Chapter 10

Over the next two hours, we made hasty plans to gather up my mother, my assistant, and my closest friends: Sera, Jesse, and Christy.

After my last trip to Elphame, I wasn't truly eager to leave New Orleans for the realm of the fae, but a mental clock was ticking louder and louder. Now that I was waiting to let Iggy's spell wear off, going to a land where he was not made welcome was all the more reason to get on with the ceremony.

"If I could invite you, I would," I told Beatrice as we stood at her estate, which admittedly seemed to have more feral pigs than it used to. I made a mental note to ask if they all had to stay in their porcine states. For now, I simply asked, "Will you have our ceremony here ready within the next week or so?"

"Of course, daughter of mine! I can finish without Fair Alice and Lauren." She sent a glare toward a man currently shaping vast topiaries. "I may find it easier in fact."

"Not all men are pigs," Eli said mildly.

"You are on two legs, Eli," Beatrice demurred. Then she offered a cold smile. "Please remind Marcus that as he would deny me the chance to see you wed in his world, I do hope he understands that he will not be welcome here on my land where the next ceremony will be."

Eli quirked his brow in her direction. "So, my wedding has become a contest, Beatrice? Truly?"

"Geneviève is more my child than any before her. You know this. Marcus knows this. Iggy knows." She patted my mother's cheek, as Mama Lauren joined our small group. "Lauren has always known. She created Geneviève from magic and will, carried a child that was both living and dead in her womb, and despite her ill-conceived affection for that worthless hyena of a creature who impreg—"

"Grandmother," Mama Lauren interrupted. "We agreed not to argue about Geneviève's fath—"

"Not my father," I grumbled. "He was a sperm donor. And I didn't agree not to point out that he was not worth the slime on the bottom of a toad's warty ass."

Mama Lauren looked around, as if someone would step in.

Jesse shrugged. "Don't like the dead."

"Except you Lady B," Allie added. "Right, everyone? And the boss, except Geneviève's not really dead, so are you insulted by the draugr-opposition, boss?"

I snorted. "What's my job?"

"Right." Allie clapped her hands and looked at the group. "So no, unless the job is a way to kill that part of you by projecting it onto—"

"Alice?" Eli interrupted. "We must depart. I expect that Geneviève would rather we do so without a psychoanalysis of her career path."

Allie grinned and no one did more than roll their eyes. We were family, a mismatched collection of weirdos who had turned friendship and genetics into something wonderful. And this family's shit-stirrer was Allie. Although she'd tried to murder me last year, Allie had more than earned her place at my side.

"Give Marcus my words," Beatrice said with a razor smile.

"Please try to not hex or eat anyone," Mama Lauren whispered.

Beatrice shooed us away with a placid look on her face.

Allie giggled, and I had a moment of gratitude that the queen of the draugr had a near-unparalleled fondness for me, but then Eli took my hand and we walked toward the glimmer in the air that was beckoning us to open it.

Allie, Sera, and Christy had been to Elphame once, and I suspected Allie had gone over on her own on several occasions. My mother and brother-by-choice had never entered the realm where the fae lived. I was more anxious than I probably ought to be, and Eli's steady hand in mine made me feel less like panicking.

"Only for this day and this time," he reminded our small group, as if he hadn't impressed the rules upon them repeatedly and carefully already. "Today and today alone, you may enter my homeland without restriction. To enter here without such assurances is to be trapped at the will and whim of the regent."

As we walked, a blinding slice appeared as if the air itself had been torn open. It glowed with a light and warmth that would make anyone want to run toward it, and I was glad to see that Jesse took both Christy and my mother's hands protectively. I flashed him a grateful smile as I motioned them forward.

Allie strode through first, as if she was far more at ease with that doorway than I realized.

Sera followed.

Then Christy released Jesse's hand, so she could step through the gateway in front of my mother and Jesse.

Once they were securely through, Eli and I crossed the passageway between this world and Elphame.

On the other side the air was as pure as air ought to be. No pollution. Nothing but the sort of air that the human world hadn't known for centuries now, except in the most remote corners.

"Welcome to my home," the king said to all of us, although his gaze lingered on Allie with the sort of proprietary gaze that she somehow still wasn't admitting existed.

I had theories as to why, but I'd made a bargain with Marcus not to get in his way . . . more or less. He had considered holding my assistant captive within Elphame, as was within his rights for any mortal entering his domain. Our discussion for her release was a combination of epiphanies and insults—and culminated with a vow not to disclose his intentions.

I hadn't found a good way to get around it, but damned if I hadn't tried.

"Nephew of mine," Marcus said with a warm voice. He embraced Eli before meeting my gaze. "Death Maiden."

I accepted his open armed invitation and whispered, "Cradle robber."

He laughed jovially, inviting curious looks from my entire group and a few shocked ones from his retinue. The royal guard was a fierce fighting force, and I'd had the pleasure of their accompaniment when I'd ended up trapped in a spa run by magic users and draugr.

A series of dipped heads met my gaze as I looked at the assembled fae warriors.

Then Marcus stepped forward to greet my mother. "It is an honor to meet the mother of my niece to be."

He reached out to lift her hand, expecting her to swoon or whatever it was most mortal women did. Mama Lauren was not most women, though. She turned his hand when he reached out and shook.

Marcus of Stonecroft was handsome and seemingly ageless. The fae didn't age like humans, so I had no real measure of his age—despite asking more than a few questions. Marcus had been king for a lot of years. He had been king when the world learned the fae were real, and he'd been king when they all retreated to Elphame.

And yet my mother—who had a few decades of knowing she was raising a mixed species child, and that her own ancestor still walked our world as a blood-drinking, dead, warrior queen—was not easily impressed. She kept hold of Marcus' hand and whispered low enough that only the non-humans heard, "Young Alice may not see the truth of the words between your lines, but I do. The girl has no mother to speak for her, but that child is our family. My daughter and my grandmother are quite vicious, you know . . ."

The King of Elphame gave her a level look. "I see the trait is hereditary."

"I'm not opposed to outsourcing," she murmured.

Then the awkward moment passed, and everyone other than my mother was whisked away. I thought it best to keep Mama Lauren nearby in hopes of avoiding conflicts.

At Eli's house, my mother explored and then sat outside, marveling at nature as I once had. Unlike in the Outs, there were no random monsters—or the draugr or looter variety—roaming in the dark of night. There she'd always risen and slept with the cycle of the sun, and I thought she was enjoying the peace of being able to commune with nature under the moon.