“They call it the dead gardens, not the dead forest,” I said.
“It was both once,” Doyle said, softly.
Rhys explained, “This was a world at one time, Merry, a whole underground world. There were forests and streams, and lakes, and wonders to behold. But it whittled down, as our power was whittled away. Until, at the end, it was just what you saw when we entered—a bare patch where a flower garden once grew, surrounded by a fringe of dead trees.” He motioned toward the spreading trees. “The last time I saw anything like this inside any faerie mound was centuries ago.”
Abe hugged me from behind. It startled me, and I tensed. He started to pull away from me, but I patted his arm and said, “You startled me, that’s all.”
He hesitated, then hugged me close. “You’ve done this, Princess.”
I turned enough to see his face. He was smiling. “I think you helped, too,” I said.
“And Mistral,” Doyle added. His deep voice tried for neutral and almost made it, as much as it hurt him to say those words. He’d been convinced that the queen’s ring, which now sat on my hand, had chosen Mistral for my king. Only later had I been able to convince him it wasn’t so much Mistral as the fact that he was simply the first sex I’d had inside faerie while wearing the ring. Doyle had accepted that, but now he seemed to be wondering again.
“Doyle,” I said.
He shook his head at me. “For miracles such as this, what is one person’s happiness, Princess?”
I’d almost broken him of calling me princess. I had finally been Meredith, or Merry, to him, but no longer, apparently. I touched his arm. He pulled away from my touch, gently but firmly.
“You give up too easily, my friend,” Frost said.
“There is sky above us, Frost.” Doyle motioned outward with the gun in his hand. “There is forest to walk through.” He raised his face upward, and let the warm rain fall on his closed eyes. “It rains inside the sithen once more.” Doyle opened his eyes and looked at Frost, grabbing his arm, dark against light. “How clear do you need your messages to be, Frost? It seems that Mistral did this.”
“I will not give up my hope, Darkness. I will not lose it, when it is so freshly won. You should not, either.”
“I’ve missed something,” Rhys said.
Doyle shook his head. “You have missed nothing.”
“Now, that’s too close to a lie, and we never lie,” said Rhys.
“I will not discuss this with you, here,” Doyle said. He looked past Rhys to Mistral’s tall figure. It was a small look, but enough to tell me of his jealousy.
“Look to your own power, Darkness,” Abe said.
“Enough,” said Doyle. “We must tell the queen what has happened.”
“Look at your chest, Darkness,” Abe said.
Doyle frowned at him, then looked down. My gaze followed his. It was hard to see against the black of his skin, and in the uncertain light, but…“There are lines on your skin, red lines.” I moved closer, trying to decipher what Abe’s power had drawn on Doyle’s skin.
I started to reach out, to trace the lines on his chest. Doyle moved out of reach. “I cannot bear much more, Princess.”
“Your body is painted with your symbol again,” Abe said. “It is not just Mistral who is returning.”
“But it is he who is returning faerie to itself,” Doyle said. “And I was ready to stand in the way of it, for my heart would not let me lose this fight. But that was before this wonder of the dead gardens come back to life, and my sign of power returning. I have served this court century after century as we lost all that we were. How could I do less than serve the court as we begin to win back what was lost? Either my oath to serve means something, or it never meant anything at all. Either I can do this for the good of our people, or I have never been the Queen’s Darkness. I either do this, or I am nothing, do you not see that?”
Abe went to him, touched his arm. “I hear you, so honorable Darkness, but I tell you that this power is a generous thing. Goddess is a generous Goddess. God is a generous God. They do not give with one hand and take with the other. They are not so cruel.”
“I have found their service most cruel.”
“Nay, you have found Andais’s service cruel,” Abe said, voice soft.
A bird twittered out in the twilight woods—a sound of settling in for the night, sleepy and questioning.
A voice came out of the dimness: “I thought you a drunken fool, Abeloec, but now I realize that it wasn’t the drink making you so. It’s simply your natural state.”
