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"I do not answer to you, Meredith, not yet"
"It is not I, Meredith, who asks for your oath Tonight I ride at the head of a different court It is with that power that I ask a second time, Finbar Give your oath that she lies about your protection, and no more need be said"
"I do not owe the perverse creature at your side my oath"
He had used Queen Andais&039;s nickname for Sholto She had called hi me my Creature Sholto had hated the nicknaed histhe theht he&039;d lose his teant as Finbar&039;s had been "How does a lord of the Seelie know the Dark Queen&039;s nicknauards?"
"We have spies, as you do"
Sholto nodded, his hair catching the yellow light, except that there was no light in the rooht I ah, and the Huntsht Would you refuse your oath to the Huntsman?"
"You are not the Huntsman," Finbar said
It was the blond-haired noble who rode with us who said, "We attacked the hunt, noe ride with it They are the huntsht"
"You are bespelled, Dacey," Finbar said
"If the Great Hunt is a spell, then I aive your oath that theto that He just looked handsoant In the end, it was the last defense of the sidhe, beauty and pride I&039;d never had enough of either to learn the trick of it
"He cannot give oath," Cair said, "for he would be forsith the wild hunt standing in front of hiry now She, like ance that the true sidhe had We could have been friends, she and I, if she hadn&039;t resented me so
"Tell us what he proh to her to place the spell upon her"
"She lies" This came not from Finbar, but from his son, Barris
Finbar said, "Barris, no!"
Some of the hounds had turned toward Barris where he stood at the end of the far side of the roo The huge dogs began to creep toward hi sound "Liars were once the prey of the hunt," Sholto said, and he was sain, to remind him not to enjoy the power too er we rode in it, the harder it would become to remember that
He reached back, and took my hand in his He nodded and said, "Think carefully, Barris Is Cair a liar, or does she tell the truth?"
Cair spoke "I a the truth Finbar told me what to do, and promised that if I did it, he would let Barris and me be a couple And that if I became with child, ould marry"
"Is that true, Barris?" I asked
Barris was staring in horror at the huge white hounds as they crept forward There was soes of lions stalking on a savannah Barris didn&039;t look as if he enjoyed playing the part of the gazelle
"Father," he said, and looked at Finbar
Finbar&039;s face was no longer arrogant If he&039;d been human, I&039;d have said that he looked tired, but there weren&039;t enough lines and circles under those pretty eyes for that
The hounds began to herd Barris with snaps of teeth and presses of huge bodies He htened noise
"You alere an idiot," Finbar said I was pretty sure he wasn&039;t talking to us
"I knohat you hoped to gain, Cair, but what did Finbar hope to gain by the deaths of erous consorts"
"Why?" I asked, and I felt strangely calm
"So that the Seelie nobles could control you once you were queen"
"You thought that if Doyle and I were dead you could control Meredith?" Sholto asked
"Of course," she said
Sholto laughed, and it was both a good laugh and a bad one, the kind of laugh that you ht describe as evil "They do not know you, Meredith"
"They never did," I said
"Did you really think that Rhys, Galen, and Mistral would let you control Meredith?"
"Rhys and Galen, yes, but not the Storirl," Finbar said at last It wasn&039;t a lie or an oath He could order her about or insult her in safety
"You have betrayed me, Finbar, and proved your word as worthless I owe you nothing" She turned toout to s "I will tell you all, please, Meredith, please Faerie itself has taken care of the Killing Frost, but the Darkness and the Lord of Shadows needed to go"
"Why did you spare Rhys, Galen, and Mistral?" I asked
"Rhys was once a lord of this court He was reasonable, and we thought he would be reasonable again if he could come back to the Golden Court"
It wasn&039;t justhas it been since Rhys was a ht hundred years, ht have changed in that h; it hadn&039;t "Everyone wants to be a noble in the Golden Court," she said, and she believed it The proof was in her eyes, her face, so earnest
"And Galen?" I asked
"He is not a threat, and we cannot deprive you of all your mates"
"Glad to hear it," I said I don&039;t think she picked up on the sarcasm I&039;d found that many of the nobles missed it
"What of Mistral?" Sholto asked
There was a flicker of eyes, as Cair and Barris looked at each other, then at Finbar He did not look at anyone He kept his face and every inch of himself to himself
"Have you set a trap for hier ones did the nervous look Finbar reed the ed s had herded him to stand beside his would-be bride
"Have you sent so to kill ht, but we are not here for Barris tonight I called kin slayer, and he is not our kin" I looked at the young lord "Do you want to survive this night, Barris?"
