She sat on the edge of her huge black-silk-and-fur-draped bed. It was rich and sensual, and a little threatening, as if there would be pressure to live up to such a bed, and the price for failing expectations might be harsh, or maybe that was just me knowing my aunt far too well.
She was wearing a black silk robe so that her ankle-length black hair mingled with the robe and the sheets, until it was as if her hair was formed out of all that silk and dark fur. Her skin was whiter than white, framed by all that raven darkness, except for one spill of honey-and-white fur to her left that spoiled the effect and showed her hair black and almost normal across it. It wasn’t like her to not notice that one bit of pale that spoiled the intimidating effect of her visual.
Her face was almost free of makeup, and without the black eyeliner she usually wore her triple-gray irises weren’t as striking, again leaving her eyes almost ordinary. Her beauty didn’t need makeup, though without it she was a cold, distant beauty as if carved of ice and raven’s wings. That was a strange thought, with Cathbodua standing beside the mirror in her raven wing cloak, but though both women might have begun as similar battle goddesses, where they had gone from their beginnings had made all the difference. It had made one a queen for a millennium and left the other to diminish until she was barely more than human. It is not where you begin, or what gifts you begin with, but what you do with them that matters in the end.
“Greetings, Aunt Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, sister of my father, ruler of the Unseelie host.”
“Greetings, niece Meredith, Princess of Flesh and Blood, daughter of my beloved younger brother, mother of his grandchildren, and conqueror of hearts.”
I had chosen my words carefully to remind her that I was her niece and she might value my bloodline if not the rest of me, but she had given an answer as careful as my own, and as nonthreatening. It wasn’t like her.
“Aunt Andais, I’m not quite sure what to say next.” She was too far off script for me, and when in doubt truth is not a bad fallback plan.
She smiled, and she seemed tired. “I grow tired of torturing people, my niece.”
I fought to keep my face blank, and felt Doyle’s hand tense on my shoulder where I touched him. I forced my breathing even, and spoke in a normal voice. “May I be so bold as to say, Aunt Andais, that both surprises and pleases me.”
“You may, since you already have, Meredith, and you are not surprised that torture no longer pleases me, you are shocked, are you not?”
“Yes, aunt, quite so.”
She laughed then, head back, face shining with it, but it was the kind of laugh that slithered down your spine and tickled goose bumps from every inch of your skin. I’d heard that laugh as she cut people’s skin with a blade while they screamed.
I swallowed past my suddenly thudding pulse, and knew in that moment that I never wanted her around my babies. I never wanted them to hear that laughter, not ever.
“I see that look upon your face, Meredith. I know that look.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Andais.”
“Determination, decision, and not in my favor, am I right?”
“In your moments of clarity, aunt, you see much.”
“Yes,” she said, face growing somber, “in my moments of clarity, when I do not let my bloodlust have full rein, and carve my unhappiness and lust from the bodies of my courtiers.”
“Yes, Aunt Andais, when you’re not doing that,” I said.
She held her hand out to someone out of sight of the mirror. Eamon, her favorite lover for the last hundred years or so, came to take her hand. He was as pale of skin, as black of hair, as she; a little taller, broader through the shoulders, six-plus feet of sidhe warrior, but the face he turned to the mirror held that calm, even a kindness, that had often been all that stood between Andais and her worst instincts. He’d grown out a thin, neat Vandyke mustache and goatee, but it was still more facial hair than I’d ever seen my aunt allow at our court. Beards and such were for Taranis and his golden throng. Andais preferred her men clean shaven; many of the men couldn’t even grow facial hair.
Eamon sat on the bed beside her, putting his arm across her shoulders, and she leaned into him, as if she needed the reassurance of the touching. It was a show of weakness that I never thought she would allow me to see.
“Greetings, Princess Meredith, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, niece of my beloved,” Eamon said.
In all the years that he had stood by her side in mirror calls to others, I had never heard him greet, or be greeted, by anyone. He had been an extension of Andais, nothing more.
