Andais stood in the center of the chamber carved of moonlight and darkness. Her white skin shone as if she'd captured the full moon inside her skin and all its soft radiance spilled out of her. Her hair was a fall of blackest night, except that if I looked at her from the corner of my eye there were pale points of light in her hair, like scattered stars, but when I turned to face her directly, there was only a shimmering blackness, unrelieved by any light, the heart of deepest, emptiest space. The kind of empty darkness that held no warmth, no life.
The triple grey of her eyes glowed, but it was subdued as if lit only by reflected light. Her eyes were light grey storm clouds lit by distant lighting, with no light of their own. That last thick ring of charcoal was like the sky before it fell upon the earth and poured its rage upon us all.
The look in her eyes alone would have stopped me at the door. Her power filled her like some stroke of fate waiting for its victim, making me want to turn around and run. I was still touched by the magic that had revived the spring. The magic that Adair and I, merely touching, had awoken. But that bright, healing spell faded to ashes in my heart with a look from Andais's power-mad eyes. There was nothing sane in them.
I stood barely inside the door, afraid to move, afraid to attract her attention. All the new power, all the new self-discovery, all the newfound joy and love; and I was suddenly back to being a child again. A frightened rabbit huddling in the grass hoping the fox will pass me by. When I swallowed, it hurt, as if my fear meant to choke me. But I wasn't the rabbit that this particular fox was hunting.
Eamon stood on the small platform at the end of the room, the one that was usually curtained off. He was tall and pale, with his fall of ankle-length black hair the only thing that shielded his body from our view. Eamon was one of those who did casual nudity around the court. I'd seen him nude before and, if he survived the night, would again. No, it wasn't Eamon's beauty that sped my pulse. It wasn't even the implements of torture and death that hung on the wall behind him, framing his body like a collage. It was the queen's words, and his answer to them.
"Do you defy me, Eamon, my consort?" Her voice was calm when she asked it, too calm. It matched nothing in the room, not even the expression on her face.
"I do not defy you, my queen, my love, but I beg you. You will kill him if you do not stop this."
A voice called from behind Eamon, "Don't stop, please, don't stop."
"He does not wish to stop," Andais said, and she moved one hand, negligently, bringing my attention to the whip in it. It had been lost against the blackness of her long skirt, so that until she moved it, I had seen nothing. It was like some well-camouflaged snake, hidden until it would strike. The whip made a heavy slithering sound against the floor, as she moved it back and forth. An idle gesture that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
"You told me once that you valued him because he could take so much pain. If you kill him, you will not have him to play with, my queen." I realized that Eamon was standing in front of the alcove in the center of the wall. He was blocking the view of the place where I knew there were chains bolted into the wall. Whoever it was, he was shorter than Eamon's six feet, and could be killed by a mere whip. Most of the fey could be decapitated, pick up their heads under one arm, and strike back at their enemy. They were not easily killed or injured. Who would need to be shielded like this? Who would Eamon risk himself for? No name came to my mind.
There were other guards in the room. They were all nude. Clothes, armor, weapons lay in a heap at the foot of her bed, as if she'd lain among the silk and fur, and ordered them all to strip. Which she may have done, but seeing a dozen of the sidhe, kneeling, heads bowed, their hair loose and covering their nudity like robes of many colors, was both a lovely sight and a disturbing one.
What had happened? What had changed since Barinthus and the others left the mound and came to fetch me? Barinthus had said she was getting better; this was as bad as I'd ever seen her.
I was afraid to speak, afraid to make any noise, for fear that all that anger would turn in my direction. I wasn't the only one perplexed about how to proceed, for Doyle stood in front of me, and a little to one side, as motionless as I was, as motionless as we all were. Our entrance through the door had turned her eyes to us, but now that we'd stopped moving, she had turned all that attention back to Eamon. None of us seemed willing to risk sharing that attention with him.
She drew the whip out behind her, and there was room among the kneeling men, room, as if this wasn't the first time the whip had come snaking back along the floor. Not the first time that night, nor the twelfth, nor the twentieth. The men stayed like a strange garden of beautiful statues, so very still, as the whip whispered back along the floor. The queen sent the whip forward, using her whole arm, shoulder, back, and finally lower body. She threw the whip the way you throw a good punch. Her wrist flicked at the last moment and gave it that added curl that would make it crack.
