Andais stood in the center of the chamber carved of moonlight and darkness. Her white skin shone as if she'd captured the full moon inside her skin and all its soft radiance spilled out of her. Her hair was a fall of blackest night, except that if I looked at her from the corner of my eye there were pale points of light in her hair, like scattered stars, but when I turned to face her directly, there was only a shimmering blackness, unrelieved by any light, the heart of deepest, emptiest space. The kind of empty darkness that held no warmth, no life.

The triple grey of her eyes glowed, but it was subdued as if lit only by reflected light. Her eyes were light grey storm clouds lit by distant lighting, with no light of their own. That last thick ring of charcoal was like the sky before it fell upon the earth and poured its rage upon us all.

The look in her eyes alone would have stopped me at the door. Her power filled her like some stroke of fate waiting for its victim, making me want to turn around and run. I was still touched by the magic that had revived the spring. The magic that Adair and I, merely touching, had awoken. But that bright, healing spell faded to ashes in my heart with a look from Andais's power-mad eyes. There was nothing sane in them.

I stood barely inside the door, afraid to move, afraid to attract her attention. All the new power, all the new self-discovery, all the newfound joy and love; and I was suddenly back to being a child again. A frightened rabbit huddling in the grass hoping the fox will pass me by. When I swallowed, it hurt, as if my fear meant to choke me. But I wasn't the rabbit that this particular fox was hunting.

Eamon stood on the small platform at the end of the room, the one that was usually curtained off. He was tall and pale, with his fall of ankle-length black hair the only thing that shielded his body from our view. Eamon was one of those who did casual nudity around the court. I'd seen him nude before and, if he survived the night, would again. No, it wasn't Eamon's beauty that sped my pulse. It wasn't even the implements of torture and death that hung on the wall behind him, framing his body like a collage. It was the queen's words, and his answer to them.

«Do you defy me, Eamon, my consort?» Her voice was calm when she asked it, too calm. It matched nothing in the room, not even the expression on her face.

«I do not defy you, my queen, my love, but I beg you. You will kill him if you do not stop this.»

A voice called from behind Eamon, «Don't stop, please, don't stop.»

«He does not wish to stop,» Andais said, and she moved one hand, negligently, bringing my attention to the whip in it. It had been lost against the blackness of her long skirt, so that until she moved it, I had seen nothing. It was like some well-camouflaged snake, hidden until it would strike. The whip made a heavy slithering sound against the floor, as she moved it back and forth. An idle gesture that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

«You told me once that you valued him because he could take so much pain. If you kill him, you will not have him to play with, my queen.» I realized that Eamon was standing in front of the alcove in the center of the wall. He was blocking the view of the place where I knew there were chains bolted into the wall. Whoever it was, he was shorter than Eamon's six feet, and could be killed by a mere whip. Most of the fey could be decapitated, pick up their heads under one arm, and strike back at their enemy. They were not easily killed or injured. Who would need to be shielded like this? Who would Eamon risk himself for? No name came to my mind.

There were other guards in the room. They were all nude. Clothes, armor, weapons lay in a heap at the foot of her bed, as if she'd lain among the silk and fur, and ordered them all to strip. Which she may have done, but seeing a dozen of the sidhe, kneeling, heads bowed, their hair loose and covering their nudity like robes of many colors, was both a lovely sight and a disturbing one.

What had happened? What had changed since Barinthus and the others left the mound and came to fetch me? Barinthus had said she was getting better; this was as bad as I'd ever seen her.

I was afraid to speak, afraid to make any noise, for fear that all that anger would turn in my direction. I wasn't the only one perplexed about how to proceed, for Doyle stood in front of me, and a little to one side, as motionless as I was, as motionless as we all were. Our entrance through the door had turned her eyes to us, but now that we'd stopped moving, she had turned all that attention back to Eamon. None of us seemed willing to risk sharing that attention with him.

She drew the whip out behind her, and there was room among the kneeling men, room, as if this wasn't the first time the whip had come snaking back along the floor. Not the first time that night, nor the twelfth, nor the twentieth. The men stayed like a strange garden of beautiful statues, so very still, as the whip whispered back along the floor. The queen sent the whip forward, using her whole arm, shoulder, back, and finally lower body. She threw the whip the way you throw a good punch. Her wrist flicked at the last moment and gave it that added curl that would make it crack.

It made the sound of a tornado rushing past, and I knew from hard experience that on the receiving end of that lash, the sound was even more overwhelming, like standing on the railroad tracks while the train thunders down toward you, and you can't move out of the way. Not because you don't want to, but because you're chained in place.

