We got only as far as the spring. It bubbled and sang among the stones. The queen dropped to her knees before it. "I have not seen this water flowing in nearly three hundred years." She gazed up from her knees. "How did it come to be here?"
The men turned and looked at me. The look was more eloquent than any words.
"This is your doing, is it?" she asked, and her voice held an unfriendly purr, as if we were no longer best friends.
Eamon, who had stayed close to her side since his miraculous healing, laid a hand on her shoulder. I expected her to toss his gesture away, but she didn't. Her shoulders rounded under his touch, her head almost bowing. When she raised her head, there was a smile on her face more tender than any I'd ever seen before.
She asked her question again, in a voice that matched that smile, but all the attention of her face was for Eamon. "Did you bring the spring to life, niece?"
It was a trickier question than she meant it to be. If I said yes, then I was claiming more credit than was my due. "I and Adair."
The gentle look left her face as she turned to me. "You must truly be a wondrous piece of ass. One quick fuck and he risks his life for yours."
I was puzzled by most of what she'd said, but concentrated on the latter part. "If he fucked me, it was on your orders. The punishment of death for breaking his celibacy no longer applies. The guards were always allowed to fuck if the queen wills it."
Some of her anger faded to a look I couldn't decipher, as if she was thinking. I remembered Barinthus's words that her mind was harder to keep distracted than her groin had been. "You did not see Adair's heroics, then?"
I looked at her, fighting to keep my face neutral. "I don't know what you mean, Aunt."
"When you bled me, after Galen had taken some of my sting, Adair threw himself in my path as well." She didn't look pleased. "As I said, you must fuck like a courtesan. Bloody fertility goddesses, always think they're so wonderful."
I wasn't sure if admitting Adair and I hadn't had sex would please her or enrage her. So I said nothing. Apparently, Adair and all the others who had witnessed thought the same thing, because no one spoke up.
Eamon's hand squeezed gently on her shoulder. She patted his hand, but said, "Adair, come to me."
The guards parted and Adair came to the front to stand beside me. He risked a glance at my face, then dropped to one knee before the queen. His head was bowed so his face was hidden from her. It was the proper thing to do, but I'd seen the anger in his eyes before he knelt. He had to master his face better than that or he would not last at court, any court.
I looked down at where he knelt, golden and perfect except for the lack of hair. He was immortal, and had once been a god, and had risked all that to help me. The queen had promised me that all the Ravens I took to my bed would be mine. My guards, and no longer hers. Technically, she couldn't harm him, not if she believed we'd had sex. Of course, the same was true of Doyle, Galen, Rhys, Frost, Nicca, and, though she did not know it, Barinthus. But her promise had not kept my true guards safe. In fact, crazy or not, bespelled or not, that she had harmed them meant she was forsworn. I'd promised to keep them safe, and by dying to prove it, my promise stood. Hers was broken. She was an oathbreaker. Sidhe had been cast out of faerie for such things. The problem was that the only person who could hold her to that level of faith, was her.
"Galen and Adair took blows meant for the princess. The princess's own guard took blows meant for Eamon and Tyler." A look like pain crossed her face, and she held on to Eamon's hand where it lay on her shoulder. "I am grateful that Merry's men saved me from destroying that which I hold dear. But none of the Ravens threw themselves in Merry's way. No guard of mine tried to help me, once battle was joined, even though it was not a declared duel. Only a declared duel would have freed my guard from protecting me."
Mistral dropped to his knees on the other side of her, though I noticed that he was just out of reach. Not that that would truly help if things went badly. "You ordered us to kneel, and not to move, my queen. On pain of joining your human against the wall." He gave her a look that was a mixture of appeal and anger. "None of us would risk your anger."
"But that is not all, Mistral. That, I could forgive. I heard others talk of slaying me. Of taking my own sword Mortal Dread and killing me before I awoke. I heard the treacherous talk."
I remembered snatches of conversation myself. This line of reasoning could end nowhere that I wanted us to go. But how to distract her? Doyle's deep voice fell into that nervous silence. "Should we not attend to Nuline, who is truly traitor to the courts, before we place blame for loose talk?"
"I say who and what we attend to first," she said.
Eamon knelt beside her, and even kneeling he was bigger than she. I'd never appreciated before how broad his shoulders were, how physical his presence was. He whispered something against the side of her face.
She shook her head. "No, Eamon, if they will not protect me, and would rather see me dead, then they may turn and join our enemies. We will be besieged on two fronts. You must never leave an enemy behind you."
"Is it not better to fight a war on one front, rather than two?" I asked.
She looked up at me, befuddled. I didn't know if it was the aftereffects of the spell, or something else, but she wasn't herself.
