“Love,” she said, and made it sound like a very different kind of four-letter word.
“Yes,” he said, softly.
I wanted to say,
Stop this, don’t make her look at herself that closely
, but hadn’t I done just that the last time we spoke to her? Had my boldness made him bolder, too?
“I do not need to be loved, Galen. I need to be obeyed. I need my people to follow me unquestionably.”
“Everyone needs to be loved, my queen,” he said.
“Now you remember I’m your queen; how convenient and how too late.”
“Too late for what, Aunt Andais?” I asked. My heart was thudding in my throat, and I had to swallow past it to speak clearly. Galen had been one of her lesser guards; he had no special place in her esteem, which meant he had no cards to play here. What was he trying to accomplish?
“If Merry disfigured members of the Seelie Court, they could go to the human media. They would think her a monster, and they’d be right.”
She frowned and gave him a very unfriendly look. “Perhaps being thought a monster is the price a queen must pay to keep her people and those she loves safe.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but Meredith must win the media’s love, or the Golden Court will win their sympathy and all the good work you’ve done over the years in America will be undone. Haven’t you wished for Taranis and his people to be as reviled and feared as we once were?”
She still didn’t look happy, but there was a considering look on her face. He had her thinking, which in this case was good. “Go on,” she said, voice still unhappy, but under that was another tone. I couldn’t quite interpret it, but it wasn’t anger.
“What if we make Taranis the monster in the press? What if we use the modern media to win the hearts and minds of viewers to our side?”
“Viewers? I don’t understand.”
“We’ve been offered a television show.”
“We had decided not to take it,” Doyle said.
Galen turned to Doyle. “But don’t you see? Taranis will never be able to control himself forever. If we give him enough on-camera rope, I think he’ll hang himself.”
“You want him to attack us on camera,” I said, staring at him.
“I think I do, yes, I do.”
“He could hurt or even kill one of us, not to mention endangering the human camera crew,” Rhys said.
“True, it’s a risk, but maybe we don’t have to make him fear Merry, but fear looking bad on TV. He’s the King of Light and Illusion; he prides himself on being desirable, right?”
“He does,” Doyle said.
“What would he do if he saw himself on film being monstrous and terrifying?”
“The cameras could capture your deaths on film very nicely,” Andais said in a voice thick with disdain.
“Or capture us fighting for our lives and defending ourselves.”
“You’re planning to kill him on camera,” Andais said, and she sounded astonished and almost happy.
Galen nodded. “If he attacks us, yes, why not?”
She laughed, head back, her hand in Eamon’s swinging, almost like a child skipping beside you.
“We’d be up on murder charges, for one thing,” Rhys said.
“Maybe, but the camera crew would be our witnesses, don’t you see?”
“It is possible, but Taranis would have to lose complete control on camera,” Doyle said.
“And we would have to have the camera crew in the house with us for weeks, months before the chance might come,” Mistral said. His hand was tense in mine.
I turned and looked up at him. His long gray hair had more glittering strands of gold, copper, and silver, as if the “light” were getting stronger with his anxiety.
“The thought of them filming us truly bothers you,” I said.
“Yes, do you honestly want them filming everything here?”
“There are things that we do, or that happen around us, that we might not want on camera,” Doyle said.
I turned and looked at him. He was right, but … “No, Mistral, I don’t, and Doyle is right.”
“If we just want to kill the king, then let’s do it. Why do the television show? Why give the courts proof we did it? We could go back home and simply execute him for what he did to Merry.”
“I like this plan,” Doyle said, and his deep voice was a little deeper with emotion. I knew he’d wanted to slay Taranis for raping me. It had been tempting to let him do it.
“No,” I said, “no, the risk is too great.” I squeezed his hand in mine and looked up at him. “I will not lose you to vengeance.”
“He’s tried to kill me twice, Meredith; if he attacks us on camera my life may still be forfeit.”
“Then no,” I said, “no. We will not lure him here to help us kill him on camera, and we will not go home and slay him there. We will leave the mad king alone.”
“He won’t leave us alone, Merry,” Galen said.
“The boy is right,” Mistral said.
