She made a face, as if she smelled something bad. “Your hands of power may be Unseelie Court magic, but you are so”—and here she rolled her eyes—“the descendant of all those bloody fertility deities in the Seelie Court. Love and kindness will win the day, oh yes, oh my, my ass.”
“The truth is in the results, aunt.”
“I have ruled for over a thousand years; kindness and love will not see you rule for that long.”
“No, because I shall not live that long, Aunt Andais, but my children will and their children.”
“I’ve never liked you, Meredith.”
“Nor I you.”
“But I am beginning to truly hate you.”
“You’re late to this party, Aunt Andais; I’ve feared and hated you most of my life.”
“Then it’s hatred between us.”
“I believe so.”
“But you want me to come and pretend otherwise in front of your children.”
“If you wish to be their aunt in truth, rather than just by bloodline, yes.”
“I do not know if I have that much pretense in me.”
“That is for you to decide, aunt.”
She patted Eamon’s hand. “I understand what you were trying to tell me now. I will never be other than your aunt by bloodline, Meredith.”
“Agreed, Aunt Andais.”
“But you would give me the chance to be more to your children.”
“If you behave yourself, yes.”
“Why?”
“Truth, you are powerful enough that I would rather not go from hating each other to trying to kill each other.”
She laughed so abruptly it was more of a snort. “Well, that is truth.”
“But there is one other reason I’m willing to do this, Aunt Andais.”
“And what would that be, niece Meredith?”
“My father told me stories of you and him playing together when you were children.”
“He did?”
“Yes, he did. He would tell me of you as a little girl with him a little boy, and his face would soften and the memories gave him joy, and in hopes that my father’s sister is still inside you somewhere, I will give you a chance to show Essus’s grandchildren the part of you that made my father smile.”
Her eyes were shining again, but it wasn’t magic; tears glittered in her tricolored eyes. She swallowed hard enough I could hear it, and then she said, “Oh, Meredith, nothing you could have said would have hurt me more than that.”
“I did not mean to cause you pain.”
“And I know that you mean that, and that is the cruelest blow of all, my niece, my brother’s daughter, because you remind me of him. He should have killed me and taken the throne when Barinthus urged him to; so much pain could have been saved.”
“You were his sister and he loved you,” I said.