"It is always better to fight a war on a single front, instead of two," she said, at last. "That is why the traitors before me must die first."
"The spell was meant to make you butcher your guards," I said, the way you'd talk to a slow child. "If you execute them now, you will be doing exactly what your enemies wish."
She frowned at me. "There is logic in what you say. But talk of murdering your queen cannot go unpunished."
"And what is the penalty for being forsworn among us?" I asked.
"An oathbreaker," she said.
"Yes."
"Death or banishment from faerie," she said, and her voice was very sure, but her eyes held something. Either she saw the trap or she was worried about something else.
"You swore to me that all the men who came to my body would be my guards, the princess's bodyguards, no longer Queen's Ravens."
She frowned at me. "I remember."
"You also promised that no harm would come to them without my permission, just as no harm can come to your guards without your permission."
She frowned harder. "Did I promise you that?"
"Yes, Aunt Andais, you did."
She looked down at the bubbling spring. "Eamon, did you witness this promise?"
Eamon looked up at me, and something in his eyes let me know he was about to lie. "Yes, my queen, I did." Eamon had not been in the room when Andais made the promise. He had lied for me. No, not for me, for all of us.
Andais sighed, "The queen's promise must be inviolate." She stood and looked down at me. "I am forsworn, Princess Meredith, but I am also queen here. We have a quandary upon our hands."
"Since the promise was made to me, then the wrong was done to me."
"So you may forgive it," she said, "but I assume that this forgiveness comes at a price." The eyes were watchful, and there was a warning in them that I could not read. There was something she was afraid I would ask, and she did not wish to give it.
"I am blood of your blood, Aunt. How could it be otherwise?"
"And what is your price, niece of mine?"
"A price for each of my men that you injured."
"Blood price then," she said.
"It is my right."
Her face was as closed and guarded as I'd ever seen it. "And what blood would you demand?"
"Blood price can be paid in other coin," I said.
A look slid through her eyes, almost of relief, then she nodded. "Ask."
"Any guards who spoke of Mortal Dread are to be forgiven. All are allowed to arm themselves before we go to the throne room. And we show a united front before the rest of the court until the would-be assassins are caught and executed."
She nodded. "Agreed."
The guards put back on their armor, some of which looked like the pelts of animals or the hard shiny coats of insects, and some of the more knightly-looking armor came in colors that no human-wrought steel could have achieved. The queen went to the wall and touched the stones. A piece of the wall vanished, and there was nothing but darkness in its place. The queen reached into that darkness and drew out a short sword whose hilt was formed of three ravens with their beaks holding a ruby nearly the size of my fist, and their wings flung outward in silver to form the guard. The sword's name was Mortal Dread, and it was one of the last great treasures left to the Unseelie Court. This weapon of all our weapons could bring true death to the sidhe. A mortal wound with its blade was mortal for all. It could also pierce the skin of any fey, no matter its magic, or what substance it called flesh.
She turned to me with the sword in her hand, and I did not fear, for she had no need of such magic if she meant to slay me. She stared down at the blade, letting it catch the light. "I am still not myself, Meredith. My mind is half besotted with the effects of the spell. I have not allowed myself such a surrender to slaughter in centuries. Such should only be used against one's enemies." She looked up, and there was sorrow in her eyes. A heavy knowledge. She knew that none of Cel's guard would have dared such a thing without his knowledge, if not his approval. He had not said, Kill my mother, from his jail. No, it would be more along the lines of, Will no one rid me of this inconvenient woman? Something where, if questioned, he could truthfully deny the order. Deny knowing that they would take his words of anger and make them real. But it was a game of words, and half-truths, and lies of omission. The look in her eyes was of someone who could no longer afford half-truths.
"I feared for my son's sanity, Meredith." Her voice held a note of apology. "I allowed one of his guard to go to him and slack the lust of Branwyn's Tears before he went mad."
I just looked at her and my face showed nothing, because I didn't know what I felt in that moment.
"You allowed one of his guard to slack his lust, to save his mind, and that very night another of his guard gave you a spell that would drive you to slaughter your most powerful protection."
Her eyes were frightened. "He is my son."
"I know," I said.
"He is my only child."
I nodded. "I understand."
"No, you do not. You will not understand until you have children of your own. Everything before that is pretense of sympathy, a dream of understanding, a nightmare of things you think you believe."
"You're right, I have no children, and I don't understand."
She held Mortal Dread up to the light, as if she could see more in its slender surface than was there for me to see. "I am still not sane. I can feel the madness inside me now, can feel what I've become. I've felt this feeling before, but now I wonder if my love for seeing the blood of others has had help. Help for years, perhaps."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing. Silence was good when anything you said could be taken so wrong.
