There are no seconds in a seelie duel. Once one of the combatants can no longer continue, the fight ends. There is no second to pick up the weapon and avenge you. But you can choose who wields the blade that draws your blood for the oath.
Doyle had borrowed a ribbon to pull his hair back from his face. He put the tip of his knife against my lower lip, the very point of his sharp knife against the soft skin of my mouth. He was quick, but it hurt anyway. It always did when you bled your mouth. It would be a kiss that sealed the blood oath: such a little bit of blood to mean so much.
If it had been only to first blood we could have worn armor, which was why the first cut was on the face. All you had to do was remove the helmet, and you could be cut.
He cradled my hand in his, baring the wrist to the point of his blade. Again, he was quick, but it hurt more this time, because it was a larger cut. Not too deep, but longer. Blood filled the wound and began to drip slowly down my skin.
Again, if it had been to second blood, someone could have kept a little armor on, but third blood meant no armor. No protection but your own skin and whatever clothes you were wearing.
Doyle touched his blade to the hollow of my throat, and made a tiny cut that stung. I could not see when blood filled it, but I could feel the first trickle of warmth as my blood began to slide down my neck.
All three cuts hurt, sharp and immediate, which was good. I knew from experience that if any of the cuts closed before the final part of the ritual, Miniver's blade wielder would get to redo my wounds. I did not want that. I didn't even have to know who it was, to know that you do not give your flesh over to your enemies' blades. I'd had Galen wield the knife once, and he'd been so squeamish about hurting me that two of the wounds had had to be redone. Cel's friends had damn near slit my wrist.
I looked up into Doyle's darkly handsome face. I wanted to say so many things. I wanted to kiss him good-bye, but didn't dare. We stood in a magic circle that the queen had traced upon the stones of the main court. Inside this circle was a sacred place, and one touch of mortal blood could contaminate, as I'd proven in other duels. But the last duel that I'd managed to kill someone in, I'd been armed with a handgun. They'd been outlawed after that duel. I thought that was unfair, since the gun had acted as the equalizer it was meant to be. The sidhe who'd died had outweighed me by more than a hundred pounds, and had had more than double my reach of arm and leg. He'd been a great swordsman, and I was not. But he hadn't been much of a marksman. Most of the sidhe weren't, the Queen's Ravens being the exception. Most sidhe still treated firearms as if they were some sort of human trick.
But there would be no guns today. No swords, no weapons. I'd chosen magic, and Miniver was more confident than ever of her victory. I was hoping she would be overconfident. She was Seelie enough for it.
She stood across the stones from me, in her dress of gold. Blood had begun to trace a thin dark line on the front of that dress, as her neck wound bled. The cuff of her dress was scarlet with her blood. Her blood was only a little darker red than her mouth, and it only showed crimson as it began to spill down her chin.
I fought the urge to lick my own lip as I felt the blood seep down my chin, but we were supposed to save that blood for each other.
"Are the wounds satisfactory?" the queen asked from the throne where she sat to watch.
We both nodded.
"Then make oath to each other." Andais's voice was neutral, but not perfectly so. Her voice betrayed a niggling sense of anger and unease.
Doyle stepped to one side, and the noble who had wielded the blade for Miniver did the same on the opposite side of the circle. It left Miniver and I facing each other over a space of stone floor.
We stayed unmoving for a heartbeat or two, then she started forward, striding in her full skirt like a confident golden cloud. I walked to meet her. I had to be more careful, because the high heels I was wearing were not meant for striding over old stones. It would ruin so much if I twisted an ankle. My skirt was too short to do anything, and all my clothes were still blood-soaked. Nothing about me billowed or floated like a cloud.
Her full skirts seemed to wrap around my nearly bare legs. She looked down at me for a moment, as if she expected me to finish it, but she was a foot taller than I was, and there was no way for me to close that distance without her help.
She stood there, blood running down her chin. Hands at her sides. I wasn't sure what was wrong at first; then I realized where she was looking. She was staring at my throat, at the blood that welled there. She was trying to stare as if she were horrified by the barbarity of it, and most of her face succeeded, but her eyes... those beautiful blue eyes like three circles of perfect sky... those eyes held something close to hunger. I remembered what Andais had said: that whoever crafted the spell had understood her battle madness, her bloodlust. Whoever had made the spell had understood Andais's magic. How do you best understand something, except by experiencing it yourself.
