"Why would you want me to see that?" I asked.
"I wanted you to know that I had enough control not to send him out the window, where I could use the sea to drown him. I wanted you to see that I chose to spare him."
"To what purpose?" I asked. Sholto drew me in against his body so that I wrapped my arms around him almost absently. I wasn't sure if he was trying to protect me or just to comfort me, or maybe even just to comfort himself, though touch is more comfort to the lesser fey than to the sidhe. Or maybe he was warning me. The question was, warning me about what?
"I wouldn't drown," Galen said.
We all looked at him.
He repeated it. "I am sidhe. Nothing of the natural world can kill me. You could shove me under the sea but you couldn't drown me, and I wouldn't explode from pressure changes either. Your ocean can't kill me, Barinthus."
"But my ocean can make you long for death, Greenman. Trapped forever in the blackest depths, the water made near solid around you as secure as any prison, and more torturous. The rest of the sidhe cannot drown, but it still hurts to have the water go down your lungs. Your body still craves air and tries to breathe the water. The pressure of the depths cannot crush your body, but it still presses down. You would be forever in pain, never dying, never aging, but always in torment."
"Barinthus," I said, and that one word held the shock I felt. I clung to Sholto now, because I needed the comfort. It was a fate truly worse than death that he threatened Galen with, my Galen.
Barinthus looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face didn't please him. "Don't you see, Meredith, that I am more powerful than many of your men?"
"Are you doing this in some twisted bid to make me respect you?" I asked.
"Think how powerful I could be at your side if I had my full powers."
"You'd be able to destroy this house and everyone in it. You said as much in the other room," I said.
"I would never harm you," he said.
I shook my head, and pulled away from Sholto. He held on to me for a moment, then he let me stand on my own. It was how this next part had to be done.
"You would never hurt my person, but if you had done that terrible thing to Galen, stolen him as husband and father for me, it would be harming me, Barinthus. Surely you see that?"
His face fell back into that handsome unreadable mask.
"You don't understand that, do you?" I asked, and the first trickle of real fear wormed its way up my spine.
"We could form your court into a force to be feared, Meredith."
"Why would we need it to be feared?"
"People only follow out of love or fear, Meredith."
"Don't go all Machiavellian on me, Barinthus."
"I don't know what you mean by that."
I shook my head. "I don't know what you mean by any of the things you've done in the last hour, but I do know that if you ever harm any of my people and condemn them to such a terrible fate, I will cast you out. If one of my people vanishes and we can't find them, I will have to assume that you've done what you threatened, and if that happens, if you do that to any of them, then you will have to free them, and then ..."
"And then what?" he asked.
"Death, Barinthus. You would have to die or we would never be safe, especially not here on the shores of the Western sea. You're too powerful."
"So, Doyle is the Queen's Darkness, still to be sent out to kill on command like the well-trained dog he is."
"No, Barinthus, I will do it myself."
"You cannot stand against me and win, Meredith," he said, but his voice was softer now.
"I have the full hands of flesh and blood, Barinthus. Even my father didn't have the full hand of flesh, and Cel didn't have the full hand of blood, but I have both. It's how I killed Cel."
"You would not do such a thing to me, Meredith."
"And moments ago I would have said that you, Barinthus, would never have threatened people I loved. I was wrong about you; do not make the same mistake."
We stared at each other across the room, and the world narrowed down to just the two of us. I met his gaze, and I let him see in my face that I meant what I'd said, every word of it.
He finally nodded. "I see my death in your eyes, Meredith."
"I feel your death in my heart," I replied. It was a way of saying that my heart would be happy to have his death, or at least not sad.
"Am I not allowed to challenge those who insult me? Would you make a different kind of eunuch out of me than Andais did?"
"You can protect your honor, but no duel is to the death, or to anything that will destroy a man's usefulness to me."
"That leaves little that I can do to protect my honor, Meredith."
"Maybe, but it's not your honor I'm worried about, it's mine."
"What does that mean? I have done nothing to besmirch your honor, only the pixie brat."
"First, never call him that again. Second, I am the royal here. I am the leader here. I have been crowned by faerie and Goddess to rule. Not you, me." My voice was low and careful. I didn't want it to break with emotion. I needed control in this moment. "By attacking the father of my child, my consort, in front of me, you proved that you have no respect for me as a ruler. You do not honor me as your ruler."
"If you had taken the crown as it was offered, I would have honored what Goddess chose."
"She gave me a choice, Barinthus, and I have faith that she wouldn't have done that if the choice offered was a bad one."
"The Goddess has always allowed us to choose our own ruin, Meredith. Surely you know that."