Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(70)

Our plan to find Nuline and ask her where the wine had come from had failed. Sholto’s sluagh had found Nuline, but she’d been beyond questions. Her head was still missing. Her death meant either that the would-be assassin was taking no chances, or that he, or she, or they, already knew they’d failed to kill the queen. It changed nothing about our plans, but it did make a person wonder.
Sage stood just behind Rhys and Frost at my back. We’d had to introduce his new form, along with its tricolored eyes, to his Queen Niceven. She was furious that he couldn’t change back, but intrigued with his being newly sidhe. Intrigued enough to help us. The demi-fey were the ultimate spies—so tiny, so inoffensive. The sidhe ignored them as if they were truly the insects that they mimicked. They were not considered a power in the courts, and thus they could be anywhere, everywhere. Queen Niceven had scattered her people among the court. They would listen and report back. They would spy for me and for Queen Andais.
King Kurag, with his many-armed queen on his arm, was behind us in the waiting room. He and his entourage of goblins would enter as part of my entourage. He would take his throne at the end of the hall, closest to the doors, farthest from the throne, but we would enter together, and some of his warriors would stay with me as we walked the length of the hall. 
In person Ash and Holly looked both more sidhe and less. Handsome and arrogant as any the court could boast with that flawless golden sunlit skin, but the eyes, vibrant green and burning red, respectively, were pure goblin, huge and oblong, taking up more of the face than sidhe or human eyes. It gave the goblins superior night vision, but marked them as other. Physically, they were bulkier, seeming to have more muscles under that lovely skin than they should have. I was betting they were stronger than a pure sidhe.
Ash had been more than happy to take part in our show of unity. Holly had not wanted to help. It was beneath him to sit at a woman’s feet, especially a sidhe woman. I had had to let Holly have a little preview, and once he licked the blood along my skin, he hadn’t argued again. They were goblin enough to value the sidhe blood that covered me. For tonight that was good; for later, when they came to my bed, it was a little unnerving. But one problem at a time; tonight had enough without borrowing.
Sage said, “Queen Niceven says that one of the royals has knelt on the floor before the queen.” He took in a breath, then said in an excited voice, “Now!”
Barinthus and Galen pushed the doors open, and the stronger light of the great hall spilled around us. We were moving as the doors opened. I walked a little in front of Rhys and Frost; then came Nicca and Sage, and beyond that everyone just picked a partner and followed me two by two, with Galen and Barinthus coming at our backs just ahead of the goblins.
Doyle stayed by the door, as planned, and we gave no acknowledgment of him, as if he’d angered us. The plan, as it were, was rolling along.
Gasps, furious whispers, and even one muffled scream met me at the door. I think for a moment the herald at the door didn’t recognize me. The only part of me that wasn’t pasted with blood were my eyes, and even the lashes of one eye were stiff with it. I’d spent my life being treated as lesser, as someone not of importance, and certainly not dangerous. I admit that a large part of me enjoyed that first moment when they watched me cross into the hall. I enjoyed their fear, their surprise, their worry. What had happened? What had changed? What did this mean? They were some of the best court politicians in the world, but now all their plans were thrown into the air simply because I walked into the throne room covered in blood.
Queen Andais sat on her throne, her white skin clean and pure where she’d scrubbed the blood away. Her dress was black and bared her shoulders and arms. Diamonds gleamed in her hair, hiding the metal of the tiara behind the dazzle of their light. A line of diamonds graced her neck and spilled across her chest as if the necklace were a rope, or a serpent, caught in midmotion. The diamonds were the only color to her simple black dress and the long gloves that covered her arms and hands. Though perhaps color wasn’t the right word for the effect. It was more as if the jewels bent the light around her head and neck like a halo sliding down her body.
Mistral stood behind and to one side of her throne in his armor, with his spear resting against the dais. Mistral as her new captain did not surprise me, but her new second in command did. Silence was hidden behind his armor, only his long braid of pale brown hair showed from underneath his helmet. He was called Silence because he never spoke except to whisper in the queen’s ear, or Doyle’s. How can you command if you will not speak?
