If I could have killed him with a look, I might have. Last time I checked, I was still a bloody Chieftain and I still ranked alongside him. I tried to speak again, to no avail.

‘If she has done the deeds of which you accuse her, however,’ Kincaid continued, ‘there is no doubt that she will lie. In fact, she has already obviously lied because she is standing there, living and breathing.’

Aifric rubbed his chin as if deep in thought. Were these idiot Sidhe falling for this act? ‘Hmm, yes. I wonder if you would be so good…’ he gestured towards the Kincaid Clan.

‘It would be our pleasure. Several of my Clan members have Truth-Telling as a Gift.’ Malcolm Kincaid nodded at Kirsty.

She blanched. ‘Someone else.’

He seemed puzzled. So she’d kept the information that she no longer had her Gift from her own Chieftain. That was curious because Tipsania knew that she’d lost it. Before I could dwell on this little titbit, however, Kincaid pointed at an older woman. ‘Molly then.’

Molly Kincaid inclined her head and stood up. Aifric beckoned her over. With obvious reluctance, she sidled past her compatriots and walked up the aisle, brushing past various flowers and ribbons.

‘Let’s try again, shall we?’ Aifric said. He turned to me and asked in a sad voice, ‘Did you fake your own death?’

I hissed and this time the sound tripped out of my mouth. ‘Yes. But…’ The rest of my sentence was ripped away from me. Apparently I wasn’t going to be allowed to say much at all. That could prove troublesome.

There was a murmur from the watching Sidhe. This was beginning to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer. Aifric sighed loudly. ‘This is very hard for me,’ he declared. ‘I took it upon myself to help Integrity. There were many among you who did not want her to visit the Cruaich grove and receive her true name but I trusted her enough to permit it. I was willing to take her in and treat her like one of my own family, despite her well-advertised past as a thief. You all know how close I was to her father and how difficult it was for me to accept what happened all those years ago.’

My mouth dropped open, so wide with disbelief that Brochan could probably have steered a container ship through it. Many heads nodded in agreement. Aifric was being incredibly canny here; his words were vague enough to avoid being outright lies but there was no doubt what he was implying. ‘I have to face facts: Gale Adair was a dangerous man and his daughter is no different.’

I didn’t hit people. I didn’t hit people. I didn’t hit people. But I trembled with bitter rage.

One of the Moncrieffes from Byron’s stag party stood up. ‘She let the Foinse escape! We’ve got less magic now because of her!’ There was a chorus of angry mutters. It got louder and I felt as if I were being assailed with a wave of hatred from the crowd. Right now that was nothing compared to how I was feeling about Aifric, who held his hand up for quiet.