“Princess Meredith, greetings from the Queen of Air and Darkness. She sends us as gifts.” That lilt of mockery was back in his voice.
Hawthorne had also dropped to his knees, but the way he held the cloak tight with only his hands showing made me wonder if he were wearing anything more under his cloak than Ivi was.
“We are gifts for your stay if the ring doth know us,” Hawthorne said, and he sounded as if he would have been angry if he dared.
“Surely this can wait,” Onilwyn said. “If the queen truly does not know of what has happened, then she must be told.”
It was Usna who answered that. “If you want to hurry off and give the queen bad news, by all means run along. I, for one, do not want to be the first person to tell her.” He was still nude, carrying his sheathed sword in his hand. The queen had been known to shoot the messenger, as it were.
Onilwyn looked a little pale. “You may have a point.”
“But so do you,” Barinthus said. “The queen needs to know. I cannot believe that no one has contacted her.”
“She did not know near three hours hence,” Hawthorne said.
“If she knew now, there would be more men,” Doyle said, and no one argued with him.
“She was entertaining herself,” Ivi said, his voice rich with that self-loathing humor, as if every word meant more, “and gave word that only the princess’s arrival would be good enough to disturb her.”
“Surely someone would have interrupted her fun and games for this,” Barinthus said.
Hawthorne looked up at him. “You are one of us, Lord Barinthus, but she does not treat you as she treats most. She respects your power. The rest of us are not so lucky. If we interrupt her game, then we are to take the place of the one she plays with.” He looked down and a shudder passed through him. “I would not interrupt her for an attempted assassination.”
“If I’d died, then one of you would have told her?” I asked, and my own voice held an edge of what Ivi usually sounded like.
“You have stripped us of all who were powerful enough to beard her in her den, Princess,” Hawthorne said.
“Darkness, Frost, Barinthus,” Ivi said, “teacher’s pets compared to the rest of us.”
“Mistral is still here,” Doyle said.
Hawthorne shook his head. “He fears her, Darkness, as do we all.”
“She has gotten better in the last few months,” Barinthus said, “easier to talk to.”
“Again, Lord Barinthus, perhaps for you,” Hawthorne said.
“Let us finish our speech,” Ivi said. “Then you can all draw straws for who gets to be the bearer of such evil tidings.”
“You say that as if you don’t get to draw a straw,” Rhys said.
“We don’t,” Ivi said.
“Hawthorne, explain,” Doyle said.
“We are gifts for the princess, if the ring doth know us.”
“You said that already,” Rhys said.
Doyle gave him a look, and Rhys shrugged. “He did.”
“And if the ring knows you,” Frost said.
“Then we are to invite the princess to bed us.” Hawthorne was careful to look only at Doyle, as if I weren’t standing there.
Ivi snorted, as if trying not to laugh.
“What is funny in that?” Doyle asked him.
“That’s not what the queen said.”
“It is the meat of what she meant,” Hawthorne said, and there was an air of offended dignity in his tone.
Ivi laughed out loud.
“What did the queen say, Ivi?” Doyle’s tone was resigned, as if he really didn’t want to know, but understood there was no choice.
“If the ring knows us”—and he finished the rest in an imitation of the queen’s voice good enough to raise the hair at the back of my neck—“then fuck Meredith, fuck her as soon as you see her. If she gets picky then you may go to her room, or yours. I don’t care, just get the job done.”
“Well,” Galen said, “that’s . . .”
“A little less than poetic even for the queen,” Rhys said.
“That’ll do.” Galen looked a little shocked.
“Do I get a say in this?” I asked.
Hawthorne bowed until his forehead nearly touched the stone. “I am sorry, Princess.”
“What he won’t tell you,” Ivi said, “is that he asked what we were to do if Princess Meredith did not wish to bed us as soon as she entered the sithen.” He imitated the rhythm of Hawthorne’s speech.
“And what did my aunt say?” I asked.
Ivi smiled up at me, and his dark green eyes held a fierce triumph that I didn’t understand.
Hawthorne answered with his face still bowed toward the stones, his voice holding sorrow the way Ivi’s usually held mockery. “Are you Unseelie sidhe or not? Persuade her.”
