A Lick of Frost

EVENTUALLY THE MIRROR WAS JUST A MIRROR AGAIN. THE GOBLINS would arrive tonight with a guard of Red Caps to make certain this was not sidhe treachery. With Doyle injured, I had to choose new guards to watch us, and frankly the ones I trusted most didn't want the duty.

Frost would have stood with Doyle, if ordered, but he didn't really enjoy seeing me with other men. He was okay with Doyle and himself being in the same room at the same time with me, but he didn't share with anyone else. Rhys was more open-minded about the sharing thing, but it would have been a type of torture to ask him to watch the goblins with me. Being a prisoner of the goblins had been what had cost him one eye.

"You meant that about wanting them to hurt you, didn't you?" Rhys asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Do you know how disturbing that is?"

I thought about it, then nodded. "You either get it, or you don't."

"I do not get it either," Frost said.

I kept quiet because Frost actually got it more than he thought he did. He didn't like causing me pain, but a little "tie me up, tie me down" worked just fine as foreplay for him. But since he didn't consider bondage the same thing as causing pain, I didn't argue with him.

"Doyle gets it," Rhys said.

I nodded.

"You enjoy normal sex, right?" Rhys asked.

"Normal is a judgment. The kind of sex I like is just the kind of sex I like, Rhys."

He took a deep breath and started over. "I don't mean to sound judgmental. What I mean is, do you have less... bondage sex with the rest of us because you think we won't do what you want? I guess I want to know that you really enjoy being with me."

I put my arms around him, but kept us far enough apart so I could gaze up into his face. "I love being with you, all of you. But sometimes I like something rougher. I wouldn't want to have the goblins' idea of sex every night, but the thought does excite me."

He shivered, and it wasn't from pleasure. No, it was definitely fear. "I know now, thanks to you, that only my ignorance of goblin culture cost me my eye. If I hadn't been just another arrogant sidhe, I'd have known that their culture allows even prisoners to negotiate sex. I could have forced them not to maim me. But I saw the sex as torture, and you can't bargain with torture."

"When a goblin tortures you, you'll know it."

He shuddered again.

I hugged him, trying to squeeze that haunted look from his face. "We need to decide who's going to guard my back tonight."

He hugged me tightly. "I'm so sorry, Merry, but I can't. I just can't do it."

I whispered into his hair, "I know, and it's all right."

"I will do it," Frost said.

I turned in Rhys's arms so I could see Frost. His face was at its arrogant best, coldly handsome. What I saw was that it wasn't his lack of enjoyment of what would be happening that would hamper his ability to guard me, but rather just how much he might secretly enjoy it. That would hamper him. He had a tendency to let his emotions cloud his judgment. Tonight would push too many of Frost's buttons for him to guard me well. If Doyle had been there to help force him through his emotional baggage, then maybe, but Doyle wouldn't be there tonight. Who could I ask to do this?

The mirror suddenly showed the queen's bedroom. We had put a spell on the mirror to keep anyone else from simply peeking in, but the queen had taken that badly. So she had ready access to the mirror. It meant we had no privacy, but it kept Andais's anger to a more manageable level.

It also meant that I'd started sleeping in some of the smaller rooms in the house. My excuse that sex exhausted us and we just fell asleep elsewhere was holding so far.

The queen was covered in blood from about mid-arm to her lower body. It was hard to tell with the black she was wearing, but the cloth seemed to be stuck to her body with the wetness of it. She held the blade in one hand, so covered in blood that I knew it must be slippery.

I didn't want to look at the bed, but I had to. I stayed in Rhys's arms and we both looked at the bed, in that slow-motion way you do when you both want to see and never want to see.

It had to be Crystall, but he was just a bloody form in the shape of a man. Only his shoulders and the width of his hips made me sure of the man part. He was still on his stomach, still where we'd last seen him. One arm lay half off the bed, the hand hanging in midair. The hand twitched involuntarily as if something she'd done to him had affected the nerves.

Tears simply spilled down my face. I couldn't stop them. Rhys pushed my face against his shoulder so I wouldn't have to see. For once, I let him. I'd seen what Andais wanted me to see, though I had no idea why she wanted me to see it. What she'd done to Crystall was usually reserved for traitors, enemies. People she meant to get information out of, or prisoners who were to be tortured for crimes. She had reduced him to a red ruin for what? For what! I wanted to scream it at her.

Rhys's arms tightened around me, as if he had read my intent.

"You lied about taking Rhys to your bed," she said at last.

"No," I said. "We just got off the mirror from the goblins." I wiped at my eyes and turned to face my queen. How I hated her.

"You seem a little pale and uncertain for sex, niece of mine." Her voice purred with pleasure at the effect she was having on me. Was that it, just a game to see how awful she could make me feel? Was Crystall so unimportant to her that he was just a body to use to hurt me?

"I will have Sholto fetch Rhys home. He can enchant my mirror as he enchanted yours, then he can join me, as he's always wanted to." She looked at Rhys then. She gave him the full look of those triple gray eyes. "You do still want me, don't you, Rhys?"

That was a dangerous question. Rhys spoke, carefully, "Who would not want to lie with your beauty? But you wanted Merry to be with child, and I must be here to do my duty by her, as you ordered me to do."

