“I don’t think I’m braver, my queen, just understanding the value of those around me more than I did before.”
“What does that mean, Rhys?”
“You know my hatred for the goblins.”
“I do, but this one seems to have won your favor; how?”
Eamon was utterly still beside her, as if he would have left if he thought it wouldn’t attract her attention. She had played sane, but her nearest and most dear love was acting like a rabbit in the grass hoping the fox won’t find it, if only it can be still enough.
“It was Kitto who shopped for an extra crib, blankets, toys, everything, when the news came that we were having triplets and not just twins. He made certain we came home to a house that was ready for all the children, and that Merry had everything she needed.”
“Any good servant will do as much,” Andais said.
“True, but Kitto helps tend the babies not out of duty, but out of love.”
“Love.” She made it sound distasteful. “Goblins don’t understand love for that which is small and helpless. Newborn sidhe are a delicacy among the goblins, you know that better than anyone standing here except for my Darkness. The others were not with me during the last Great War against the Goblins, but you and he know what they are capable of.”
He glanced back at Doyle and then back to the mirror. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was fierce and bitter, “Now, my queen, remember I was at your side. I remember that the atrocities weren’t all goblin work.”
“We didn’t eat their young,” she said. Her eyes had darkened and were beginning to have that first hint of shine, her power beginning to rise. It could also be a sign of anger, or even anxiety, but it usually meant magic was on the rise.
“No, most goblin flesh is too bitter to eat,” he said, and there was a finality in his voice. He’d left all pretense of placating her behind. It was simply the truth, and my joking Rhys had decided to leave humor for honesty, the kind of honesty that royals do not always welcome.
I was shocked enough myself, because I hadn’t known that my people, the sidhe, had tasted goblin flesh enough to know the bitter or sweet of it. I held Bryluen closer to my face, smelling the sweet clean scent of her to hide my face, because in that moment I wasn’t certain I could have kept it neutral.
Bryluen opened those huge almond-shaped eyes, all swimming blue, and I had a sensation like falling. I had to literally drag myself back from the brink. I lowered my baby away from my face and avoided direct eye contact with her. It wasn’t just glamour, she had power, did our little Cornish Rose. How much, and how did we teach her not to use it willy-nilly? How do you explain to a newborn the concept of abuse of power?
“We vowed never to speak of some things, Rhys,” Andais said, in a voice that crawled along the spine and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Alastair began to cry, high and piteous. He waved small fists as he did it. He couldn’t be hungry—we’d made sure that everyone had nursed or had a bottle before this call, so we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Sholto began to rock him side to side. Alastair didn’t like to be bounced the way Gwenwyfar did, and Bryluen liked to be held up on the shoulder and have her back rubbed while you rocked her. Three days and the babies were already so different, so individual. I’d been told that multiples were like each other, but I was beginning to wonder if that was just because most of them looked alike, so people expected it.
Sholto began to rock Alastair in wider arcs, so his upper body turned from side to side. The movement began to quiet the baby.
“We vowed, but we did not swear,” Rhys said. If he had given his sworn word he couldn’t have spoken of it, because to be an oathbreaker was one of the few “sins” among the fey. An oathbreaker could be cast out of faerie forever.
Andais was looking at the crying baby. “I have seen the girls, but not the boy. Would you bring him closer so I might?”
It was Doyle who said, “If you will stop trying to unsettle us, my queen, perhaps, but if your behavior of the last few minutes continues, then what is the point? We do not want our children raised in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.”
“How dare you question my behavior, Darkness?”
He shrugged with his hand on my shoulder, and the other still holding Frost’s hand. “And this is exactly why we do not want the babies raised around you, or your court. I thought Essus a fool when he took Merry and his retinue and left the Unseelie Court, but now I see it for wisdom. Even if Merry could have survived in our court as a child, she would have been a different person now. I do not think that person would have been better, or kinder.”
“You cannot be kind and rule the sidhe, or the goblins, or the sluagh, or anyone inside or out of faerie. Kindness is for children and human fairy tales.”
“Kindness where possible is not a weakness,” Doyle said.
“In a queen it most certainly is,” she said.
“You have seen Merry on the battlefield; do you think her kindness made her less ruthless, or less dangerous, my queen?” he asked, and his voice was lower, crawling down into those vibratingly low tones that had frightened me once. Now it made me shiver for a different reason, a much more fun reason, because three things make a man’s voice lower, and all are testosterone based—heavy exercise, violence, and sex.
“Do you think it is wise to remind me that I watched her slaughter my son in front of me?”
“Do you think it wise that you reminded Frost of the loss of his first love?”
“Frost cannot punish such impudence as I can,” she said.
“And there you go again,” Rhys said.
She looked back at him. “What are you talking about?”
Eamon moved beside her and spoke low and clear, in the kind of voice you use to calm wild animals or talk jumpers off ledges. “My queen, my beloved, he means that if you keep threatening punishment they have no reason to share your nieces and nephew with you. Your brother’s grandchildren are before you; do you want to be a part of their lives, or do you prefer to be the Queen of Air and Darkness, frightening and unyielding to all insults?”
“I have already offered to give up being the Queen of Air and Darkness if Meredith will but take the throne.”
“So you would rather be Aunt Andais to Essus’s grandchildren than queen of all?”
She seemed to think about it for a moment or two, and then she nodded. “Yes, to see my bloodline continue, to have three descendants of our line who are already displaying such power, for that I would step down.”
It wasn’t just descendants, but powerful, magical descendants. She’d already seen the lightning mark on Gwenwyfar’s arm and watched it spark at Mistral’s touch. Alastair had displayed no overt talent as the girls had done, but she seemed willing to take it for granted that he, too, would be powerful. If any of our children proved without magic, by her standards, she would still see them as useless, as not worthy, as she’d decided with me when I turned six and she tried to drown me.
Eamon laid his hand over hers, cautiously. “But, my beloved, it’s more than stepping down from the throne; Meredith and her consorts want to feel safe around you, and at this moment, they do not.”
“They should not. I am the Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Court. The fact that people fear me is part of the point, Eamon; you know that.”
“For ruling our court, perhaps, and for keeping the Golden Court in check, absolutely, but my love, perhaps being frightening is not the best way to be Great-Aunt Andais.”
She frowned at him as if she didn’t understand the words, The words made sense, she could hear them, but I wasn’t certain she could grasp their meaning.
She finally said out loud, “I don’t understand what you mean, Eamon.”
He tried to pull her into his arms as he said, “I know you do not, my love.”
She pushed away from him. “Then explain it to me, so I will understand.”
“Aunt Andais,” I said.
She looked at me, still frowning, still not understanding.
“Do you regret the loss of Tyler?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“Then what are you talking about, Meredith?”