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 h*ps 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."