"And if I ordered you home?" she asked.

"You gave your oath that all the men who had come to my bed would be mine," I said. "You swore it."

"Except for Mistral. He I did not give to you to keep," she said.

"Except for Mistral," I said, voice soft, and fighting to be even.

"Would it upset you more to see Rhys stretched across my bed like this?"

Again, a dangerous question. I thought of several things to say, then settled for the truth. "Yes."

"You cannot love them all, Meredith. No woman can love them all."

"True love, no, my queen, but love them, yes. I love them because they are my people. I was taught that you take care of those who are in your charge."

"My brother's words keep haunting me from your mouth." She flung her hand up, and I think not on purpose sent blood splattering across her side of the mirror. "Sir Hugh has contacted me. There is talk that Taranis will be forced to be a sacrifice to bring life back to his people. There is talk of regicide, Meredith. Talk that the Seelie Court has suffered under his reign of madness." There was something about the way she said that last that made my stomach clench.

Frost said, "He was quite mad this morning, my queen."

"Yes, Killing Frost, yes, you are still there. Still by her side. The Seelie want me to know that they mean no insult by offering you their throne."

"Is it done then?" Frost said.

"No, not quite, but you have perhaps a day and a night before Hugh's faction either loses or gains control of enough nobles to bring our princess to their throne. Hugh told me that I still had Cel to bring to my throne. That it wasn't as if Meredith were my first choice."

Did Hugh have any idea how much he had endangered me? Andais was not much more stable than Taranis. I had no idea how she would react to such talk from the Seelie Court.

"You look frightened, Meredith," she said.

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Why are you not thrilled at the possibility of being queen of the Seelie?"

"Because my heart lies with the Unseelie Court," I said finally.

She smiled then. "Does it, does it truly? Half my sithen is covered in white and pink and gold marble. There are flowers and vines everywhere. The Hallway of Immortality, which has stood as a place of torment for millennia is covered in flowers. Galen's magic dissolved the cells, and I cannot make the sithen rebuild them. I have people tear up the flowers in the hallway, but they simply regrow overnight."

"I do not know what you want me to say, Aunt Andais."

"I thought the only revolution I had to worry about was one of arms and politics. You have shown me that there are other ways to lose power, Meredith. Your magic is possessing my sithen even with you in Los Angeles. The changes creep farther every day, like some kind of cancer." She laughed, but it held an edge of pain. "A cancer formed of flowers and pastel walls. If I let the Seelie have you, will my kingdom go back to what it was, or is it too late? Is that what the Seelies see, Meredith, that you will remake all of faerie in their image? You are destroying your heritage, Meredith. If I do not stop it, there will soon be no dark court left to save."

"It was not deliberate on my part, Aunt."

"If I give you to the Seelie, will it stop?"

I looked into those eyes. Eyes that held less sanity than they should have. "I don't know."

"What does the Goddess say?"

"I don't know."

"She speaks to you, Meredith. I know she does. But have a care. She is not some Christian deity to take care of you. She is the same power that made me."

"I know the Goddess has many faces," I said.

"Do you, Meredith, do you really?"

I just nodded.

"Enjoy Rhys while you can, because once you sit the Seelie throne, my guard revert to me. They guard only our noble line."

"I have not agreed..."

She waved me to silence. "I no longer know how to save my people and our culture. I thought you were the solution, but though you may save faerie, you seem to be destroying the Unseelie way of life. Did the Goddess offer you a choice for how to bring life back to faerie?"

"Yes," I said softly.

"She offered you blood sacrifice or sex, didn't she?"

"Yes," I said. I couldn't keep the look of astonishment off my face.

"Don't look so shocked, Meredith. I was not always queen. Once no one ruled here who was not chosen by the Goddess. I chose death and blood to cement my tie to the land. I chose the Unseelie way. What did you choose, child of my brother?"

There was a look in her eyes that made me afraid to tell the truth, but I could not lie, not about this. "Life. I chose life."

"You chose the way of the Seelie."

"If there is a way to bring power that does not kill, why is it wrong to choose it?"

"Whose life did you spare?"

I licked suddenly dry lips. "Do not ask."

"Doyle?"

"No," I said.

"Then who!" She screamed it at me.

"Amatheon," I said.

"Amatheon. He is one of your newest lovers. He helped Cel torment you as a child. Why?"

"I don't understand, Aunt."

"Why?"

"Why what?" I asked.

"Why save him? Why not kill him to bring life back to the land? He was a willing sacrifice."

"Why kill him if I didn't have to?" I asked.

She shook her head sadly. "That is not an Unseelie answer, Meredith."

"My father, your brother, would have said the same thing."

"No, my brother was Unseelie."

"My father taught me that all in faerie from lowest to highest have value."

"No," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I thought of you while I cut Crystall up, Meredith. The only hesitation I have about giving you to the Seelies is that if I do, I cannot kill you without starting a war. I don't want to lose the option of torturing you to death, Meredith. I think once you are dead your magic will fade and the traitorous Goddess that comes to you will fade with it."

"Would you condemn all of faerie to death because it is not the faerie you wish it to be?" Frost asked it, his face astonished.

"No and yes." With that the mirror went blank again. We were left staring at our own reflections. We all looked pale and shocky. Today no good news seemed to go unpunished.