“He’s going to hunt us in our dreams, Merry; we can’t protect ourselves there, so bring him out here where our power is greater.”
“What power do we have that is greater?” I asked.
“You are Princess Meredith NicEssus, the first faerie princess born on American soil, and now you have triplets. You are a media darling, or have you forgotten that the police had to help us drive out through the press and people?”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Merry, you are
the
face of faerie right now. If you take this moment and run with it, really embrace it, you will have the power of the media.”
“They’re already trying to climb the walls and using telephoto lenses on us, Galen. I’m not sure I want more.”
“You asked what power we have that is greater than Taranis; well, that’s it. You can be the biggest star, the biggest illusion in all faerie, because we pick and choose what they see. We can take this moment and show the Unseelie as good and loving, and eventually the king will lose it and have to come to us. He won’t be able to resist, because above all else he has to be the star, the center of attention.”
“He always has been a media slut,” Rhys said.
“No,” I said, “just no; I just want to enjoy my children and the men I love. I don’t want more attention.”
“You can do what the queen suggested, and maim someone with your hand of flesh, but then you will be the bad guy. Let’s just for once make the Seelie Court the bad guys.”
“This is conspiracy before the fact,” I said.
“No, it’s not. We won’t do anything to lure him here or set him up; he will come on his own, because he won’t want anyone, not even you, to outshine him, Meredith. His ego is too big to stay away.”
“It could take months for him to finally break down and come here,” I said.
“It could, but we’ll be getting paid pretty handsomely the whole time, and maybe Maeve can stay home with Liam, so that he starts thinking of her as mommy, not just his mother.”
“Oh, don’t go and spoil it now,” Andais said.
“Spoil what?” Galen asked.
“You had a lovely plan to kill the king, and now instead of fear or revenge, your motive is all love and sunshine; please, just let me have a few more moments of thinking that there is an Unseelie heart trapped in that overgrown pixie body.”
The smile left his face, and he looked … cold. “Trust me, my queen, I am Unseelie.” And just as Andais had accused me of my words being mild but my tone being insulting, so now Galen’s words were fine, but the tone was … ominous, even threatening.
She looked at him, and there was something in her face I’d never seen before when she looked at Galen. She “saw” him, considered him in a way I don’t believe she ever had before. Andais had a very binary way of looking at most men. They were either barely considered, victims of the moment, or potential lovers. He’d been her victim before, as had we all, and he’d been barely considered for most of his life, but now I watched that third choice cross through her eyes.
“If the genetic tests do not come back with your genetics listed, then perhaps I’ll give you a night to prove just how Unseelie you are, Galen Greenknight.”
He tensed, visibly, his newfound boldness stumbling. My heart was back in my throat, and I was clutching Doyle’s hand a little. Mistral had actually moved a little apart from us, so that he was at Rhys’s back, as if he thought she might try some violence, and in a way he was right, because she didn’t have sex without violence. She was like the anti-vanilla, Auntie Vanilla, and once I thought of it, it was funny and I laughed.
I laughed and I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed so hard it began to ache in places that even sex hadn’t bothered. I laughed until tears ran down my face, and I heard other laughter. Galen came to stand by my chair, taking my hand and joining me in helpless laughter, but we were the only ones. Everyone else stayed silent, and when I could wipe the tears away enough to look at the mirror I saw why: The queen was not amused.
She was on her feet with Eamon far enough behind her that she, or maybe he, was out of reach. Her tricolored eyes sparked like lightning behind gray clouds.
The storm isn’t overhead, but it’s coming.
“I will not be laughed at, Meredith, not by anyone.” Her voice had crawled down into that low purr that should have meant sex but usually meant torment for someone.
I managed to say, “You are the least vanilla person I know, Auntie Andais; you are anti-vanilla, Auntie Vanilla, get it?”
Rhys gave a small snort as he tried not to laugh. Even Mistral made a small noise; only Doyle stayed impervious to my dangerous silliness.
“No,” she said coldly, “I do not ‘get it.’”
