The cautious hand on his arm belonged to Hawthorne. His black hair fell in thick waves past his knees. When he turned his head, the light gleamed rich green from those black waves. He wore a silver circlet that held that heavy mass back from his face. The rest of him, from broad shoulders to feet, was covered in a cloak the color of pine needles, a rich deep green, that was held closed over his shoulder by a silver brooch.

"What is wrong, Darkness?" he called to us. "We have done nothing."

"Why are you here?" Doyle called back.

"The queen has sent us to meet the princess," Hawthorne said.

"Why only the two of you?"

Hawthorne blinked, and even from this far away I could see that strange pink shade that his inner circle of eye had. Pink, green, and red were Hawthorne's tricolored eyes. "What do you mean, only the two of us? What has happened?"

"They don't know," Barinthus said, quietly.

"How long have you been standing here, waiting?" Doyle asked. But he'd already relaxed his pose, the gun in his hand beginning to lower to point at the floor.

"Hours," Ivi said, and swirled the edge of his own pale green cloak out like a skirt at a dance.

Hawthorne nodded. "Two hours, or more. Time moves oddly in the sithen."

Doyle put up his gun, and as if that were a signal, swords were sheathed, guns holstered, until they all stood at ease, or as easy as they got.

"I ask again, Darkness, what has happened?" But no one had to explain, because some shifting among the guards had let him see me. I'd forgotten about the blood on my face. I'd wiped some of it off with a bit of wet cloth from one of the men, but not all of it. Only soap would get it all off. "Lord and Lady protect us, she's hurt!"

"It is not her blood," Doyle said.

"Then whose?"

"Mine," Frost said, and he moved up through the crowd of guards, and again, as if that were a signal, they all began to move down the hallway toward the other two guards.

Ivi wasn't smiling when he said, "What happened?"

Doyle told him, the brief outline, leaving out what happened when Barinthus touched the ring.

Ivi was shaking his head. "Who would dare? Princess Meredith bears the queen's mark. To harm her is to risk the queen's mercy. None of her Ravens would risk that." There was absolutely none of Ivi's banter in those words. It was as if the news of the assassination attempt had frightened him out of his jokes and into something more real.

Hawthorne's tricolored eyes were wide. "Who indeed would dare?"

Barinthus was still holding me in his arms, but there was no snow now, no cold. I touched his shoulder. "I can walk now."

He looked at me as if he'd forgotten he was holding me, and maybe he had. He had to bend over to put me safely on the stone floor. I shook the back of my skirt in place, smoothed it with my hands, and knew that the pleats in back simply would not be perfect until the skirt was ironed. There was nothing I could do about it. I just hoped that the news of my near death would distract her from my less-than-perfect clothing. You never knew with Andais; sometimes she would direct her anger at small things if she couldn't deal with the large.

Ivi went to one knee before me, and when he did, the cloak caught on his leg and pulled to one side, baring his shoulder, part of his chest, and the edge of his hips. He was nude under the cloak.

"Princess Meredith, greetings from the Queen of Air and Darkness. She sends us as gifts." That lilt of mockery was back in his voice.

Hawthorne had also dropped to his knees, but the way he held the cloak tight with only his hands showing made me wonder if he were wearing anything more under his cloak than Ivi was.

"We are gifts for your stay if the ring doth know us," Hawthorne said, and he sounded as if he would have been angry if he dared.

"Surely this can wait," Onilwyn said. "If the queen truly does not know of what has happened, then she must be told."

It was Usna who answered that. "If you want to hurry off and give the queen bad news, by all means run along. I, for one, do not want to be the first person to tell her." He was still nude, carrying his sheathed sword in his hand. The queen had been known to shoot the messenger, as it were.

Onilwyn looked a little pale. "You may have a point."

"But so do you," Barinthus said. "The queen needs to know. I cannot believe that no one has contacted her."

"She did not know near three hours hence," Hawthorne said.

"If she knew now, there would be more men," Doyle said, and no one argued with him.

"She was entertaining herself," Ivi said, his voice rich with that self-loathing humor, as if every word meant more, "and gave word that only the princess's arrival would be good enough to disturb her."

"Surely someone would have interrupted her fun and games for this," Barinthus said.

Hawthorne looked up at him. "You are one of us, Lord Barinthus, but she does not treat you as she treats most. She respects your power. The rest of us are not so lucky. If we interrupt her game, then we are to take the place of the one she plays with." He looked down and a shudder passed through him. "I would not interrupt her for an attempted assassination."

"If I'd died, then one of you would have told her?" I asked, and my own voice held an edge of what Ivi usually sounded like.

"You have stripped us of all who were powerful enough to beard her in her den, Princess," Hawthorne said.

"Darkness, Frost, Barinthus," Ivi said, "teacher's pets compared to the rest of us."

"Mistral is still here," Doyle said.

Hawthorne shook his head. "He fears her, Darkness, as do we all."

"She has gotten better in the last few months," Barinthus said, "easier to talk to."

"Again, Lord Barinthus, perhaps for you," Hawthorne said.

"Let us finish our speech," Ivi said. "Then you can all draw straws for who gets to be the bearer of such evil tidings."

"You say that as if you don't get to draw a straw," Rhys said.

"We don't," Ivi said.

"Hawthorne, explain," Doyle said.

"We are gifts for the princess, if the ring doth know us."

"You said that already," Rhys said.

Doyle gave him a look, and Rhys shrugged. "He did."

"And if the ring knows you," Frost said.

"Then we are to invite the princess to bed us." Hawthorne was careful to look only at Doyle, as if I weren't standing there.

Ivi snorted, as if trying not to laugh.

"What is funny in that?" Doyle asked him.

"That's not what the queen said."

"It is the meat of what she meant," Hawthorne said, and there was an air of offended dignity in his tone.

Ivi laughed out loud.

"What did the queen say, Ivi?" Doyle's tone was resigned, as if he really didn't want to know, but understood there was no choice.

"If the ring knows us" — and he finished the rest in an imitation of the queen's voice good enough to raise the hair at the back of my neck—"then fuck Meredith, fuck her as soon as you see her. If she gets picky then you may go to her room, or yours. I don't care, just get the job done."

"Well," Galen said, "that's..."

"A little less than poetic even for the queen," Rhys said.

"That'll do." Galen looked a little shocked.

"Do I get a say in this?" I asked.

Hawthorne bowed until his forehead nearly touched the stone. "I am sorry, Princess."

"What he won't tell you," Ivi said, "is that he asked what we were to do if Princess Meredith did not wish to bed us as soon as she entered the sithen." He imitated the rhythm of Hawthorne's speech.

"And what did my aunt say?" I asked.

Ivi smiled up at me, and his dark green eyes held a fierce triumph that I didn't understand.

Hawthorne answered with his face still bowed toward the stones, his voice holding sorrow the way Ivi's usually held mockery. "Are you Unseelie sidhe or not? Persuade her."