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I stood there, and until Barinthus touched my shoulder and made me jump, I
didn't realize my hands were in tight fists. I was shaking again, but not from
fear, from anger.
"The queen put a geas on us all not to tell you, Merry. I should have warned
you anyway," Galen said, moving up on the other side. It was almost as if the
two of them expected to have to grab me and keep me from doing something
foolish. But I wasn't going to be foolish-that's what Cel wanted. He'd come
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here to show off Keelin, to enrage me, with Siobhan at his back to kill me.
I'm sure he could have
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concocted some story about me attacking him and his guard having to defend
him. The queen had believed thinner stories than that over the years. He had
every reason to be confident where the queen was concerned. I could be calm,
because I could do nothing here and now but die. Cel, I might have considered
taking on. He was one of the few people that I would use the hand of flesh on,
and not lose sleep over it. But Siobhan, she was different. She would kill me.
"How long has Keelin been with him?" I asked.
Cel started to answer, and I raised a hand. "No, don't speak, cousin. I asked
the question of Galen."
Cel smiled at me, a flash of white in the moonlit dark. Strangely, he stayed
silent. I hadn't really expected him to, but I also knew that if I had to hear
his voice one more time, I was going to start screaming just to drown out his
voice.
"Answer me, Galen."
"Almost since you left."
My chest was tight, eyes hot. This was my punishment. My punishment for
escaping the court. Even though I hadn't told Keelin that I was leaving, even
though she was innocent, they'd hurt her to hurt me.
Cel had kept her as a pet for nearly three years waiting for me to come home.
Enjoying himself no doubt, and if there was a child, all the better. But it
wasn't a desire for children that had motivated the choice of
Keelin. I looked into Cel's smug face, and even by moonlight I could read his
expression. She'd been chosen out of revenge to punish me. And I'd been
thousands of miles away, unknowing.
Cel and my aunt had waited patiently to show me their surprise. Three years of
Keelin's torment and no one told me. My aunt knew me better than I'd thought,
because the knowledge that Keelin had suffered the entire time I'd been gone
would eat at me. And if she held out Keelin's freedom to me as a prize for
whatever it was she wanted from me, she might have me. I needed to speak with
Keelin alone.
As much as I hated Cel, this was one of the very few ways that Keelin could
enter the court. She'd been one of my ladies in waiting-my companion. But
being my friend and my servant had allowed her to see the inner workings of
the court. I'd known she had a great hunger to be accepted in that darkling
throng, hunger enough, maybe, to endure Cel and resent if I put a stop to it.
Just because I saw it as a rescue didn't mean Keelin would. Until I knew
exactly how she felt, I could do nothing.
Cel's hand finally slid back into sight. Seeing his pale hand on Keelin's
shoulder instead of deep in her dress made it easier to just stand and watch.
"The queen has sent me to escort my fair cousin to her private chambers. The
two of you have an appointment at the throne room."
"I am aware of what I am expected to do," Barinthus said.
"How can we trust you not to harm her?" Galen asked.
"Me? Harm my fair cousin?" Cel laughed again.
"We shall not leave." Barinthus's voice was very low and steady. You had to
know his voice well to hear the anger in it.
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"You fear that I will harm her, too, Barinthus?"
"No," Barinthus said. "I am afraid she will harm you, Prince Cel. The life of
her only heir means a great deal to our queen."
Cel laughed loud and long. He laughed until either tears actually crept from
his eyes, or he merely pretended to wipe them away. "You mean, Barinthus, that
you're afraid she will try to harm me, and I will put her in her place."
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Barinthus leaned over me and whispered, "You cannot afford to appear weak
before Cel. I did not expect him to meet us. It is a bold move. If you have
gained power in the lands to the west, show it now, Meredith."
I turned, staring up into his face. He was so close to me that his hair
trailed against my cheek, smelling of the ocean and something herbal and
clean. I whispered back to him, "If I show him my powers now, it will take
away all element of surprise later on."
His voice was the soft murmur of water over round stones. He was using his own
power to quietly make sure that Cel could not overhear us. "If Cel insists
that we leave and we refuse, it will go badly for us."
"Since when has the Queen's Guard answered to her son?" I asked.
"Since the queen has decreed it so."
Cel called to us, "I order you, Barinthus, and you, Galen, to go to your
overdue appointment. We will escort my cousin to the queen's presence."
"Make him afraid of you, Meredith," Barinthus said. "Make him wish for us to
remain. Cel would have access to his mother's ring."
I stared up at him. I didn't bother to ask if Barinthus really thought that
Cel had tried to kill me in the car.
If he didn't believe it possible, he wouldn't have said it.
"I gave you both a direct order," Cel said. His voice rose, riding on the
growing wind.
The wind picked up, rushing through the men's long coats, whispering in the
dried leaves of the trees at the edge of the field to our left. I turned to
those whispering trees. I could almost understand the wind and the trees,
almost hear the trees sighing of winter's coming and the long cold wait ahead.
The wind rushed and hurried, sending a small herd of newly fallen leaves
skittering down the rock path past Cel and his women, to brush up against my
feet and legs. The wind picked the leaves up in a swirl like tiny hands
playing against my legs. The leaves were carried up and past us in a sudden
burst of sweet autumn wind. I closed my eyes and breathed in that wind.
I stepped away from the men at my back, a few steps closer to Cel, but it
wasn't him I was moving toward. It was the call of the land. The land was
happy that I was back, and in a way that it had never done before, the power
in that land welcomed me.
I spread my arms to either side and opened myself to the night. I felt the
wind blow not against my body but through it, as if I were the trees above,
not an obstacle to the wind but part of it. I felt the movement of the night,
the rushing, hurrying, pulse of it all. Underneath my feet the ground went
down and down below me to unimaginable depths, and I could feel them all, and
for a moment I felt the world turning
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under my feet. I felt that slow, ponderous swing around the sun. I stood with
my feet planted solidly like the roots of a tree going down and down to cool
living earth. But that was all that was solid about me.
The wind swept through me as if I were not there, and I knew I could have
wrapped the night around me and walked invisible among the mortals. But it
wasn't mortals I was dealing with.
I opened my eyes with a smile. The anger, the confusion, it was all gone,
washed away in the wind that smelled like dried leaves and somehow spicy, as
if I could smell things on the wind that were only half remembered or half
dreamed. It was a wild night, and there was wild magic to be had from it, if
you could ken to it. Earth magic can be ripped from the world by someone
powerful enough to do it, but the
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