Ivi kept his darkly joyful face turned up toward me. “He asked, and if she will not be persuaded?” And again he echoed the queen’s voice so well that it raised chills upon my skin, “Persuade her, or take her, or tell her what I have said, and let that be your persuasion. If Meredith will not take the pleasure I offer her, then perhaps she will take pain instead. For there is both to be had here among the Unseelie. Remind her of that if her sensibilities are too delicate for fucking.”
“I would change what she has sent us for, if I could,” Hawthorne said, and he prostrated himself against the stone, his forehead pressed to the floor.I turned from Ivi’s gloating face to Barinthus. “I thought you said she’d gotten better over the last few months.”
“She has, she had,” he said, and he had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Come on, Princess,” Ivi said, “put that pretty hand out and see what happens. If the ring doesn’t know us, then we’re all free.”
“He’s right,” Doyle said, “let them touch the ring, and if it is cold to them, then we can go to the queen and give our news.”
“And if it is not cold?” Frost asked.
“Then we can fuck up against the wall,” Ivi said.
“Over my dead body,” Galen said.
“If you want it that way,” Ivi said.
“Boys,” I said.
Galen looked at me. Ivi continued to look at Galen.
“No killing each other unless I tell you to.”
Ivi looked at me then, and that fierceness held a note of puzzlement. “What does that mean?”
“It means that if you annoy me enough, Ivi, I have more than half a dozen of the best warriors the sidhe ever produced, and if I asked nicely, they’d slice you into pieces for me.”
“Ah, but that would not be obeying the queen’s directive.”
I bent down just the little bit I needed to be face to face with him, and I felt an unpleasant smile cross my face. “Oh, but it would be. Corpses routinely have one last orgasm just as they die. The queen’s exact orders are not to come before her without your seed upon my body. She didn’t specify where or how that happens, now, did she?”
The triumph was gone, the mockery faded as I watched, until the only thing left in those dark green eyes was fear. It didn’t make me happy to see him fear me, but it did give a certain satisfaction.
He licked his lips as if they’d suddenly gone dry, and said, “You are your aunt’s bloodline.”
“Yes, Ivi, I am, and it would be best if you did not forget that”—I leaned in close above his lips—“ever again.” I laid a gentle kiss upon his mouth, and he flinched.
As I raised my hand to cup Ivi’s face, Barinthus grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from the other man’s flesh. “Perhaps the queen should know of other events before we use the ring again.”
We all had a moment of exchanging glances. Hawthorne said, “What else has happened?”
“Let us say, that the ring has risen in power,” Barinthus said, “and I am no longer certain of what will happen when the princess presses it to anyone’s flesh.”
Ivi gave a dark laugh. “I see what happened when she touched you, Lord Barinthus.” He was staring at the other man’s groin, and the stain that had set into the front of the leather pants.
Abloec pushed to the front, to stand near Ivi. He knelt down beside the other man. It was the steadiest I’d seen him, as if the cold had sobered him. “I am soaking wet, freezing, and sober. I don’t want to be any of those three things. You are going to shut up, and we are all going to go to the queen.” He looked up at the rest of us. “When she hears about the flooding, she’ll want to make sure that the princess is in a secure area before the ring is used.”
“Flooding?” Hawthorne said.
“Every river in the area,” Abloec said.
Hawthorne glanced up at Barinthus. “You mean touching Lord Barinthus flooded the area?”
Doyle and Barinthus said in unison, “We believe so.”
Galen and Rhys said in unison, “Yes.”
Usna pushed through us all, still nude, and getting angry. “We’re going to see the queen now, because I want to be warm again.”
“Would you risk your life for a little comfort?” Frost said.
Usna gave him a wide grin. “What else is there to risk one’s life for these days? Haven’t you heard, Killing Frost, the days of myth and magic are gone. The days when there was anything worth fighting for are over.” He looked at Barinthus as he finished, then his grey eyes found me, and he gave me a lingering look. It wasn’t sexual, or food, or anything that I would have expected from Usna. It was a considering look. A look that held far too many guesses that were far too close to the truth.