Miniver's eyes stared at the wound in my throat as if it was something wondrous, and fearful. She wanted the blood, or the wound, or the harm; something about it fascinated her. But she feared that fascination.
I'd spent my share of time being on the wrong end of Andais's hobbies. I knew that for her blood and sex and violence were all intertwined to the point that where one left off, and the others began, had blurred.
Miniver had never by action or word given hint that her power held anything akin to the queen's. If she was filled with the same hungers that Andais fed, then Miniver had the control of a saint. Of course, it's easy to be a saint when you are so terribly careful never to be tempted.
Miniver had spent my lifetime leaving the court when the entertainments were too bloody. She was too Seelie to enjoy such blood sport, so she'd said. Now I saw the truth in her eyes. She hadn't left because she was horrified; she'd left because she did not trust herself. Just as she did not trust herself at this moment.
I knew what it was to deny your true nature. I'd done it for years among the humans, cut off from faerie and from anyone who could have given me what I craved. I knew what it felt like to have that craving answered after so very long. It had been overwhelming. Would it be the same for Miniver?
I closed the distance between us, wading into that stiff gold cloth until I could feel her legs, her hips, against my body. She watched the blood at my throat, as if the rest of me were not there. I finally moved close enough that I had to put my hands around her waist to keep steady on my high heels.
She backed up then, and made a show of not wanting me to embrace her, but it hadn't been that, or at least not just that. I'd stepped so close she couldn't see the blood flowing.
"You are a foot taller than I am, Miniver. I cannot share oath with you, unless you help."
She stared down that perfect nose at me. "Too short to be sidhe at any court."
I nodded, and winced, made a show of touching my throat. It hurt, but not that much. She watched me touch the wound, watched me tug at the neck of my blouse. If she'd been male, or a lover of women, I'd have accused her of enjoying the flash of clean white breast I gave her, but I don't think it was anything as simple as flashing the top of my breast at her. I think it was the sight of clean white flesh with fresh blood on it.
I offered her my hand, the one with the cut wrist. "Come, Miniver, help me make this oath."
She could not refuse me, but the moment her hand touched mine, felt the slick play of blood, she jerked back. It must have been torture to her to watch first the goblins feed, and then the demi-fey.
"If you wish to call this duel off, I will not argue," I said, and my voice sounded utterly reasonable.
"Of course you wouldn't, because I am about to end your life."
"Will you bleed me?" I asked, raising the wrist so she could see how much blood was welling out of it. "Will you spill my body open across these stones?"
The first bead of sweat marred that perfect forehead. Oh, yes, she wanted to do just that. She wanted to slaughter as she'd made Andais do. She had filled that wine with all her own most fervent and hidden desires. If I stripped her of her pretense late in the fight, she would slaughter me. But if I could strip her now, immediately, if I could make her attack me during the kiss, then I could strike without any ceremony, too. I could open that white throat from end to end, and maybe, just maybe, I'd live through this.
She had two hands of power. The first worked from afar, and I didn't want that one. She could shoot a bolt of energy from a great distance, and one direct hit might be enough to stop my heart, but she had a second hand. The hand of claws. She had to put those slender fingers against my body, and it would be as if invisible claws shot out from those manicured nails. Invisible claws that cut through flesh like knives, and could be wrenched through the body without the resistance of metal. Doyle and Rhys had both seen her use it. It was her left hand, and it was the one I could survive. So it was the one I needed her to use.
I'd been afraid, but now there was no time for fear. Panic would get me killed, and what would happen to my men if I died? Frost had said he would die before going back to Andais. I was all that stood between them and returning to the queen's mercy. I could not leave them, not like that. Not helpless to protect themselves.
I needed to survive. I had to survive, and that meant that Miniver had to die.
I walked back into the rough embrace of her gold cloth, and as before when I was close enough to feel her body through the dress, I put my hands at her waist for balance.
This time she pulled me roughly against her, as if she'd make it all as quick as possible.