It made the sound of a tornado rushing past, and I knew from hard experience that on the receiving end of that lash, the sound was even more overwhelming, like standing on the railroad tracks while the train thunders down toward you, and you can't move out of the way. Not because you don't want to, but because you're chained in place.
Eamon could have moved, but he did not. He stood there, and used that tall, commanding body as a shield for whoever lay behind him. The bullwhip struck him full across the chest with a near-explosive crack that overwhelmed the sound of it hitting his flesh. With a small whip you'd have heard the meaty slap of it. But this was her largest whip, the one that looked like a melanistic anaconda, something long enough and thick enough to crush your life out. I feared that particular whip, because I was mortal, and though Eamon's flesh reddened, it did not bleed. I would have bled.
I like rough play, but not the way the queen did it. She played over the edge and down into the abyss. She went places that my body didn't want to go, and couldn't have survived even if I had. I realized in that moment not who was chained to the wall behind Eamon, but what. There were a few humans who lived at our court. Most were not like Madeline Phelps, the publicist. It wasn't a job. They had been chosen hundreds of years ago, and taken to faerie, some willingly, some not. But they stayed willingly now, because if they stepped but one foot outside faerie, they would age and wither and die. It was a sacred trust, the humans you captured. Some were servants, but usually it was something that attracted sidhe attention. Some were stolen for their beauty or musical talent; in Ezekiel's case the queen had admired his ability at torture. You prized them enough to steal them away from the human world. It was illegal now, but once when we had been a law unto ourselves, both courts had done it. But for whatever reason, once they were given a home here, it was considered bad form, a breach of contract, a sin, to take their lives. They were offered a life of immortality without aging, so you could abuse them, but not to the point of killing them. You couldn't steal from them the very thing that had made them willing to come to faerie in the first place.
Once I realized she had a human against the wall, I was almost certain who it was. Tyler was her current human lover. Last time I'd seen him, he'd been a blond with a skater's cut and a real tan. He was barely old enough to be legal. He was also, according to current rumor, a pain slut. If he was enjoying what the queen was doing to him, he'd passed from pain slut to suicidal.
The great black whip came whispering and slithering back along the stone floor. She sent it out behind her among her silent, immobile guards, and it was roaring through the air, cutting like lightning, against Eamon's flesh. The force of it moved his body as if he'd been shoved, but other than a reddish mark, there was no sign it had hurt him.
Andais made a sound low in her throat, almost a growl, as if that did not satisfy her. She let the whip fall to the ground, like some discarded skin, suddenly empty of life.
She raised her pale hand with its carefully painted nails and gestured toward Eamon. He stumbled back and had to catch himself on the rim of the alcove, or he would have fallen in on top of the one he sought to protect. His fingers grew mottled with the effort to keep himself from falling that last inch backward. Her power filled the room like the pressure before a storm, when the air feels solid and hard to swallow. The pressure grew, and grew, until it was hard to breathe, as if my chest could barely lift against her magic. I knew in that one moment that if she wanted to, she could make the air so heavy that you would suffocate, or at least I would; you could not kill the sidhe by mere suffocation.
She squeezed her hand into a tight fist, and Eamon's arms began to shake with the effort of holding himself against the push of her magic. He spoke between gritted teeth: "Do not do this, my queen." His fingertips moved, his grip beginning to break. He dug into the very stone with the strength that had allowed the sidhe to conquer nearly all of Europe. The stone cracked under his fingertips, but he was able to dig himself fingerholds in it. Blood filled those holes, and began to trickle down the rock. He'd sliced open his fingers, but he held his ground.
I struggled to force my chest to rise and fall, but it was as if I were pushing against some great weight. I could not catch my breath. The cup spilled from my hand, and only Galen's hand on my arm kept me upright. I'd never felt her magic like this. Not like this.
She began to walk toward Eamon, slowly, pushing her power before her like some huge invisible hand. I knew from my own experience that the closer she was to you physically, the stronger this particular magic could be.
