Sixty-five

‘They want us to have a child?’

Henry nodded miserably.

Blue stared at him for a long, long time. There were so many questions boiling in her mind, but at the end of it all she simply asked, ‘Why us?’

‘You’re Queen,’ Henry said, a bit too quickly. ‘If you had a demon child, it would automatically be in a position of power. When it grew up.’

He was hiding something. ‘Why you?’ Blue asked. ‘Why not –’ she thought of Black John with his fur and his tail and his clawed hand in hers, ‘– a real demon?’

‘I am a real demon when they activate that thing. It’s just my shape that stays the same. They thought you wouldn’t … accept … something in demon form. Actually, they thought you might know it was a demon in my form. That’s why they deactivated my implant.’

‘They could have forced me,’ Blue said coldly.

‘No, they couldn’t,’ Henry said earnestly. ‘Not something like that. The implants don’t work on faeries.’

That was a bit of interesting information. But they wouldn’t have used an implant on her anyway – they wanted a faerie mother, not some demon who looked like one. All the same, the demons could get into your mind, whether you were human or faerie. Why couldn’t they control her that way?

Hesitantly she asked, ‘What about … possession?’

‘Possession won’t let them push faeries to do something against your deepest moral principles,’ Henry said. ‘They can only hold you still and make you walk and things like that. It’s different with humans – they can make us do anything they want.’

Mr Fogarty was possessed by a demon when he killed her father. They could make humans do anything they wanted. Up to and including murder. Blue shifted uneasily. She still had the feeling Henry was holding something back.

‘Why did they pick you, Henry?’ she asked again.

Henry’s face flared bright scarlet. His eyes went down to the floor and he drew away from her stiffly. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he mumbled quietly, ‘They think you might be in love with me …’

Blue wanted to hold him then, but it clearly wasn’t the time. Besides which, her fury at the demons was consuming her.

‘They think all they have to do is put us in a room together and we’ll make a child just because I’m in love with you?’

Henry glanced at her strangely. After a moment he said, ‘They don’t really understand people.’

‘No, they don’t.’ It was almost laughable.

‘Of course –’ Henry began, then stopped.

Something in his tone alerted her at once. ‘What? Come on, Henry, I need to know everything before they turn you back into a demon. It’s the only way we can survive this.’

Henry said slowly, ‘If we don’t … if we don’t … you know … if we don’t, I mean of our own accord, they’ll … they’ll …’ He swallowed. ‘They’ll force you. They’ll hold you down.’

It took her a second to realise what he was saying. ‘And you would …?’ she asked, outraged.

‘They’ll change me back into a demon!’ Henry wailed.

Suddenly, in the middle of it all, she realised what he must be going through. She softened her tone. ‘So they’ll try that anyway, if we don’t … of our own accord?’ She almost added, Because I love you.

Henry nodded. ‘Yes.’

She sighed, stood up and walked across the room to the viewscreen. ‘That’s what this thing’s for, isn’t it?’ she said, stroking the screen. ‘To see what we do.’

‘Yes.’

She was holding herself together with a massive effort, exhibiting a calm she didn’t feel because she had to be strong enough for the two of them.

‘What happens if I don’t conceive?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Henry said. ‘They’ll know that right away – they have some sort of probe that tells them. If you aren’t pregnant, they’ll invade the Realm.’

Blue stared at him. ‘The portals are all closed,’ she said foolishly.

‘They’ve opened new ones,’ Henry said.