Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“I do not believe that you know what I want, Dormath. But if you remain mute, I will kill you, and there will be no argument that it is unfair, for it will be one-on-one against me.”

He swallowed, and his throat looked almost too thin to hold the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. “Why are you doing this, my queen?”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Do you want the court to know? Is that what you want?”

“I want a child who values his people and their welfare before his own.”

The silence in the room was profound. It was as if all of us took a breath and held it. It was as if the very blood in our veins ceased to move for just that instant. Andais had admitted that Cel valued nothing but himself, something I had known for years. She had raised him to believe that faerie and the sidhe and the lesser fey owed him. He had been the apple of her eye, the song in her heart, the most precious thing in her world for longer than this country had existed, and now she wanted a child that valued others above themselves. What had Cel done to so disillusion his mother?

Dormath spoke into that silence. “My queen, I do not know how to give you what you desire.”

“I can give you what you want.” Maelgwn’s voice had lost its usual amused smoothness. He sounded serious and gentle at the same time, a tone I’d never heard from him.

Andais looked at him, and with only her profile I could tell it wasn’t a friendly look.

“Can you, wolf lord, can you truly?” Her voice held that edge of warning, like the pressure in the air before you even know the storm is coming.

“Yes,” he said softly, but the word carried through the hall.

She settled herself against the back of her throne, her hands very still on the carved arms. “Illuminate me, wolf.”

“There are two children of your line who have come of age, my queen. One child has reawakened the queen’s own ring, and now offers almost anything to be allowed to enjoy the ring’s magic. A child who says bringing children to all the sidhe is more important to her than gaining the throne, or protecting her own life, or filling her own belly with life. These are all things that most of the nobles in this room, perhaps everyone in this room, would give anything to have. Is that not a child who puts her people’s welfare above her own?”

I sat very still. I did not want to draw her attention to me. Maybe what Maelgwn said was true, but the queen didn’t always like or reward the truth. Sometimes a lie got you further. Andais’s most beloved lie was that Cel was fit to rule here. She herself had opened the door to the nobles finally speaking the truth. That Cel would have been almost no one’s choice, if they’d had any other choice that didn’t include a half-breed mortal. Only my father had ever had the courage to tell Andais that there was something wrong with Cel. Something that went beyond just being spoiled or privileged.

Andais spoke as if she’d heard my last thought. “When my brother got his new bride pregnant so quickly, there were those who urged me to step down. I refused.” She turned and looked at me. “Do you want to know why I called you home, Meredith?”

It was so unexpected that I gaped at her for a moment, then managed, “Yes.”

“I’m infertile, Meredith. All those human doctors have done everything they can for me. That is why you must prove yourself fertile. Whoever rules after me must be able to bring life back to the courts. Maelgwn accused me of condemning all of you to be childless because my line is. I can only give you my word that I did not believe it until recently. If I could go back…” She sighed and slumped as much as her tight bodice would allow. “I wonder what we would be now, we Unseelie, if I had allowed Essus to take this throne these thirty years and more.” Her eyes held a pain that she’d never let me see before. That one look answered a question that I had wondered about. I knew that my father loved his sister, but until that moment I had not been sure that she loved him back. It was there in her eyes, in the lines of her face, even underneath the makeup. She looked tired.

“Aunt Andais—” I started but she shushed me.

“I have heard whispers in the dark, niece of mine, whispers that I did not believe. But if the ring truly lives for you, if it has begun to choose fertile couples for you, then perhaps the rumors are true. Is Maeve Reed, once Conchenn among the Seelie, with child?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. There had to be some among us who were spies for the Seelie Court. It would endanger Maeve to say yes, but Taranis had already tried to kill her. She was in another country now, as safe as we could make her. It was more dangerous not to answer, because we had told no one that Maeve Reed had been exiled from faerie because she had refused the king’s bed on the grounds that he was sterile. Which meant that, unlike Andais, Taranis had known a hundred years ago that he was infertile. He had kept his throne and condemned his people to diminish and die rather than step down. The Seelie were within their rights to demand his death as a true sacrifice to the land for that oversight.

I’d thought too long, and Andais said, “Meredith, what is wrong?”

Frost squeezed my shoulder, Galen was very still beside me. I looked at Doyle, and he gave a small nod. Truth was the lesser evil. I whispered it. “Yes, she is with child.”

Andais was looking from me to Doyle, as if she longed to ask why I had hesitated so long, but she was a better politician than to ask. You did not ask a question in public to which you did not know the answer. “Answer so that everyone can hear you, niece.”

I had to clear my throat to make my voice carry through the hall. “Yes, she is with child.”

A sigh of murmurs ran through the assembled nobles.

Andais smiled, as if she was satisfied with the reaction. “Did you work a spell for her, a fertility spell?”

“Yes,” I said.

The murmur grew, swelling like the sea as it sweeps toward the shore.

“I heard her husband was dying even then, is that true?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Treatments for cancer can leave a man sterile or unable to perform.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“But you managed a spell that got a dying man to perform one last time for her?”

“Yes.”

“Who played the part of the consort to your goddess? Who was god to your goddess for this spell?”

“Galen.” I pressed his hand against my chest, as I said it.

The ocean of murmurs burst upon us in a confused babble. Cries, almost shouts. Some did not believe it. I heard at least one male voice that I could not quite place say, “That explains it.” I would ask Doyle or Frost if they recognized the voice later.

Andais looked at Kieran still standing bound at the foot of the steps. “I slew Galen’s father before I, or the noble lady who brought complaint of magical seduction, knew she was pregnant. You almost slew a warrior who had helped work magic to create life in the womb of a sidhe woman and a dying human.”

Kieran looked confused, as if he was thinking very hard. “I would say I do not believe it, but you have spoken too much truth today, my queen, for me to doubt this. And you do not like Galen enough to lie to save him.”

“We never lie, Kieran.”

He bowed. “I meant…”

“I know what you meant.” She leaned back against her chair, almost cozily, like a cat settling in. “What did Cel’s people tell you that made you agree to do this traitorous thing?”

I expected Kieran to argue, or fight her, but he simply answered. “That the green man would bring life to her.” He nodded at me, since he could not point.

Andais looked at Dormath. “And what did Siobhan tell you?”