She motioned at Amatheon. “Make my land live.”
Amatheon offered his sword up to me again, and closed his eyes. He put his neck back at an angle where I could have a clean strike.
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
He opened his eyes just enough to look at me. “In vision, and for truth.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Yes.” Then he closed his eyes, and lifted the sword up higher, as if that would make me take it sooner.
“He is a willing sacrifice, Meredith. There is no evil here.”
I shook my head. “How is that you, who have all eternity, are so impatient, and I, who have only a few decades, want to take the longer road?”
In that moment I felt her sigh, and her happiness at the same time. It had been a test of sorts, not of good versus evil, but of the direction this revival of power would take. She had offered me a quicker, more violent way to bring faerie back to its power. I knew with a knowledge as solid as the foundations of the world that Amatheon would die. It would be true death. The fact that he would rise from that grave, and be reborn to his “life,” did not change the fact that it would be my hand that slit his throat. My hand that spilled his blood hot across the earth, across my skin. I gazed down at him as he knelt, eyes closed, face peaceful.
I took the sword by the hilt, and lifted it from his hands. Those hands went to his sides, limp, only a slight tension in the fingers letting me know that he was fighting the impulse to guard himself from the blow.
He had gone from hating me for my mongrel blood to offering me up his pure sidhe flesh, and letting me spill that same pure blood in a hot wash across the ground.
I leaned over him and pressed my mouth to his. His eyes opened, wide and startled. I think the kiss surprised him more than any blow could have. I smiled down at him. “There are other ways to make the grass grow, Amatheon.”
He stared up at me, uncomprehending for a moment. Then the shadow of a smile caressed his lips. “You would refuse the call of the Goddess?”
I shook my head. “Never, but the Goddess comes in many guises. Why choose pain and death when you can have pleasure and life?”
The smile widened just a bit. He unbent his neck from its almost painful offering position, then looked from the sword in one hand to the chalice in the other. “What would you have of me, Princess, Goddess?”
“Oh, no,” she said, and this time it wasn’t my lips. There was a hooded figure not far from us, her feet not touching the bare soil. In fact she was misty, and try as I might, I could not see her clearly. The hand that held the hood close was neither old nor young nor in between. She was all women and no woman. She was the Goddess. “Oh, no, Amatheon, she has made her choice. I will leave her to that decision. She does not need me to finish this task.” She gave a small chuckle that held something of the dryness of an old woman’s voice, the rich melodious sound of a woman in her prime, and the lightness of a girl. “I do not often agree with Andais, but in this I might. Bloody fertility goddesses.” But she laughed again.
“I did not know that Andais still spoke with you, Goddess.”
“I did not stop speaking to my people, they stopped listening to me, and after a time, they could no longer hear my voice. But I never stopped speaking to them. In dreams, or that moment between waking and sleep, there is my voice. In a song, the touch of another’s hand in theirs, I am there. I am Goddess, I am everywhere, and in everything. I cannot leave, nor can you lose me. But you can leave me, and you can turn your back on me.”
“We did not mean to leave you alone, Mother,” Amatheon said.
“I was not alone, Child. I cannot be truly alone, but I can be lonely.”
“What can I do, Mother, to repent?”
“Repentance is an alien concept to us, Amatheon. But if you wish to make it up to me…”
“Yes, Goddess, with all my heart.”
“Make the earth live again, Amatheon. Spread your seed over that which is barren, and make it live again.” She began to fade like mist in the sun.
“Goddess,” he said.
Her voice floated to us. “Yes, Child.”
“Will I see you again?”
Just her voice now, young and old at the same time. “In the face of every woman you meet.” And she was gone.
He gazed at the spot where she had been, and only when I let the sword fall to the ground did he turn to me.
“What would you have of me, Princess? I am yours in any way you want me. Whether by my life, my blood, or my strong right arm, I will serve you.”
“You sound as if you’re about to pledge me your sacred honor like some knight of old.”
“I am a knight of old, Meredith, and if it is my honor you want, you may have it.”
“You told Adair you had no honor, that the queen had taken it with your hair.”
“I have touched the chalice and seen the face of the Goddess. Such blessings are not given to the unworthy.”
“Are you saying your honor is intact because the Goddess treated you as one who is honorable?”
A quick puzzled look flashed through his multicolored eyes, then he said, “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Say what you are thinking.”
He smiled, a quick flash of real humor, that made his face less perfectly handsome, but more real, more precious to my sight. “My honor was never gone, because no one can take your honor from you, not without your letting it go. I was going to say that you have given me back my honor, but I understand now.”
I smiled at him. “No one can take your honor, but you can give it away.”
The smile wilted around the edges. “Yes. I let fear take my honor from me.”
I shook my head.
He smiled again, almost embarrassed. “I mean that my fear became more important than my honor.”
I stopped his words with a kiss. I wrapped my hands across his back, the chalice still held in my right hand. His arms came up tentatively, as if he wasn’t certain how to begin. I think the sex would have been slow and gentle, but I held the symbol of the Goddess, and I was the living symbol of the Goddess. An impatient Goddess. The chalice pulled us backwards as if there was some huge magnet underneath the ground. When the chalice met the earth, it went into the ground, and I was left holding nothing. Amatheon’s back hit the spot where the chalice had vanished, and his spine bowed, eyes fluttering closed, his fingers convulsing against my back, his body pushing against mine. The strength of his hands, the solidness of his body, and the raw need in his face, all of it pulled me down to him, put my mouth against his, my hands eager on his body. When my hand slid between our bodies so I could cup the hard, thick length of him, he shuddered and cried out. His eyes were wild when he looked up at me again.
“Please, Princess.” His voice was so hoarse it didn’t sound like him.
“Please what?” I whispered against his mouth.
“I cannot promise how long I will last.”
“What do you want, Amatheon?”
“To serve you.”
I shook my head, so close above him that my hair brushed his face when I did it. “Say what it is you want, Amatheon.”
He closed his eyes, and swallowed so hard it sounded painful. When he opened his eyes again, he was calmer, but there was something in those flower-petal eyes that was still cautious. His voice was a whisper, as if he didn’t want to speak his wish too loudly, as if someone might overhear him. “I want you to ride me, to press my naked body into the dirt. I want to watch your breasts dance above me. I want to feel your body slipped over mine like a sheath to a sword. I want to watch your skin shine, your eyes and hair dance with power while I shove myself into you as far and as often as I can. I want to hear you cry out my name in that voice that women use only at the height of their passion. I want to pour my seed inside your body until it spills down the sides of you, and trails down my own hips. That is what I want.”
“Sounds wonderful to me,” I said.