Divine Misdemeanors Read Free Page A

just like humans—they understand fear. Some magic, a little near-immortality, doesn’t make you unafraid; it just gives you a different list of fears.

CHAPTER TWO
    FROST TRIED TO HUG ME, BUT I PUT A HAND ON HIS STOMACH, TOO short to really touch his chest. Doyle said, “She’s trying to appear strong in front of the policemen.”
    “We shouldn’t have let you come see this now,” Frost said.
    “Jeremy could have given a fey’s opinion.”
    “Jeremy is the boss and he’s allowed to turn his phone off on a Saturday,” I said.
    “Then Jordan or Julian Kane. They are psychics and practicing wizards.”
    “They’re only human, Frost. Lucy wanted a fey to see this crime scene.”
    “You shouldn’t have to see this in your condition.”
    I leaned in and spoke low. “I am a detective. It’s my job, and it’s our people up there dead on the hillside. I may never be queen, but I’m the closest they have here in L.A. Where else should a ruler be when her people are threatened?”
    Frost started to say something else, but Doyle touched his arm. “Let it go, my friend. Let us just get her back to the vehicle and be-gone.”
    I put my arm through Doyle’s leather-clad arm, though I thought it was too hot for the leather. Frost trailed us, and a glance showedthat he was doing his job of searching the area for threats. Unlike a human bodyguard, Frost looked from sky to ground, because when faerie is your potential enemy, danger can come from nearly anywhere.
    Doyle was keeping an eye out too, but his attention was divided by trying to keep me from twisting an ankle in the sandals that looked great with the dress but sucked for uneven ground. They didn’t have too tall a heel, they were just very open and not supportive. I wondered what I’d wear when I got really pregnant. Did I have any practical shoes except for jogging ones?
    The major danger had passed when I’d killed my main rival for the throne and given up the crown. I’d done everything I could to make myself both too dangerous to tempt anyone and harmless to the nobles and their way of life. I was in voluntary exile, and I’d made it clear that it was a permanent move. I didn’t want the throne; I just wanted to be left alone. But since some of the nobles had spent the last thousand years plotting to get closer to the throne, they found my decision a little hard to believe.
    So far no one had tried to kill me, or anyone close to me, but Doyle was the Queen’s Darkness, and Frost was the Killing Frost. They had earned their names, and now that we were all in love and I was carrying their children, it would be a shame to let something go wrong. This was the end of our fairy tale, and maybe we had no enemies left, but old habits aren’t always a bad thing. I felt safe with them, except that while I loved them more than life itself, if they died trying to protect me I’d never recover from it. There are all sorts of ways to die without dying.
    When we were out of hearing of the human police, I told them all my fears about the killings.
    “How do we find out if the lesser fey here are easier to kill?” Frost asked.
    Doyle said, “In other days it would have been easy enough.”
    I stopped walking, which forced him to stop. “You’d just pick a few and see if you could slit their throats?”
    “If my queen had asked it, yes,” he said.
    I started to pull away from him, but he held my arm in his. “You knew what I was before you took me to your bed, Meredith. It is a little late for shock and innocence.”
    “The queen would say, ‘Where is my Darkness? Someone bring me my Darkness.’ You would appear, or simply step closer to her, and then someone would bleed or die,” I said.
    “I was her weapon and her general. I did what I was bid.”
    I studied his face, and I knew it wasn’t just the black wraparound sunglasses that kept me from reading him. He could hide everything behind his face. He had spent too many years beside a mad queen, where