Brochan wasn’t the only one who was concerned. Taylor rubbed his chin and sat down with a heavy sigh. ‘It’s a convoluted plan. A fake wedding?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The best plans are the simplest ones.’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is not a simple plan.’

‘To be fair,’ I argued, ‘we’ve not managed to come up with anything to beat Aifric. At least Byron is trying.’

Brochan’s gills bristled. ‘We’ve been busy.’

I threw up my hands. ‘I know! I wasn’t blaming anyone. If anyone should have been working out some way of dealing with the Steward, it should have been me. All I’m saying is that Byron’s way might work and we should support it.’

‘Might work,’ Speck said. ‘Key word might.’

‘Yeah,’ Taylor drawled in agreement. ‘I’m not sure about those odds.’

Lexie wrinkled her nose. ‘Tegs is right. Byron Moncrieffe has had nothing but this to think about. He’s probably already considered every other avenue. He succeeded in breaking into the Moncrieffe castle, didn’t he?’

‘Lex, it hardly takes a criminal mastermind to sneak into your own damned home.’

She whirled round, squaring up to Speck. ‘Oh yeah? Because last night, I seem to recall that you couldn’t even sneak into your own bedroom after doing some midnight magic gallivanting!’

The rest of us exchanged looks. Perhaps it was time to change the subject. ‘Just because we don’t have a plan yet,’ Taylor said, ‘doesn’t mean that we can’t come up with one. Get Byron down here, Tegs, and we can thrash out some ideas.’

‘I can’t. He has to stay and make sure everything is ready for the wedding. And he’s got his Plan B to sort out.’

‘You don’t even know what Plan B is.’

I sighed and glanced down at my feet. ‘I’m not blind to the fact that it’s not perfect, I’m really not. But he was right when he said that the Sidhe and the Clans aren’t my world. I don’t know them like he does. In the absence of any alternatives, I think we need to go with him.’

Taylor ran a hand through his hair. ‘We have an alternative.’

There was something about the tone of his voice that I didn’t like. ‘What?’

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘We play Aifric at his own game. I’ve done some research and it wouldn’t be too hard to get hold of some kind of poison…’

Bob clapped his hands together in glee. ‘Now we’re talking!’

I counted to ten. ‘I can’t believe you’re bringing that up as an idea.’ Taylor was normally as anti-violence as I was.

‘Take a look around, Tegs. We saw exactly the same vision that you did.’ He pointed over to the faint patch on the cobbles where my mother and father had breathed their last – and I had breathed my first. ‘He ran a sword into your father’s back, not to mention murdering your entire Clan. Maybe it’s time to put your pacifism to one side.’

‘We’ve been through this before.’ My jaw was clenched so tight that it hurt. ‘No. Nothing’s changed since last time.’