Tyler curled at her feet on the end of a bejeweled chain, his only clothing the shining of the collar. Eamon sat in the smaller throne just below hers, the consort’s throne. He was dressed all in black except for a silver circlet at his pale brow.We passed the empty table and throne where the sluagh sat, because the sluagh were behind the queen. Nightflyers like a cross among giant bats, tentacled horrors, and airborne manta rays clung to the stones at her back, going up and up like a living curtain of dark flesh. Things with more tentacles than flesh stood behind the throne. The hags, Black Agnes and Segna the Gold, were cloaked and waiting behind the queen, taller than the guards at her back. The hags normally stood at their own king’s back, but Sholto had a new place to sit.
An empty throne that had once been reserved for the heir, but had become known as the prince’s throne, awaited me. Sholto’s throne had been placed on the dais, just below mine. For tonight, it was to be a consort’s throne as well. My consorts, though, not the queen’s. For me, it would be whomever I was going to sleep with that night.
Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, sat on the dais for the first time, tall and pale, with moonlit skin to make any Unseelie sidhe proud. His hair was white as snow, long and silken, and, as was his wont, tied back in a loose ponytail. His eyes were tricolored; a circle of metallic gold like mine, then a circle of amber, and last a line the color of leaves in the autumn. He was as fair of face and body as any sidhe who graced the court, sitting there in black-and-gold tunic, black pants tucked into knee-high boots of softest black leather, with more gold edging the turned-down tops. His cloak was fastened with a gold brooch carved with the device of his house.
He looked every inch the sidhe prince, but I knew, better than most, that looks could be deceiving. Sholto was wasting magic to hide what lay under his clothes. Almost all his stomach, down to his lower abdomen, was a mass of tentacles. Without his glamour, it would have bulged under even the generous cloth of a tunic. Modern clothing was nearly unwearable without his magic to make everything lie smoothly. His mother had been Seelie sidhe. His father had been a nightflyer.
As King of the Sluagh he could have any female of his court in his bed. As a member of the queen’s guard, no one at Andais’s court could sleep with him but the queen herself. I don’t think it would ever have occurred to her to take him to her bed. She called him my perverse creature, or sometimes simply my creature. Sholto hated the nickname, but you didn’t complain to Queen Andais about nicknames, not even if you were the king of another court. If Sholto had been content with the females of his court, then I would have had nothing to bargain with, but he was not content. He wanted sidhe skin against his body. So our bargain was struck, and if not tonight, then tomorrow I would find out if I could stomach all the extra pieces he had growing from his body. I hoped I could, because like it or not, I would have to bed him for tonight’s help. 
Afagdu stood to one side of the dais. He’d been on his knees before the throne when the doors opened. He, too, was dressed in black, as most of the court was. Courtiers often dressed in their sovereign’s favorite color, and black had been Andais’s signature color for centuries. Afagdu’s hair was so black it seemed to melt into his cloak, and the beard on his face made it seem as if his tricolored eyes floated in his face, lost in all that blackness. His voice carried through the hall, cutting across the whispers and gasps. “Princess Meredith, is that your blood, or someone else’s?”
I ignored him and went to stand before the dais, directly below the queen. I bowed, but only from the neck. “Queen Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, I come before you covered in the blood of my enemies, and my friends.”
“Meredith, Princess of Flesh and Blood, join us.”
There were more gasps at the new title. Doyle had wanted to keep my new power secret so we could surprise my enemies, but Andais had overruled. She wanted the court to fear me, as they feared her. She could not be persuaded from it, and she was queen.
Sholto stood and came down the two steps left him. He smiled and offered me his hand. I took it, and found his palm sweaty. Why would the King of the Sluagh be nervous?
I gave him a smile, and wondered if the effect was friendly, or frightening, from my mask of blood.
He led me to my throne, and once I was seated went back to his own. The others crowded around. Kitto took his place at my feet, and all we needed was a jeweled collar to mimic Tyler at the queen’s. Rhys and Frost took their places on either side of my throne. The men whom I had taken to my bed spread out behind me and to either side. Barinthus had included himself in this list, and I could not protest. The queen had been both puzzled and intrigued, but left it for later. The others, hers and mine, filled out around the room. Andais wanted it clear that the guards were there not to protect us, but to be a threat to the rest of the Unseelie.