“To be fair,” Uncle Mike said, “we watched the Europeans do a fair job of killing off the people who were originally on this continent.” He gave me a sly look. “You could ask your father’s people about that. But she doesn’t have smallpox or the black measles, so she’s trying out a few other things. The last one was a troll who was nearly mindless—there are a few of them who are quite brilliant by troll standards at least, Mercy—but who had the delightful talent of growing in strength every time he ate a human and, in the water, was impossible to kill.”

I stared at him, trying to imagine that troll being stronger.

Uncle Mike gave me a cheery smile. “Happily for our side, he was too dumb to jump in the water before your pack killed him. Had he made it to the city and started killing hundreds of people, none of us could have stopped him.” He paused. “Well, maybe Nemane or Beauclaire. But the Widow Queen forgets how much power she’s lost.”

“Our storytelling this night is at an end,” Beauclaire said softly. He got up from the table. “If you would excuse me for a few moments. Goreu will continue our conversation.”

Goreu leaned forward. “The situation with your pack has presented us with a unique opportunity. We need to negotiate with the human government—and have scared them to the point that there is no path for communication. But you killed a troll.”

He let that statement sit in the air.

“And you did it on national TV. In the past few months, several fairy monsters have been publicly taken down by werewolves.” He tapped on the table. “If we can manage to sign a nonaggression pact that would make the Tri-Cities a neutral territory, somewhere that we have agreed that no aggressive act can take place—enforced by someone the humans can trust in, trust in their honor and in their ability—then it is just possible that we might avoid a war with the humans and go back to how we have been. Coexisting.”

“Are we negotiating with Beauclaire and Goreu?” asked Adam softly. “Or the Council of the Gray Lords?”

“The Council,” Goreu said. “Beauclaire to represent the majority and I the minority opinion. It took some doing for that to happen. If they’d been able to locate Órlaith, this would have been much more difficult.”

“Goreu,” I said, “did you hurt Zee?”

He met my eyes. “No.”

“So why did you cringe from him?”

He smiled. “Because it was the action that the male who I pretend to be would have done once the wristlets had proven him weaker than the half-dead daughter of one of the Old Kings. Such a fae would know that Zee was a threat he could not face.”

“They believed that?” asked Adam. “That a Gray Lord would be so weak?”