"He wants to be left alone, Princess. He wants to not be involved in this fight."

"Unless you're Switzerland, there is no neutrality," I said.

"So he learned."

The other guard still stood in a cloak of his own pale yellow hair. That hair framed a body that was a pale whitish-grey, not moonlight skin like mine, but a soft, almost dusty color. His eyes gleamed out of a narrow, high-cheekboned face, eyes the color of dark green leaves, with an inner star of paler green like some sort of starred jewel. His lips were the reddest, ripest, prettiest in the courts, either court, if you asked me. The ladies envied him that mouth, and only the brightest, most crimson of lipsticks came close to producing it. His name was Briac, though he preferred to be called Brii. Briac was just another form of the name Brian, and had nothing to do with plants or agriculture. I knew that Brii was some sort of plant deity, or had been, but beyond that his name kept its secrets.

He smiled as we came nearer—those red, red lips, distracting from the jewels of his eyes, the curtain of his hair, and even the long naked lines of his body. As if he felt me looking, his body began to respond, as if my approach was enough to whet his anticipation and bring him partially erect.

Adair's body was as empty of reaction to my approach as his eyes. He was lucky I was not my aunt, for she sometimes took lack of response on an involuntary level as a personal insult. I did not. Adair had, at the very least, had his pride cut away with his hair. I had no idea what other pains my aunt had put him through to make him willing to stand at this door and await me. He was angry, on that I would have bet a great deal. Anger and embarrassment are not always the best aphrodisiac. My aunt has never truly understood that.

Brii's head went to one side like a bird. His smile slipped a little. "You have not done your duty by the princess."

"There was an assassination attempt on the princess," Doyle said.

The last of his smile was gone. "The blood."

"What else did you think it was from?" I asked.

He shrugged and gave a rueful smile. "Someone else's blood smeared on the queen's face would mean she had a very, very good time. My apologies for assuming the same of you." He gave a bow that swept his hair out and around one arm like a cloak then stood up smiling again, with that look in his eyes that was all male, and said plainly that no amount of unpleasantness could take all the pleasure from this duty, at least not for him.

Adair stood on the other side of the doors, wooden-faced and limp-bodied. He wouldn't even look at me.

"We must tell the queen of the attack." Doyle moved up as if to touch the doors.

Adair moved first, but Brii followed, and their arms crossed in front of the door handles. "Our orders were very specific," Adair said. His voice tried to be as empty as the rest of him, but failed. There was a razor-thin edge of rage in those simple words. So much so, that it danced a line of magic down the hall, across our skins like tiny bites. He was fighting very, very hard to control himself.

I rubbed my arm where the edge of his power had touched me, had hurt me, totally by accident, and cursed my aunt. She'd made it so that Adair would obey her orders and bed me, but she'd made certain that neither one of us would enjoy it.

"And what were those orders?" Doyle said, his dark voice, lower even than normal, sounding as if it would crawl down your spine and hunt for vital organs.

Brii answered, trying to make his voice upbeat, conciliatory. I didn't blame him; I wouldn't have wanted to be standing between Doyle and Adair when the flags went up, either. "If the ring knows both Hawthorne and Ivi, then they are to service the princess as soon as possible. If the ring does not know both of them, then one of us is to take the place of the one the ring did not recognize." He smiled, at Doyle, as if trying to ease some of the tension. It didn't work.

"Open the door, Brii. We have much to tell the queen, and much of it is not only dangerous but also not something to be discussed in the hallway, where more ears may hear us than the queen would like."

Brii actually moved back, but Adair did not. Somehow I'd known he wouldn't. "The queen has been at great pains to be certain that I follow all her orders. I will do as she has... bid me, and follow those orders to the absolute letter. I will not give her cause to abuse me again this day." The anger had quieted and didn't bite down the hall now, but Doyle moved like a horse when a fly settles on it. Perhaps all that stinging anger had gone only on his skin.

"I am captain here, Adair, not you."

"It is good to have you back, Captain" —Adair made that last word an insult—"but whatever your rank, it is not greater than the queen's. She is our master, not you. She made this very clear to me, Darkness, very clear."

They were almost touching, so terribly close, almost too close to fight. "You refuse my direct order?"

"I refuse to disobey the queen's direct order, yes."

"I ask you one last time, Adair, will you step aside?"

"No, Darkness, I will not."

Magic breathed through the hallway. That first hot breath that it draws sometimes, like the tensing of a muscle before a blow. It wasn't that I didn't think Doyle would win. He was the Queen's Darkness. It was that it seemed a waste to fight among ourselves when we had enemies to fight. I didn't know who those enemies were, not yet, but they'd tried to kill me earlier today. We needed to save our energy for them, not spend it in senseless bickering.

"Stand down, Doyle," I said, soft but clear.

The magic grew in the hallway, as if the very air were drawing a breath.

"I said, stand down, Darkness," and this time my voice was not soft.

The power that was growing all around us hesitated, flickered. Doyle did not turn from the man he faced, he merely growled, "He stands in our way, and we must needs see the queen."

"We will see the queen," I said, and began to work my way up through the men. I looked at both Abloec and Usna. "Do you both stand by what you said, that you will tell the queen what needs telling?"

"I forgot how wretched it is to be sober, so let this wretchedness end. I will tell the queen of what I saw; you have what word is left me." He even began a bow, but it seemed to hurt his head, so he stopped in midmotion.

"Usna," I said.

He gave me that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile and said, "Of course, Princess, I am always a man of my word."

"I will allow no one past me until we have obeyed everything the queen instructed," Adair said.

"Do you really think that you can withstand the might of this many of your fellow Ravens?" Barinthus asked, though he did not move up closer to the door. I think he was afraid of what might happen if he used his power to fight. I know I was.

I stepped past Frost's back and got a glimpse of Adair's determined face before Frost moved in front of me. "You are too close, Meredith," he said.

I shook my head. "Not close enough, Frost."

He frowned down at me. "I did not save you from a human assassin to have you hurt by your own guards."

"I will not be hurt, not in that way, at least."

Puzzlement filled his grey eyes, and he frowned harder. "I do not understand."

There was no time to explain it. Power was building on the very air again. A glance showed that Adair's skin was beginning to glow.

"It wasn't a human who tried to assassinate me today, Frost." I made sure my voice carried. "It was sidhe magic that bespelled that human. Sidhe magic that put a spell on Doyle that made him slow to defend me. Only a sidhe could have put such a spell on the Darkness himself."

Brii spoke up as I'd hoped he would, "Who could bespell Darkness, except for the queen herself."