“Is it safe for Rhys to do this?” I asked.
Rhys looked back at me. He grinned. “If I were taller, I wouldn’t have to climb.”
“I mean it, Rhys. I don’t want to trade you for Aisling. And I really don’t want two of you hanging up there.”
“If I really thought you loved me, I might not chance it.”
“Rhys…”
“It’s all right, Merry, I know where I stand.” He turned to the tree and started climbing.
Doyle touched my shoulder. “You cannot love us all equally. There is no dishonor in that.”
I nodded, and believed him, but it still hurt my heart.
Rhys looked like some white phantom against the blackness of the tree. He was right underneath where Aisling hung. He was just about to reach out toward him when magic crawled across my skin, stopped my breath in my throat.
Doyle felt it, too, and yelled, “Wait! Don’t touch him!”
Rhys started climbing back down the tree, sliding on the rain-slicked bark.
“Rhys! Hurry!” I screamed.
The air around Aisling’s body shimmered, like a heat haze, then exploded. Not in a rain of flesh and blood and bone, but in a cloud of birds. Tiny birds, smaller, more delicate than sparrows. Dozens of songbirds flew over our heads. We all fell to the ground, guarding our heads. Frost put his body over mine, protecting me from the fluttering, twittering mob. The birds looked charming, but looks can be deceiving.
When Frost raised up enough for me to see clearly again, the birds had vanished into the dimness of the trees. I stretched upward, trying to see. “Is the cavern wall farther away than it was?” I asked.
“Yes,” Doyle said.
“The forest stretches for miles now,” Mistral said, and his voice held awe.
“They call it the dead gardens, not the dead forest,” I said.
“It was both once,” Doyle said, softly.
Rhys explained, “This was a world at one time, Merry, a whole underground world. There were forests and streams, and lakes, and wonders to behold. But it whittled down, as our power was whittled away. Until, at the end, it was just what you saw when we entered — a bare patch where a flower garden once grew, surrounded by a fringe of dead trees.” He motioned toward the spreading trees. “The last time I saw anything like this inside any faerie mound was centuries ago.”
Abe hugged me from behind. It startled me, and I tensed. He started to pull away from me, but I patted his arm and said, “You startled me, that’s all.”
He hesitated, then hugged me close. “You’ve done this, Princess.”
I turned enough to see his face. He was smiling. “I think you helped, too,” I said.
“And Mistral,” Doyle added. His deep voice tried for neutral and almost made it, as much as it hurt him to say those words. He’d been convinced that the queen’s ring, which now sat on my hand, had chosen Mistral for my king. Only later had I been able to convince him it wasn’t so much Mistral as the fact that he was simply the first sex I’d had inside faerie while wearing the ring. Doyle had accepted that, but now he seemed to be wondering again.
“Doyle,” I said.
He shook his head at me. “For miracles such as this, what is one person’s happiness, Princess?”
I’d almost broken him of calling me princess. I had finally been Meredith, or Merry, to him, but no longer, apparently. I touched his arm. He pulled away from my touch, gently but firmly.
“You give up too easily, my friend,” Frost said.
“There is sky above us, Frost.” Doyle motioned outward with the gun in his hand. “There is forest to walk through.” He raised his face upward, and let the warm rain fall on his closed eyes. “It rains inside the sithen once more.” Doyle opened his eyes and looked at Frost, grabbing his arm, dark against light. “How clear do you need your messages to be, Frost? It seems that Mistral did this.”
“I will not give up my hope, Darkness. I will not lose it, when it is so freshly won. You should not, either.”
“I’ve missed something,” Rhys said.
Doyle shook his head. “You have missed nothing.”
“Now, that’s too close to a lie, and we never lie,” said Rhys.
“I will not discuss this with you, here,” Doyle said. He looked past Rhys to Mistral’s tall figure. It was a small look, but enough to tell me of his jealousy.
“Look to your own power, Darkness,” Abe said.
“Enough,” said Doyle. “We must tell the queen what has happened.”
“Look at your chest, Darkness,” Abe said.
Doyle frowned at him, then looked down. My gaze followed his. It was hard to see against the black of his skin, and in the uncertain light, but…“There are lines on your skin, red lines.” I moved closer, trying to decipher what Abe’s power had drawn on Doyle’s skin.
I started to reach out, to trace the lines on his chest. Doyle moved out of reach. “I cannot bear much more, Princess.”
“Your body is painted with your symbol again,” Abe said. “It is not just Mistral who is returning.”
“But it is he who is returning faerie to itself,” Doyle said. “And I was ready to stand in the way of it, for my heart would not let me lose this fight. But that was before this wonder of the dead gardens come back to life, and my sign of power returning. I have served this court century after century as we lost all that we were. How could I do less than serve the court as we begin to win back what was lost? Either my oath to serve means something, or it never meant anything at all. Either I can do this for the good of our people, or I have never been the Queen’s Darkness. I either do this, or I am nothing, do you not see that?”
Abe went to him, touched his arm. “I hear you, so honorable Darkness, but I tell you that this power is a generous thing. Goddess is a generous Goddess. God is a generous God. They do not give with one hand and take with the other. They are not so cruel.”
“I have found their service most cruel.”
“Nay, you have found Andais’s service cruel,” Abe said, voice soft.
A bird twittered out in the twilight woods — a sound of settling in for the night, sleepy and questioning.
A voice came out of the dimness: “I thought you a drunken fool, Abeloec, but now I realize that it wasn’t the drink making you so. It’s simply your natural state.”
We all whirled toward the voice. Queen Andais stepped from the far wall, where she had emerged earlier. We had been more than careless not to realize she might come back.
Abe dropped to one knee in the mud. “I meant no offense, my queen.”
“Yes, you did.” She walked only a little way toward us, then stopped, grimacing. “I am happy to see the rain and clouds, but the mud, I could have done without.”
“We are sorry that you are displeased, my queen,” Mistral said.
“The apology would sound better if you were on your knees,” she said.
Mistral dropped to his knees in the mud beside Abe. Their hair was too long, wet and heavy; it trailed into the mud. I didn’t like seeing them like that. It made me afraid for them.
She waded through the now ankle-deep mud until she could have touched them, but she walked past. Instead, she reached out to trace her fingers across Doyle’s chest. “Puppy dogs,” she said, smiling.
Doyle stood impassive under the caress of her hand, though Andais had made a torture of caresses. She would tease and torment, then deny them release. She’d made a game of it for centuries.
She touched Frost’s arm. “Your tree is dark against your skin now.” She moved to Rhys, touching the dual fish. She moved to me, and I fought not to cringe away from her. She put her hand on my stomach where the exact imprint of a moth stood, like the world’s most perfect tattoo. “A few hours ago this moth fluttered, struggling to escape your skin.”