Eamon could have moved, but he did not. He stood there, and used that tall, commanding body as a shield for whoever lay behind him. The bullwhip struck him full across the chest with a near-explosive crack that overwhelmed the sound of it hitting his flesh. With a small whip you'd have heard the meaty slap of it. But this was her largest whip, the one that looked like a melanistic anaconda, something long enough and thick enough to crush your life out. I feared that particular whip, because I was mortal, and though Eamon's flesh reddened, it did not bleed. I would have bled.

I like rough play, but not the way the queen did it. She played over the edge and down into the abyss. She went places that my body didn't want to go, and couldn't have survived even if I had. I realized in that moment not who was chained to the wall behind Eamon, but what. There were a few humans who lived at our court. Most were not like Madeline Phelps, the publicist. It wasn't a job. They had been chosen hundreds of years ago, and taken to faerie, some willingly, some not. But they stayed willingly now, because if they stepped but one foot outside faerie, they would age and wither and die. It was a sacred trust, the humans you captured. Some were servants, but usually it was something that attracted sidhe attention. Some were stolen for their beauty or musical talent; in Ezekiel's case the queen had admired his ability at torture. You prized them enough to steal them away from the human world. It was illegal now, but once when we had been a law unto ourselves, both courts had done it. But for whatever reason, once they were given a home here, it was considered bad form, a breach of contract, a sin, to take their lives. They were offered a life of immortality without aging, so you could abuse them, but not to the point of killing them. You couldn't steal from them the very thing that had made them willing to come to faerie in the first place.

Once I realized she had a human against the wall, I was almost certain who it was. Tyler was her current human lover. Last time I'd seen him, he'd been a blond with a skater's cut and a real tan. He was barely old enough to be legal. He was also, according to current rumor, a pain slut. If he was enjoying what the queen was doing to him, he'd passed from pain slut to suicidal.

The great black whip came whispering and slithering back along the stone floor. She sent it out behind her among her silent, immobile guards, and it was roaring through the air, cutting like lightning, against Eamon's flesh. The force of it moved his body as if he'd been shoved, but other than a reddish mark, there was no sign it had hurt him.

Andais made a sound low in her throat, almost a growl, as if that did not satisfy her. She let the whip fall to the ground, like some discarded skin, suddenly empty of life.

She raised her pale hand with its carefully painted nails and gestured toward Eamon. He stumbled back and had to catch himself on the rim of the alcove, or he would have fallen in on top of the one he sought to protect. His fingers grew mottled with the effort to keep himself from falling that last inch backward. Her power filled the room like the pressure before a storm, when the air feels solid and hard to swallow. The pressure grew, and grew, until it was hard to breathe, as if my chest could barely lift against her magic. I knew in that one moment that if she wanted to, she could make the air so heavy that you would suffocate, or at least I would; you could not kill the sidhe by mere suffocation.

She squeezed her hand into a tight fist, and Eamon's arms began to shake with the effort of holding himself against the push of her magic. He spoke between gritted teeth: «Do not do this, my queen.» His fingertips moved, his grip beginning to break. He dug into the very stone with the strength that had allowed the sidhe to conquer nearly all of Europe. The stone cracked under his fingertips, but he was able to dig himself fingerholds in it. Blood filled those holes, and began to trickle down the rock. He'd sliced open his fingers, but he held his ground.

I struggled to force my chest to rise and fall, but it was as if I were pushing against some great weight. I could not catch my breath. The cup spilled from my hand, and only Galen's hand on my arm kept me upright. I'd never felt her magic like this. Not like this.

She began to walk toward Eamon, slowly, pushing her power before her like some huge invisible hand. I knew from my own experience that the closer she was to you physically, the stronger this particular magic could be.

Eamon began to tremble, and the blood flowed faster, pooling out of the rock, running down in scarlet rivulets. The effort to hold against the force of her magic made his heart race, his pulse beat harder, and that forced his blood to run faster, made it spill out of him.

My vision ran in streamers of grey and white and star-like patterns. Someone else grabbed my other arm, I couldn't see who. My knees buckled, and I sagged in his arms as darkness ate the light. The air was solid, and I could not breathe it. The light went grey, and then I gasped. My breath came in a long ragged cough that doubled me nearly in two, and only other hands kept me from falling to the floor. When the coughing fit passed, the light came back, and I realized the air was cool against my face. I could breathe again. Galen had a double grip on my right arm, and Adair had my left, a hand around my waist, while my legs remembered how to stand.