I raised my left hand, the one with its fresh wound, as if I meant to touch her face, but she grabbed my wrist to stop me. It didn't really hurt, her hand on the cut, but I made a small pain sound anyway.
Her eyes were just a little wider, and she pressed her hand into my wrist.
I obliged her, making another small sound.
I could see her pulse in her throat jumping under her skin. She liked the sounds. She liked them so much that she ground her hand into my wrist, and the next sound was real.
My voice came out breathy, and it wasn't pretend. "You're hurting me."
She pulled me in tight against her body, twisting my arm behind my back so that she could keep digging at the wound. She jerked my arm upward, sharp and hard as if she meant to pull it out of its socket.
I cried out, and her eyes were wild. She put her other hand against the back of my head, balling her hand into my blood-soaked hair. A sound came low in her throat, and I watched her fight against herself, watched the battle rage in her eyes from inches away. If I had misjudged this, I was about to die, and it was going to be slower and a great deal more painful. The thought brought fear in a rush over my skin, thundering my pulse in my head. I didn't fight it, and it was as if Miniver could smell it on me, could smell my fear, and liked it.
Her mouth hovered over mine, a breath from closing the space and sealing our oath. She jerked my arm again, and I screamed for her. A sound came out of her that was almost a laugh, but had nothing to do with laughter. I'd never heard anything like it. If I'd heard it in the dark, I'd have been afraid.
She whispered into my mouth, "Scream for me, scream for me as I drink your blood. Scream, and I won't hurt you while I do it."
I hesitated, because I could not decide in that split second what would be better: to give in and scream, or to make her work for it. Miniver made my mind up for me. She pressed her mouth to mine, and I didn't scream for her, so she made me scream.
She jerked my arm again, and that made a small sound, but she didn't want a small sound. There was no warning, no prickle of magic; my left hand was just suddenly pierced by knives, five blades slicing through my flesh and bones. I screamed for her then, I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, muffled against her mouth, trapped against her body. She drank my screams the way she drank my blood, and I defended myself.
The pain and fear translated directly into power. I didn't think, Bleed, I thought, Die. Her throat exploded with our mouths still pressed together, so that we both coughed on her blood.
I thought she would let me go, but she didn't. Her hand was still wrapped in my hair, and all she had to do was call her power, and I would die. I focused on the wound in her wrist, and she tried to scream with her ruined throat. Her hand fell away from my head, and the hand flopped almost completely torn away from the arm. There was no hunger in her eyes now, only shock and horror, and the panic that only the truly immortal can show at death. That puzzled fear as they feel it begin to take hold.
She threw me away from her body, and I couldn't catch myself with only one good arm. The arm she had pulled behind my back was useless, numb and aching at the same time. I could not feel my shoulder, and distantly I knew that was probably a good thing.
I lay on the floor for a second trying to decide if I was too hurt to move. Then I saw her stagger toward me, trying to get her hand in line with her wrist, as if she was having trouble using her hand of power with her hand torn away. I had to do something before she figured out how to use it.
I stared at the gaping red mess that had been her throat, her spine shining wetly in the lights. I could see the bones of her clavicle just over her breasts. With all that damage, she was still struggling to kill me. She should have been dying by now. Why wasn't she dying?
I shoved my power into her. I could feel it like a huge balled fist just under the bare bones I could see in her upper chest. I squeezed that power, squeezed it, concentrated it.
A bolt of energy raised the hair on my body, and scarred the floor just beyond me. Miniver had torn her own hand off, and was trying to shoot energy out of her bloody stump, but she was having trouble finding the range.
I felt that huge fist of power in her upper chest, in the wound I'd made, and I opened it. I spread the fingers of my magic wide, and her upper chest exploded outward in shards of bone and flesh and blood like a crimson rain.
I had to use my good hand to wipe the blood from my eyes so I could see Miniver on her back, her arms scrambling at the stones as if she was trying to breathe without a throat, without a chest, without lungs. If she'd been human she would have been dead. If she had been mortal, she would have been dead. But she wasn't dead.
I heard the queen's voice distant, more distant than it should have been. "I declare this duel over. Do any of you argue this?"
There was no sound.
"I declare Meredith the winner. Do any of you debate that?"
