Swallowing Darkness (Merry Gentry #7)(64)

“Before,” she said.
“You are an oathbreaker, my aunt. The wild hunt lives.”
“I know you and my Perverse Creature can summon the wild hunt. I know you slew your cousin and the other conspirators of the Seelie Court.”
“Would you have us hunt you?” I asked.
“Would it save my son’s life?”
“No,” I said.
“But still, I am an oathbreaker. I deserve to be hunted.”
Andais was the ultimate survivor. There was only one reason she would choose to die.
“Before Sholto and I give chase, I will order Cel’s death,” I said. “Our chase will not give him time to escape, and I don’t think he has enough friends left in court to save him.”
“I have allies,” Cel yelled from the ground.
I looked only at my aunt, not at him, as I said, “Siobhan is dead, and your so-called allies fled when they could. The only one who came to save you is your mother. If she is dead, then I think, cousin, you will find that you have no allies left. They don’t follow you. They follow her.” 
“They will not follow you, Meredith,” Cel said. “Crown, or no crown, if it is not me on the throne, then they will kill you and choose their own ruler. My spies have heard them plot this.”
I laughed, and finally looked down at Cel. Whatever he saw on my face widened his eyes, and made him catch his breath, as if he saw something that frightened him. “You never understood me, cousin, or you, my aunt,” I said. “I never wanted to rule. I know they hate me, and no matter how much power I show them, they will always see me as the future of the sidhe. They see me as the diminished them. They see in me what they see in Sholto, that the sidhe grow weak. They would rather hide in their hollow hills and waste away than change and go outside to meet the world. I had hope for our people. My father had hope for our people.”
“His hope is what killed him,” Cel said.
I looked down at him where he lay on the ground, Doyle’s sword at his throat, but he didn’t look frightened. He believed that Andais would save him. Even now, he was confident in her power to protect him.
“How do you know that hope killed my father?” I asked.
Something crossed through his eyes, some thought or emotion. I smiled at him.
“It’s just an expression,” he said, but his voice wasn’t so confident now.
“No,” I said, “it’s not.” I knelt beside him.
“Cel,” Andais said, “Cel, don’t….”
My smile stayed. I couldn’t seem to stop smiling, though I wasn’t happy. “I hadn’t seen you fight before. I didn’t understand how good you were.”
Cel tried to sit up, but Doyle’s sword point pushed him back down. “I am glad you finally understand that I could lead our people.”
“You killed him. You killed Prince Essus. You yourself. It’s why we couldn’t find an assassin. It’s why no matter how many people Andais tortured they had nothing to tell us about my father’s death.”
He yelled, “She’s mad, Mother. You ordered me not to plot against my uncle. I obey you in all things.”
“But you didn’t plot,” I said. “You did it yourself. Because you were good enough with a blade, and because you knew he would hesitate. You knew my father loved you. You counted on it.”
Andais’s voice was almost a wail, “Cel, tell me she’s wrong.”
“She’s wrong,” he yelled.
“Swear by the Darkness that Eats all Things. Swear by the wild hunt. Swear, and I’ll believe you,” she said. “Swear those oaths and I will fight to the end for you.”
He tried. “I swear by the Darkness That Eats All Things….” and for a moment I thought I’d been wrong, then he stopped. He tried again. “I swear by the wild hunt…I swear.” He screamed it. “I swear!”
“What do you swear, Cel? Son, tell me you did not kill my brother. For the love of Goddess, tell me you did not kill Essus.”
He lay on the ground, staring from Doyle to me, to the circle of my other guards who had gathered around us. He stared up at us, his eyes wide, shifting back and forth as if seeking a way out. Rhys stood beside Doyle, his face a mask of blood. Galen came to kneel by me. He had no good arm left to both hug me and keep his blade. He leaned his head against my cheek, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Merry.”
Mistral was still kneeling where he’d been left, which meant he was hurt indeed. But he called out, “Essus was the best of us.”
Cel yelled, “So good, my uncle, that they wanted him to be king. They wanted him to kill my mother and be king.”“Essus would never have done that,” Doyle said.
“My brother loved us!” Andais screamed it at him. She looked at me, and there was real pain in her eyes. In all the years of seeking, it had never occurred to her that it was her own son.
