“No!” I cried out, and Jamie wept openly.
“She will die in any case. You feel it, my liege. How the discomfort of being in her presence lessens. Her life is seeping out. But it is of no use to us unless you take it for yourself.”
Can I save her? Her wounds are so great, and those caused by the Hunt can never heal.
Bess looked at me with wide eyes, those eyes the color of marshland which I had once borne. She could barely speak, and yet she uttered a single word: “Mercy.”
We were never meant to be both in the same place.
Tears poured from my eyes as I thrust Jamie behind me. He must not see. I could not let him see. And so, I pulled the knife from my girdle and, as swiftly as I could, showed Bess the only mercy I could at the time.
I slit her throat.
I did notlosethe very essence of who I had been. I killed her and feasted upon her soul. I did not even feel the guilt anymore; another forty or fifty years and she would have been dead anyway. That is how we must see them, after all.
But I did regret how much I frightened Jamie. When I turned back around, his eyes were squeezed tightly closed, his face turned away. I placed a hand on his back and escorted him into Faery. He walked woodenly, more like his false mannikin than his true mortal self. I kissed him on his cheek as I showed him to his wonderful ocean bedroom, tucking him in like he was still a very small child. “I am sorry,” I told him. It would be the very last time I used those words. We of Faery are not made for regrets.
He rolled away from me and buried his face in the pillow. Ever thereafter it was Lileas he sought out, it was Lyel, or it was Theron. Never was it me.
I returned to my own bedchamber to find the Dark Fool lying across my bed. After all he had done! Did he not realize I had discovered his little trick? For Amadan looked smug and satisfied as a recently fed cat.
I was all too aware of the knife sheathed in my girdle.
Amadan rose and kissed me, hot with pleasure, sweet and sharp as a thorny rose. “The Teind is paid, I can feel it,” he told me, squeezing my shoulder as we separated. “And a sweet and powerful Teind it was.”
I nodded only. “Bess Grieve is dead.”
“Oh.” His winged brows lifted in surprise. That was when I knew what he intended. For Jamie to pay the Teind, not Bess. He had played me, like he always played me. Maybe since he stroked his long fingers along Mairi Grieve’s cheek and caused her death. Maybe even before then when Lord Elidor planted the poisonous nail in my true mother’s bed. Elidor had told me, “You cannot uproot us all.”
And maybe I couldn’t, but there was one noxious weed I could pluck from the ground now, and easily. I wove one hand sensuously behind Amadan’s neck. Then I slammed my dagger into his chest.
I released him, and time slowed. Amadan stumbled backwards, gurgled. I had caught him by surprise. The traitor hit the ground. I knelt beside him, not certain whether I wanted to comfort him, bring him back, or stab him yet again. In the end, I did nothing, but let him fall.
The Dark Fool had been right. Losing the essence of who I had been freed me to become the queen I must.
Amadan’s head lolled to the side, eyes wide even as they glazed over, and his body went still. The grass ate his blood, but nothing more.
Faery had already feasted on Bess’s human soul.
Samhain
“I killed my mortal selfto pay the Teind.”
I let it land heavily on Janet and Tam Lin’s ears, even as I banish my fearsome seeming, let myself become the crimson-haired queen yet again. I make them feel the weight of it, the pain yet liberation of giving up who I was for so long to become the person I must. Until you lose the very essence of who you have been, you will never become the queen you were meant to be. Amadan would be so proud.
Bess Grieve is no more. Surely, by now I have become the queen I am meant to be.
So why can I not get this mortal woman to give up her lover’s life?
I have shown her Faery. She knows the Teind must be paid, or else we pay the price. Does she truly not care?
Janet’s eyes narrow, as she considers my true inhuman form. “Your mortal self—the seeming you just shed like a snake its skin?”
I nod. “Bess’s was the last killing I mourned, the last regret I will ever have. I have given up sentiment for expedience, my personal wants for the greater need. There is no kindness in me, none of your mortal weakness any longer, no shame, no hesitation, no guilt. I would sacrifice Tam Lin in a moment to pay the Teind, had you, fair Janet, not stolen him away.”
My cupbearer, my ward, and fairest knight in all my company, and she has stolen him away. Woe betide her ill-fared face indeed.
Janet presses her lips together in thought, cocking her head to look at me.
