I just couldn’t decide whether the player was someone I knew already or not.
I looked up and met Eli’s gaze. If you asked him, he’d claim that he wasn’t on the chess board at all. I had trouble believing that a faery prince was so innocent--and Eli was the faery prince, as a matter of fact. He failed to share that tidbit with me at first. Right up to the point where he’d spirited me away to his homeland to save my life, I thought he was just a guy: a very hot, infuriating, loyal, fae guy. So, maybe I was still pissy over the whole my friend is an exiled faery prince thing.
Now that we were accidentally engaged because of it, I was starting to think that he was the hand in the sky. Was Eli the chess player toying with my life? Had he always planned to trap me?
But based on the way my life had gone of late, he was far from the only one moving pieces. His uncle, the king I might have to wear a dress to meet again, and the dead lady I thought might be an ancestor or mine . . . and some unknown figure who hired a human to murder me a few months ago. The shooting at Cormier’s raising was weird, too. The police had no answers, and all three of the men were suddenly dead. Too many people were trying to play with my life, and I was fed up.
I couldn’t do anything about that murder-attempts thing, but I could handle the holidays. I was still me: half-witch, half-draugr. I wasn’t a fae princess, no matter what the King of Elphame thought, and I wasn’t pleased to be summoned as if his laws applied to me.
“Which holiday do you want us to celebrate?” I asked my friends. “Cocktails. Friends. Maybe we can do a formal meal. You want dresses, Sera? Fuck it. We do dresses.”
Jesse and Christy both looked at me like I’d suggested we knock over a bank or gnaw on a witch’s house.
“Gen, you can’t just ignore the king,” Jesse said. “You’re engaged to--”
“Not on purpose! For an honorary brother, you’re awfully calm. Eli is trying to marry me. Besmirch me.” My voice was loud enough that several people looked our way.
“You like besmirching,” Jesse said. Then he met my gaze and added, “And you’re obviously not besmirched yet because you’re surlier than usual lately.”
I shot a glare at Eli. It took effort to glare at him, though. Logic meant I was still angry that he wouldn’t free me from our engagement, but logic was a weak defense against him. I wanted Eli the way witches crave nature, the way the starving crave food.
And I was in definite need of being besmirched, preferably by Eli. Repeatedly. I’d been ready to ignore the risk to our friendship, tired of resisting our chemistry, over all of the very sound reasons not to lock the doors and get gloriously naked with Eli.
But then someone tried to kill me.
And Eli had to save me.
And in the mess that followed we ended up accidentally betrothed—which meant no sex for me. Fae rules of love and matrimony meant that if I banged him while we experienced true love, we were de facto married.
“Both holidays,” I said, louder than necessary. “We’ll celebrate twice. Fuck him.”
“Oh, I do wish you would,” Sera muttered.
Christy snorted.
Sera squeezed my hand fondly. “Eli is not without his charms. You’re engaged—and please don’t take this wrong, sweetie—but you need to burn up some sheets or something. You’re on edge.”
“Understatement,” Jesse said with a shrug.
When I made a crude gesture at my friends, Sera held up her hands. “Fine. Eli is hotter than Satan’s knickers are in the summer, and Geneviève is as tense as a kitten in a room of rocking chairs and Rottweilers.” She took a long drink of her bourbon, and then she added, “The point, Gen, is that you like him, and he obviously loves you. Why not give it a go?”
Sera pursed her lips at me when I tried to interrupt.
“And he was willing to do whatever it took to keep you safe,” she continued. “For the fae, that’s a lot. So, go to dinner with the king, and try to be a little kinder to Eli. His greatest crime—as far as I can see--is that he wants you.”
My temper fizzled. She was right. Hell, they all were. I wanted to give in to Eli, but he needed to have a child. That child had to be carried by his wife, or his line of the fae would wither. He—literally—carried his ancestral memory in his blood. A child of the blood was required to pass on the living memory of his family.
He had to have a kid.
And I would never ever be a mother. Some people just weren’t meant to be parents, and that should be okay. Freedom of choice ought to mean freedom to choose not to breed.
Eli, however, had to have a kid. There wasn’t really a compromise there.
It wasn’t even that fae law was unreasonable. There were exemption options for infertility or if a person was gay or lesbian—or if they had a sibling who was able to pass on the family memories. Elphame Law addressed most concerns. There were even Temple partners who were magical enough to have multiple children. That enabled the exceptional cases—gay, lesbian, or second children-- to pass on their genes.
Eli was neither gay nor a second son.
I’d be asking Eli to sacrifice his ancestors if he was with me. I wouldn’t do that to anyone I liked even a little, much less someone I trusted and respected as I did with him.
“It’s complicated,” I said quietly.
I didn’t have consent to share the fae secret of ancestry. I couldn’t explain why I was refusing him. And no one quite understood my aversion to parenthood. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to pass on my fucked up genetic soup. That was a huge factor, but when Eli explained how we could avoid that . . . I still didn’t want to be a parent. I wanted my life. My mission in my city. I liked what I had.
The only thing I’d change was . . . adding Eli.
He’d always been the flame that drew me. His glamour hadn’t ever worked on me—either because of my witch blood or maybe my other blood. I wasn’t sure what he looked like to others, but he’d always been perfect to me.
If not for the whole royal requirement and duty to pass on his ancestral lineage, I’d be naked with him by now.
Without quite meaning to, I looked over and met his gaze again, and this time, he walked over to the table. I guess a guy could only ignore being stared at so long.
“Christy. Sera. Jesse.” He nodded at each of my friends. Then he looked at me. “Geneviève.”
My insides turned to mush, and I realized I was still staring at him. It had been forty-three days since I’d thought we could be together. Forty-three days that we had been engaged. Two weeks since the last job together when we kissed and sparred. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t even pretend to want anyone else. I’d never been monogamous, but something about Eli had me embracing monogamy—without the sex that should go with it. It was baffling.
I licked my lips unconsciously, and then blushed at his responding smile.
“What?”
“I said ‘Would you accompany me?’” he asked, eyes twinkling as if he was aware that I’d completely failed to hear him the first time. He added, “To meet Lady Beatrice.”
“Beatrice?” I echoed.
Eli nodded. “Indeed.”
I had been avoiding the draugr queen since she’s saved my life. I was being ungrateful, but I had complicated feelings. I was, awkwardly, related to her, and as best as I understood, she was my maternal ancestor—but she was a draugr. My job was killing her kind. So, yeah, it was complicated. “I’m not sure I—"