I heard a voice, though I couldn't place it. It was a woman. "They are both on the ground. I think the princess is as hurt as Miniver."
I understood then that I would have to get up. I managed to push myself upright with my good arm. The world swam in colors, but if I braced my arm, I could sit. I looked up, slowly, and found it was Nerys who had spoken against me.
"Are you content now, Nerys?" Andais asked.
"The law says that to be victor you must leave the circle under your own power."
I was really beginning to dislike Nerys. I pushed to my knees, and the world swam in colors, but finally I could see again. I wasn't entirely sure I could stand, let alone walk. But if you have no pride to defend, then there are other methods of moving. I crawled on one hand, and my knees. I crawled toward Nerys. I crossed the magic circle just in front of her table, then I used my good hand to grab the edge of that table and pull myself upright.
I stared at her from not so very far away, and said, "Doyle."
He was beside me, and probably had been closer than I knew. "I am here, Princess."
"Tell the queen to tell the court what Nerys did."
He called to Andais, "The princess requests that you reveal what Nerys has done."
The queen did, and I watched Nerys and all her people push away from the table, and stand there. They could not run because the guards held the only door, but the moment they pushed to their feet in a mass, I knew they intended to fight, and not as Miniver had fought, not within the rules. They intended to fight everyone.
"Demi-fey," I said.
Doyle leaned close. "Let me carry you, Meredith."
I said again, "Demi-fey."
He didn't seem to understand, but I suddenly had a small cloud of winged people around me. "You called, Princess?" said the one with a voice like bells.
"I offer you sidhe flesh and blood."
"Yours?" she asked.
"No," I said, "theirs."
There was a moment where the cloud of bloody butterflies hesitated, then almost as a single mass they fell upon Nerys and her people. It was so unexpected that the demi-fey got their bit of blood and flesh before the sidhe began to swat at them, and use magic to burn one small winged creature out of the air.
Nerys's face was a mass of bloody scratches. All of them had been bloodied, hands, necks, faces, breasts. The demi-fey had done their work well.
It never occurred to me that I shouldn't try. It never occurred to me that it wouldn't work. Shock is a wonderful thing. I didn't even hurt; I just couldn't feel my arm. But I could feel my power. I whispered, "Bleed," and blood began to pour out of their wounds. Such small wounds for so very much blood.
That burning bolt came our way, but an armored knight was there to take the blow, to send the heat shattering into sparks.
"Goblins," I said, and the Red Cap Jonty was there, with Ash and Holly beside him. "Bring your brother Red Caps."
Jonty didn't argue, but brought back a wall of huge Red Caps, and they lined up around me. They helped keep me safe while I called blood from Nerys and all her nobles.
Some of them broke ranks and drew knives against the swords of the guard. I think they preferred to be cut down rather than go the way Miniver had gone. Then one of her nobles dropped to her knees, and called out, "Forgive us!"
Andais said, "You would have killed me, and made me slaughter my guards. What mercy do you deserve?"
The woman crawled out from under the table, and Doyle moved me back, out of her bloody reach. "Please, Princess, please, do not destroy our entire house, all that we are."
"Nerys must die, for she has led you into betraying your queen."
Nerys's voice came, all arrogance gone. "I will pay the price for my actions if you will spare my people."
Andais agreed, and Nerys came out from behind her table, to stand where Miniver and I had begun our fight. The circle was gone. It was not a duel. It was an execution. Except how do you kill the immortal? Miniver was still struggling on the floor surrounded by guards. How do you kill the immortal? By tearing them apart.
I had Ash do it, because I needed Doyle to keep me standing, and I would not have asked any of the other guards to do it. Ash cut her at her throat, chest, and stomach, and I thought that was enough. The Red Caps encircled her, and the demi-fey hovered overhead. I threw the hand of blood into those wounds, and split her open like a ripe melon thrown to the ground. The Red Caps and demi-fey were drenched in her blood. But she did not die.
My legs wouldn't hold me anymore, and Doyle carried me away from it. He carried me to the queen, and I was crying, and didn't remember it. "I can't kill them any more dead than this."
She handed her sword, Mortal Dread, to me, hilt-first.
"She cannot stand enough to wield it," Doyle said.
