A Kiss of Shadows (36 page)

“Do you remember what Essus's answer to me was that night?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, my queen.”

“Essus said, ‘Even if Merry never takes the throne she will be more queen than Cel will ever be a king.'”

“You hit him that night,” I said. “I never remembered why.”

Andais nodded. “That was why.”

“So you're unhappy with your son.”

“That is my business,” she said.

“If I let you elevate me to coheir with Cel, it will become my business.” I had the cuff link in my purse. I thought about showing it to her, but I didn't. Andais had lived in denial of what Cel was, and what he was capable of, for centuries. You spoke against Cel to the queen at your peril. Besides, the cuff link could belong to one of the guards, though I couldn't fathom why, without Cel's urging, any of the guard would want me dead.

“What do you want, Meredith? What do you want that I can give you that would be worth you doing what I ask?”

She was offering me the throne. Barinthus would be so pleased. Was I pleased? “Are you so sure that the court will accept me as queen?”

“I will announce you Princess of Flesh tonight. They will be impressed.”

“If they believe it,” I said.

“They will if I tell them to,” she said.

I looked at her, studied her face. She believed what she said. Andais overestimated herself. But such absolute arrogance was typical of the sidhe.

“Come home, Meredith, you don't belong out there among the humans.”

“As you reminded me so very often, Aunt, I am part human.”

“Three years ago you were content, happy. You had no plans to leave us.” She settled back in her chair, watching me, letting me stand over her. “I know what Griffin did.”

I met her pale gaze for a heartbeat, but couldn't sustain the look. It wasn't pity in her glance. It was the coldness in it, as if she simply wanted to see my reaction, nothing more.

“Do you really think I left the court because of Griffin?” I didn't try and keep the astonishment out of my voice. She couldn't honestly believe I'd left the court over a broken heart.

“The last fight the two of you had was very public.”

“I remember the fight, Auntie dearest, but that is not why I left the court. I left because I wasn't going to survive the next duel.”

She ignored me. In that moment I realized that she would never believe the worst of her son, not unless forced to beyond any shadow of doubt. I couldn't give her that absolute proof, and without it, I couldn't tell her my suspicions, not without risking myself.

She kept talking about Griffin as if he were the true reason I'd left. “But it was Griffin who began that fight. He, the one who was demanding to know why he wasn't in your bed, in your heart, as before. You'd been chasing him around the court for nights, and now he pursued you. How did you effect such a quick change in him?”

“I refused him my bed.” I met her eyes, but there was no amusement in them, just a steady intensity.

“And that was enough to make him pursue you in public like an enraged fishwife?”

“I think he truly believed that I'd forgive him. That I would punish him for a while and then take him back. That last night he finally believed that I meant what I said.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“That he would never be with me again this side of the grave.”

Andais looked at me very steadily. “Do you still love him?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“But you still have feelings for him.” It was not a question.

I shook my head. “Feelings, yes, but nothing good.”

“If you still want Griffin, you may have him for another year. If at that time you are not with child, I would ask that you choose someone else.”

“I don't want Griffin, not anymore.”

“I hear a regret in your voice, Meredith. Are you sure that he is not what you want?”

I sighed, and leaned my hands against the tabletop, staring down at them. I felt hunched and tired. I'd tried very hard not to think about Griff and the fact that I'd see him tonight. “If he could feel for me what I felt for him, if he could truly be as in love with me as I was with him, then I would want him, but he can't. He can't be other than what he is, and neither can I.” I looked at her across the small table.

“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.

“Doyle said your powers had grown, but I didn't quite believe it. But there you stand before me, and I must accept that you are true sidhe, at last.” She put her foot on the lowest step. “But never forget that I am queen here, Meredith, not you. No matter how powerful you become, you will never rival me.”

“I would never presume otherwise, my lady,” I said. My voice was just a touch shaky.

Her magic pushed at me. I couldn't draw a good breath. My eyes blinked as if I were looking into the sun. I fought to stand and not to give ground. “My lady, tell me what you wish me to do and I will do it. I have not offered challenge in any way.”

She came up another step, and this time I did give ground. I did not want her to touch me. “Simply by standing in the face of my power you challenge me.”

“If you wish me to kneel, I will kneel. Tell me what you want, my queen, and I will give it to you.” I did not want to get into a contest of magic with her. I would lose. I knew that. It left me with nothing to prove.

“Make the ring have life on my finger, Niece.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I finally held my hand out to her. “Do you want the ring back?”

“More than you will ever know, but it is yours now, Niece. I wish you joy of it.” That last sounded more like a curse than a blessing.

I went to the far edge of the table, gripping it to steady myself against the growing pressure of her magic. “What do you want from me?”

She never answered me. Andais made a gesture with both hands toward me and that pressure became a force that shoved me backward. I was airborne for a second until my back met the wall, and my head hit a heartbeat later. I kept my feet through a shower of grey and white flowers on the edge of my vision.

When my vision cleared, Andais was standing in front of me with a knife in her hand. She pressed the tip of it against the small hollow at the base of my throat, pressed the tip of the blade until I felt it bite into my skin. She put her finger against the wound and came away with a trembling drop of my blood clinging to her leather-clad finger. She held her finger upside down so the drop fell quivering to the floor.

“Know this, niece of mine. Your blood is my blood, and that is the only reason I care what happens to you. I do not care if you like what I have planned for you or not. I need you to continue our bloodline, but if you will not help do that, then I do not need you.” She withdrew the knife very slowly, drawing it back an inch or two. She laid the flat of the blade against my face, the point dangerously close to my eye.

I could taste my pulse on my tongue, and I'd forgotten to breathe. Looking into her face, I knew that she would kill me, just like that.

“That which is not useful to me is discarded, Meredith.” She pressed the flat of the blade into my flesh so that when I blinked the tip of the knife brushed my eyelashes. “You will pick someone to sleep with tonight. I don't care who. Since you have invoked virgin right, you are free to go back to Los Angeles, but you will have to pick some of my Guard to take with you. So look at them tonight, Meredith, with those emerald-green-and-gold eyes of yours, those Seelie eyes of yours, and choose.” She put her face next to mine, so close that she could have kissed me. She whispered the last words into my mouth. “Fuck one of them tonight, Meredith, because if you don't, tomorrow night you will entertain the court with a group of my choosing.”

She smiled, and it was the smile that touched her face when she had thought of something wicked, and painful. “At least one that you choose must be enough my creature to spy for me against you. If you go back to Los Angeles.”

My voice came out the barest of whispers. “Must I sleep with your spy?”

“Yes,” she said. The blade point moved a fraction closer, so close it blurred in my vision, and I fought not to blink, because if I did the point would pierce my eyelid. “Is that all right with you, Niece? Is it all right with you that I make you sleep with my spy?”