He looked up at me, and I saw in his blue eyes the weakness that must have made a political animal like Finbar despair He wasn&039;t just weak, he also wasn&039;t bright I&039;d offered hihts That I vowed
Finbar said, "Do not speak"
"The king will save you, Father, but he has no use for h that he is not at her side It rave We have ht, then ill be rewarded"
"If Mistral dies this night, Barris, you will follow him, and soon This I promise you" The mare shifted underneath me, uneasy
"Even you, Barris, must knohat a promise like that means when the princess sits a horse of the wild hunt," Sholto said
Barris sed hard, then said, "If she breaks the promise, the hunt will destroy her"
"Yes," Sholto said, "so you had better talk while there is still time to save the Storm Lord"
His eyes with their circles of blue showed too ed his leg, and he made a small sound that in anyone else would have been a scream But the nobles of the Seelie Court did not screaed them
Finbar said, "Remember who you are, Barris"
He looked back at his father "I reht me that all are equal before the hunt Did you not call it the great leveler?" Barris&039;s voice held sorrow, or perhaps disappointht of years Years of never quite being what his father wanted in a son Years of knowing that though he looked every inch a Seelie noble, he was pretending as hard as he could
I looked at Barris, who had always seeant as all the rest I had never seen beyond that perfect, handso me clear vision, or had I simply assumed that if you looked perfectly sidhe - tall, thin, and so perfect - you would be happy and secure? Had I truly still believed that beauty was security? That if I had only been taller, thinner, less hu and more sidhe my life would have been perfect?
I looked into Barris&039;s face, saw all that disappointment, all that failure, because his beauty hadn&039;t been enough to win hi I hadn&039;t expected: pity
"Help us save Mistral and you may yet keep your life Keep silent, let him die, and I cannot help you, Barris"
Sholto looked at me, his face careful not to show surprise, but I think he&039;d heard that note of pity in my voice, and found it unexpected I couldn&039;t blarands, but it hadn&039;t been hiained with the only asset he had, his pure sidhe blood and all that tall, unnaturally slender beauty
Finbar had had nothing to bargain ith Cair except his son&039;s pale beauty To be accepted in the court, to have a pure-blooded sidhe lover and perhaps husband, that had been the price for Gran&039;s life It was the sareed to o A chance to marry into the Golden Court - for a half human, half brownie, a once-in-a-millenniuht"
"Tell them," Cair said, her voice thin with fear Which said that she didn&039;t knohat their plan was for Mistral, only that there was one
"We found a traitor to lure him out into the open Our archers will use cold iron arrowheads"
"Where is it to take place?" Sholto asked
Barris told us He confessed everything while so was indeed gone He&039;d vanished to safety The guards didn&039;t hold Finbar for what he&039;d tried to do to ainst the Unseelie Court That was a killing offense at both courts, to act without the express orders of your king or queen in such a way that it could cause war Though part of h not outright He was of a flavor of kingship to ask, "Who will rid me of this inconvenient man?" Deniability that he could take oath on But Taranis was prey for another court, and another day
I tried to turnof Mistral, but it shook its head It pranced nervously, but would not move
"We must finish here, or the hunt will not move on," Sholto said
It took me a moment to understand, then I turned to Cair, where she stood pressed to the wall, surrounded on all sides by the great hounds I could have used them as my weapon They would have torn her apart for h that, and it would take longer We needed so quicker, for Mistral&039;s sake and for my own peace of mind
Sholto held out a spear formed of bone Did it appear out of the air? It was one of the h, but it had been lost centuries ago, long before he took the throne It and the dagger of bone in his hand had returned with the wild ic e had first an to screa pole until I had the weight of it I would not throw it; there was no room and no need "She died in my arms, Cair"
She reached out to someone behind me "Grandfather, help ht he&039;d say, "The wild hunt cannot be stopped And I have no tis"
Cair turned back to me "Look what she did to you and s that could never be accepted by our own people"
"The wild hunt coh me, the Consort coe the spear doard through her thin chest I felt the tip grate on bone, and pushed that last inch to feel the tip break out of her body, and hit empty air on her other side With more meat on her bones it would have been harder, but there wasn&039;t enough to her to stop that weapon and the strength ofat the spear, but she couldn&039;t seeht Her brown eyes stared up atI looked into those eyes, a mirror of Gran&039;s eyes, and watched the fear fade, to leave puzzlement Blood trickled from her lipless mouth She tried to speak, but no words cain to fade People say that it&039;s light that fades when humans die, but it&039;s not; it&039;s them The look in their eyes that makes them who they are, that is what fades
I jerked the spear backward, twisting it, not to cause e, but simply to loosen it from its sheath of flesh and bone When the spear had coan to fall to the floor I just had to hold on, and the weight of her body and gravity pulled her free of it
I looked at the bloody spear and tried to feel soown to clean the blood away, then I handed the spear back to Sholto I would need both hands to ride
He took the spear froentle kiss, the tentacles brushingto comfort me I could not afford that coht would fade
I drew back from all the comfort he offered and said, "We ride"
"To save your Storm Lord," he said
"To save the future of faerie" I turned the mare, and this time she came easily to my hand I set my heels in her flanks, and she bounded forward in a flare of green flaloas as white and pure as the full old of the Seelie banquet room seemed to have absorbed into the white, so we kept that silver and gold glow My grandfather saluted esture The jeweled doors opened for us
I whispered, "Goddess, Consort, help ain there was that sensation of movement, but there was no summer meadow, no illusion One moment we rode on stone, in the halls of the Seelie, the next our horses were on grass, in the night outside the faerienot froround to the sky I called, "Mistral!"
We rode toward the fight, rising above the grass, gaining the sky, and rushing like wind and stars toward my Storm Lord