"One more offering in a wealth of offerings will go unnoticed," Doyle said.
"We need to know where Nuline got the wine," Galen said.
Andais nodded. "Yes, yes, we do." There was something in her voice that I didn't like. It was a purr of hatred. Hatred will blind you to the truth, especially if you want to be blinded. She said, "Bring me my Darkness."
Doyle came at her call, but he stayed by my side. "I am, by your own words, the princess's Darkness now."
She waved it away, as if it meant nothing. "Call whomever you like master, Darkness. I ask only if you can track this spell back to its owner."
"I could not track it off your skin, but the bottle is still here. It is too powerful a spell not to leave a taint, a signature as it were, of the one who made it. If I can smell their skin, taste their sweat, then yes, I can track this to its owner."
"Then do it," she said, and she looked at me as she said the last: "Wherever this trail leads, we will follow, and punishment will be swift."
I looked at her, afraid to believe that she meant what I hoped she meant.
"Heard and witnessed," Barinthus said.
The queen did not look at him, but only at me. "There, Meredith, another oath to hold over my head."
"What do you want me to say, Aunt?"
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her gaze fled from my face and found a piece of wall to look at, as if she didn't want anyone to read her eyes in that moment. "What would you do, if you were me, niece?"
I opened my mouth, closed it, and thought. What would I do? "I would send for the sluagh."
She looked up then, her eyes very hard, as if she were trying to see through me. "Why?"
"The sluagh are the most feared of all the Unseelie. The sidhe themselves fear them, and they fear little. With the sluagh at your back, as well as your Ravens, no one will try a direct attack."
"You believe someone would dare attack me, us" - she motioned at the waiting knights - "head-on?"
"If the spell had gone its course, Aunt Andais, you would have slaughtered all your guards, and then with no one left to kill in this room, where would you have gone? What would you have done?"
"I would have found others to kill, any others."
"You would have ended in the banquet hall where there are sidhe who would not stand idle while you sliced them open," I said.
"They would have looked for a reason for my behavior," she said.
"I don't think they would. You have slaughtered and terrorized this court for a very long time. What you did here tonight is not that far from things I have seen you do before."
"Before, most of the slaughter had a purpose," she said. "My enemies fear me."
"Slaughter done coldly, and slaughter done in the heat of madness, look much the same when you are on the wrong end," I said.
"Have I been such a tyrant that the entire court would believe this of me?"
The silence in the room was thick enough to wrap around us all. To wrap us and choke us, because none of us knew how to answer the question without either lying, or angering her.
She gave a bitter laugh. "There is answer enough in your silence." She rubbed at her head as if it ached. "It is good to be feared by your enemies."
"But not by your friends," I said, softly.
She looked at me, then. "Oh, niece of mine, have you not learned, yet, that a ruler has no friends? There are enemies and allies, but not friends."
"My father had friends."
"Yes, my dear brother did have friends, and it's most likely what got him killed."
I fought back that flare of anger in me. Anger was a luxury that I could not afford. "If I had not been here today with the hand of blood, to bleed the magical poison out of your body, you would be dead, too."
"Be careful, Meredith."
"I have been careful all my life, but if we are not bold tonight, then our enemies will see us both dead. Perhaps Cel was even meant to die tonight. To be executed for killing me, and you. It would clear the way to the throne for other bloodlines."
"No one would be so foolish," she said.
"No one at court knows that I have the hand of blood. But for a quirk of magic, this would have worked exactly as they planned it."
"Fine, call the sluagh, and then what?"
"If I were you, or if I were me?" I asked.
"Either, both." Again she was studying me, trying to understand me.
"I would contact Kurag, Goblin King, and warn him, and have him bring more goblins than he is usually allowed into our sithen."
"You think he will throw his lot in with you against the entire Unseelie sidhe?"
"If I gave him a choice, no, but he has no choice. He is my sworn ally, and to deny me aid is to be forsworn. The goblins will kill a king for that."
She nodded. "Three months from now, he will not be your ally."
"Actually, four," I said.
"It was only six months, and they are half gone," she said.
"True, but Kitto is now sidhe, and for every sidhe-sided goblin I bring into their power, I gain a month of Kurag's aid."
"Will you f**k them all?" It was said with no offense, as if it was the only way she knew how to ask the question.
"There are other ways to bring someone into his power."
"You would not survive hand-to-hand combat with a goblin, Meredith."
"Kurag has agreed that we may help the princess bring over his people," Doyle said. He touched my arm, and in anyone else I would have said it was nerves. But it was the Queen's Darkness; Doyle didn't get nervous.