“What about her father?” Brianna demanded.
Now the old man looked at me out of the corner of his eye and shrugged. “Not Court business,” he replied. “She wasn’t marrying the King, her mother was. The only importance she has is that she owns a baronial farm and manor and a knight’s manor, and both of those are gifts of the Crown.” Having tendered these pearls of wisdom, he sidled back to the other discussion.
Domna snorted. “What an irritating little man.”
“He’s saved us a lot of work,” Bianca pointed out. “Now we only have to concentrate on…” She raised an eyebrow at me. I licked my dry lips.
Mama wasn’t paying attention to any of this; she was deeply involved with whatever Papa and the Archbishop and a growing gaggle of other important people from Papa’s Privy Council were talking about.
“If I have living grandparents, Father never told me about them or… anything,” I said lamely. “There’s nothing about his parents anywhere that I know of—oh, wait—I remember one thing.” The three godmothers hung on my every word, and I flushed with embarrassment that what I remembered was so trivial. “I was told once by one of the other knights that a beautiful woman came to the Knights’ Hall with my father when he was six or seven. She asked to see Sir Delacar. She said a word or two to him, and he took her and my father to a private room, and when they came out, he told everyone that Father was now his page and that if anyone bullied him, Delacar would beat the blackguard three times around the courtyard with his sheathed sword. The lady disappeared, and Father went into Delacar’s service, and everyone assumed that Father was one of Delacar’s…” I blushed.
“By-blows,” said Bianca briskly. “Well, I think it’s clear that he wasn’t.”
“In fact, I think it’s clear that he was fully Fae or at least half,” Domna opined. “The question is, why would a Fae woman entrust her precious child to a mortal—and a mere knight at that?”
“Maybe she wasn’t Fae at all. Perhaps she was mortal, and the child was her half-Fae son with a Fae lover?” Brianna asked. “That makes more sense, doesn’t it?”
Domna pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “At the moment, the only thing that makes sense is that we need to get this child trained, and the sooner the better.”
The other two nodded, but my mouth dropped open. “Wait—me? But—”
“Your sister is in grave peril,” Domna said ominously. “Think about it. A powerful Dark Fae from outside this kingdom spirited herself here secretly and established a home so hidden that not even the native Dark Fae knew about her—and why? Was it all so she could attack Aurora on her christening day? And why would that be? She played very cleverly within the Rules, but what is so important about this particular child and this particular kingdom that she would do this?”
“That is a great deal of work,” said the purple-haired Fae. “And yet, there is no sign she intended anything else. She brought with her no army, no allies, so she did not intend to harm anyone but the child—”
“Exactly!” Domna said grimly. “Surely you see what that means?”
Bianca rushed to answer. “It means that something about Aurora is portentous and that either the Dark Fae of some other realm know it or some mortal, king, or wizard knows it and hired a powerful Dark Fae to eliminate her, one clever enough to calculate a way to get the task completed without breaking the Rules. And it is something no Dark Fae resident in this kingdom is aware of.”
“We can’t protect her,” Brianna said grimly.
“The wizard could do that now,” said Domna. “Simply take her away, hide her until we can think of a way we can keep her protected.”
“Oh, because that has always gone so well in the past.” Bianca snorted. “Or need I remind you of all the times it hasn’t? She needs an actual protector with powerful magic! I do respect Gerrold, but he is old and hasn’t the stamina to ward off an attack like the one we just saw.”
But I have Fae magic.…
“Am I bound by the Compact, the Rules, and the Strictures?” I asked aloud.
“No, of course not, dear,” Domna said absently. “You’re at least half human. You are outside the Rules.”
I still hesitated. Because this was terrifying. Just because I’d managed to prevail by sheer force of will the first time, it didn’t mean I could do it again. I sure wasn’t expert enough to be a knight. And a knight—a magic knight—was what she needed.
But then Aurora giggled, and my panic fled before determination. I was not going to let anyone harm my sweet baby sister! And boys younger than I was were made knights all the time. If they could go to war, surely I could find the courage to defend her!
“All right,” I said, my voice shaking but my fist clenched. “I’ll do it. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it.”
“Do you think she can?” asked Bianca.
“We could train her ourselves,” Domna pointed out. “She’s not the first half-Fae to appear and need training. We’d have to train her anyway, so why not focus that training on how to protect the baby?”
“Well, we’ll have to do something given what just happened.” Brianna looked into the middle distance. “No one has tested the Rules and the Compact this blatantly for three hundred years. I don’t think we have any choice in the matter.”
Papa and Mama had caught wind of the tail end of this conversation and turned to us with looks of horror on their pale faces.
“She’s only fifteen!” Mama cried.
“I’ll not have you risking a child!” blustered Papa, and I was more or less shoved unceremoniously aside and talked over, under, and around by Fae and humans all at once. It went on for long enough that the potion started to wear off, and I felt a headache start between my eyebrows.
“Stop!” I finally shouted. And amazingly enough, they all did and stared at me.
“Look,” I said into the sudden silence. “The godmothers all say that I’m Fae-blooded, but since I’m not Fae, the Rules don’t apply to me, and I can do whatever I want to any Dark Fae who sticks its nose into our business.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly what they’d said, but I supposed it was close enough.
“They said they’ll train me so I can protect Aurora.” Mama’s lips started to move in protest, but I turned to Papa. “The christening’s over. Aurora should be fine until she’s thirteen, right? That’s the next time she should be vulnerable. Papa, that’s thirteen years for me to learn Fae magic. That’s three more than it took for you to go from page to knight!”
“That’s true,” he admitted as Mama’s face took on an expression of dismay.
And now I turned to her. “You always say how much like Father I am—well, what would Father have done, even at fifteen? He’d have said the same! Mama, I have Fae magic. What’s going to protect Aurora better? A knight with a sword or a knight with magic?”
But it was Papa who answered, his brow clearing. “Someone with both,” he said softly, looking at me as if he saw not me but his old friend, his fellow squire, Geniver. He turned to Bianca. “Is there any reason why she can’t learn weapons along with magic?”