Guards spilled into the room, some sidhe and some Red Caps. They had begun to train together, working on battle strategies that played to their mixed strengths. The goblins had fought like shock troops for the Unseelie sidhe for centuries, but never shoulder to shoulder with them. Goblins had been used as cannon fodder, never truly as another warrior to fight beside. Now they spread out in front of us, sidhe and goblin, side by side. They stacked themselves around us in a move that was obviously practiced, making themselves a shield of flesh between their “queen” and her “kings.” I hated that they might have to sacrifice themselves for us, but that was what it meant to be bodyguards, especially royal guards. Once it had been Doyle and the rest who were the sacrifice for Andais, and the female guards in front of me scattered among the men had been expected to do the same for Prince Cel.
“I allowed you to flee to the Western Lands and my niece’s more tender care, but do not let it go to your heads, my guards. None of you are would-be kings. If I call you back to the court, you are oath-bound to answer and return to me.” I couldn’t see her through the bodies of our guards, but hearing the tone was enough to steal away the last bit of my laughter, even with happy tears still wet on my face.
Galen took my hand in his; he looked grim. Doyle, Mistral, and Rhys had all moved up around my chair, but they were still behind the wall of guards. In a real battle we might lead from the front, but in moments like this princes and kings did not stand in front of their bodyguards. I had spent months learning this lesson as I watched the men I loved risk themselves again and again to keep me and the unborn children safe. Now, they were having to learn the lesson. I looked at my three warriors standing so certain, so ready, and hidden from the threat. I knew that it would chafe on them more than it had on me, because a year ago they would have stood between the danger and Queen Andais; now they stood beside me.
A voice even lower than Doyle’s came from that tall wall of guards. “We are goblin; you cannot call us back to your side, Queen Andais, for that has never been our place.” It was Jonty, the leader of the Red Caps. He was smallish for his people, only a little over eight feet tall; some of the men in the line were closer to thirteen feet, like small giants, or average-sized ogres. Their skin color ranged through every shade of gray, yellow, and two golds that were almost brown. The sidhe warriors, so tall and commanding, looked small interspersed between them.
“You are Kurag the Goblin King’s problem, not mine, but the men and women you stand beside—they are mine.” Her voice went down another note to a purring, sexual depth, but it didn’t excite any of us who were sidhe, because we knew that it promised violence, not sex, at least for us. I’d begun to realize that violence was a kind of sex for my aunt. She was truly like one of those sexual predators who are wired so that images of violence hit the same centers of the brain that “normal” sex does for the rest of us.
I projected my voice to be heard. It would have been more impressive if I hadn’t been hiding behind my guards, but it would have to do, because Andais wasn’t the most stable person, and I wouldn’t risk myself betting that, one, she couldn’t do magic through the mirror, and two, she would remember that she valued my fertile womb, if nothing else.
“They are not yours, Aunt Andais, not anymore.”
“Do not let your fertility go to your head, Meredith. It may keep you and your lovers safe, but the rest are on loan, nothing more. Until you sit on my throne, the Unseelie sidhe are mine.”
“They are oathed to me now, Aunt Andais.”
“They cannot be oathed twice, niece. That would make them foresworn.”
“The Cranes, my father’s female guards, were never asked to make oath to Prince Cel; you just ordered them to guard him, so they were free to make oath where they will.”
“They were oathed to my son,” she said.
“No, they were not,” I said. I would have liked to see her face, but I trusted the guards to do their job and stared at their broad backs, Galen’s hand still in mine.
“Cel gave them a choice and they swore oath to him.”
“Who told you that?” This was from Cathbodua, who stood at the end of the line that shielded us.
“Cel and the captain of the Cranes, Siobhan.”
“They lied, then,” Cathbodua said.
“Why would they have lied about that?”
“His reasons were his own, always, Queen Andais, but I swear to you that no one standing here today ever took oath to Prince Cel.”
“I neglected much where my son was concerned, and I regret that.”
Cathbodua went to one knee. “I am honored to hear you say that, Queen Andais.”
One guard taking a knee was often a sign for all, but no one else knelt, and after a time Cathbodua got to her feet and joined her fellow guards again.