“The hallway is a torture chamber, where most magic does not work. It’s a null place,” I said.

“But once, Meredith, it was more.”

I looked at the men. “More how?”

“Things that were older than faerie, older than us, were imprisoned there. Remnants of power from the peoples we had defeated.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Mistral.”

He looked at Doyle. “Help me explain this.”

“Once there were creatures in the Hallway of Mortality that could bring true death to even the sidhe. They were kept there to serve as methods of execution, or torture, or simply the threat of those things. The queen did not care for them because, as you well know, she likes to do her own torturing. Watching some other being tear us limb from limb was not half so amusing to her as doing it herself.”

“And we healed better if she did it,” Rhys said.

Doyle nodded. “Yes, she could torture us longer and more often if the things did not help.”

“What kind of things?” I asked. I didn’t like how serious they’d gotten.

“Terrible things. A glimpse of them would drive a mortal mad,” he said.

“How long ago did these things vanish from the sithen?”

“A thousand years, maybe more,” he said.

“The forests haven’t been gone so long as that,” I said.

“No, not quite that long.”

“Why are you all so worried?”

“Because if you, or the Goddess’s power through you, can bring this about,” Abe said, motioning at the ever-expanding forest, “then we must prepare for the fact that the second heart of our court can come back to full life, as well.”

“Perhaps Merry is too Seelie to bring back such horrors?” Mistral said, almost hopefully.

“Her two hands of power are flesh and blood,” Doyle said. “Those are not Seelie magicks.”

“I came to the princess for aid for Nerys’s people, but I would not risk her now, not for a house full of traitors,” said Mistral.

“If we save them, they won’t be traitors,” I said.

“They still believe that your mortality is contagious,” Rhys said. “They still think that if you sit on the throne, we will all begin to age and die.”

“Do you think that Nerys’s court still has enough honor to realize that I’m trying to ensure that their rulers’ sacrifice wasn’t for nothing? Nerys gave her life so her house would not die, and I want that to mean something.”

The men seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally Doyle said, “They have honor, but I do not know if they have gratitude.”