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?”
“I have merely given the queen’s words back to her.”
“I have never liked you, niece of mine, but nor have I hated you. If you force me to kill Cel, I will hate you.”
“It is not me who will force your hand, Queen Andais, it is him.”
“They could have acted without his knowledge.” Even as she said it, her eyes showed that she didn’t believe it. She wasn’t crazy enough to believe it anymore.
She looked at me, and something passed through her tri-grey eyes with their rings of black that left each grey darker and richer because of it, as if she had used eyeliner on her own irises.
“Far be it from me to complain if we’re talking about killing Cel,” Galen said, “but everyone knows that any attempt on Merry while Cel is still imprisoned means a death sentence for him.”
“If we can prove his people were responsible,” Mistral said.
“But don’t you see, Nuline is part of his guard. If Nuline brought the spell, then it must be Cel who sent her—but what if it wasn’t?”
“I am listening,” Andais said.
“Nuline is like me, she’s not good at court politics. She’s not good at deception. What did she say when she brought the wine to you?”
“That she knew it was one of my favorites and hoped its sweet taste would remind me of just how sweet my son could be.” Andais was frowning now. “The words do sound like a speech given to her by someone else.” She shook her head. “I am the Queen of Air and Darkness, I do not fear assassination attempts. Perhaps such arrogance has made me careless.” She said it slowly, as if she didn’t really believe it.
“People often give her gifts,” Mistral said. “It is a way of currying favor.”
“One more offering in a wealth of offerings will go unnoticed,” Doyle said.
“We need to know where Nuline got the wine,” Galen said.
Andais nodded. “Yes, yes, we do.” There was something in her voice that I didn’t like. It was a purr of hatred. Hatred will blind you to the truth, especially if you want to be blinded. She said, “Bring me my Darkness.”
Doyle came at her call, but he stayed by my side. “I am, by your own words, the princess’s Darkness now.”
She waved it away, as if it meant nothing. “Call whomever you like master, Darkness. I ask only if you can track this spell back to its owner.”
“I could not track it off your skin, but the bottle is still here. It is too powerful a spell not to leave a taint, a signature as it were, of the one who made it. If I can smell their skin, taste their sweat, then yes, I can track this to its owner.”
“Then do it,” she said, and she looked at me as she said the last: “Wherever this trail leads, we will follow, and punishment will be swift.”
I looked at her, afraid to believe that she meant what I hoped she meant.
“Heard and witnessed,” Barinthus said.
The queen did not look at him, but only at me. “There, Meredith, another oath to hold over my head.”
“What do you want me to say, Aunt?”
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her gaze fled from my face and found a piece of wall to look at, as if she didn’t want anyone to read her eyes in that moment. “What would you do, if you were me, niece?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and thought. What would I do? “I would send for the sluagh.”
She looked up then, her eyes very hard, as if she were trying to see through me. “Why?”
“The sluagh are the most feared of all the Unseelie. The sidhe themselves fear them, and they fear little. With the sluagh at your back, as well as your Ravens, no one will try a direct attack.”
“You believe someone would dare attack me, us”—she motioned at the waiting knights—“head-on?”
“If the spell had gone its course, Aunt Andais, you would have slaughtered all your guards, and then with no one left to kill in this room, where would you have gone? What would you have done?”