Eamon began to tremble, and the blood flowed faster, pooling out of the rock, running down in scarlet rivulets. The effort to hold against the force of her magic made his heart race, his pulse beat harder, and that forced his blood to run faster, made it spill out of him.
My vision ran in streamers of grey and white and star-like patterns. Someone else grabbed my other arm, I couldn't see who. My knees buckled, and I sagged in his arms as darkness ate the light. The air was solid, and I could not breathe it. The light went grey, and then I gasped. My breath came in a long ragged cough that doubled me nearly in two, and only other hands kept me from falling to the floor. When the coughing fit passed, the light came back, and I realized the air was cool against my face. I could breathe again. Galen had a double grip on my right arm, and Adair had my left, a hand around my waist, while my legs remembered how to stand.
I thought the queen had left the room, but she hadn't. She was merely standing in front of Eamon, narrowing her magic down upon him. She had concentrated it on a smaller and smaller point until the rest of the room had emptied of her power.
Eamon had kept his grip on the wall, his mouth open wide, but he wasn't gasping, because gasping implies breathing, and I didn't think he was doing that. It was as if she could bring the pressures of atmospheres to bear upon you. She could use the very air as a weapon. I'd always known everyone was afraid of her, but I'd never seen her use her power like this, and for the first time I realized it wasn't just her absolute ruthlessness that kept her in power for over a thousand years. I looked at the faces of the guards, the greatest warriors the sidhe had to offer, and I saw fear on their faces.
They were afraid of her. Truly afraid of her.
Andais laughed, and it was a wild, unnerving sound that promised pain or death.
She'd picked up a blade while I was mostly unconscious. Now she used that blade on Eamon's chest. She sliced at him as if he were a piece of shrubbery that she wanted to clear away. I expected to see blood spraying, but the air was so heavy that it held the blood close. Made it drip slowly, so that she'd made half a dozen wounds before the first began to bleed.
"Lady help us," Doyle said, and his voice sounded so sad, so empty. He was standing almost directly in front of me. I realized that somewhere in her walk toward Eamon, he had moved to block me from her sight. He sighed, and glanced back at the others. There was a look on his face that I'd never seen before.
Rhys sighed back at him. "I hate having to do this."
"As don't we all," Frost answered from my other side.
I found that I had enough breath to speak. "What are you going to do?"
Doyle shook his head. "There is no time to explain." His black eyes were turned away from me, looking at Eamon and the queen. Eamon's chest and stomach were decorated in blood, shallow cuts dripping down his body. There were deeper wounds on his chest that looked like wide scarlet mouths. She'd opened him up on one side of his body so that the white bones of his ribs glittered through the blood.
He repeated, "There is no time," then he was striding toward the queen. Frost followed him, and Rhys followed them both, giving me a backward glance. "It will look worse than it is. Remember, we'll heal."
My pulse was suddenly faster. What were they planning to do? I started forward, but Galen and Adair held my arms. What had been comforting, and supportive, was suddenly a trap. They held me, not so I wouldn't fall, but so I would not follow.
"Let me go, Galen," I said.
"No, Merry, no." But he wasn't looking at me as he said it; his eyes were all for Eamon. Tall, handsome Eamon, being turned into so much raw meat. "They'll be all right." His voice didn't sound as certain as his words.
I looked at Adair. "Let me go."
Adair shook his head. "I will not, Princess. I will stand and I will hold you, so you do not interfere."
Brii said, "You'll stand and hold her, because then you don't have to help." He moved past us in a swirl of yellow hair.
"Help do what?" I asked, and looked from Galen's serious face, his attention all for what was happening against the wall, to Adair, who would not meet my eyes or look at the queen butchering Eamon.
Doyle was close enough to touch the queen now. His deep voice carried. "My queen, we have returned."
It was as if she didn't hear him, as if the world had narrowed down to the blood-soaked blade in her hand, and the body she was cutting.
"My queen." This time Doyle reached out and laid his dark hand on the whiteness of her arm, just above where the blood had begun to run and stain her skin.
She turned on him in a movement almost too fast for the eye to follow. The blade flashed silver, and fresh blood flew in an arc from Doyle's arm.
