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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?"
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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.
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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.
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"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."
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"And what is the penalty for being forsworn among us?" I asked.
"An oathbreaker," she said.
"Yes."
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