We all whirled toward the voice. Queen Andais stepped from the far wall, where she had emerged earlier. We had been more than careless not to realize she might come back.
Abe dropped to one knee in the mud. “I meant no offense, my queen.”
“Yes, you did.” She walked only a little way toward us, then stopped, grimacing. “I am happy to see the rain and clouds, but the mud, I could have done without.”
“We are sorry that you are displeased, my queen,” Mistral said.
“The apology would sound better if you were on your knees,” she said.
Mistral dropped to his knees in the mud beside Abe. Their hair was too long, wet and heavy; it trailed into the mud. I didn’t like seeing them like that. It made me afraid for them.
She waded through the now ankle-deep mud until she could have touched them, but she walked past. Instead, she reached out to trace her fingers across Doyle’s chest. “Puppy dogs,” she said, smiling.Doyle stood impassive under the caress of her hand, though Andais had made a torture of caresses. She would tease and torment, then deny them release. She’d made a game of it for centuries.
She touched Frost’s arm. “Your tree is dark against your skin now.” She moved to Rhys, touching the dual fish. She moved to me, and I fought not to cringe away from her. She put her hand on my stomach where the exact imprint of a moth stood, like the world’s most perfect tattoo. “A few hours ago this moth fluttered, struggling to escape your skin.”
I looked down at where she touched, hoping she wouldn’t go lower. She didn’t like me, but she might touch my intimate parts because she knew I loathed her. Sex and hatred always mixed well for my aunt.
“My guards told me that it would become like a tattoo.”
“Did they tell you what it was?”
“A mark of power.”
She shook her head. “The others have the outline of a creature, or an image, but your moth looks real. It is more like a photograph imprinted on your skin. That is not something that Abeloec’s magic can give you. This”—she pressed hard against my stomach—“means you can mark others. It means that those you mark are lesser powers flocking to the warmth of your fire.” She curled her arm around my waist, and pressed my body against the black robe of hers. She whispered against my ear, “The men don’t like this, no, they don’t. They don’t like me touching you, not one…” she licked the edge of my ear, “little…” she licked down the curve of my neck, “bit.” She bit me, hard and sudden, not to draw blood, but to make me jerk.
She drew her head up and said quietly, “I thought you liked pain, Meredith.”
“Not straight out of the box, no.”
“That’s not what I heard.” She let me go and walked around the group of us. “Where are all the other men who vanished from the bedroom with you?”
“The garden has taken them,” Doyle said.
“Taken them, how?”
“Taken them into tree and flower and ground,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
“As Amatheon rose from the dirt, will they return to us, or was their death the price for this miracle?” She whispered it, but her voice seemed to echo.
“We don’t know,” Doyle said.
A bird began to sing again. A high, trilling cascade of music fell from the sky, dancing over us. And as if sound could be touch, it wrapped us around in something beautiful, something just out of sight. It seemed a reminder that the dawn would come and death would not be forever. It was the sound of hope that comes each spring to let you know that winter will not last, and the land is not dead.
I could not help but smile. Mistral and Abe raised their faces upward, as if turning gratefully into a spill of warm sunshine.
Andais began to back away as the last sweet note fell upon the air. She backed toward the part of the wall that still held darkness, as if the magic’s return could not touch it. “You will make of the Unseelie Court a pale imitation of the golden court that your uncle rules, Meredith. You will fill the darkness that is our purpose with light and music, and we will die as a people.”
“Once there were many courts,” Abeloec said, “some dark, some light, but all faerie. We did not divide ourselves into good and bad as the Christians do for their religion. We were everything at once, as we were meant to be.”
Andais did not bother to respond. Instead she simply said, “You have brought life to the dead gardens. I will not try to pixie on my promise. Come to the Hallway of Mortality and save Nerys’s people if you can. Bring that bright Seelie magic into the other heart of the Unseelie Court and see how long it survives.” With that she was gone.