she was going to kiss me before her lips touched mine.
I felt movement all around me, and knew that the guards were standing. Everyone with me had been in the hallway when Mistral and I had sex, so they all stood to answer her question. They stood to draw her attention from me to them. My bodyguards, my men and women. Some of them had spent centuries like well-armed mice. Quiet, hiding, trying to be invisible. Now they stood and purposefully made a spectacle of themselves.
She had moved back from me when they stood, leaving the taste of her lipstick on my mouth. "She fucked all of you?" She sounded as if she didn't believe it.
"You asked only who has had release," Frost said. "When the power filled the hallway, it touched all who stood there."
"You mean the power when Mistral and Meredith came together made all the guard in the hallway orgasm?"
"Yes," Frost said.
She laughed and let me go. "How many fertility deities are in your lineage?"
"Five," I said.
"Five," she repeated, as she paced away from us. "Now you don't even have to touch them to bring them power, is that what you're telling me?"
"I thought you would be pleased that magic returns to the sidhe," I said carefully.
Afagdu, one of the nobles, spoke from his chair, his eyes the only color in the white of his face and the black of his hair and beard. "Our magic returns, is that not what we have all wished for, Queen Andais?" His voice was mild, careful. Afagdu and his entire house belonged to no one. They were one of the four or five truly neutral houses.
Dylis stood in a gown of yellow that complemented her hair and brought out the tri-blue of her eyes. She was head of one of the sixteen houses, and had never been my friend. "You know that I have never liked Essus's daughter. I agreed with you, my queen, when you tried to drown her in childhood. But if the ring lives on her hand, and can bring children back to the sidhe, then I will follow her."
A sort of mixed endorsement but I took it.
"You follow me, Dylis, until I say otherwise."
The woman gave a curtsy. "You are our queen. I misspoke myself. I meant only that if Meredith can give us back our children, then I would rethink my objections to her."
"Politely and politically spoken, Dylis. But if you mean Nicca and Biddy, they are both guards sworn to me and mine, and no one else. The guards serve me and my blood." She smacked her hand against her chest to emphasize her words.
"Do you forbid a couple the ring has chosen to bed?" Afagdu asked.
"Royal guards serve royalty, this is their function," Andais said.
"They will still serve you," he said, and his voice was careful again.
She shook her head. "Not if there is a child."
"But a child would be a great blessing." This from one of Nerys's ladies.
"The head of your house tried to kill Meredith just last night, or had you forgotten that, Elen?"
She gave a curtsy so low that she almost disappeared behind the table. "If the ring truly lives on her finger, then Nerys was wrong, very wrong. If the Goddess blesses Meredith with her gifts, then we were all wrong."
"Would you have us all childless because your bloodline is?" asked Maelgwn, the wolf lord. He was naked from the waist up except for a hood and cloak of wolf skin, complete with most of the animal's face sitting above his own. All his people had been shape-shifters until they lost the ability.
"I am queen and my blood inherits this throne."
"You have your brother's blood standing in front of you," Maelgwn said, his mocking smile and his happy, peaceful eyes taking me in. "There she stands, your blood. If your niece can bring blood back to all of us, then your line is indeed powerful magic."
"I have held the guards in abstinence for more than a thousand years. They wait at my pleasure, and the pleasure of my son."
"And at your niece's pleasure," Afagdu said. He seemed to be helping me, but I didn't trust it. He helped no one but himself and his clan.
Andais waved that away as if it was unimportant. "Yes, yes, on Meredith's pleasure." She looked at me then. "Though I did not intend the pleasure to be so... pleasurable." She came down the steps again, gliding toward me in her heels and silk. "The