Her face was almost free of makeup, and without the black eyeliner she usually wore her triple-gray irises weren’t as striking, again leaving her eyes almost ordinary. Her beauty didn’t need makeup, though without it she was a cold, distant beauty as if carved of ice and raven’s wings. That was a strange thought, with Cathbodua standing beside the mirror in her raven wing cloak, but though both women might have begun as similar battle goddesses, where they had gone from their beginnings had made all the difference. It had made one a queen for a millennium and left the other to diminish until she was barely more than human. It is not where you begin, or what gifts you begin with, but what you do with them that matters in the end.
“Greetings, Aunt Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, sister of my father, ruler of the Unseelie host.”
“Greetings, niece Meredith, Princess of Flesh and Blood, daughter of my beloved younger brother, mother of his grandchildren, and conqueror of hearts.”
I had chosen my words carefully to remind her that I was her niece and she might value my bloodline if not the rest of me, but she had given an answer as careful as my own, and as nonthreatening. It wasn’t like her.
“Aunt Andais, I’m not quite sure what to say next.” She was too far off script for me, and when in doubt truth is not a bad fallback plan.
She smiled, and she seemed tired. “I grow tired of torturing people, my niece.”
I fought to keep my face blank, and felt Doyle’s hand tense on my shoulder where I touched him. I forced my breathing even, and spoke in a normal voice. “May I be so bold as to say, Aunt Andais, that both surprises and pleases me.”
“You may, since you already have, Meredith, and you are not surprised that torture no longer pleases me, you are shocked, are you not?”
“Yes, aunt, quite so.”
She laughed then, head back, face shining with it, but it was the kind of laugh that slithered down your spine and tickled goose bumps from every inch of your skin. I’d heard that laugh as she cut people’s skin with a blade while they screamed.
I swallowed past my suddenly thudding pulse, and knew in that moment that I never wanted her around my babies. I never wanted them to hear that laughter, not ever.
“I see that look upon your face, Meredith. I know that look.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Andais.”
“Determination, decision, and not in my favor, am I right?”
“In your moments of clarity, aunt, you see much.”
“Yes,” she said, face growing somber, “in my moments of clarity, when I do not let my bloodlust have full rein, and carve my unhappiness and lust from the bodies of my courtiers.”
“Yes, Aunt Andais, when you’re not doing that,” I said.
She held her hand out to someone out of sight of the mirror. Eamon, her favorite lover for the last hundred years or so, came to take her hand. He was as pale of skin, as black of hair, as she; a little taller, broader through the shoulders, six-plus feet of sidhe warrior, but the face he turned to the mirror held that calm, even a kindness, that had often been all that stood between Andais and her worst instincts. He’d grown out a thin, neat Vandyke mustache and goatee, but it was still more facial hair than I’d ever seen my aunt allow at our court. Beards and such were for Taranis and his golden throng. Andais preferred her men clean shaven; many of the men couldn’t even grow facial hair.
Eamon sat on the bed beside her, putting his arm across her shoulders, and she leaned into him, as if she needed the reassurance of the touching. It was a show of weakness that I never thought she would allow me to see.
“Greetings, Princess Meredith, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, niece of my beloved,” Eamon said.
In all the years that he had stood by her side in mirror calls to others, I had never heard him greet, or be greeted, by anyone. He had been an extension of Andais, nothing more.
“Greetings, Eamon, wielder of the hand of corrupting flame, consort of my Aunt Andais, holder of her heart.”
He smiled at me, and it was a good smile, a real one. “I have never heard myself called that last before, Princess Meredith; I thank you for it.”
“It was a title I suspected you deserved long ago, but I had never known for certain until today.”
He hugged Andais, and she seemed somehow diminished, smaller, or I just had never appreciated how big a man Eamon was, or perhaps a bit of both.
Eamon raised his eyes a little and spoke. “Greetings, Doyle, wielder of the painful flame, Baron Sweet-Tongue, the Queen’s Darkness, consort of Princess Meredith.”
“And to you, Eamon, all graces and titles deserved and earned to you, as well.”
He smiled. “Now, I do not know whom to greet next, Princess Meredith. Do I give formal acknowledgment to Lord Sholto, who is a king in his own right, or to the Killing Frost, who is dearest to you and the Darkness, or to Rhys, who has regained his own sithen again, and no offense to Galen the Green Knight, but our protocols have nothing to cover so many consorts or princes.”
“If it is a formal greeting for all of us, then Sholto should be next,” Frost said.
I reached out to touch his hand where it sat on the pommel of the sword at his waist. He always touched his weapons when he was nervous. He rewarded me with a smile, and that was enough.
“I will waive such niceties,” Sholto said. “For my fellow consorts to acknowledge my title is enough.” He gave a small bow from his neck toward Frost, who acknowledged with a bow as low as Sholto’s but no lower. There had been a time when you had to know just how low to bow to each level of noble, and to get it wrong was an insult. I was glad such things were in the past. How had anyone gotten anything done?
“Such calm, civilized behavior,” Andais said, in a voice that held distaste, as if it wasn’t a compliment at all.
Eamon hugged her, laying his cheek gently against her hair. “Would you rather they fight and demand every title we could paint upon them, my queen?”
She ignored his question and spoke, in a voice that seemed as diminished as the rest of her. “Why have you not come to kill me, Meredith?”
I fought to keep my face neutral, and watched Eamon look startled, and the first unease cross his face. What was worse, then his face went back to that handsome, unreadable mask that had allowed him to live and thrive in Andais’s bed for so long. Perhaps that last comment had been over the line even for him, chastising his queen in front of others.
I found my voice and said, “I was pregnant with my father’s, your brother’s, grandchildren and would not risk them for vengeance.”
She nodded and put her arm around Eamon’s waist, to be held closer. “I went mad after you killed my son and turned down the crown of my court to save your lover, Meredith. Did you realize that?”
“I was aware that you seemed … unwell,” I said.
She gave that horrible laugh again, and her eyes were fever bright. “Unwell; yes, I have been unwell.”
Eamon held her closer, but his face remained unreadable. Whatever happened here, if she went back to being her usual sadistic self, he would survive. Eamon was not our enemy, but he could not afford to be our friend either.
“Meredith, Meredith, the look on your body, your tight control. Do you not understand that after centuries even the fight for control shows to my eyes?”
“I do know that, Aunt Andais, but control is all I can offer.”
“Control is all any of us can offer in the end, and I lost mine,” she said.
“You seem better now,” I said.
She nodded. “It took me months to realize I was trying to force you to send my Darkness to me. I knew if anyone could slay me, it would be him, but day after long day he did not come. Why did you not send him to me, Meredith?”
We had actually discussed sending Doyle to assassinate her, but I had vetoed it. “Because I didn’t want to lose my Darkness,” I said.
“Your Darkness, yes, I suppose now he is ‘your Darkness.’” Anger showed on her face.
I didn’t like the “suppose” in that sentence. “Doyle is one of the fathers of my children, which makes us a committed coupling now.”
She sat up a little straighter in the curve of Eamon’s arm. “Yes, yes, he is yours as a consort, Meredith. I mean nothing by it, beyond the fact that I thought he would be sent to end my pain, but he did not come, and gradually the madness and grief left me. Eamon risked much to bring me back to myself. I tortured Tyler to death one night. I valued him, and I have missed him since, and that helped me realize how far I had fallen.”