“Greetings, Eamon, wielder of the hand of corrupting flame, consort of my Aunt Andais, holder of her heart.”
He smiled at me, and it was a good smile, a real one. “I have never heard myself called that last before, Princess Meredith; I thank you for it.”
“It was a title I suspected you deserved long ago, but I had never known for certain until today.”
He hugged Andais, and she seemed somehow diminished, smaller, or I just had never appreciated how big a man Eamon was, or perhaps a bit of both.
Eamon raised his eyes a little and spoke. “Greetings, Doyle, wielder of the painful flame, Baron Sweet-Tongue, the Queen’s Darkness, consort of Princess Meredith.”
“And to you, Eamon, all graces and titles deserved and earned to you, as well.”
He smiled. “Now, I do not know whom to greet next, Princess Meredith. Do I give formal acknowledgment to Lord Sholto, who is a king in his own right, or to the Killing Frost, who is dearest to you and the Darkness, or to Rhys, who has regained his own sithen again, and no offense to Galen the Green Knight, but our protocols have nothing to cover so many consorts or princes.”
“If it is a formal greeting for all of us, then Sholto should be next,” Frost said.
I reached out to touch his hand where it sat on the pommel of the sword at his waist. He always touched his weapons when he was nervous. He rewarded me with a smile, and that was enough.
“I will waive such niceties,” Sholto said. “For my fellow consorts to acknowledge my title is enough.” He gave a small bow from his neck toward Frost, who acknowledged with a bow as low as Sholto’s but no lower. There had been a time when you had to know just how low to bow to each level of noble, and to get it wrong was an insult. I was glad such things were in the past. How had anyone gotten anything done?
“Such calm, civilized behavior,” Andais said, in a voice that held distaste, as if it wasn’t a compliment at all.
Eamon hugged her, laying his cheek gently against her hair. “Would you rather they fight and demand every title we could paint upon them, my queen?”
She ignored his question and spoke, in a voice that seemed as diminished as the rest of her. “Why have you not come to kill me, Meredith?”
I fought to keep my face neutral, and watched Eamon look startled, and the first unease cross his face. What was worse, then his face went back to that handsome, unreadable mask that had allowed him to live and thrive in Andais’s bed for so long. Perhaps that last comment had been over the line even for him, chastising his queen in front of others.
I found my voice and said, “I was pregnant with my father’s, your brother’s, grandchildren and would not risk them for vengeance.”
She nodded and put her arm around Eamon’s waist, to be held closer. “I went mad after you killed my son and turned down the crown of my court to save your lover, Meredith. Did you realize that?”
“I was aware that you seemed … unwell,” I said.
She gave that horrible laugh again, and her eyes were fever bright. “Unwell; yes, I have been unwell.”
Eamon held her closer, but his face remained unreadable. Whatever happened here, if she went back to being her usual sadistic self, he would survive. Eamon was not our enemy, but he could not afford to be our friend either.
“Meredith, Meredith, the look on your body, your tight control. Do you not understand that after ce
nturies even the fight for control shows to my eyes?”
“I do know that, Aunt Andais, but control is all I can offer.”
“Control is all any of us can offer in the end, and I lost mine,” she said.
“You seem better now,” I said.
She nodded. “It took me months to realize I was trying to force you to send my Darkness to me. I knew if anyone could slay me, it would be him, but day after long day he did not come. Why did you not send him to me, Meredith?”
We had actually discussed sending Doyle to assassinate her, but I had vetoed it. “Because I didn’t want to lose my Darkness,” I said.
“Your Darkness, yes, I suppose now he is ‘your Darkness.’” Anger showed on her face.
I didn’t like the “suppose” in that sentence. “Doyle is one of the fathers of my children, which makes us a committed coupling now.”