“Yes,” Cel said. He grabbed my arm, and Doyle’s sword brought another drop of blood from his throat. “Do you know what your father’s last words were, Meredith?”
I could only shake my head.
“He said he loved me.” Then I felt his power spill up and over us all. One moment he was helpless, the next he was the wielder of old blood, and everyone around him had wounds to be reborn.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I WAITED FOR THE PAIN OF THE SHRAPNEL WOUNDS, BUT IT WAS nothing compared to the pain of my men. Two thousand years of war. A thousand years of being tortured by my aunt. Every sword cut, every spear thrust, every whip mark, every claw was there on their bodies in one red ruin.
Galen writhed on the ground beside me clutching the bloody front of his pants. I knew what wound had reappeared. Rhys’s missing eye was a bloody hole again. Doyle lay on his side, fighting to try to get to his knees, but he was too hurt. They were all too hurt. There were cries in the distance, and it was not just my men. The Red Caps were back to being damaged. I understood in that moment what a terrible hand of power Cel possessed. I hadn’t understood until that moment. I hadn’t understood so very much until that moment.
Cel jerked me to my feet by my wrist. He pulled me in against his body, and turned me to gaze out at the field. Everyone was on the ground, everyone. Andais was just a dark heap on the frost-whitened grass. Her cloak of shadows had gone, which meant she was either unconscious or worse.
“Draw your sword,” he hissed in my face. “Let me disarm you in front of them all, and drive it into that fertile womb of yours. Did you know that’s why my mother turned against me? She made me take those human doctors’ tests and found that I couldn’t father children. That’s when she called you home.” He traced his free hand up the side of my neck, until he entwined his fingers in my hair. He stopped just short of where the crown still burned with its darkling flame on my head.
He let go of my wrist, and put his other hand on the other side of my face. He turned me to face him and cradled me oh so gently between his hands. “Draw your sword, Merry. Draw it, and let them see how weak you truly are.” He whispered it against my face as he came in for a kiss.
I put my hands on his hands, bare skin to bare skin, as he kissed me. My arm that had been crippled by the original injury seemed a little less hurt. Was it the crown protecting me, or the fact that I was queen at last? 
He laid a gentle kiss on my mouth, a good kiss, and not what I’d expected, but then he was full of surprises tonight.
He drew back from me, taking my hands in his. He smiled, and his eyes were completely mad. “I’m going to kill you now.”
“I know,” I said, and I used the hands of blood and flesh together. Where Holly and Ash and I had used them to heal, now I used them to destroy. I drove the hand of blood into him, not in search of wounds, but in search of blood. I used the hand of flesh to cut and tear his body from the inside out. As the hands of power had flowed over the battlefield in a wave of cleansing blood and smoothing flesh, now they filled this one man.
Cel’s eyes went wide. “You can’t,” he whispered.
“I can,” I said, and I flexed that power, flexed it like a giant’s fist that I’d shoved deep into his body, then I opened that fist. One moment Cel was there, eyes wide, hands in mine, the next he wasn’t. Blood smacked into me, and thicker things hit my face. There was a sharp pain in my cheek, and I was left standing alone, covered in blood and thicker things. I scraped what was left of my cousin off my face so I could see, and found that it was his teeth in my cheek, blown there by the force of the magic. I pulled them out, and promised myself a tetanus shot, and antibiotics if I could have them while pregnant. I promised myself a lot of things as I stood there, shaking.
Doyle was suddenly at my side. Rhys was there too, wiping the blood from his face. His eye was back to its usual scar. Galen was with me too. His only injuries were the fresh ones from the fight.
“But how…?” I asked.
“He died, and his hand of old blood died with him,” Doyle said. I held my bloodstained hand out to Doyle. He took it, and I drew him over the red ruin that was all that was left of our enemy. I drew him down into a kiss, and the moment our lips met, our skin ran with light. I was moonlight, and he was black fire, bright enough that it cast shadows across the field.
There were gasps and whispers, and I finally came away from the kiss to find that there was a crown woven into Doyle’s hair. Thin thorn branches formed a latticework above his head, but each thorn was tipped with silver. It was Jonty who whispered, “The Crown of Thorn and Silver.”