He stood and buttoned his shirt. “I value your presence more than you know.” When he took the throne she’d make a fine Hunter.
Dylis inclined her head, the ever-obedient courtier. “Thank you, Prince. I will hold you to your fine words.” She buckled on her blade and checked her appearance before facing him. “What do you know of a fairy called Riobard?”
Felan glanced up. He hadn’t heard that name in a long time. “He left Court a very long time ago to wander amongst the mortals. Why?”
“I was doing some digging in the mortal world and his name was mentioned in connection with the Window.” Dylis was watching him closely.
“Riobard, like your Bramwel, was a minstrel before I’d reached one hundred mortal years. After a fight with his lover he left, never to be seen again.” Felan picked up his waistcoat. “There were a few rumors that he took some things. A silver pipe, a set of dice… trinkets that mortals wouldn’t suspect gave him an advantage.”
“So he could’ve taken the Window.”
“If he did, the loss was never mentioned.” He looked at Dylis. “For obvious reasons.” No one would want to admit to owning it and losing it.
“Who was his lover?”
“Sulia’s mother.” While Sulia’s mother was dead, Sulia was the Queen’s favorite lady-in-waiting.
Dylis gave a low whistle that sounded more mortal than fairy. “Do you think she still has the Counter-Window?”
Felan shrugged. “If she does, I doubt she knows what she has, otherwise she’d have handed it over to my mother.” The word caught and left a bad taste in his mouth. “I could probably get an invitation to her chamber.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment as if calculating her next few steps. Felan liked the way she was always thinking ahead. “Too risky; besides, you told me once you’d rather cut it off than sleep with her.”
He laughed. “I’d make an exception in this case.”
“Better I arrange something.”
She was right. Dylis had reach in places he didn’t—including with his mother’s ladies. He put his hand on her arm. “Watch yourself in that den of wolves.”
“I will.” She inclined her head and pulled away.
Felan walked over to the desk and picked up a box. Made of sandalwood and lined with delicate fairy-made velvet, the box itself was a work of art no human could match, but the gift was inside. “A gift for my son.”
Dylis looked at the box, and then at him. Her eyebrows were drawn down. “Am I to say it’s from you?”
Felan nodded. It was time to let Caspian know he hadn’t forgotten him and that his father knew of the son’s dealings with the banished Shea.
Chapter 7
Caspian walked into his kitchen. His house was empty. After the warmth and heady history of Lydia’s house, his home seemed even worse—just a box of brick and mortar.
For the first time since his divorce, he felt truly alone. It wasn’t the Brownies he missed, or even Dylis. It was the simple pleasure of coming home to someone. Of having someone to care about. He’d walked away from that and never looked back, but Lydia had pulled the blinders off and now he was forced to look at what his life had become. He spent more time with echoes of the past than he did with real people. He hadn’t been on a date in eight months. The three dates he’d been on hadn’t gone anywhere because the whole time he’d been thinking of the lies he’d have to tell and the things he might see about them, even if he didn’t want to. He sighed and fiddled with the broken tea set. The contents hadn’t been touched. If he were a Brownie, he wouldn’t have touched it either.
He shouldn’t have kissed Lydia.
He wanted to kiss her again.
He imagined he could still taste her on his lips, and feel the heat of her body pressed to his. The curve of her hip under his hand and the way her body had shifted closer as the kiss had deepened. After that moment the rest of the evening had been off-kilter. Not awkward, but not comfortable.
Then she’d asked him to stay. Even now he could feel the lingering heat in his blood. It had taken everything he had in him to walk out that door. He craved her touch. But whatever was going on between them, it was a bad idea to act upon it. Not with his heritage. Not if there was a Grey lurking about. He leaned against the kitchen counter and closed his eyes.
Still, there was no doubt his dreams tonight would be full of Lydia.
Something in the air shifted around him and Caspian knew he was no longer alone in the house. He recognized the heady perfume of Court. He cracked open his eyes and saw Dylis; she was what he guessed was her natural height for a change. She had also managed to layer several items of clothing on varying shades of blue to produce an outfit that a fashion designer would be proud of. The longer he looked the more he thought she was wearing enough clothes for three days.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Thinking.” Like it mattered to her.
Dylis placed a box on the kitchen counter.
He was tempted to ask about it but decided that he probably wouldn’t like the answer. That she came from Court bearing gifts put him on edge.
“Aren’t you curious?” She kicked his foot.
“About the box or what you found out about the Window?”
She grinned and bobbed down next to him. “Both.”
“Tell me about the Window.” But his gaze slid to the box she’d carried in. It came from Annwyn; he could feel the shimmer of magic from here.
Dylis tapped the glass oven door and an image formed of two polished copper mirrors. Oval hand mirrors—the kind one expected an evil queen to hold as she asked who was the fairest in the land.
Gooseflesh rose down Caspian’s arms. He was rapidly coming to dislike mirrors of any type. “What am I looking at?”
“This is the last known appearance of the Window and Counter-Window.”
“Why are there two?”
“Together they are a portal to Annwyn. The Counter-Window is somewhere in Annwyn, and the Window is here… we think.”
“How could something so valuable be lost in the mortal world?” He should be in bed dreaming of Lydia, not standing in the kitchen talking about fairy-made mirrors.
Dylis gave him a look that had lost its power around the time he’d turned eighteen. “Things get exchanged, misplaced, and forgotten about. You mortals die so fast it’s hard to keep track of where things go. Plus it can’t be tracked by those with fairy blood.”
“So I can’t find it anyway.” What had she been hoping, that he’d trip over it and realize what it was?
“You will be able to recognize it when you touch it. It’s why Shea came to you and not another changeling. It’s why I asked you to keep an eye out.”
“And I was thinking it was because of my father.”
“Ah, no. Most don’t know who your father is. Trust me when I say that’s the way you want to keep it.”
He’d take her word on that. “Why not destroy the Counter-Window and prevent him from getting through?”
Dylis raised her eyebrows as if he’d just suggested she chew iron filings. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to make something this powerful? The Court would rather it be returned.”
Of course they would because they wouldn’t be inconvenienced by the search. He would be. “There can’t be too many hand mirrors this old lying around. It’s probably in a museum.”
“No one has seen it for five hundred years. And no one has heard of it in a century. It’s probably changed shape a dozen times.” Dylis gave a shrug and the image vanished, leaving Caspian staring at himself in the dark glass of the oven, a frown creasing his forehead.
“It changes shape?” Whoever made the portal had gone to a lot of trouble to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.