"Then I will give them to your allies, the goblins and the demi-fey. I will let them be eaten alive as a warning to our enemies."
I looked into her eyes and hoped she was joking, but knew she wasn't. I held out my hand for the sword, and she gave it to me. Doyle carried me back with the sword resting across my lap.
The queen stood and announced in her ringing voice, "Miniver drank of Meredith's blood, yet she has not died from mortal wounds. It seems to disprove her theory that Meredith's mortality is contagious."
Silence met her words, silence and faces pale with shock. I think that the Unseelie Court had seen more of a show than they'd bargained for this night.
"Meredith begs me to kill the two traitors and not to leave them as they are. I told her that they were her kills, and that I would give them to the goblins and the demi-fey to feast upon. Let them be eaten alive, and let their screams echo in the ears of my enemies."
They stared up at her like children told that the monster under the bed is coming to get them.
"But they are not my kills, and if the princess can bring them true death before they are fed to the goblins and the wee ones, then so be it."
Doyle carried me to the floor, then hesitated a moment before carrying me to Miniver. Her throat had begun to heal, the flesh filling back in. I realized that she would survive this wound. In fact, the hand that she'd torn off to try to kill me was half attached again.
"Doyle," I said, and he seemed to know what I meant, because he called my guards to me. If Miniver was healing, then that meant she was still dangerous. It would be foolish indeed to get myself killed doing an errand of mercy.
Andais called, "Why do you need extra guards, my niece?"
Doyle answered for me, "She heals, my queen."
"Yes, be careful that your act of mercy does not get you killed, Meredith. That would be a shame." She said it almost carelessly, as if it truly didn't matter to her. "You will find, niece, that no one here will respect you for being merciful."
I said too softly for her to hear, "I do not do it for their respect."
"What did you say, niece?"
I took a deep breath and did my best to make myself heard. "I do not do it for their respect."
"Then why?" she asked.
"Because if I were in her place, I would want someone to do it for me."
"That is weakness, Meredith, and the Unseelie will not forgive it. It is a sin among them."
"I do not do it for their pleasure or their pain; I do it because it matters to me what I do, not what they do, not what anyone else does, only what I do."
"You are like an echo of my brother. Remember what happened to him, Meredith, and take it as caution. It was most likely his sense of mercy and fair play that got him killed." She stalked down the steps, holding her black skirts out, and she looked as if she were waiting for a roving photographer to snap her picture. She always moved in front of the court as if she were on display.
"Strange then, Aunt, that it was your violence and love of pain that was nearly your undoing."
She stopped on the last step. "Have a care, niece."
I was too tired, and the shock was beginning to wear off, and my arm was beginning to hurt. I wanted to be somewhere where I could pass out when I could feel my arm completely again. The first twinges promised much, none of it good.
I looked down at Miniver. "Do you wish true death? Or would you go alive into the pots of the goblins?"
I watched thoughts slide through those blue eyes, some good, some bad. Some I couldn't even begin to understand. "What will they do to me?" she asked, at last.
I leaned in against Doyle's chest, and didn't want to answer the question. I wanted to be done with this. I did not want to be sitting here talking to someone who should have been dead. Someone who was, in a way, already dead. Miniver still held hope in her eyes, and she should not have.
"At the rate you are healing, the goblins will most likely use you for sex before they begin to cut off pieces of you for food."
She stared up at me, and I saw the denial in her eyes. She didn't believe me. She was rebuilding herself, not just her body, but her sense of self. I was watching that arrogance begin to take hold again. She did not believe that such horrors would befall her. She believed that she would somehow survive, as she'd survived my attack.
"You will wish for death long before it comes, Miniver."
"Where there is life, there are always possibilities," she said. The skin of her chest showed white and whole through the blood, as if this was new skin, freshly made, that the blood had not touched.
Doyle put two guards on her and carried me back to Nerys. She was not healing as quickly, because I'd been more thorough, but she was healing.
I gave her the same choice that I'd given Miniver, but Nerys said, "Kill me." Her eyes had flicked up to the circle of Red Caps, and Holly and Ash. Seeing them stare down at her had convinced her she did not want to be alive when they took her.
