"Laurell K. Hamilton - Faerie 3 - Seduced by Moonlight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

for us to have some privacy, we'd make sure that at prearranged times they had something newsworthy

to take pictures of. I was Princess Meredith NicEssus, heir to the throne of the Unseelie Court, and the

fact that I'd surfaced in Los Angeles, California, after a three-year absence was big news. People thought

I'd died. Now I was alive and well, and living in the middle of one of the biggest media empires on the

planet. Then I'd gone and done something that was even better tabloid fodder.

I was looking for a husband. The only faerie princess born on American soil was looking to wed.

Being fey, especially a member of the sidhe, the highest of the high royals, I wasn't allowed to marry

unless I was pregnant. The fey don't breed much, and the sidhe royals breed even less. My aunt, the

Queen of Air and Darkness, would not tolerate anything less than a fertile match. Since we seemed to be

dying out, I guess I couldn't blame her. But somehow the tabloids had gotten wind that I wasn't just

dating my bodyguards, I was fucking them. Whoever got me with child, got a wedding. Got to be king to

my queen.

The tabloids even knew that the queen had made it a contest between me and her son, my
cousin, Prince Cel. Whoever got a baby first, won the throne. The media had fallen on us like a

cannibalistic orgy. Not pretty, not pretty at all.

What the tabloids didn't know was that Cel had tried to have me assassinated more than once.

They also didn't know that he'd been imprisoned by the queen for six months as punishment. Imprisoned

and tortured, for six months. Immortality and an ability to heal almost anything do have some downsides.

Torture can last a very, very long time.

When Cel got out, he'd be allowed to continue the contest, unless I got pregnant first. So far, no

luck, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

Doyle was one of five bodyguards, the queen's own bodyguards, who had volunteered, or been

volunteered, to be my lover. Queen Andais had had a rule that her bodyguards gave their seed to her

body, or nobody. Doyle had been celibate for centuries. Again, immortality, if it goes wrong, can have

some downsides.