“Do not make me your enemy, Meredith.”

“Then apologize, Aunt Andais.”

“For what?”

“For reminding Frost of past pain, for trying to frighten Kitto, for every threat, every hint of pain and violence you’ve spoken since this conversation began.”

“A queen does not apologize, Meredith.”

“But an aunt does.”

She blinked at me. “Ah,” she said, “you want me to be some cheerful relative that comes with gifts and smiles.”

“Yes,” I said.

She smiled, but it was an unpleasant one, as if she’d tasted something bitter. “You want me to be other than I am around your children?”

“If by that you mean pleasant, kind, and just a normal aunt, then yes, Andais, that is what I want.”

“It is not their heritage to be any of those things.”

“My father, your brother, thought otherwise, and he raised me to be all those things.”

“And it was love and kindness that got him killed, Meredith. He hesitated, because he loved his killer.”

“And perhaps if you had raised your son, as my father raised me, to be kinder, considerate, happy, then neither of them would be dead right now.”

She startled as if I had slapped her. “How dare you …”

“Speak the truth,” I said.

“So I must be this false self, this fiction of a cheerful, smiling auntie, or you will try to keep me out of the lives of my nieces and nephew?”

“Yes, Aunt Andais, that is exactly what I mean.”

“And if I said there is always darkness through which I can step and visit as I will, what would you say?”

Doyle said, “I would say that if it is death you seek, come unasked, unbidden, unannounced, and we will grant that wish.”

“You dare threaten me, my own Darkness.”

“I am no longer your anything, my queen. You cared for me not at all except as a visible threat by your side—‘Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness’—and then you would send me to kill on your behalf. I have a life now, and a reason to keep living, beyond just the fact that I do not age, and I will let nothing stand between me and that life.”

“Not even your queen,” she said, voice soft.

“Not even you, my queen.”

“So either I concede to your ridiculous demands or I lose all contact with the babes.”

“Yes,” I, Doyle, Frost, and Rhys said at the same time. The others nodded.

“Once I would have threatened to send my sluagh to the Western Lands and find you, or the babies, and bring all to me, but now the King of the Sluagh stands by your side and no longer answers to me.”

“You sent me to the princess, my queen.”

“I sent you to bring her home, not to bed her. You I did not choose for her.”

“You gave her the choice of all your Raven guards, and I am that, as well as King of the Sluagh.”

She looked at me, and there was threat and anger, and everything I wanted to keep away from our babies in her face. “You have stripped me of most of my threat, Meredith. Even the goblins answer to you now, rather than to me, and that I did not intend. That was your doing, niece of mine.”

“Essus, your brother, made certain I understood all the courts of faerie, not just the Unseelie. He wanted me to rule all, if I ruled any.”

She nodded and looked thoughtful, the anger gone as if she could not stay enraged and think at the same time, and that was probably truer than was pretty to think about.

“You are right, Meredith; it was you who bargained with the goblins so wisely, and you who seduced the sluagh to your side, and you who won the loyalty of my Darkness, and my Killing Frost. I did not see you as a threat to my power, but only as a pawn to be used and discarded if it did not serve me, and now here we are with you more powerful than I ever envisioned, and that is without a crown upon your head.”

“I did not have your magic to protect me, aunt; I had to find power where it was offered for it was not within me.”

“You wield the hands of flesh and blood, niece; those are formidable powers on the battlefield.”

“But if all I depended on was my magic, then I would not have Doyle, or Frost, or Sholto, or the goblins, or any of what I have won. I have killed only to save my life and the lives of those I love. My ability to kill, no matter in what horrific way, is not where my power lies, aunt.”

“And where does your power lie, niece?”

“Love, loyalty, and when forced being utterly ruthless, but it is kindness and love that have won me more power than any death I have dealt.”

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.”