She sat up a little straighter in the curve of Eamon’s arm. “Yes, yes, he is yours as a consort, Meredith. I mean nothing by it, beyond the fact that I thought he would be sent to end my pain, but he did not come, and gradually the madness and grief left me. Eamon risked much to bring me back to myself. I tortured Tyler to death one night. I valued him, and I have missed him since, and that helped me realize how far I had fallen.”
Tyler had been a barely legal teenage lover. He’d been a human brought into the Unseelie sithen to be her slave, in the bondage-and-submission sense, not in a bought-and-sold sense. Tyler had been good looking in a vapid sort of way; he had been entirely too much pet and not enough person for my tastes, but he had pleased Andais, met a need that was real for her. Apparently he had been more important to her than even she knew.
“I am sorry for your loss, Aunt Andais.”
“You sound as if you mean that.”
“I would not have wished death by torture on anyone. I had no quarrel with your slave, Tyler. I simply did not understand him or his interactions with you enough to comment.”
“Such careful wording, my niece; you never liked Tyler.”
“He disturbed me, because you wanted him to disturb me. I know it was part of your games to control me, or amuse yourself, but I was never afraid of Tyler, and he never harmed me. If I hadn’t found some value in him I wouldn’t have helped your guards and Eamon protect Tyler the night that you almost whipped him to death.”
There had been a night in the private chambers of the queen when she had chained Tyler to the wall of her bedroom, and it had gone from a pain-filled game to a near-death experience for him. Eamon had shielded the human with his own body, trying to bring Andais back to sanity in time to save Tyler and keep her from stripping the flesh even from Eamon’s bones.
The other guards had been forced to kneel and watch the torture, but what had begun as forcing her celibate guards to watch her have sex with her pet had turned into true life and death. I had watched Rhys, Doyle, Frost, Galen, Mistral, and so many others bloodied and dreadfully injured trying to come to Eamon’s aid. In the end I had stepped forward and hoped only to give them time to gather themselves, to think of a way to stop her, but the Goddess had blessed me, and the queen had been stopped by the blessing of the Goddess through me. It was not my power that had done it; I never had illusion otherwise. The best I could claim was that my faith and courage had been rewarded. That night Aunt Andais had been poisoned deliberately to drive her into her full bloodlust in hopes that she would be painted so mad that her nobles would see that Prince Cel, her son, should come to the throne sooner, but I had interfered, and the plan had backfired.
“But you were not there this time, Meredith. You were not in the court that the Goddess and Consort gave to you and Doyle. If you had been, Tyler might still live.”
Was she truly going to make this my fault? It was like her self of old; she took little blame for herself and had seen even less attached to Cel, her late son.
Eamon didn’t try to soothe her this time, but sat with his arm almost stiffly around her, as if he wasn’t sure whether she still welcomed it.
“Would you not have given up your crown to have the man you loved by your side again?” I asked. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to ask, but it was all I could think of to say.
I smelled roses, and knew the Goddess was with me. She either approved of what I’d said or would aid me if the queen did not. Something brushed my cheek and I looked up to find pink and white rose petals falling from empty air. The petals began to collect in my lap like floral snow.
Andais made a sound between a scream and an inarticulate curse. “Pink and white petals, not red, not the colors of our court, but of that golden throng that thinks themselves so superior to us, why, Meredith, why the Goddess of the Seelie and not the Dark Mother?”
“The Goddess is all women, all things, or that is what She has shown to me.” I kept my voice calm, but surrounded by the scent of roses in the summer heat of a meadow, in the midst of the soft-petaled rain of roses, I couldn’t be upset. Her blessing was too close to me, and it felt warm, safe, like home is meant to be, but so seldom is.
Andais sat up, moving out from the curve of Eamon’s arm. “The gardens that have returned to our sithen are full of bright and happy colors. Your Seelie heritage has contaminated our kingdom. You would reshape us in the form of that other world of lies and illusions. You’ve seen what Taranis considers truth, Meredith. How can you wish our court to become a fairy-tale land that is not real?”
