Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(56)

I glanced up and found both Amatheon and Onilwyn closer than they had been. Close enough perhaps, to hear our words. I knew almost with a certainty that they were spies for Queen Andais. The question was, who else would they spy for? Did Queen Andais really believe that either man would tell secrets only to her? No, it wasn’t their loyalty she counted upon. It was their fear. Andais counted on all the sidhe fearing her more than anyone else.
Yet someone had tried to kill me. Someone had risked the queen’s anger. Either they did not fear her as they once had, or fear alone is not enough to rule a people. She was still the Queen of Air and Darkness, and that was plenty scary enough for me. But I’d never believed that fear alone was enough to rule the sidhe. Of course, neither had my father, and his lack of ruthlessness had gotten him killed. If I survived to come to the throne, I knew I could not be Andais; I didn’t have the stomach for it. But I also knew I could not be my father, because the sidhe already saw me as weak. If I were as compassionate as my father, it would be my death. If you cannot rule by fear, or by love, what is left? To that, I had no answer. As the faerie mounds rose out of the winter twilight, I realized that I didn’t truly believe there was an answer. Two words came into my mind as if someone had whispered them: ruthless and fair.
Could you be ruthless and be fair, at the same time? Isn’t to be ruthless, to be unfair? I’d always thought so, and my father had taught me so, but maybe there was a middle ground between the two. And if there was, could I find it? And if I did, did I have enough power, enough allies, to walk that middle road? To that last question, I truly had no answer, because I knew enough of court politics to understand that no one really knows how much power she has, how good her friends are, how stout her allies, until it’s too late, and she’s either won, or lost; lived or died.Chapter 26
The faerie mounds looked like soft snow-covered hills, and if you did not know the way in, that’s all they would be. Of course, the mounds, like almost everything else in faerie, were never quite what they seemed.
There were two things you needed to go inside the sithen. One, to know where the door was; two, to have enough magic to open that door. If the sithen was feeling playful, the door would move repeatedly. You could spend an hour chasing the door around a hill the size of a small mountain. Or perhaps it only played with me, because when Carrow laid his tanned hand against the white of the snow, there was a sound of music. I could never tell you what the tune was, or if it was singing or merely instruments. But it was beautiful music, and the closest thing we had to a doorbell. Though it was more to let you know that you’d found the door than to announce you to everyone inside. No music meant you hadn’t touched the right spot. Carrow laid that small flare of magic against it, and the door was suddenly there. Or rather the opening was there, for there was never truly a door to the Unseelie sithen. There was just suddenly an opening big enough for us all to walk inside, four or more abreast. The opening always seemed to know exactly how big it needed to be. It could grow large enough for a semi to pass through, or small enough for a butterfly.
The twilight had deepened to near darkness, so that the pale white light from the opening seemed brighter than it was. Barinthus carried me into that light. We stood in a grey stone hallway, big enough for the semi to have kept on driving, at least to the first bend of the hallway. The size of the door didn’t change the size of the first hallway. It was one of the few things that never changed about the sithen. Everything else could change on the sithens’, or the queen’s, whim. It was like a fun house made of stone, so that entire floors could move up and down. Doors that led one place would suddenly lead somewhere else altogether. It could be irritating, or amazing; or both.
The opening vanished as Frost, the last of us, stepped through. It was just another grey stone wall. The door could be just as invisible from this side as the other. The white light came from everywhere and nowhere. It was steadier than firelight, but softer than electric light. I’d asked what the light was once, and been told it was the light of the sithen. When I’d protested that that told me nothing, the reply was, it told me what I needed to know. A circular argument at best, but in truth I think it’s the only answer we have. I don’t think anyone alive today remembers what the light truly is.
“Well, Barinthus, are you going to carry the princess all the way to the queen?”
The sound of swords clearing sheaths made a soft metallic hiss, like rain on a very hot surface. Guns are quieter when you draw them. But guns and swords pointed down the hall toward that voice, and some weapons pointed back toward the now invisible door, just in case. Barinthus and I were suddenly standing in the center of a well-armed circle. 
