"Wait," she said, again, and I saw something that I never thought I'd see, tears. The queen was crying.

"Heal Eamon first, and Tyler."

We all looked at her. I'd really thought she'd ask for her own injuries first. The queen did not share magic, she hoarded it. Taranis, the king of the Seelie Court, was the same way. It was almost as if they both feared that someday the magic would run out, and they knew that to rule here, you needed magic.

I wanted to say no, but Amatheon spoke before anyone else. "Yes, my queen." His voice was tired, and thick with something like grief. He walked, stiffly, to a point between the two groups of us, the queen with her injured lovers, and me with mine. Technically, Onilwyn and Mistral weren't mine, but somehow it felt very much as if everyone on this side of the room was not on her side.

Amatheon was still cradling the arm she'd cut open. The back of his coat was so blood-soaked it had glued itself to the back of his body like a second skin. "Bring the princess," he said.

"She is too injured to move," Galen said.

"As the queen bids," Amatheon said, "so we must do. Bring the princess." Perhaps he was too tired and in too much pain to control his face, because a fine, deep rage sparkled in those flower-petal eyes. But after the show Andais had just put on, it wasn't merely fear of losing his beautiful sidhe hair that made him willing to simply obey her.

Galen repeated, "Merry is too hurt to move."

"We can bring Eamon to the princess." Frost's voice was neutral, his face an arrogant mask.

"No," the queen said.

Galen bowed his head over me. He whispered, "No, no more."

Rhys looked at her with his renewed eye. "Merry needs a healer before she is moved."

"I know that," the queen said, and there were the first stirrings of anger in her voice. Old times, rearing their ugly head.

Galen leaned over me enough to hide my view. "I won't let her hurt you again."

He was too close for me to look in his eyes; I had to be content with the smoothness of his cheek, the fall of his hair. "Don't do anything foolish, Galen, please."

"My queen, do you need help?" This from Mistral.

Galen drew back enough so I could see. The queen who had looked small and dwarfed beside Eamon was standing with the larger man in her arms. Even hurt, she carried him easily, although he had to be almost twice her body weight. She was tall enough, long enough of arm, to cradle him. She was sidhe, and that meant she could have picked up a small car. It was that she was willing to carry him that made us all stare.

She spoke to no one and everyone. "Take Tyler down, gently, and bring him, too." She carried Eamon toward me, and cried as she came. If it had been anyone else I would have said, She grieved.

She knelt beside me and stumbled as she did it, managing a wry smile. "You sliced me up, niece, and you did a good job of it."

I took it as the compliment I thought it was meant to be. "Thank you."

She knelt beside me, cradling Eamon in her arms. "Heal him for me, Meredith."

Eamon's body was a mass of bloody stab wounds, so many that his chest looked like tenderized steak. His heart had to have been pierced multiple times, but he was sidhe and his poor heart kept beating, even cut up. There didn't seem to be an inch of his chest undamaged, as if he wore a shirt of blood and meat.

She made a small sound, almost a sob. "Nuline came, and we shared wine, and she left, and I went mad."

I fought to keep my face blank, because Nuline was one of Cel's royal guards. To accuse the prince's guard was almost the same as accusing Cel himself of the poisoning. They did nothing without his orders, for fear of what he would do to them. If Andais was a sadist, then you needed a new word for Cel. None of them would dare risk Cel's displeasure. None of them would poison the queen without Cel's permission, or at least believing they had it. Had he given the order from his dark prison?

Doyle spoke carefully with his ruined mouth. "I smell no poison."

"There are other ways to use your nose, Darkness," she said.

He leaned in toward her face, slowly, painfully. When he was an inch or less from her face, he sniffed the air. "Magic," he whispered. He very carefully licked her cheek, but the movement seemed to hurt him. He drew back. "Bloodlust."

She nodded.

"If it was in the wine, then why isn't Nuline here, butchered or butchering?" Amatheon asked.

"She is a thing of spring and light. There is no bloodlust to call in her," Andais said. The queen looked at me, and those tri-grey eyes were full of a sorrow that I hadn't known Andais was capable of. "They were very clever." She said, they. Would she make that logic jump to Cel? Or would she do what she had always done, and find a way for it not to be his fault?

"I had not felt such a rush of battle madness for centuries. It felt so good. Every wound, every harm I caused made the bloodlust grow. I'd forgotten how amazingly good it felt to slaughter, not for effect, or information, or to invoke fear, but simply for the love of it. Whoever did the spell knew my powers, intimately," Andais reached out a bloodstained hand toward me. "Heal my Ravens, and I will slay Nuline."

"Only Nuline," I said.

"I will slay the one who did this to me." Her voice was firm, but there was a wariness in her eyes. She knew what I meant. "Heal my Ravens, Meredith." Her hand touched my arm, and that one touch echoed through me. Made the magic that the God had placed inside me ring like a great bell. Andais must have felt it, for she looked wide-eyed at me.

Galen whispered, "What was that?"

Doyle spoke carefully through his ruined mouth. "The God's call."

I heard the voice in my head: All power comes from the head. I understood then, or hoped I did. The reason that the Unseelie couldn't have children was that Andais couldn't have children. The reason our magic was fading was that Andais's magic had begun to fade. She was our queen, our head.

I looked up into her startled face, and said the words I had to say: "Come, Aunt, let us embrace."

She leaned over me, and the look on her face was almost unwilling, as if she was as caught up in the magic as I. She was my aunt, my father's sister, and had known me since birth, but in all those years she had never kissed me.

The press of her lips was like touching the skin of some delectable fruit, where the skin lies thin and ripe against your mouth. The scent of ripe plums filled my senses as if I could drink it out of the very air, or sip it from her lips. My mouth was pressed to hers, and I opened to it as if I would take a bite from the ripeness of her mouth.

The sweet taste of her stirred the magic, woke it like heat to rise up, up inside me, to spill shimmering and burning along my skin. The heat melded into the honeyed sweetness of the fruit, and I could feel the summer sun caressing the thick, glowing skins of the plums as they hung heavy on the tree. The heavy summer heat clung to our skin, filled the world with the drowning scent of fruit, so ripe, so heavy that it was ready to burst its thick silken skin, ready to give up its meat to the sun's caress and the drowsy hum of bees. The fruit held itself in a perfect moment of readiness, the breath of absolute perfection. One second more and it would fall from the tree, ruined; one second less and it would not be the sweetest thing to ever touch mortal mouth.

I came back to myself in the blink of an eye. I opened my eyes and found Andais like some silver dream, shining so bright that she made nests of shadows around everything in the room. And I realized that it wasn't just her who made shadows quiver through the room. I'd seen my skin glow like moonlight, but never like this. It was as if my skin were filled with a white, almost silver fire of burning magnesium. A flame so clear and pure that it would blind if you gazed too long.