Page 1 of Cathmoir's Sons

Chapter 1

My Own Dark Room

KELLAN

“And that’s how I became a queen of Faery,” I say, before taking a tequila shot, licking salt from the back of my hand, and biting into a lime.

Six pairs of eyes watch me drink. Black, brown, bright blue, forest green, and the pale green of the Cait Sidhe.

“I’ll drink to that,” my friend Rachel—of the bright blue eyes—says, grabbing her own shot glass. She downs the shot and burps, breaking the tension. Even Jane, sitting wan and lost beside me, laughs a little.

“Well, that’s fucked, innit?” asks Teddy, her brown eyes steady on me.

Teddy’s the only one of us not drinking, because she’s nursing her newborn. Carrie Prince Nowak Tate-Wilson, third cutest baby in the world. Even if she does still look a little like a red alien. But she’s getting steadily cuter. She’s much less red and wrinkly than she was three days ago when I first saw her. She wasn’t even an hour old at that point; both she and Teddy were looking a little worse for the wear.

Teddy’s already bounced back to her usual form, sitting on Jane’s couch in red and green pajamas printed with the words “proper crimbo” all over them, with baby Carrie sleeping in a bassinet at her feet. I’m not sure what “proper crimbo” means, but Teddy’s British and her humor sometimes escapes me. Despite the fact she gave birth three days ago, Teddy was the one who insisted we have our long-delayed “Mega Girls’ Night” tonight.

I think she wanted a night off from her other kids, the Terror Twins. And maybe from her husbands. Since she has three husbands, all of whom are very alpha even if they’re “sweet buns” inside, I can understand why she might want a night with the girls.

“Yup,” I agree. “Fucked in the ass with a flaming poker.”

That provokes another round of giggles. Except from Larissa, one set of pale green eyes, who is sitting on a cushion on the floor in front of the fire while we all crash on Jane’s comfortable couch. Larissa doesn’t speak, at least not according to Lawson. Not that I can put any stock in anything he told me, given what a consummate liar he turned out to be. But she’s good at communicating without words. When she turned up at Jane’s townhouse four days ago, she handed me a note and a suitcase. The note was from Allie, Law’s mother and Larissa’s—employer? Owner? I’m not sure what you call someone who has a “handmaiden” but the whole concept still makes me squirm.

In the note, Allie apologized for her sons’ behavior and asked me to please keep in touch with her via Larissa. The suitcase contained clothes from the extensive wardrobe Allie and Larissa provided for me when I was living at Cait House.

I put the suitcase in a closet without unpacking its contents and told Larissa I was fine but she was welcome to visit any time. She evidently took that as an invitation to move in. Except for short trips back to Cait House, she’s stayed with me and Jane.Jane only has one guest room, so Larissa’s been sleeping with me.

I guess I should be used to Cait commandeering my bed by now.

If I’m being fair and not letting the two other tequila shots I’ve done turn me sour, I’d admit that Larissa’s been nothing but helpful as Jane and I go about the heart-rending business of dealing with Carrie’s death. Yesterday, Jane broke down in tears while we were sorting through the contents of Carrie’s desk. Larissa stepped in without us even asking. While I consoled Jane, Larissa sorted everything into three boxes: personal records, academic records, and memorabilia. I put the memorabilia in the attic, took the academic records to Bevington College’s offices, and left the personal records for Jane to go through when she felt stronger.

Larissa’s been a Goddess-send. But I’m finding it very hard to be fair at the moment, particularly to a Cait.

Which reminds me of the other pair of eyes watching me. I glance at the long French doors at the far end of Jane’s living room. The doors look out into the garden, now covered with snow. A small, black figure, white paws disappearing into the frosty groundcover, stares back at me with sage-green eyes.

He’s been there for the past three days, even though I’m sure he’s not recovered enough from his injuries to leave Cait House. I haven’t let him in, not even when he meowed at me for a solid hour after breakfast while I was trying to read. I toyed with the idea of flattening him under an avalanche of snow off the roof, but in the end, I shut the curtains and went upstairs where I couldn’t hear him as clearly. He’s not coming in. I’m not interested in anything he has to say. That’s final.

I glare at him before twisting around on the couch until my back’s to him.

Larissa watches me snub her prince. She presses her lips together, then reaches over and pours another shot of tequila into each of our glasses. She lifts her shot glass to me, downs the shot with a small cough, then licks salt off the pad of her thumb in a very cat-like gesture before biting into a lime wedge from a tray on the coffee table between us.

“So,” Teddy says, drawing my attention back to her. “What are you going to do about it, Kells?”

I hold up my free hand. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“You closed the gates into your court, right?” Teddy asks. I nod. “What about the bwg and the afanc and the other fae you said could live there?”

“And the piskie sheep!” Rachel interjects.

I do have a soft spot for my sheep. They’re so fluffy.

“I’ve checked. They’re all fine. They can’t leave while the gates are closed, but if they wanted to leave, they shouldn’t have asked to come in in the first place.”

Larissa makes a face. I know what Cait think of confinement already, so I ignore her.

“I might ask for a loan of some piskie sheep,” Teddy says, rubbing her chin. “They’d come in dead handy for trimming the grass along the canal.”

Teddy and her husbands have several houses, including a palace in Scotland that has an underground pool and a bowling alley. All palaces should have bowling alleys, in my opinion. One of the “houses” is a houseboat on a canal in Wales. Despite the lack of bowling alley, I think the houseboat is probably Teddy’s favorite house. It has serious sentimental value to her and she takes good care of it, even when they’re away in Scotland for long periods of time.

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