"I will see Nuline dead, and the ones who are behind the attack on you, my niece."
"And if they are the same people?" I asked.
Her eyes flicked to me. "And what if they are?"
"You decreed that if any of Cel's people tried to kill me while he was still imprisoned, his life would be forfeit."
She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the flat of the blade. "Do not ask me for the life of my only child, Meredith."
"I have not asked."
She let me see that famous anger in her eyes. "Haven't you?"
"I have merely given the queen's words back to her."
"I have never liked you, niece of mine, but nor have I hated you. If you force me to kill Cel, I will hate you."
"It is not me who will force your hand, Queen Andais, it is him."
"They could have acted without his knowledge." Even as she said it, her eyes showed that she didn't believe it. She wasn't crazy enough to believe it anymore.
She looked at me, and something passed through her tri-grey eyes with their rings of black that left each grey darker and richer because of it, as if she had used eyeliner on her own irises.
"Far be it from me to complain if we're talking about killing Cel," Galen said, "but everyone knows that any attempt on Merry while Cel is still imprisoned means a death sentence for him."
"If we can prove his people were responsible," Mistral said.
"But don't you see, Nuline is part of his guard. If Nuline brought the spell, then it must be Cel who sent her - but what if it wasn't?"
"I am listening," Andais said.
"Nuline is like me, she's not good at court politics. She's not good at deception. What did she say when she brought the wine to you?"
"That she knew it was one of my favorites and hoped its sweet taste would remind me of just how sweet my son could be." Andais was frowning now. "The words do sound like a speech given to her by someone else." She shook her head. "I am the Queen of Air and Darkness, I do not fear assassination attempts. Perhaps such arrogance has made me careless." She said it slowly, as if she didn't really believe it.
"People often give her gifts," Mistral said. "It is a way of currying favor."
"One more offering in a wealth of offerings will go unnoticed," Doyle said.
"We need to know where Nuline got the wine," Galen said.
Andais nodded. "Yes, yes, we do." There was something in her voice that I didn't like. It was a purr of hatred. Hatred will blind you to the truth, especially if you want to be blinded. She said, "Bring me my Darkness."
Doyle came at her call, but he stayed by my side. "I am, by your own words, the princess's Darkness now."
She waved it away, as if it meant nothing. "Call whomever you like master, Darkness. I ask only if you can track this spell back to its owner."
"I could not track it off your skin, but the bottle is still here. It is too powerful a spell not to leave a taint, a signature as it were, of the one who made it. If I can smell their skin, taste their sweat, then yes, I can track this to its owner."
"Then do it," she said, and she looked at me as she said the last: "Wherever this trail leads, we will follow, and punishment will be swift."
I looked at her, afraid to believe that she meant what I hoped she meant.
"Heard and witnessed," Barinthus said.
The queen did not look at him, but only at me. "There, Meredith, another oath to hold over my head."
"What do you want me to say, Aunt?"
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her gaze fled from my face and found a piece of wall to look at, as if she didn't want anyone to read her eyes in that moment. "What would you do, if you were me, niece?"
I opened my mouth, closed it, and thought. What would I do? "I would send for the sluagh."
She looked up then, her eyes very hard, as if she were trying to see through me. "Why?"
"The sluagh are the most feared of all the Unseelie. The sidhe themselves fear them, and they fear little. With the sluagh at your back, as well as your Ravens, no one will try a direct attack."
"You believe someone would dare attack me, us" - she motioned at the waiting knights - "head-on?"
"If the spell had gone its course, Aunt Andais, you would have slaughtered all your guards, and then with no one left to kill in this room, where would you have gone? What would you have done?"
"I would have found others to kill, any others."
"You would have ended in the banquet hall where there are sidhe who would not stand idle while you sliced them open," I said.
"They would have looked for a reason for my behavior," she said.
"I don't think they would. You have slaughtered and terrorized this court for a very long time. What you did here tonight is not that far from things I have seen you do before."
"Before, most of the slaughter had a purpose," she said. "My enemies fear me."
"Slaughter done coldly, and slaughter done in the heat of madness, look much the same when you are on the wrong end," I said.
"Have I been such a tyrant that the entire court would believe this of me?"
The silence in the room was thick enough to wrap around us all. To wrap us and choke us, because none of us knew how to answer the question without either lying, or angering her.
She gave a bitter laugh. "There is answer enough in your silence." She rubbed at her head as if it ached. "It is good to be feared by your enemies."
"But not by your friends," I said, softly.
She looked at me, then. "Oh, niece of mine, have you not learned, yet, that a ruler has no friends? There are enemies and allies, but not friends."
"My father had friends."
"Yes, my dear brother did have friends, and it's most likely what got him killed."
