Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(67)

“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.”