"Ash." I had to repeat his name twice more, before he turned his green eyes to me. "Take the Red Caps and stand around Miniver. Let her see what fate awaits her if you take her living into the mound."
"We will be staying here with you, so we will not be touching her."
I sighed. "Please, do not split hairs with me, just do what needs doing."
"How convincing do you want us to be?" he asked, and there was something in his face of anger. I'd spoken dismissively to him, and that is not a good tone to take with a goblin warrior, especially one who will share your body soon.
Saying I was sorry would be seen as weakness, and would make it worse. I did the only thing I could do: I grabbed his arm - not as hard as I would have liked, but as hard as I was able with the inside of my head feeling so fragile. "You and Holly are not to be convincing at all. You are mine, and I will not share you. Let the Red Caps be convincing."
Ash gave me a smile that managed to be fierce and lusty at the same time, a look you wore if slaughter was your idea of sex. "You played the first sidhe well, Princess." He leaned in close and almost whispered, "Helpless little noises. Will you make helpless little noises for us?"
I felt Doyle's body go very still, as if he didn't like the question, or what it meant. But truth was truth. "Helpless little ones, and probably great big screams."
He chuckled, and it was that masculine sound that all men make when they think of such things. It was almost reassuring that he made that laugh. Male was male, some of the time.
"Your screams will be the sweetest of music." He took my hand from his arm and laid a kiss upon the back of it. Then he motioned, and all the Red Caps, save Jonty, followed him away.
Jonty looked at me. "My king ordered me to guard your body, not hers. I got distracted by this one's blood, and let you get too close to that other one just now. If she'd killed you, I'd have never heard the end of it."
He was well spoken for a Red Cap, but I didn't say so out loud, because that would imply I was surprised that any Red Cap was well spoken.
"You must strike the death blow from your own two feet, Meredith," Andais said, "or Nerys goes to the goblins as she is."
Real fear flared in Nerys's eyes, and she mouthed, Please.
Doyle pressed his mouth against my ear. "Can you stand?"
I laid my face against his and gave the only answer I had. "I don't know."
He set me on my feet, and steadied me that moment I needed. I looked at her chest. I was short enough that I could rest the tip of the blade over her heart. My legs began to tremble, but that was all right. I gripped the hilt with my good hand, took a deep steadying breath, and let my body fall upon the hilt of the sword, driving the point through her chest and into that still-beating heart. The blade rested against bone for a second, then slid home. I collapsed to my knees beside the body, my one good hand still wrapped around the hilt.
Nerys's eyes, almost a twin of the queen's, were open and unseeing. I'd done what I could for her.
Screams came from behind us.
I leaned my forehead against my good arm. I wasn't sure I could stand on my own. If the queen insisted on me walking to Miniver, then I could not do it.
Galen knelt beside me. "Take off the high heels, Merry."
I turned my head just enough to see his face, and managed a smile. "Smart you."
He slid the shoes off my feet while I stayed kneeling. I realized that I was swaying on my knees. Shoes or no shoes, that didn't bode well for walking. "What are they doing to her?"
"Playing," Doyle answered.
I raised my head enough to meet his eyes. "Playing?"
Doyle and Galen exchanged a look. That was enough. "Take me to her." Doyle lifted me as gently as he could, and the sword trailed from my hand. It felt so heavy. Apparently being dead once today, and nearly having my arm ripped out, was taking its toll. I was beginning to look forward to passing out, the way you look forward to sleep after a long, hard day.
The goblins had moved so that the court could see what they were doing. It was a show - and what good is a show without an audience? One of the smaller Red Caps was kneeling beside Miniver. His fingers were playing in the healing flesh of her chest. He traced and tickled her flesh, as if he were touching her genitalia. A touch here, a caress there, and it showed skill, but his fingers weren't between her legs. His fingers were inside the meat of her chest. He was caressing the top of her heart as if that would finally bring her to orgasm.
Doyle carried me around to her head. "Don't let them take you like this, Miniver."
"Get them away from me. Get them away from me!"
I looked at Ash, and he motioned the rest of them away. The one who was playing in her body left reluctantly, and squeezed her breast as he moved away.
