"You would come?" she asked, voice soft.

"If you commanded it."

I sat on the bed and tried to keep my face neutral. I hugged my knees to my chest and tried to not look anything, nothing. If I could just not think, it wouldn't show on my face.

"You say you are still the captain of my Ravens, but are you still my Darkness, or do you belong to another now?"

He kept his head down and stayed silent. I kept trying to think of nothing. She gave me a very unfriendly look. "You have stolen my Darkness from me, Meredith."

"What do you want me to say, Aunt Andais?"

"It's good to remind me that you are my blood. Seeing his back sliced up makes me hope you are more mine than I knew."

Nothing, nothing, I would think nothing. I imagined emptiness like looking through a pane of glass into another pane and another and another. Clear, nothing.

"The Nameless was loosed for a reason, Darkness. Until I know what that reason is, I'm covering my assets. The fair Meredith is one of those assets. I still hope to get a child out of her."

She looked at me, and it was not a friendly look. "Is he as magnificent as he looks?"

I fought for a neutral voice to match the face. "Yes."

The queen sighed. "A pity, but I didn't want to give birth to puppies, now did I?"

"Puppies?" I said.

"Didn't he tell you? Doyle has two aunts whose true forms are dogs. His grandmother was one of the hounds of the great hunt. Hellhounds, humans call them now, though you know we have nothing to do with hell. A different religious system altogether."

I remembered the baying and the look of hunger in Doyle's eyes. "I was aware that Doyle wasn't pure sidhe."

"His grandfather was a phouka so evil that he bred in dog form with the wild hunt itself and lived to tell the tale." She smiled, and it was sweetly malicious.

"Doyle's as mixed a bag of genetics as I am then." The voice was still neutral; yeah for me.

"But did you know he was part dog before you took him to your bed?"

Doyle stayed kneeling through all this, his hair hiding his face.

"I knew he owed his bloodline in part to the wild hunt before he came inside me."

"Really?" She made it sound like she didn't believe me.

"I've heard the belling of the hounds come out of his mouth." I moved my hair so she could see the bite mark on my shoulder, very near my neck. "I knew that he dreamed of my flesh in more than one way before I allowed him to satisfy either hunger."

Her eyes grew hard again. "You surprise me, Meredith. I never thought you had the stomach for violence."

"I do not enjoy hurting people. Violence in the bedroom when all agree is different."

"I've never found it different," she said.

"I know," I said.

"How do you do that?" she asked.

"How do I do what, my queen?"

"How do you sound so neutral, utterly neutral, yet somehow you manage to say 'go to hell' with a smile and a neutral word."

"It's not deliberate, Aunt Andais, believe me."

"At least you didn't try to deny it."

"We do not lie to each other," I said, and this time my voice was tired.

"Arise, Darkness, and show your queen your ravaged back."

He stood without a word, gave his back to the mirror, and swept his hair to one side.

Andais came close to the mirror, reaching out with one gloved hand, so that for a second I thought her hand would keep traveling and come out like a 3-D image. "I had taken you for a dominant, Doyle, and I don't enjoy being dominated."

"You never asked what I enjoyed, my Queen." He was still facing away from the mirror, his back to it.

"I also never thought you'd be so blessed down below." She sounded wistful now, like a child who hadn't gotten what she wanted for her birthday. "I mean, you are descended from dogs and phoukas, and they are not much in that way."

"Most phoukas have more than one shape, my Queen."

"Dog and horse, sometimes eagle, yes, I know all about that. What does that have to do. ." She stopped in midsentence, and a smile crooked at the edges of her lipsticked mouth. "Are you saying that your grandfather could turn into a horse as well as a dog?"

He spoke softly. "Yes, my Queen."

"You're hung like a horse." She started to laugh.

He said nothing, only shrugged his broad shoulders. I was too startled at her laughter to join it. It wasn't always a good thing to amuse the Queen.

