"I would have found others to kill, any others."

"You would have ended in the banquet hall where there are sidhe who would not stand idle while you sliced them open," I said.

"They would have looked for a reason for my behavior," she said.

"I don't think they would. You have slaughtered and terrorized this court for a very long time. What you did here tonight is not that far from things I have seen you do before."

"Before, most of the slaughter had a purpose," she said. "My enemies fear me."

"Slaughter done coldly, and slaughter done in the heat of madness, look much the same when you are on the wrong end," I said.

"Have I been such a tyrant that the entire court would believe this of me?"

The silence in the room was thick enough to wrap around us all. To wrap us and choke us, because none of us knew how to answer the question without either lying, or angering her.

She gave a bitter laugh. "There is answer enough in your silence." She rubbed at her head as if it ached. "It is good to be feared by your enemies."

"But not by your friends," I said, softly.

She looked at me, then. "Oh, niece of mine, have you not learned, yet, that a ruler has no friends? There are enemies and allies, but not friends."

"My father had friends."

"Yes, my dear brother did have friends, and it's most likely what got him killed."

I fought back that flare of anger in me. Anger was a luxury that I could not afford. "If I had not been here today with the hand of blood, to bleed the magical poison out of your body, you would be dead, too."

"Be careful, Meredith."

"I have been careful all my life, but if we are not bold tonight, then our enemies will see us both dead. Perhaps Cel was even meant to die tonight. To be executed for killing me, and you. It would clear the way to the throne for other bloodlines."

"No one would be so foolish," she said.

"No one at court knows that I have the hand of blood. But for a quirk of magic, this would have worked exactly as they planned it."

"Fine, call the sluagh, and then what?"

"If I were you, or if I were me?" I asked.

"Either, both." Again she was studying me, trying to understand me.

"I would contact Kurag, Goblin King, and warn him, and have him bring more goblins than he is usually allowed into our sithen."

"You think he will throw his lot in with you against the entire Unseelie sidhe?"

"If I gave him a choice, no, but he has no choice. He is my sworn ally, and to deny me aid is to be forsworn. The goblins will kill a king for that."

She nodded. "Three months from now, he will not be your ally."

"Actually, four," I said.

"It was only six months, and they are half gone," she said.

"True, but Kitto is now sidhe, and for every sidhe-sided goblin I bring into their power, I gain a month of Kurag's aid."

"Will you fuck them all?" It was said with no offense, as if it was the only way she knew how to ask the question.

"There are other ways to bring someone into his power."

"You would not survive hand-to-hand combat with a goblin, Meredith."

"Kurag has agreed that we may help the princess bring over his people," Doyle said. He touched my arm, and in anyone else I would have said it was nerves. But it was the Queen's Darkness; Doyle didn't get nervous.

"Most will not agree to fighting you, Darkness, or the Killing Frost. They will pick on those among Meredith's guard whom they believe they can defeat. They will try to kill your men." She turned back to me. "How will you prevent that once the fight is joined?"

"I will choose champions," I said. "They fight the warriors of my choice, not theirs."

"I assume you will choose Darkness and Frost."

"Probably," I said.

"Many will refuse to fight them, so I ask again, are you willing to bed all the goblins who will line up for a taste of your shining flesh?"

"I will do what I said I would do."

She laughed. "Even I have not stooped so low as to bed a goblin. I would have thought it was beyond the pale for you."

"I think you'd like goblin sex. They like it rough."

She looked past me, and I realized she was looking at Kitto, who was trying to stay close to me and be as invisible as possible at the same time. "He looks a little fragile for my idea of rough."

Kitto pulled back even farther behind me and Doyle, and Galen. I moved just enough to bring her attention more firmly to me. "When you have to lay ground rules that your lover is not allowed to bite off pieces of your body, I think that qualifies as rough."

She looked past me again at the sliver of face that Kitto had left in view. She jumped, and said, "Boo." He scrambled behind me, and then pushed back into the other guards, putting distance between himself and the queen.

Andais laughed. "Fierce indeed."

"Fierce enough," I said.

"I will call the sluagh. You call the goblins." She put her head to one side like a bird that had spied a worm. "I can call the sluagh from a distance, for I am their queen, but how will you call the goblins?"

"I will try the mirror first."

"And if that fails you?" she asked.

"I will use blade and blood, and magic to call him."

"An old method," she said.

"But effective."

She nodded, then closed her eyes for a moment. "The sluagh come to my call. I grant you the use of my own mirror to try for Kurag's attention."

"You sound doubtful that I will gain his attention."

"He is a crafty one, for a goblin. He will not wish to be drawn into the royal squabbles of the Unseelie Court."

"The goblins are the foot soldiers of the Unseelie Court. Kurag can pretend that our infighting means nothing to him, but so long as he calls himself a part of the Unseelie Court, then he must pay attention to our squabbles."

"He will not see it that way," she said.

"Let me worry about Kurag."

"You sound confident. You cannot bed him, for you cannot help him commit adultery."

"Sometimes you gain more from the promise of a thing than from the thing itself."

"You cannot offer what our laws forbid," she said.

"Kurag knows our laws as well as we do, never believe otherwise. He forgets them only when it is convenient for him. He will know that it is not sex I am offering."

"Then what?"

"A chance to help me clean myself up."

She frowned. "I do not understand."

And she didn't, because though Kurag knew the laws of the sidhe, the same could not be said of our queen about the laws of the goblins. I knew that the fluids of the body were more precious to the goblins than almost anything. Flesh, blood, sex; somewhere in that combination was a goblin's idea of perfection. I was going to offer the goblins two out of three, and the touch, though not the taste, of sidhe flesh. I would have said that I was going to offer them all three, but knew better. The goblins' idea of flesh is a piece they get to keep in their stomachs or in a jar on a shelf.