Miniver lay there gasping on the floor, her eyes wild. She looked up at Jonty, still standing over her, and said, "Get him away."
"No," he said, "I am her guard, and I will guard her. I have no interest in your white flesh."
Doyle put me on my feet, but my legs did not hold this time. I collapsed to my knees beside her.
Miniver reached out toward me with her healed hand, beseeching. I had a heartbeat to realize that she lied with her eyes and her body. Doyle hit her hand away, and the bolt of energy sizzled outward to scar along the table on the other side of the room. Jonty trapped her arm under his big knee. He was shaking his head. "Do you want me to tear her arm off?"
I thought about it, then shook my head. "Bind her, and let them take her."
"No," Andais said, "for that last, I think we should see some of her punishment." The queen came in a hiss of black silk. She looked down at Miniver. "You are a fool. Do you not understand that the very fact that you are alive and healing means that Meredith is no longer mortal? I watched her die today, and breathe again. You have lost everything you are, for nothing."
"Lies," she said.
Andais leaned down, touched the other woman's face, a strangely tender caress. "You craved blood and violence. I saw it. We all saw it. You tried to destroy me with it. Now we will see you destroyed with it." She turned to me. "Do you see now, Meredith? You offered her mercy and she tried to kill you. You cannot be weak among the sidhe, not if you wish to rule." She touched my face, much as she'd touched Miniver's. "Heed this lesson, Meredith, and wipe mercy from your heart, or the sidhe will surely cut it out." Her smile was half wistful, half something I could not read, and probably did not want to. "You look tired, Meredith."
She eased the sword from my hand. "Take your princess to my room, use my bed as if it were your own. I will send Fflur with you." She motioned and a sidhe as golden-haired as Miniver came forward, but Fflur's skin was also a pale yellow, and her eyes a solid black. She had been Andais's personal healer for more years than I remembered.
She gave a lovely curtsey and said, "I would be honored to tend the princess."
"Yes, yes," the queen said and waved it away, as if it were a given and Fflur had had no real choice.
Chains had been brought, and Miniver screamed as they shackled her. It was cold iron, and her hands of power would not work while she wore it. Goblins handle base metal better than the sidhe, probably because it interferes with magic more than the strength of arm.
"Take her, Darkness. Go." She turned and began to walk back toward her throne.
It was only when Sholto realized we were leaving for the night that he came to the doors. "The duty of the sluagh is to protect the queen, but when our bargain is done, we will also protect you." It was almost an apology for not having helped more tonight. Sholto is young for a king, under four hundred, and it keeps him more humble than most.
"I will not be striking any bargains with anyone tonight," I said.
"That is as well, I would not leave the queen's side this night." He glanced back at her. "The sluagh stand with Andais, and there are still those sitting here who need to be reminded of that."
He was right, and I was suddenly more tired than I could manage. I wanted no more politics tonight. No more games. My arm throbbed, sending sharp, shooting pains through my body like small knives. The muscles in it seemed to have a life of their own, dancing and twitching involuntarily. I fought not to cry out with the pain, for that was weakness, too, among the sidhe.
Fflur touched the arm lightly, and made a small tsking sound. "You've torn the muscles, and the ligaments that bind your bones. Dislocated, as well. The damage to the soft tissues will be harder to heal than bone." She shook her head, and made that faint tsking sound again.
"Can she be healed tonight?" Ash asked.
Fflur looked at the goblin as if she wouldn't answer, then did. "No, not tonight. She is part human, and that makes her healing slower."
Ash grinned at me. "Then we will leave you for tonight, Princess. I think we should stay and hear what else happens tonight."
"As you please," I said, and truly did not care what they did. I was fast approaching the point where the pain was all I could concentrate on. Soon nothing else would matter, and my world would narrow down to the pain. I liked a little pain in the right context, but I couldn't turn this to pleasure. This was just going to hurt.
We left the great hall to the sounds of voices, as the Unseelie began to murmur among themselves. It would be interesting to see how long it took this night's work to reach the ears of the King of Light and Illusion in the Seelie Court. I was due in two days to be at a banquet in my honor at his court. Two days to heal. Two days to finish my alliance with the sluagh and the goblins. Two days didn't seem enough time for all that.