Andais agreed, and Nerys came out from behind her table, to stand where Miniver and I had begun our fight. The circle was gone. It was not a duel. It was an execution. Except how do you kill the immortal? Miniver was still struggling on the floor surrounded by guards. How do you kill the immortal? By tearing them apart.
I had Ash do it, because I needed Doyle to keep me standing, and I would not have asked any of the other guards to do it. Ash cut her at her throat, chest, and stomach, and I thought that was enough. The Red Caps encircled her, and the demi-fey hovered overhead. I threw the hand of blood into those wounds, and split her open like a ripe melon thrown to the ground. The Red Caps and demi-fey were drenched in her blood. But she did not die.
My legs wouldn’t hold me anymore, and Doyle carried me away from it. He carried me to the queen, and I was crying, and didn’t remember it. “I can’t kill them any more dead than this.”
She handed her sword, Mortal Dread, to me, hilt-first.
“She cannot stand enough to wield it,” Doyle said.
“Then I will give them to your allies, the goblins and the demi-fey. I will let them be eaten alive as a warning to our enemies.”
I looked into her eyes and hoped she was joking, but knew she wasn’t. I held out my hand for the sword, and she gave it to me. Doyle carried me back with the sword resting across my lap.
The queen stood and announced in her ringing voice, “Miniver drank of Meredith’s blood, yet she has not died from mortal wounds. It seems to disprove her theory that Meredith’s mortality is contagious.”
Silence met her words, silence and faces pale with shock. I think that the Unseelie Court had seen more of a show than they’d bargained for this night.
“Meredith begs me to kill the two traitors and not to leave them as they are. I told her that they were her kills, and that I would give them to the goblins and the demi-fey to feast upon. Let them be eaten alive, and let their screams echo in the ears of my enemies.”
They stared up at her like children told that the monster under the bed is coming to get them.
“But they are not my kills, and if the princess can bring them true death before they are fed to the goblins and the wee ones, then so be it.”
Doyle carried me to the floor, then hesitated a moment before carrying me to Miniver. Her throat had begun to heal, the flesh filling back in. I realized that she would survive this wound. In fact, the hand that she’d torn off to try to kill me was half attached again.
“Doyle,” I said, and he seemed to know what I meant, because he called my guards to me. If Miniver was healing, then that meant she was still dangerous. It would be foolish indeed to get myself killed doing an errand of mercy.
Andais called, “Why do you need extra guards, my niece?”
Doyle answered for me, “She heals, my queen.”
“Yes, be careful that your act of mercy does not get you killed, Meredith. That would be a shame.” She said it almost carelessly, as if it truly didn’t matter to her. “You will find, niece, that no one here will respect you for being merciful.”
I said too softly for her to hear, “I do not do it for their respect.”
“What did you say, niece?”
I took a deep breath and did my best to make myself heard. “I do not do it for their respect.”
“Then why?” she asked.
“Because if I were in her place, I would want someone to do it for me.”
“That is weakness, Meredith, and the Unseelie will not forgive it. It is a sin among them.”
“I do not do it for their pleasure or their pain; I do it because it matters to me what I do, not what they do, not what anyone else does, only what I do.”
“You are like an echo of my brother. Remember what happened to him, Meredith, and take it as caution. It was most likely his sense of mercy and fair play that got him killed.” She stalked down the steps, holding her black skirts out, and she looked as if she were waiting for a roving photographer to snap her picture. She always moved in front of the court as if she were on display.“Strange then, Aunt, that it was your violence and love of pain that was nearly your undoing.”
She stopped on the last step. “Have a care, niece.”
I was too tired, and the shock was beginning to wear off, and my arm was beginning to hurt. I wanted to be somewhere where I could pass out when I could feel my arm completely again. The first twinges promised much, none of it good.
I looked down at Miniver. “Do you wish true death? Or would you go alive into the pots of the goblins?”
I watched thoughts slide through those blue eyes, some good, some bad. Some I couldn’t even begin to understand. “What will they do to me?” she asked, at last.
