"You may include him in the contest to win your heart, or you may exclude him from the running. It is your decision."
I nodded and stood up straight, no hunching like some kind of wounded rabbit. "Thank you for that, Auntie dearest."
"Why does that fall from your lips like the vilest of insults."
"I mean no insult."
She waved me to silence. "Do not bother, Meredith. There is little affection lost between us. We both know that." She looked me up and down. "Your clothing is acceptable, though not what I would have chosen."
I smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. "If I'd known I was going to be named heir tonight, I'd have worn the Tommy Hilfiger original."
She laughed and stood with a swish of skirts. "You can purchase an entire new wardrobe, if you like. Or you can have the court tailors design one for you."
"I'm fine as I am," I said. "But thank you for the offer."
"You are an independent thing, Meredith. I've never liked that about you."
"I know," I said.
"If Doyle had told you in the western lands what I planned for you tonight, would you have come willingly, or would you have tried to run?"
I stared at her. "You're naming me heir. You're letting me date the Guard. It's not a fate worse than death, Aunt Andais. Or is there something else you haven't told me about tonight?"
"Pick up the stool, Meredith. Let's leave the room neat, shall we?" She glided down the stone steps to walk toward the door in the opposite wall.
I picked up the stool, but didn't like that she hadn't answered my question. There was more to come.
I called after her before she got to the small door. "Aunt Andais?"
She turned. "Yes, Niece." There was a faintly amused, condescending look on her face.
"If the lust charm that you placed in the car had worked and Galen and I had made love, would you have still killed him and me?"
She blinked, the slight smile fading from her face. "Lust charm? What are you talking about?"
I told her.
She shook her head. "It was not my spell."
I held my hand up so the silver ring glinted. "But the spell used your ring to power itself."
"I give you my word, Meredith, I did not put a spell of any kind in the coach. I merely left the ring in there for you to find, that was all."
"Did you leave the ring, or did you give it to someone to put in the coach?" I asked.
She would not meet my eyes. "I put it there." And I knew she'd lied.
"Does anyone else know that you plan to rescind the order of celibacy where I'm concerned?"
She shook her head, one long black curl sliding over her shoulder. "Eamon knows, but that is all, and he knows how to keep his own counsel."
I nodded. "Yes, he does." My aunt and I looked at each other from across the room, and I watched the idea form in her eyes and spill across her face.
"Someone tried to assassinate you," she said.
I nodded. "If Galen and I had made love and you hadn't lifted the geas, you could have killed me for it. Galen's fate seems to be incidental to it all."
Anger played across her face like candlelight inside glass.
"You know who did it," I said.
"I do not, but I do know who knew that you were going to be named coheir."
"Cel," I said.
"I had to prepare him," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"He did not do this," she said, and for the first time there was something in her voice-the same protest you'll hear in any mother's voice when defending her child.
I simply looked at her and kept my face blank. It was the best I could do, because I knew Cel. He would not simply give up his birthright on the whim of his mother, queen or no.
"What did Cel do to anger you?" I asked.
"I tell you, as I told him, I am not angry with him." But there was too much protest to her voice. For the first time tonight Andais was on the defensive. I liked it.
"Cel didn't believe that, did he?"
"He knows what my motives are," she said.
"Would you care to share those motives with me?" I asked.
She smiled, and it was the first genuine smile I'd seen on her tonight. An almost embarrassed movement of lips. She wagged a gloved finger at me. "No, my motives are my own. I want you to choose someone for your bed tonight. Take them back to the hotel with you, I don't care who, but I want it to begin tonight." The smile was gone. She was her royal self once more, unreadable, self-contained, mysterious and absolutely obvious all at the same time.
"You never have understood me, Aunt."
"And what, pray, does that mean?"
"It means, Auntie dearest, that if you had left off that last order, I would probably have taken someone to my bed tonight. But being commanded to do it makes me feel like a royal whore. I don't like it."
She settled her skirts so the train glided behind her and walked toward me. As she moved, her power began to unfold, flitting around the room like invisible sparks to bite along my skin. The first two times I jumped, then I stood there and let her power eat over my skin. I was wearing steel, but a few knives had never been enough for me to withstand her magic. It had to be my own newfound powers that kept it from being so much worse.
Her eyes narrowed as she came to stand in front of me. With me standing on the small raised platform, we were eye-to-eye. Her magic pushed out from her like a moving wall of force. I had to brace my feet as if I were standing against wind. The small burning bites had turned into a constant ache like standing just inside an oven, not quite touching the glowing surface, but knowing that one tiny shove and your skin would burn and crisp.