The guards parted and Adair came to the front to stand beside me. He risked a glance at my face, then dropped to one knee before the queen. His head was bowed so his face was hidden from her. It was the proper thing to do, but I'd seen the anger in his eyes before he knelt. He had to master his face better than that or he would not last at court, any court.
I looked down at where he knelt, golden and perfect except for the lack of hair. He was immortal, and had once been a god, and had risked all that to help me. The queen had promised me that all the Ravens I took to my bed would be mine. My guards, and no longer hers. Technically, she couldn't harm him, not if she believed we'd had sex. Of course, the same was true of Doyle, Galen, Rhys, Frost, Nicca, and, though she did not know it, Barinthus. But her promise had not kept my true guards safe. In fact, crazy or not, bespelled or not, that she had harmed them meant she was forsworn. I'd promised to keep them safe, and by dying to prove it, my promise stood. Hers was broken. She was an oathbreaker. Sidhe had been cast out of faerie for such things. The problem was that the only person who could hold her to that level of faith, was her.
"Galen and Adair took blows meant for the princess. The princess's own guard took blows meant for Eamon and Tyler." A look like pain crossed her face, and she held on to Eamon's hand where it lay on her shoulder. "I am grateful that Merry's men saved me from destroying that which I hold dear. But none of the Ravens threw themselves in Merry's way. No guard of mine tried to help me, once battle was joined, even though it was not a declared duel. Only a declared duel would have freed my guard from protecting me."
Mistral dropped to his knees on the other side of her, though I noticed that he was just out of reach. Not that that would truly help if things went badly. "You ordered us to kneel, and not to move, my queen. On pain of joining your human against the wall." He gave her a look that was a mixture of appeal and anger. "None of us would risk your anger."
"But that is not all, Mistral. That, I could forgive. I heard others talk of slaying me. Of taking my own sword Mortal Dread and killing me before I awoke. I heard the treacherous talk."
I remembered snatches of conversation myself. This line of reasoning could end nowhere that I wanted us to go. But how to distract her? Doyle's deep voice fell into that nervous silence. "Should we not attend to Nuline, who is truly traitor to the courts, before we place blame for loose talk?"
"I say who and what we attend to first," she said.
Eamon knelt beside her, and even kneeling he was bigger than she. I'd never appreciated before how broad his shoulders were, how physical his presence was. He whispered something against the side of her face.
She shook her head. "No, Eamon, if they will not protect me, and would rather see me dead, then they may turn and join our enemies. We will be besieged on two fronts. You must never leave an enemy behind you."
"Is it not better to fight a war on one front, rather than two?" I asked.
She looked up at me, befuddled. I didn't know if it was the aftereffects of the spell, or something else, but she wasn't herself.
"It is always better to fight a war on a single front, instead of two," she said, at last. "That is why the traitors before me must die first."
"The spell was meant to make you butcher your guards," I said, the way you'd talk to a slow child. "If you execute them now, you will be doing exactly what your enemies wish."
She frowned at me. "There is logic in what you say. But talk of murdering your queen cannot go unpunished."
"And what is the penalty for being forsworn among us?" I asked.
"An oathbreaker," she said.
"Yes."
"Death or banishment from faerie," she said, and her voice was very sure, but her eyes held something. Either she saw the trap or she was worried about something else.
"You swore to me that all the men who came to my body would be my guards, the princess's bodyguards, no longer Queen's Ravens."
She frowned at me. "I remember."
"You also promised that no harm would come to them without my permission, just as no harm can come to your guards without your permission."
She frowned harder. "Did I promise you that?"
"Yes, Aunt Andais, you did."
She looked down at the bubbling spring. "Eamon, did you witness this promise?"
Eamon looked up at me, and something in his eyes let me know he was about to lie. "Yes, my queen, I did." Eamon had not been in the room when Andais made the promise. He had lied for me. No, not for me, for all of us.
Andais sighed, "The queen's promise must be inviolate." She stood and looked down at me. "I am forsworn, Princess Meredith, but I am also queen here. We have a quandary upon our hands."
"Since the promise was made to me, then the wrong was done to me."
"So you may forgive it," she said, "but I assume that this forgiveness comes at a price." The eyes were watchful, and there was a warning in them that I could not read. There was something she was afraid I would ask, and she did not wish to give it.
"I am blood of your blood, Aunt. How could it be otherwise?"
"And what is your price, niece of mine?"
"A price for each of my men that you injured."
"Blood price then," she said.
"It is my right."
Her face was as closed and guarded as I'd ever seen it. "And what blood would you demand?"
"Blood price can be paid in other coin," I said.
A look slid through her eyes, almost of relief, then she nodded. "Ask."