The sidhe who’d spoken was smiling. The sidhe standing next to him was not. Ivi’s smile was insolent, mocking. He made himself the butt of his own jokes more often than anyone else. He was tall, as tall as Frost or Doyle, but he was slender as a reed, and as graceful as a bed of reeds when the wind makes them dance. I’d have liked him better with shoulders a little wider, but the lack of them made him seem even taller, willowy. His hair fell straight and fine to his ankles. The hair was his most outstanding feature, medium to dark green, with a pattern of white veins running throughout. It was only when he got closer that you realized that his hair bore the mark of leaves as if the hair had been tattooed with ivy. As he moved down the hall, it was as if wind blew the leaves apart, and they re-formed only as his companion grabbed his arm and held him back. I think Ivi would have kept on in the face of all those weapons; walked down that hallway with a smile on his face and laughter like darkness in his eyes. Once I’d thought him careless, but as I grew older I tasted the sorrow in him. I began to realize that it wasn’t carelessness, but despair. Whatever had prompted him to become one of the Queen’s Ravens, I don’t think he enjoyed the bargain as much as he’d hoped.
The cautious hand on his arm belonged to Hawthorne. His black hair fell in thick waves past his knees. When he turned his head, the light gleamed rich green from those black waves. He wore a silver circlet that held that heavy mass back from his face. The rest of him, from broad shoulders to feet, was covered in a cloak the color of pine needles, a rich deep green, that was held closed over his shoulder by a silver brooch.
“What is wrong, Darkness?” he called to us. “We have done nothing.”
“Why are you here?” Doyle called back.
“The queen has sent us to meet the princess,” Hawthorne said.
“Why only the two of you?”
Hawthorne blinked, and even from this far away I could see that strange pink shade that his inner circle of eye had. Pink, green, and red were Hawthorne’s tricolored eyes. “What do you mean, only the two of us? What has happened?”
“They don’t know,” Barinthus said, quietly.
“How long have you been standing here, waiting?” Doyle asked. But he’d already relaxed his pose, the gun in his hand beginning to lower to point at the floor.
“Hours,” Ivi said, and swirled the edge of his own pale green cloak out like a skirt at a dance.
Hawthorne nodded. “Two hours, or more. Time moves oddly in the sithen.”
Doyle put up his gun, and as if that were a signal, swords were sheathed, guns holstered, until they all stood at ease, or as easy as they got.
“I ask again, Darkness, what has happened?” But no one had to explain, because some shifting among the guards had let him see me. I’d forgotten about the blood on my face. I’d wiped some of it off with a bit of wet cloth from one of the men, but not all of it. Only soap would get it all off. “Lord and Lady protect us, she’s hurt!”
“It is not her blood,” Doyle said.
“Then whose?”
“Mine,” Frost said, and he moved up through the crowd of guards, and again, as if that were a signal, they all began to move down the hallway toward the other two guards.
Ivi wasn’t smiling when he said, “What happened?”
Doyle told him, the brief outline, leaving out what happened when Barinthus touched the ring.
Ivi was shaking his head. “Who would dare? Princess Meredith bears the queen’s mark. To harm her is to risk the queen’s mercy. None of her Ravens would risk that.” There was absolutely none of Ivi’s banter in those words. It was as if the news of the assassination attempt had frightened him out of his jokes and into something more real.Hawthorne’s tricolored eyes were wide. “Who indeed would dare?”
Barinthus was still holding me in his arms, but there was no snow now, no cold. I touched his shoulder. “I can walk now.”
He looked at me as if he’d forgotten he was holding me, and maybe he had. He had to bend over to put me safely on the stone floor. I shook the back of my skirt in place, smoothed it with my hands, and knew that the pleats in back simply would not be perfect until the skirt was ironed. There was nothing I could do about it. I just hoped that the news of my near death would distract her from my less-than-perfect clothing. You never knew with Andais; sometimes she would direct her anger at small things if she couldn’t deal with the large.
Ivi went to one knee before me, and when he did, the cloak caught on his leg and pulled to one side, baring his shoulder, part of his chest, and the edge of his hips. He was nude under the cloak.