“I did not wish these changes on your court, Aunt Andais. The Goddess returned and with Her the wild magic, and it goes where it will, changing things as it goes. No one of flesh and blood can control the wild magic of faerie itself.”
“Would you have returned us to our former dark glory if you could have chosen, Meredith?”
The fall of petals began to slow, but my lap was full of them already. “I do not know, and that is the truth. I had no affection for the court of my uncle; if I had a home in faerie it was the Unseelie Court, and as you remind me, my uncle has made me dread his court even more. So no, aunt, I would not make the Unseelie Court over into that glittering place of lies.”
My pulse had sped, not from Andais being so close, but from the thought of Taranis. I mercifully didn’t remember most of the attack, but I remembered enough.
Frost and Doyle both laid a hand on my shoulders at the same time. Sholto and Mistral each laid a hand on mine, and I took their hands. Galen went to one knee beside me, his leg almost brushing Kitto, who had remained motionless and still as the footstool he pretended to be, so still that I had almost forgotten him. He had the gift of being that still even when standing beside me. Galen laid his hands on my knee through the layer of petals. He gazed up at me, giving most of his back to the mirror. It was both an insult and a sign that he didn’t see her as a threat, or it would have been if one of the other men had done it, but it was Galen and I doubt he thought beyond comforting me. Rhys had taken a half-step forward, so that his hands were free if she was as rash as Taranis had been when he got angry over a mirror call. Galen seemed oblivious to the danger. He had not changed completely. I was both relieved and afraid of what I would find when I raised my eyes from his sweet face to look at my aunt.
I expected anger, disdain, but what I saw was pain, and the closest I’d ever seen to sympathy except when my father died. “It was not my intent to remind you of what he did to you, niece. Our lawyers have told me of what the Seelie king is trying to do, and for that I am sorry, Meredith. I believe Taranis is madder in his own way than I am, or was. At least I come to my senses. He lives in his delusions.”
“I appreciate your sentiments, Aunt Andais, more than I can say.”
“I made a bargain with you, Meredith, that if you produced a child I would step down for you. Now you have produced three. It is beyond my wildest hopes. I also know that there are two babes from other couplings in your exiled court; again it is more than I hoped for. Come home, Meredith, and the throne is yours, for I gave my word and I cannot go back upon it
.”
Galen’s hand tensed against my knee; the rest of the men went very still where they touched me. Rhys stayed in his forward position. I felt the guards at our backs shift as if a wind had touched them. Turning down Andais never went well.
I fought to keep my voice even. “I do not believe that I would live long upon your throne, Aunt Andais. There are still too many among our court who see my mortal blood as the doom of them all.”
“They would not dare harm you for fear of me, just as they have not harmed me during my madness for fear of worse from me, Meredith.”
There was a certain logic to what she was saying, but in the end I believed I was correct. “To rule either court, the nobles must take oath to the new ruler, and bind themselves to her or him. At our court it is a blood oath, and I proved on the dueling grounds that to share my blood made my opponents mortal.”
“That was unexpected when you killed Arzhul.”
“He certainly did not expect the blood oath to make him killable by bullet, or he would never have allowed me a gun against his sword.”
She smiled, and looked satisfied. “You were always ruthless, Meredith; why did I not see your worth sooner?”
“You hated my mixed blood as much as any in court, Aunt Andais.”
“You’re not going to bring back up the time I tried to drown you when you were six, are you? It’s very tiresome to be reminded of it, and I would take it back if I could.”
“I appreciate that you would take it back, but your belief that I am not worthy to be an Unseelie noble, let alone rule there, is shared by many at the court. They fear taking oath to me, Aunt Andais, for fear that my mortality will cancel out their immortality permanently. Since I cannot promise them it will not happen just as they fear, I think they will choose my death over theirs, or worse, my death over slowly aging like a human.”
“For fertile wombs, Meredith, you might be surprised how many would accept you.”
“I think that not all the sidhe at your court are as wedded to having children as you are, aunt.”
A Shiver of Light Page 11