“If by that you mean pleasant, kind, and just a normal aunt, then yes, Andais, that is what I want.”

“It is not their heritage to be any of those things.”

“My father, your brother, thought otherwise, and he raised me to be all those things.”

“And it was love and kindness that got him killed, Meredith. He hesitated, because he loved his killer.”

“And perhaps if you had raised your son, as my father raised me, to be kinder, considerate, happy, then neither of them would be dead right now.”

She startled as if I had slapped her. “How dare you …”

“Speak the truth,” I said.

“So I must be this false self, this fiction of a cheerful, smiling auntie, or you will try to keep me out of the lives of my nieces and nephew?”

“Yes, Aunt Andais, that is exactly what I mean.”

“And if I said there is always darkness through which I can step and visit as I will, what would you say?”

Doyle said, “I would say that if it is death you seek, come unasked, unbidden, unannounced, and we will grant that wish.”

“You dare threaten me, my own Darkness.”

“I am no longer your anything, my queen. You cared for me not at all except as a visible threat by your side—‘Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness’—and then you would send me to kill on your behalf. I have a life now, and a reason to keep living, beyond just the fact that I do not age, and I will let nothing stand between me and that life.”

“Not even your queen,” she said, voice soft.

“Not even you, my queen.”

“So either I concede to your ridiculous demands or I lose all contact with the babes.”

“Yes,” I, Doyle, Frost, and Rhys said at the same time. The others nodded.

“Once I would have threatened to send my sluagh to the Western Lands and find you, or the babies, and bring all to me, but now the King of the Sluagh stands by your side and no longer answers to me.”

“You sent me to the princess, my queen.”

“I sent you to bring her home, not to bed her. You I did not choose for her.”

“You gave her the choice of all your Raven guards, and I am that, as well as King of the Sluagh.”

She looked at me, and there was threat and anger, and everything I wanted to keep away from our babies in her face. “You have stripped me of most of my threat, Meredith. Even the goblins answer to you now, rather than to me, and that I did not intend. That was your doing, niece of mine.”

“Essus, your brother, made certain I understood all the courts of faerie, not just the Unseelie. He wanted me to rule all, if I ruled any.”

She nodded and looked thoughtful, the anger gone as if she could not stay enraged and think at the same time, and that was probably truer than was pretty to think about.

“You are right, Meredith; it was you who bargained with the goblins so wisely, and you who seduced the sluagh to your side, and you who won the loyalty of my Darkness, and my Killing Frost. I did not see you as a threat to my power, but only as a pawn to be used and discarded if it did not serve me, and now here we are with you more powerful than I ever envisioned, and that is without a crown upon your head.”

“I did not have your magic to protect me, aunt; I had to find power where it was offered for it was not within me.”

“You wield the hands of flesh and blood, niece; those are formidable powers on the battlefield.”

“But if all I depended on was my magic, then I would not have Doyle, or Frost, or Sholto, or the goblins, or any of what I have won. I have killed only to save my life and the lives of those I love. My ability to kill, no matter in what horrific way, is not where my power lies, aunt.”

“And where does your power lie, niece?”

“Love, loyalty, and when forced being utterly ruthless, but it is kindness and love that have won me more power than any death I have dealt.”

She made a face, as if she smelled something bad. “Your hands of power may be Unseelie Court magic, but you are so”—and here she rolled her eyes—“the descendant of all those bloody fertility deities in the Seelie Court. Love and kindness will win the day, oh yes, oh my, my ass.”

“The truth is in the results, aunt.”

“I have ruled for over a thousand years; kindness and love will not see you rule for that long.”

“No, because I shall not live that long, Aunt Andais, but my children will and their children.”

“I’ve never liked you, Meredith.”

“Nor I you.”

“But I am beginning to truly hate you.”

“You’re late to this party, Aunt Andais; I’ve feared and hated you most of my life.”

“Then it’s hatred between us.”

“I believe so.”

“But you want me to come and pretend otherwise in front of your children.”

“If you wish to be their aunt in truth, rather than just by bloodline, yes.”

“I do not know if I have that much pretense in me.”

“That is for you to decide, aunt.”

She patted Eamon’s hand. “I understand what you were trying to tell me now. I will never be other than your aunt by bloodline, Meredith.”

“Agreed, Aunt Andais.”

“But you would give me the chance to be more to your children.”

“If you behave yourself, yes.”

“Why?”

“Truth, you are powerful enough that I would rather not go from hating each other to trying to kill each other.”

She laughed so abruptly it was more of a snort. “Well, that is truth.”

“But there is one other reason I’m willing to do this, Aunt Andais.”

“And what would that be, niece Meredith?”

“My father told me stories of you and him playing together when you were children.”

“He did?”

“Yes, he did. He would tell me of you as a little girl with him a little boy, and his face would soften and the memories gave him joy, and in hopes that my father’s sister is still inside you somewhere, I will give you a chance to show Essus’s grandchildren the part of you that made my father smile.”

Her eyes were shining again, but it wasn’t magic; tears glittered in her tricolored eyes. She swallowed hard enough I could hear it, and then she said, “Oh, Meredith, nothing you could have said would have hurt me more than that.”

“I did not mean to cause you pain.”

“And I know that you mean that, and that is the cruelest blow of all, my niece, my brother’s daughter, because you remind me of him. He should have killed me and taken the throne when Barinthus urged him to; so much pain could have been saved.”

“You were his sister and he loved you,” I said.

The tears began to fall down her face. “I know that, Meredith, and I will miss him forever.” She blanked the mirror with a wave of her hand as she began to cry harder.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

WELL, THAT WAS unexpected,” Rhys said.

“Merry made her cry,” Cathbodua said, and came to drop to her knees in front of me, her raven-feathered cloak spilling around her like shiny black water. The cloak always moved as if it were made of different things than it appeared to be, as if it were more liquid than solid sometimes, but then once it had given her the gift of shapeshifting, so maybe that was it.