She slid her other hand into my hair, grabbed a handful of it, and jerked me to my feet. I fought not to let the anger show in my eyes, and knew that I failed.
“It is not just my powers that are returning,” Mistral said from the steps.
She turned to look at him, and I knew that he had deliberately distracted her from me, offering himself to her anger.
She kept her painful grip on my hair, her other hand stroking along the side of my face, much as she had touched his hair. “What are you babbling about, Mistral?”
“Most of the guards that experienced the magic of the ring have regained at least some small magic that had been lost.”
Her grip tightened in my hair until I fought not to make a sound of pain. Andais liked that, and I did not want to encourage her. “Are you saying that she has brought others of my guard back to their power?”
“Yes, my queen.”
She turned back to me, and I didn’t like anything I saw in her eyes. She loosened her hold on my hair just a little as the silk of her gloved hand stroked my cheek and continued down along my neck. Under other circumstances it might have been exciting. Now it just scared me more.
“How many of my guards have you had sex with, Meredith?” She moved her face in close to me, as if she meant to kiss me. “How many of my guard have you given release?” She spoke the last word above my lips, and I knew she was going to kiss me before her lips touched mine.
I felt movement all around me, and knew that the guards were standing. Everyone with me had been in the hallway when Mistral and I had sex, so they all stood to answer her question. They stood to draw her attention from me to them. My bodyguards, my men and women. Some of them had spent centuries like well-armed mice. Quiet, hiding, trying to be invisible. Now they stood and purposefully made a spectacle of themselves.
She had moved back from me when they stood, leaving the taste of her lipstick on my mouth. “She fucked all of you?” She sounded as if she didn’t believe it.
“You asked only who has had release,” Frost said. “When the power filled the hallway, it touched all who stood there.”
“You mean the power when Mistral and Meredith came together made all the guard in the hallway orgasm?”
“Yes,” Frost said.
She laughed and let me go. “How many fertility deities are in your lineage?”
“Five,” I said.
“Five,” she repeated, as she paced away from us. “Now you don’t even have to touch them to bring them power, is that what you’re telling me?”
“I thought you would be pleased that magic returns to the sidhe,” I said carefully.
Afagdu, one of the nobles, spoke from his chair, his eyes the only color in the white of his face and the black of his hair and beard. “Our magic returns, is that not what we have all wished for, Queen Andais?” His voice was mild, careful. Afagdu and his entire house belonged to no one. They were one of the four or five truly neutral houses.
Dylis stood in a gown of yellow that complemented her hair and brought out the tri-blue of her eyes. She was head of one of the sixteen houses, and had never been my friend. “You know that I have never liked Essus’s daughter. I agreed with you, my queen, when you tried to drown her in childhood. But if the ring lives on her hand, and can bring children back to the sidhe, then I will follow her.”
A sort of mixed endorsement but I took it.
“You follow me, Dylis, until I say otherwise.”
The woman gave a curtsy. “You are our queen. I misspoke myself. I meant only that if Meredith can give us back our children, then I would rethink my objections to her.”
“Politely and politically spoken, Dylis. But if you mean Nicca and Biddy, they are both guards sworn to me and mine, and no one else. The guards serve me and my blood.” She smacked her hand against her chest to emphasize her words.
“Do you forbid a couple the ring has chosen to bed?” Afagdu asked.
“Royal guards serve royalty, this is their function,” Andais said.
“They will still serve you,” he said, and his voice was careful again.
She shook her head. “Not if there is a child.”
“But a child would be a great blessing.” This from one of Nerys’s ladies.
“The head of your house tried to kill Meredith just last night, or had you forgotten that, Elen?”
She gave a curtsy so low that she almost disappeared behind the table. “If the ring truly lives on her finger, then Nerys was wrong, very wrong. If the Goddess blesses Meredith with her gifts, then we were all wrong.”
“Would you have us all childless because your bloodline is?” asked Maelgwn, the wolf lord. He was naked from the waist up except for a hood and cloak of wolf skin, complete with most of the animal’s face sitting above his own. All his people had been shape-shifters until they lost the ability.
“I am queen and my blood inherits this throne.”
“You have your brother’s blood standing in front of you,” Maelgwn said, his mocking smile and his happy, peaceful eyes taking me in. “There she stands, your blood. If your niece can bring blood back to all of us, then your line is indeed powerful magic.”
“I have held the guards in abstinence for more than a thousand years. They wait at my pleasure, and the pleasure of my son.”
“And at your niece’s pleasure,” Afagdu said. He seemed to be helping me, but I didn’t trust it. He helped no one but himself and his clan.
Andais waved that away as if it was unimportant. “Yes, yes, on Meredith’s pleasure.” She looked at me then. “Though I did not intend the pleasure to be so… pleasurable.” She came down the steps again, gliding toward me in her heels and silk. “The guards are for our pleasure, Meredith, not us for theirs. I’m not certain you understand that, niece.” She walked past me, and I knew where she was going.
She stopped by Nicca and Biddy where they knelt. I glanced back and found that they were holding hands. They were also staring very hard at the floor, as if she wouldn’t hurt them if they didn’t look up. If only it were that easy.
She ran her fingers through the heaviness of Nicca’s chestnut hair. He went very still under her touch. “I like him in my bed, but not for sex. He frightens so easily. He doesn’t like pain, do you, Nicca?”
If I hadn’t been kneeling within a yard of him I might not have heard his answer. “No, Queen Andais.”
“I taught him that in a night, did you know that, Meredith?”
“Taught him what, my queen?”
“To answer any question I asked him with yes or no, and never, ever to leave off the Queen Andais.” She ran her hand down the side of his face until she cupped his chin. She raised him to look at her. “Would you like another lesson, Nicca? It has been long since I made love to a man with wings. It might be interesting.”
“Queen Andais,” I said.
She didn’t even look at me.
“My queen, you said that the guards who came to my bed were mine to keep.” I made my voice as neutral as I could, but I knew it was a bad idea to say it.
“Would you not share him with me?”
I thought about that. “Perhaps, but after he and Biddy have had their night.”
She touched Biddy, turned her face upward, so she gazed down at both of them. “But if she gets with child then they will be married and monogamous, and even the Queen of Air and Darkness will not be able to force him to forsake his marriage vows.”
“My queen, Aunt Andais, if Nicca and Biddy could make a baby, then it might mean that others of the sidhe could as well. That is a good thing.”
She let go of their faces and walked between them, forcing them to let go of each other’s hands. She traced the upper edge of Nicca’s wings. “But he is mine, Meredith, my pretty toy, and I do not share my toys.”
“You said that any guard who went to the bed of the princess was hers,” Afagdu said. “Nicca is her pretty toy now.”