I leaned in against Doyle’s chest, and didn’t want to answer the question. I wanted to be done with this. I did not want to be sitting here talking to someone who should have been dead. Someone who was, in a way, already dead. Miniver still held hope in her eyes, and she should not have.
“At the rate you are healing, the goblins will most likely use you for sex before they begin to cut off pieces of you for food.”
She stared up at me, and I saw the denial in her eyes. She didn’t believe me. She was rebuilding herself, not just her body, but her sense of self. I was watching that arrogance begin to take hold again. She did not believe that such horrors would befall her. She believed that she would somehow survive, as she’d survived my attack.
“You will wish for death long before it comes, Miniver.”
“Where there is life, there are always possibilities,” she said. The skin of her chest showed white and whole through the blood, as if this was new skin, freshly made, that the blood had not touched.
Doyle put two guards on her and carried me back to Nerys. She was not healing as quickly, because I’d been more thorough, but she was healing.
I gave her the same choice that I’d given Miniver, but Nerys said, “Kill me.” Her eyes had flicked up to the circle of Red Caps, and Holly and Ash. Seeing them stare down at her had convinced her she did not want to be alive when they took her.
“Ash.” I had to repeat his name twice more, before he turned his green eyes to me. “Take the Red Caps and stand around Miniver. Let her see what fate awaits her if you take her living into the mound.”
“We will be staying here with you, so we will not be touching her.”
I sighed. “Please, do not split hairs with me, just do what needs doing.”
“How convincing do you want us to be?” he asked, and there was something in his face of anger. I’d spoken dismissively to him, and that is not a good tone to take with a goblin warrior, especially one who will share your body soon.
Saying I was sorry would be seen as weakness, and would make it worse. I did the only thing I could do: I grabbed his arm—not as hard as I would have liked, but as hard as I was able with the inside of my head feeling so fragile. “You and Holly are not to be convincing at all. You are mine, and I will not share you. Let the Red Caps be convincing.”
Ash gave me a smile that managed to be fierce and lusty at the same time, a look you wore if slaughter was your idea of sex. “You played the first sidhe well, Princess.” He leaned in close and almost whispered, “Helpless little noises. Will you make helpless little noises for us?”
I felt Doyle’s body go very still, as if he didn’t like the question, or what it meant. But truth was truth. “Helpless little ones, and probably great big screams.”
He chuckled, and it was that masculine sound that all men make when they think of such things. It was almost reassuring that he made that laugh. Male was male, some of the time.
“Your screams will be the sweetest of music.” He took my hand from his arm and laid a kiss upon the back of it. Then he motioned, and all the Red Caps, save Jonty, followed him away.
Jonty looked at me. “My king ordered me to guard your body, not hers. I got distracted by this one’s blood, and let you get too close to that other one just now. If she’d killed you, I’d have never heard the end of it.”
He was well spoken for a Red Cap, but I didn’t say so out loud, because that would imply I was surprised that any Red Cap was well spoken.
“You must strike the death blow from your own two feet, Meredith,” Andais said, “or Nerys goes to the goblins as she is.”
Real fear flared in Nerys’s eyes, and she mouthed, Please.
Doyle pressed his mouth against my ear. “Can you stand?”
I laid my face against his and gave the only answer I had. “I don’t know.”
He set me on my feet, and steadied me that moment I needed. I looked at her chest. I was short enough that I could rest the tip of the blade over her heart. My legs began to tremble, but that was all right. I gripped the hilt with my good hand, took a deep steadying breath, and let my body fall upon the hilt of the sword, driving the point through her chest and into that still-beating heart. The blade rested against bone for a second, then slid home. I collapsed to my knees beside the body, my one good hand still wrapped around the hilt.
Nerys’s eyes, almost a twin of the queen’s, were open and unseeing. I’d done what I could for her.
Screams came from behind us.
I leaned my forehead against my good arm. I wasn’t sure I could stand on my own. If the queen insisted on me walking to Miniver, then I could not do it.