I said his name before I could think. The queen turned puzzled eyes out into the room, as if seeking my voice, but Doyle stepped into her line of vision, and she slashed at him again. She hit him once more before Rhys moved up a little ahead of him. I couldn't hear what he said, but whatever it was, it was enough. She struck him. Only the twitch of his shoulders showed that it hurt, but he moved backward as if trying to escape the blow. She didn't like that. She came for him in a wild, slashing attack, and Amatheon was suddenly in her way. She opened his arm from shoulder to hand. The blow made him stumble and turn to protect the arm. She drove the knife into his back, and he fell, dropping to his knees. His eyes were wide with pain, and something else: resignation.
"Welcome to the world of the guards, Princess," Adair said. "Welcome to how we keep each other alive. None but the queen and her Ravens have ever witnessed this. You are most privileged." That last held an irony, a bitterness that seemed to cut the very air, as if there were power in it.
A small sound brought my gaze to the guards still kneeling on the floor in a host of bare skin and silken hair. Hair the color of new-mown hay, hair the color of oak leaves, hair the color of dragonfly wings in the sun, hair the color of purple Easter grass, skin that glistened in the light like white metal, skin that shimmered as if sprinkled with gold dust, skin that held the richness of fur on its surface like some elaborate tattoo, skin as red as flame, as pink as bubble gum. Even stripped of their armor, their clothes, their weapons, they were all different, all so terribly unique. They were the Unseelie sidhe, and stripping them could not make them less.
I wasn't sure who had made the noise, but one pair of eyes glared up at me through a fall of grey hair - not the grey of age, but the grey of clouds before a rain. The eyes that stared up through that long, pooling hair were a swimming green color, that greenish-yellowish, near gold, that the world looks just before the might of heaven roars down on your head. His eyes were the color of the world before it drowns in a storm. Because that was who he was, Mistral, the master of winds, bringer of storms. His eyes were as changeable as the weather, and this swimming green was a sign of high anxiety. I'd been told that once upon a time, the sky darkened when Mistral's eyes looked like that.
He caught my gaze, and held it. He told me with his eyes, his face, that I was just another useless royal. That I stood there guarded and well while they bled. Perhaps it was just my own guilt that I read in his eyes. My father had raised me to believe that being royal meant more than just having power over people. It meant in a way that people had power over you, too, because you were supposed to take care of them. I was in line to be queen, to have the power of life and death over these men, but here I was hiding. Hiding, and so afraid I could barely think. The feel of Galen's and Adair's hands on my arms had gone from an insult to a comfort. I wanted them to hold on to me. I wanted an excuse not to have to do anything. I was hiding behind the very people whom I was supposed to keep safe. I felt the look in Mistral's eyes like a blow. He knelt on the floor, knelt where the queen had told him to kneel, probably with the promise that if he moved he could be chained against the wall, too. That was her usual threat. I'd once knelt on this same floor until I passed out. I was after all only mortal, and could not kneel for a day and a night. They could. And if she willed it, they would.
I could still hear the sounds from across the room, but I stared at Mistral as if his face were the only thing in the world because if I looked away, I would have to see what was happening. I didn't want to see. I was tired of seeing horrors. But no matter how hard I tried, I could still hear.
Small gasps, the sound of ripping cloth, and that thick, meaty sound that is flesh parting under a blade. It has to be a truly deep wound for that sound, a wound to the heaviest, most vital parts of the body. Finally a sound like spraying water, as if someone had turned on a hose, made me look.
I turned toward that noise, slowly, the way you turn in nightmares. Galen tried to move in front of me. But it was as if he, too, were moving too slowly. I saw Onilwyn's face wide-eyed with surprise. Blood fountained from his neck, spraying out and around like crimson rain. I caught a glimpse of pale spine before Galen's broad shoulders blocked my view.
I looked up at him, saw the pain in those pale green eyes. My voice was a hoarse whisper: "Move, Galen, let me see."
He shook his head, his hair drying into haphazard curls as the ice had melted. "You don't want to see."
"If I am princess here, then you must move. If I am not princess here, then what in the name of all that grows and lives are we doing here?"
It was enough. He moved and I could see what the queen had done to her Ravens, to her men, and to mine.