"It is unlikely," she said, slapping the glove against her arm. "But the Nameless is nearly unstoppable. It is everything we have given up, and that was a great deal of wielding power. If it was sent for Meredith, then you would need all the preparation time you could manage."
"Do you truly think it was loosed to hunt the princess?"
"If it had merely been set free, it would have ravaged the countryside by now. But it has not." She stood, giving us a view of the nearly naked back of the dress. She turned back to us with an abrupt gesture. "It vanished from our sight, all of our sights, very quickly. We cannot track it, which means that the thing is getting some very highly placed help."
"But the Nameless is a part of the courts, a part of who you were. You should be able to track it as you would track your own shadow." The moment I finished, I knew I should have kept quiet.
All the anger flowed into her face, her posture, her hands where they gripped her elbows. She shivered with rage. I think for a second she was too angry to speak.
Doyle stood, putting himself in front of me. "Have you told the Seelie Court?"
"You do not need to hide her away, Darkness. I am working too hard to keep her alive to kill her myself. And, yes, the Seelie know what has happened."
"Will the two courts come together to hunt the Nameless?" he asked. He hadn't moved from in front of me, which left me peeking around his body like a child. That wasn't exactly the way to be a strong presence. I moved so I could see the mirror, but they both ignored me.
"No."
"But it is to each one's benefit, surely."
"Taranis is being difficult. He's acting as if the Nameless is made up of only Unseelie energy. Pretending that all his light has no taint." She looked like she'd tasted something sour. "He will not claim its parentage, so he will give no aid, for to give aid is to admit his part in its making."
"That is foolishness."
She nodded. "He was always one more interested in the illusion of purity than in purity itself."
"What can stand against the Nameless?" he asked, voice soft, almost as if he were thinking aloud.
"We do not know, for we bound it without testing it. But it is full of old, old magicks, things we no longer tolerate among even the Unseelie." She sat down on the end of the bed, almost jerkily. "Whoever released it, and hid it from our sight... if they can truly control it, it is a powerful weapon."
"What do you need of me, my queen?"
She looked up at that, and the look was not unfriendly. "What if I said come home, come home and protect me? What if I said I don't feel safe without you and Frost at my side?"
He dropped to one knee. His face was lost in a wave of his own hair. "I am still captain of the Queen's Ravens."
"You would come?" she asked, voice soft.
"If you commanded it."
I sat on the bed and tried to keep my face neutral. I hugged my knees to my chest and tried to not look anything, nothing. If I could just not think, it wouldn't show on my face.
"You say you are still the captain of my Ravens, but are you still my Darkness, or do you belong to another now?"
He kept his head down and stayed silent. I kept trying to think of nothing. She gave me a very unfriendly look. "You have stolen my Darkness from me, Meredith."
"What do you want me to say, Aunt Andais?"
"It's good to remind me that you are my blood. Seeing his back sliced up makes me hope you are more mine than I knew."
Nothing, nothing, I would think nothing. I imagined emptiness like looking through a pane of glass into another pane and another and another. Clear, nothing.
"The Nameless was loosed for a reason, Darkness. Until I know what that reason is, I'm covering my assets. The fair Meredith is one of those assets. I still hope to get a child out of her."
She looked at me, and it was not a friendly look. "Is he as magnificent as he looks?"
I fought for a neutral voice to match the face. "Yes."
The queen sighed. "A pity, but I didn't want to give birth to puppies, now did I?"