«I know what a kiss is,» Maelgwn interrupted. «What I don't know is how a kiss has brought about this change in the Darkness.»
«Tell him whose kiss brought you back into your powers,» Andais said.
«Princess Meredith's kiss,» Doyle said, still kneeling by my chair, still with my hand playing in the thick warmth of his hair, tickling along the back of his neck.
«Lies.» This from Miniver; she was head of her own house. She was tall and blond and could have passed for Seelie Court, because once she had been. She had come to the Unseelie and fought her way to a position of power, until the tall commanding beauty was the head of her own house in the dark court. That she had preferred to rule in the Unseelie Court, rather than accept exile to the human world, meant that the Seelie Court would never accept her back. Her exile from the shining throng would be eternal. They sometimes took back those who had wandered among the humans, but once you went to the dark court, you were considered unclean.
She stood in front of her throne, a shining thing with her yellow braids sliding over a dress of shimmering gold cloth. A golden circlet graced her brow, over the perfect arch of dark eyebrows and the tri-blue of her eyes. She had never adopted the darker colors favored by Andais and her court. Miniver dressed as if she expected to walk into a different court.
«Did you say something, Miniver?» Andais said, and by merely leaving off any title she had insulted the golden figure. It was a warning. A warning to sit down and shut up.
«I said, and I say again, that it is a lie. No mortal could bring anyone into his power.»
«She is a princess of the sidhe, and that makes her a little more than a mere mortal,» Andais said.
Miniver shook her head, sending those heavy yellow braids sliding along the gold of her dress. «She is mortal, and you should have drowned her when she was six, as you tried to. It was weakness for your brother that stopped your hand.»
She spoke as if I could not hear her, as if I were not sitting there alive in the same room with her now.
«My brother, Essus, once told me that Meredith would make a better queen than my own son, Cel, would make a king. I did not believe it then.»
«At least Cel is not mortal,» Miniver said.
«But Cel has not brought back a single drop of the power we have lost. Nor have I,» Andais said, and there was no teasing to her now. There was no showmanship.
«And you would have us believe that this half-breed mortal has done what pure sidhe blood has not?» Miniver pointed at me in what I thought was an overly dramatic gesture, but it did show the sleeve of her dress to perfection, flashing the slits of cloth open so that the blue cloth of the underdress showed through. Sometimes if you've lived nearly forever, you think overly long about how things appear. «This abomination cannot be allowed on the throne, Queen Andais.»
I thought abomination was a little harsh, but I said nothing, for in a way it wasn't me she'd challenged, it was the queen.
«I say who will and who will not sit on the throne of this court, Miniver.»
«Your obsession with a hereditary monarchy of your own bloodline will be the death of us all. We have all seen what happens on the dueling ground when one of us shares blood with that thing. They become mortal through the disease that her blood carries.»
«Mortality is not a disease,» Andais said, quietly.
«But it kills like one.» Miniver looked out over the court, and there were a lot of faces turned to her. Many showed by either silence or nodding that they agreed with at least this much. They, too, had worried about my blood. «If this mortal becomes queen, then we are honor-bound to take blood oath from her, to bind us to her. To take blood oath, very much as we take on the dueling ground.» Miniver looked up at Andais, and there was something close to pleading on her face. «Don't you see, my queen, if we take her blood into us and bind ourselves to her mortal peril, then we could lose our own immortality? We would cease to be sidhe.»
It was Nerys who stood up and said, «We would cease to be anything.»
Three, then four others of the noble houses of the Unseelie stood. They stood and showed their support for what Miniver had said. Six houses out of sixteen stood against me. That was something we had not foreseen. Or I had not.
Doyle had gone very still under my hand. All my men had gone very still, except the goblins at my feet and the Red Cap at my back. Either immortality didn't mean the same thing to them as it did to the sidhe, or other things were happening with the goblins. Things I had not quite grasped.
«I say who will be my heir,» Andais said, «unless you wish to challenge me to personal combat, Miniver, Nerys, all of you. I will gladly fight you each in turn, and this arguing will cease.»
Miniver shook her head. «Your answer to everything is death and violence, Andais. It has led us to be childless and near powerless, but our immortality, you cannot have that.»
«Then challenge me, Miniver. Make yourself queen, if you can.»
If Miniver's anger could have flown across the room and struck Andais, the queen would have died where she sat, but Miniver's anger did not have that kind of power. The day when the fey, any fey, could have killed with simply an angry thought was centuries past.
Andais looked at Nerys. «You, Nerys, do you wish to be queen? Do you wish it enough to challenge me to a duel? Defeat me and you can be queen.»
Nerys just stood there, staring at her with tri-grey eyes that nearly mirrored the queen's own. Nerys's long black hair was done in a series of complicated braids that hung like a heavy cloak at her back. Her dress was white with touches of black in the trim, the belt, the lace at her wrists. She looked cool and collected. There was no sense of outrage that Miniver vibrated with.
«I would never presume to challenge the Queen of Air and Darkness to a duel. It would be suicide.» Her voice was quiet, and somehow dark. But there was no anger in it, nothing that could give true offense.
«But attacking me from secret, an assassination attempt, that would not be suicide, would it?» Andais's smile was not pleasant. «Not if you didn't get caught.»
Nerys just stood there, looking up at the throne, with no hint of fear, no panic, no anything. If Andais thought she could frighten Nerys into a confession, she was wrong. Nerys was going to force Andais to produce proof. Did she not understand that we had proof? Did she think that with Nuline's death, she was safe?
«Assassination is a pretty business, so long as you are not discovered.» Andais looked down the line of standing nobles, I think so that she did not single Nerys out, but it was like many things tonight, in trying to do one thing, another thing was accomplished.
Miniver began to move through her people to the space between her table and the next. Some of her people touched her arm; she shook her head, and they let her go. She walked out from between the tables, her back ramrod-straight, like something carved of gold and amber.
«Do you have something to say, Miniver?» Andais asked.
«I challenge the princess Meredith to a duel.» For someone who had seemed so angry, she was strangely calm as she said it.
People at her table cried, No, do not do this. She ignored them, and kept her Seelie face pointed toward the dais. She never looked at me, only at Andais. She asked for my life, but it was not me she asked it of.
«No, Miniver, it will not be so easy as all that. The princess has had one assassination attempt tonight. We do not need two.»
«I would have preferred my spells to work earlier tonight, but if she will not die from a distance, then I will do it here, now.»
My face gave nothing away, because it took a few seconds for me to realize what she'd said. Andais looked amused, her eyes glittering.
Doyle had stood, putting himself more in front of me. My other guards moved to shield me from her sight, and whatever she might do. I had to peer between them to see that more of the armored guards spilled around her to form a half circle. She was as tall as any of them, and there was nothing fragile or fearful about that shining figure. She seemed very sure of herself.
«Are you admitting, before the entire court, that you tried to assassinate Princess Meredith earlier tonight?» Andais asked.
«I am,» Miniver said, and her voice rang through the room, matter-of-fact, as if now that the worst was happening she didn't need her anger anymore.