“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.”

Tyler had been a barely legal teenage lover. He’d been a human brought into the Unseelie sithen to be her slave, in the bondage-and-submission sense, not in a bought-and-sold sense. Tyler had been good looking in a vapid sort of way; he had been entirely too much pet and not enough person for my tastes, but he had pleased Andais, met a need that was real for her. Apparently he had been more important to her than even she knew.

“I am sorry for your loss, Aunt Andais.”

“You sound as if you mean that.”

“I would not have wished death by torture on anyone. I had no quarrel with your slave, Tyler. I simply did not understand him or his interactions with you enough to comment.”

“Such careful wording, my niece; you never liked Tyler.”

“He disturbed me, because you wanted him to disturb me. I know it was part of your games to control me, or amuse yourself, but I was never afraid of Tyler, and he never harmed me. If I hadn’t found some value in him I wouldn’t have helped your guards and Eamon protect Tyler the night that you almost whipped him to death.”

There had been a night in the private chambers of the queen when she had chained Tyler to the wall of her bedroom, and it had gone from a pain-filled game to a near-death experience for him. Eamon had shielded the human with his own body, trying to bring Andais back to sanity in time to save Tyler and keep her from stripping the flesh even from Eamon’s bones.

The other guards had been forced to kneel and watch the torture, but what had begun as forcing her celibate guards to watch her have sex with her pet had turned into true life and death. I had watched Rhys, Doyle, Frost, Galen, Mistral, and so many others bloodied and dreadfully injured trying to come to Eamon’s aid. In the end I had stepped forward and hoped only to give them time to gather themselves, to think of a way to stop her, but the Goddess had blessed me, and the queen had been stopped by the blessing of the Goddess through me. It was not my power that had done it; I never had illusion otherwise. The best I could claim was that my faith and courage had been rewarded. That night Aunt Andais had been poisoned deliberately to drive her into her full bloodlust in hopes that she would be painted so mad that her nobles would see that Prince Cel, her son, should come to the throne sooner, but I had interfered, and the plan had backfired.

“But you were not there this time, Meredith. You were not in the court that the Goddess and Consort gave to you and Doyle. If you had been, Tyler might still live.”

Was she truly going to make this my fault? It was like her self of old; she took little blame for herself and had seen even less attached to Cel, her late son.

Eamon didn’t try to soothe her this time, but sat with his arm almost stiffly around her, as if he wasn’t sure whether she still welcomed it.

“Would you not have given up your crown to have the man you loved by your side again?” I asked. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to ask, but it was all I could think of to say.

I smelled roses, and knew the Goddess was with me. She either approved of what I’d said or would aid me if the queen did not. Something brushed my cheek and I looked up to find pink and white rose petals falling from empty air. The petals began to collect in my lap like floral snow.

Andais made a sound between a scream and an inarticulate curse. “Pink and white petals, not red, not the colors of our court, but of that golden throng that thinks themselves so superior to us, why, Meredith, why the Goddess of the Seelie and not the Dark Mother?”

“The Goddess is all women, all things, or that is what She has shown to me.” I kept my voice calm, but surrounded by the scent of roses in the summer heat of a meadow, in the midst of the soft-petaled rain of roses, I couldn’t be upset. Her blessing was too close to me, and it felt warm, safe, like home is meant to be, but so seldom is.

Andais sat up, moving out from the curve of Eamon’s arm. “The gardens that have returned to our sithen are full of bright and happy colors. Your Seelie heritage has contaminated our kingdom. You would reshape us in the form of that other world of lies and illusions. You’ve seen what Taranis considers truth, Meredith. How can you wish our court to become a fairy-tale land that is not real?”

“I did not wish these changes on your court, Aunt Andais. The Goddess returned and with Her the wild magic, and it goes where it will, changing things as it goes. No one of flesh and blood can control the wild magic of faerie itself.”