I fought back that flare of anger in me. Anger was a luxury that I could not afford. "If I had not been here today with the hand of blood, to bleed the magical poison out of your body, you would be dead, too."
"Be careful, Meredith."
"I have been careful all my life, but if we are not bold tonight, then our enemies will see us both dead. Perhaps Cel was even meant to die tonight. To be executed for killing me, and you. It would clear the way to the throne for other bloodlines."
"No one would be so foolish," she said.
"No one at court knows that I have the hand of blood. But for a quirk of magic, this would have worked exactly as they planned it."
"Fine, call the sluagh, and then what?"
"If I were you, or if I were me?" I asked.
"Either, both." Again she was studying me, trying to understand me.
"I would contact Kurag, Goblin King, and warn him, and have him bring more goblins than he is usually allowed into our sithen."
"You think he will throw his lot in with you against the entire Unseelie sidhe?"
"If I gave him a choice, no, but he has no choice. He is my sworn ally, and to deny me aid is to be forsworn. The goblins will kill a king for that."
She nodded. "Three months from now, he will not be your ally."
"Actually, four," I said.
"It was only six months, and they are half gone," she said.
"True, but Kitto is now sidhe, and for every sidhe-sided goblin I bring into their power, I gain a month of Kurag's aid."
"Will you fuck them all?" It was said with no offense, as if it was the only way she knew how to ask the question.
"There are other ways to bring someone into his power."
"You would not survive hand-to-hand combat with a goblin, Meredith."
"Kurag has agreed that we may help the princess bring over his people," Doyle said. He touched my arm, and in anyone else I would have said it was nerves. But it was the Queen's Darkness; Doyle didn't get nervous.
"Most will not agree to fighting you, Darkness, or the Killing Frost. They will pick on those among Meredith's guard whom they believe they can defeat. They will try to kill your men." She turned back to me. "How will you prevent that once the fight is joined?"
"I will choose champions," I said. "They fight the warriors of my choice, not theirs."
"I assume you will choose Darkness and Frost."
"Probably," I said.
"Many will refuse to fight them, so I ask again, are you willing to bed all the goblins who will line up for a taste of your shining flesh?"
"I will do what I said I would do."
She laughed. "Even I have not stooped so low as to bed a goblin. I would have thought it was beyond the pale for you."
"I think you'd like goblin sex. They like it rough."
She looked past me, and I realized she was looking at Kitto, who was trying to stay close to me and be as invisible as possible at the same time. "He looks a little fragile for my idea of rough."
Kitto pulled back even farther behind me and Doyle, and Galen. I moved just enough to bring her attention more firmly to me. "When you have to lay ground rules that your lover is not allowed to bite off pieces of your body, I think that qualifies as rough."
She looked past me again at the sliver of face that Kitto had left in view. She jumped, and said, "Boo." He scrambled behind me, and then pushed back into the other guards, putting distance between himself and the queen.
Andais laughed. "Fierce indeed."
"Fierce enough," I said.
"I will call the sluagh. You call the goblins." She put her head to one side like a bird that had spied a worm. "I can call the sluagh from a distance, for I am their queen, but how will you call the goblins?"
"I will try the mirror first."
"And if that fails you?" she asked.
"I will use blade and blood, and magic to call him."
"An old method," she said.
"But effective."
She nodded, then closed her eyes for a moment. "The sluagh come to my call. I grant you the use of my own mirror to try for Kurag's attention."
"You sound doubtful that I will gain his attention."
"He is a crafty one, for a goblin. He will not wish to be drawn into the royal squabbles of the Unseelie Court."
"The goblins are the foot soldiers of the Unseelie Court. Kurag can pretend that our infighting means nothing to him, but so long as he calls himself a part of the Unseelie Court, then he must pay attention to our squabbles."
"He will not see it that way," she said.
"Let me worry about Kurag."
"You sound confident. You cannot bed him, for you cannot help him commit adultery."
"Sometimes you gain more from the promise of a thing than from the thing itself."
"You cannot offer what our laws forbid," she said.
"Kurag knows our laws as well as we do, never believe otherwise. He forgets them only when it is convenient for him. He will know that it is not sex I am offering."
"Then what?"
"A chance to help me clean myself up."
She frowned. "I do not understand."
And she didn't, because though Kurag knew the laws of the sidhe, the same could not be said of our queen about the laws of the goblins. I knew that the fluids of the body were more precious to the goblins than almost anything. Flesh, blood, sex; somewhere in that combination was a goblin's idea of perfection. I was going to offer the goblins two out of three, and the touch, though not the taste, of sidhe flesh. I would have said that I was going to offer them all three, but knew better. The goblins' idea of flesh is a piece they get to keep in their stomachs or in a jar on a shelf.