,” I tell him.
Law worries his lower lip with a long incisor. He needs to get those filed. “I was hoping to get him taking a bottle regularly before classes begin.”
“We still have two weeks.”
My Bevvy Winter Study practicum on tracing magickal forgeries starts the Tuesday after Oath Night and then I have two days of down time before my first class at Sapienza University: a joint seminar with Professor Dybo on the evolution of the Mother’s symbology and ritual since the tenth century.
Law smiles down at our son. “That is a long time in baby terms, isn’t it?”
I nod. Bran grows and changes so much every day that by the time my classes begin, he might be teaching them. If he doesn’t, and I have to miss a few minutes of class to nurse him, Luca can spell me. I don’t think my students will mind being taught by the co-author of A Cup of Bile , our history of the Cythonic poisonings, which just earned Luca a Master’s degree.
Darwin, who has managed to get his twin back to bed without bottle or breast, strolls over and offers to take Hayden off Rachel’s hands. She shifts the baby in her arms to show that he’s already asleep, his lips puffing in and out as he breathes.
Law and I trade eyerolls.
Darwin grins. “Experienced parenting,” he whispers.
“You are full of shit, Your Majesty,” I whisper back.
Darwin flushes red. He’s still easily flustered by reminders that the Thistle Throne skipped all ten of his older brothers to call him as the next ruler of Thistlemist. Of course, Teddy, Rachel, and I remind him at every opportunity. We’re calling it immersion therapy.
Rachel sniggers.
In an extremely majestic move, Darwin sticks his tongue out at both of us.
Law joins the sniggering. My curious baby, engaged by the amusement of the adults around him, pops off my breast to goggle and coo. I take the opportunity to switch him to my other side in the hopes that this will be a short feed and then he’ll go back to sleep.
Darwin rubs his chin, where he’s grown a collection of scraggly blond weeds as unimpressive as my mates’. His sad beard must feel particularly inadequate in comparison to Charlie’s Vikingesque glory. “Are you still okay to come with me tomorrow?” he asks Law. “If you’re trying to establish a bottle routine before Caileán’s classes start, I don’t want to impose.”
Law nods. He and his two cousins—who seem to be spending a lot of time in Hell— are helping Darwin hunt down his father. Callan disappeared after the doors of Thistlemist closed to him. Darwin and Teddy have a theory it’s because he broke his vow to the Oak King, despite Callan abdicating his Regency. Faery is not, evidently, as forgiving as the Mother. But no one knows for sure because Callan’s been missing for nearly a year. Darwin says he can sense that Callan’s alive, but not where he is. Darwin’s been chasing rumors of his father since Midsummer, when he postponed his own coronation to travel to Rowanfury after hearing of a new, blond lordling at court.
The latest rumor’s placed Callan in Germany’s Black Forest. There hasn’t been a fae presence in southern Germany since the 1500s, when the fae were hunted along with witches by the Holy Roman Empire.
What a former ruler of Faery would be doing in the Black Forest now is a mystery. A mystery his son has asked my Cait to help him solve.
“Conveniently, I have two other mates who can work on the bottle routine while you two are larking off to Germany,” I say.
“Yes, it’s really no imposition, Your Majesty,” Law quips.
Darwin splutters. “Not you, too.”
Law tugs his forelock. “Of course not, Highness.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Darwin says, showing how thoroughly Teddy’s corrupted him. “Cait.”
Law, Rachel, and I laugh so loudly, we wake the babies again.