Steal the Sun (Thieves #4)(40)

“What’s he talking about?” The subtext eluded me.

“He is pointing out the fact that the Unseelie have no priest,” Declan explained. His words were slightly slurred. “They have no fertility magic. In the past, they had one or two priests, but almost all of them were half Seelie. Over the years, the two courts have grown more insular. We rarely interbreed. The Unseelie lost their last priest over two hundred years ago. They survive because of our priests. My grandfather was a tolerant man.”

“A great man,” Braden corrected.

“Yes, yes, he was a great man but he was friendly with the monsters, too,” Declan continued. “He spent as much time in the Unseelie sithein as he did in his own. He was more than willing to perform the necessary rites. There has been talk among certain factions of withholding our blessings from the Unseelie.”

“This is what Herne was talking about.” I finally understood exactly why the Unseelie were so upset. “You threatened them. You told them Devinshea wouldn’t work with them.”

“You have no idea what they are capable of.” Declan stared down at me, anger plain in his eyes. “You have no idea what it means to be at their mercy when they have none. After what Devinshea went through, I do not see how he can stand to be in the same room with them, much less help them to make more monsters.”

Dev had his grandfather’s tolerance. “He doesn’t judge the whole of the Unseelie for the actions of a few.”

“Do you know why we were there, Zoey?” Declan asked. I’d heard the tale, seen it with my own eyes on a quick trip to the Hell plane. He and Devinshea had lived with the Unseelie for a year when they were seventeen and Dev had been assaulted.

“Dev told me your mother sent you to test your strength.” The exact words Dev had used, however, had been that she sent them there to be tortured.

Braden took up the point now. “It is an old rite of passage. It had to be done. Miria was furious when Devinshea chose to go with his brother, but she could not talk him out of it. If Declan had refused to go, he would never be able to be king.”

“This child you carry, he will be important,” Declan said, his words softer now. “But he will be a priest. He will not be asked to take that rite of passage, nor will any brother of his. My son will. So I say let them fade. Bring on the war that finally separates us once and for all so I never have to stand at the gates and watch my son as Mother had to watch me.”

Declan turned and walked away.

“You will have to forgive His Highness,” Braden requested. “His time with the Unseelie left him…unsettled.”

I watched as Declan walked to the tables and ordered a drink. He grabbed the bottle straight out of the servant’s hands and took a long swig as he watched his brother talking to Daniel and Herne. There was something dark in his eyes that made me worry.

Glancing back at Neil and Sarah, I started to walk toward my brother-in-law. “I’m going to talk to him. The way he looks, he might start a fight and that’s the last thing Dev needs. Stay here.”

“Lee will kill me,” Neil protested.

“I’m not leaving the ballroom.” Lee was attempting to track down the servant who had brought breakfast to the archer this morning. He was tracking his scent through the countryside. “I’ll be fine. I just want to talk to him.”

I crossed the full ballroom, making my way around the edges of the dance floor. Miria was dancing in Padric’s arms, but her eyes constantly strayed to Dev’s table. It was like she worried if she took her eyes off of him he would disappear again. I made it just in time. Declan was watching that table, too. He cursed as he set the bottle down, and I could see he meant to go and have a word or two with someone. I was pretty sure he wasn’t planning on talking about the weather. It wouldn’t go well and a fight would set back any progress Dev had made. I reached out and grabbed Declan’s hand. He whirled on me. “What do you want, Zoey?”

“I want you to not make an ass of yourself.” He didn’t get to be annoyed with me when I was so busy being annoyed with him.

I tried to pull my hand back but he held it firmly. “Fine, then you will have to give me something else to do, Your Grace. Making an ass of myself was the only plan I had for the evening.”

He hauled me onto the dance floor and settled his free hand on my waist. He held me closer than decorum dictated, but I was just happy he could stand. He must have started drinking early in the afternoon to have gotten to this point. I looked around for one of his servants to see if someone could help me get him to his rooms.

“I’m fine, Zoey,” he insisted, reading my mind. “Welcome to the royal court. This is what we do. We have parties and get drunk and plot behind each other’s backs.”

“It sounds like a charming life.”

“It was,” he said quietly. “I was perfectly happy until about eighteen months ago.”

That was when Devinshea had chosen to leave the Faery mound. There was a strange phenomenon that occurred between the Earth plane and the sitheins. Time moved differently in the sithein. Dev had experienced almost seven years of maturing on the Earth plane while his brother was still twenty-two. There was a big difference between twenty-eight, married with a kid on the way, and twenty-two and single, still rolling around with strange women in the grass. Devinshea now had much more in common with Daniel than he had with the brother he’d shared a womb with. It must be difficult for Declan. His brother had returned an entirely different person with different priorities.