"My Darkness, it is wondrous, but a horse you are not."

"The phoukas are shape-shifters, my queen."

The laughter faded around the edges, then she said in a voice still light with it, "Are you implying that you can change the size?"

"Would I imply something like that?" he asked in his neutral voice.

I watched emotions flow across her face too fast to catch: disbelief, curiosity, and finally a hard-edged wanting. She stared at him the way misers stare at gold, a covetous, clinging, selfish want.

"When all this is over, Darkness, if you have not fathered a child with the princess, we will make you live up to this boast."

I think I failed at the neutral face, but I tried to hang on to it.

"I do not boast, my queen," Doyle said, almost in a whisper.

"I don't know what to wish for now, my Darkness. If you make babies with Meredith, I will never know the joy of you. And I still believe what I have always believed, and what has truly kept you out of my bed."

"Dare I ask what that is?" he said.

"You may dare. I may even answer."

Silence stretched for a second or two, then Doyle said, "What do you believe that has kept me out of your bed all these years?" He turned his head enough to see her face when he asked.

"That you would be king in truth, not merely in name. And I will not share my power." She looked past him to me. I fought to keep a blank face, and knew I was losing. "What of you, Meredith? How do you feel about having a true king, one who will demand a share of your power, and a share of more than your bed?"

I thought of several answers, discarded them all, and tried, very carefully to tell the truth. "I share better than you do, Aunt Andais."

She stared at me, a look in her eyes that I couldn't read. I met that gaze with one of my own, letting the sincerity of what I'd said show in my eyes.

"You share better than me, you share better than me. What does that mean, when I do not share at all?"

"It is the truth, Aunt Andais. It means exactly what it says, nothing more, nothing less."

She stared at me for a long, long moment. "Taranis does not share his power either."

"I know," I said.

"You cannot be a dictator if you do not dictate."

"I am learning that a queen must rule those around her, truly rule them, but I am not learning that a queen must dictate to all around her. I am finding that the counsel of my guards, who you so wisely sent with me, is worth listening to."

"I have counselors," she said, and it sounded almost defensive.

"So does Taranis," I said.

Andais sat back against one of the bedposts. She seemed almost to slump, the one bare hand playing along the black ribbons on her dress. "But neither of us listens to anyone. The emperor has no clothes."

The last comment caught me off guard. It must have showed, because she said, "You look surprised, niece of mine."

"I didn't expect you to know the story."

"I had a human lover some time ago who was fond of children's stories. He read to me when I could not sleep." There was a dreamy wistfulness to her voice now, a true note of regret.

She continued in a more normal tone. "The Nameless has been freed. It was last seen headed west. I doubt it will get as far as the Western Sea, but I thought you should know, all the same." With that, she made a gesture and the mirror went blank.

My eyes were very wide in the glass. "Can you make the mirror so that no one can get through without signaling to us first?"

"Yes," he said.

"Do it"

"The queen may take that ill."

I nodded, looking at my scared face in the mirror, because now that I didn't have to pretend, I could look as scared as I felt. "Just do it, Doyle, just do it. I don't want any more surprises tonight."

He went to the mirror and made small gestures at its edges. I felt the spell prickle along my skin as I climbed back into the bed.

Doyle turned from the mirror and hesitated by the edge of the bed. "Do you still want company?"

I held out my arms to him. "Come to bed, and hold me while we sleep."

He smiled and slipped under the sheet. He spooned his body against mine until I lay cupped in his arms, his chest, his stomach, his groin, his thighs. He encircled me and I pulled the warm silken hardness of him around me.

He spoke softly as I began to drift off to sleep. "You do not mind that my grandmother was a hound of the wild hunt and my grandfather a phouka?"

"No." My voice was thick with sleep. Then I asked, "Could I really end up having puppies?"

"It is unlikely."

"Okay." I was almost asleep, when I felt him hold me tighter, as if I was his security blanket instead of the other way around.