The mist smelled damp, dank, but over it all I could still smell the scent of fruit, perfect, waiting. Waiting to yield its sweetness in that one perfect moment when the world held its breath and waited for the hand that would touch this perfect woman, this perfect offering, and give her the glory she was due. Even as I thought, I knew I was God-ridden. But with the God's power filling me, she was beautiful. Hair of raven's wings, eyes of mist and shadow, skin formed of starlight and moon's brightness, lips the color of heart blood. It was a terrible beauty, something that would call to your body and make your heart cry. I knew also that if my magic had been different, there would have been different fruit upon this tree, and I was glad that I could call the Seelie Court to my blood.
The God rode over me, and I was back to the perfect moment when even a breath would spoil all, and there was only one thing to do. You honored the gift.
I kissed those crimson garnet lips, and found my own lips were like deep, red rubies, like melding two separate jewels. I felt my hands cupping the sides of her face, and found the bones of her face delicate, fragile under my hands. My hands were smaller than hers, they had to be, but for this moment they were large enough to cup her face and hold it, gently. I became for that moment the sun, all that was male, all that was the best of what it meant to be male, at his height of prowess, the Summer King, Lord of the Greenwood. I kissed her as she was meant to be kissed, gentle, firm, held in hands larger than my own, held in a strength greater than her own, and the more tender for that, the more careful for it. I kissed her as if she would break. Then she pressed into the kiss, her power spilling through my mouth, and the kiss grew into something less cautious, more sure of itself. At the invitation of her lips, her eager hands on my body, the power of the greenwood rode through her, pierced her. She tore her mouth from mine and cried out.
Our powers fell into each other, and for a few shining moments the glow of silver and white merged until there was but one glow, one fire. It wasn't her face I saw. This face was young, with thick brown hair and laughing eyes: the next face was red-haired and green-eyed; then hair like clean white cotton and skin almost as pale. Woman after woman slid before my eyes, and I felt myself change, too. Taller, shorter, broader, bearded, dark of hair, pale of skin, dark of skin. I was many men, all men, no man. I was the Lord of Summer and I had been always. And the woman before me was my bride, and always had been. It was the eternal dance.
The first thing I noticed that was of this world and not the next was that my knees hurt. I was kneeling on stones. The second was the woman who was holding me, stroking my hair. She held me so close that I could feel her smaller breasts pressed against mine.
Andais smiled down at me, and she looked younger, though I knew that wasn't exactly it. Her eyes were bright, and her dark red lips smiled down at me, because kneeling she was still taller.
"Are you healed?" she asked.
The moment she asked, I realized that I'd forgotten I was hurt, but I took a deep breath and felt... fine. No, better than fine. "Yes," I said.
Her smiled brightened into something close to a grin. Andais did not grin. "Look at what our magic has wrought." She gestured out at the room. Onilwyn knelt, eyes a little dazed, but his throat was white and perfect once more. Eamon was sitting up, and there were no more holes in his chest. Doyle turned a perfect face to me, and gave a nod, almost a bow.
"They're all healed."
Tyler, the human whom she had nearly killed, was laughing and crying beside Mistral. I think he spoke for us all when he giggled and said, "That was absolutely the most amazing feeling. It was like being light."
I looked back at Andais. There was a look in her eyes that was disquieting, calculating, and something else, something new. I realized she was still holding me very close. I tried to move back, and her arms tightened, kept our bodies pressed together. I was no longer God-ridden. I was no longer a match for her in strength, or anything else.
The smile she gave me was one I'd only had from lovers, and it prickled down my skin to see it on her face.
"If you were a man I would take you to my bed for this night's work."
I wasn't sure what to say, but knew I had to say something. "Thank you for such a compliment, Aunt Andais."
She cocked her head to one side like a hawk that's spied a mouse. "Reminding me that you are my niece will not keep you out of my bed, Meredith. We are like most deities, we often intermarry, or interfuck." She laughed then, and it was a better, more purely amused sound than any I'd ever heard from her. "The look on your face." She laughed again, and let me go.
She stood, and stretched, and even that small movement prickled power along my skin. "I feel so very much better." She looked down at me and offered me her hand.
I took it and let her help me to my feet. She kept my hand in hers, giving me very serious eyes. "Come, Meredith, let us go kill the traitor who tried to bespell her queen. Doyle tells me we have an assassin to find as well."
I wondered then how long I'd been insensible. All I said out loud was, "As my queen wills it."
She pulled me suddenly and roughly against her, putting my arm behind my back with her hand still holding it. "I am grateful, Meredith, very grateful for this gift of magic, but do not misunderstand. If I think that by bringing you into my bed I can recall that magic, I will. If I think that by sending you to anyone's arms, that level of magic can be reborn, I will send you. Is that clear?"
I swallowed and took a deep breath before I answered, "Yes, Aunt Andais, it is clear."
"Then give your auntie a kiss."
What else could I do? I put a light kiss upon those lips, and she slipped her arm through mine, patting my hand as if we were the best of friends. "Come, Meredith, let us go slay our enemies."
I'd have been a lot happier to accompany her to the throne room if she hadn't kept touching me. It wasn't so much a lover's touch, but almost like you'd pet a dog. Something you stroke for comfort, and because it can't say no.
CHAPTER 31
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?"
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