A Caress Of Twilight

Chapter 32

We were talking about the fertility rite for Maeve Reed when the mirror sounded again; but this time it was the clear ringing of a bell, a clarion call, almost like a trumpet.

Doyle had gotten up saying, "Someone new." He came back a few minutes later with an odd look on his face.

"Who is it?" Rhys asked.

"Meredith's mother." He sounded puzzled.

"My mother." I stood up, letting the notes I was making fall to the floor. I started to bend down and pick them up, but Galen took my hand. "Do you want company?"

I think of all the men, he alone knew how I truly felt about my mother. I started to say no, then changed my mind. "Yes, I would very much like company."

He offered me his arm, and I laid my hand across his in a very formal way.

"Would you like more company?" Doyle asked.

I looked around the room and tried to decide if I wanted to impress my mother, or insult her. With the men in my living room I could do either, or maybe even both.

There really wasn't room for everybody to troop in, so I settled for Galen and Doyle. I didn't really need protection from my own mother. At least, not the kind of protection that bodyguards could supply.

Doyle went first, to tell her that the princess would be a moment. Galen and I waited outside the door for a little bit, then we walked in. He escorted me in front of the mirror, then sat down on the dark burgundy bedspread, trying to be unobtrusive.

Doyle stayed standing, though he moved to the far side of the mirror. He wasn't as concerned with being unobtrusive.

I faced the mirror. I knew her hair fell in thick, perfect waves past her waist, but you couldn't tell that from her image in the mirror. Her elaborate hairdo was piled upon her head in layers. She had used leaves made of hammered gold to encircle the hairdo. They almost hid the very ordinary brown of her hair. It wasn't as if no one of pure sidhe blood had brown hair, because some did. I think she hid her hair because it was exactly like her mother's, my half-brownie, half-human grandmother. Besaba, my mother, hated to be reminded of her origins.

Her eyes were merely brown, a nice solid chocolate brown with long, long lashes. Her skin was lovely. She'd always spent hours on her skin — milk baths, creams, lotions — but nothing she could do would ever give her the pure white of moonlit skin, or the soft gold tint of sunlight skin. She would never have sidhe skin, never. Her older twin sister, Eluned, had that glowing skin. But it was my mother's skin, more than the hair or eyes, that set her apart, at a glance, as not pure sidhe.

Her cream-colored dress was stiff with gold and copper thread. The square neckline made much of her bust, creamy mounds, but there was a reason why the sidhe are so fond of bust-improving styles: they don't have a great deal to work with.

Her makeup was artful, and she was, as always, beautiful. She'd never gone a single visit without reminding me that she was lovely, a Seelie princess, and I was not. I was too short, too human shaped, and my hair, dear Goddess, my hair was blood auburn, a color that was found only in the Unseelie Court.

I looked at her, her beauty, and realized that she could have been human. There were humans who were tall and slender, and that was all she had to prove she was more sidhe than I.

She was far too overdressed to pay a call upon her own daughter. The care with which she'd arranged herself made me wonder if she knew just how much I disliked her. Then I realized she was almost always thisarranged, this carefully constructed.

I was wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top that showed off my stomach. The shorts were black, the top was a bloodred, and my skin gleamed between the two colors. My shoulder-length hair was beginning to catch some of the wave it had when I let it grow long, not the profuse waves of my mother's and grandmother's hair, but waves nonetheless. The hair was only two shades darker than the bloodred of the tank top.

I wore no jewelry, but my body itself was jewelry. My skin shone like polished ivory; my hair gleamed like garnets; and my eyes, I had tricolored eyes. I looked at my beautiful, but all-too-human-looking mother and had a moment of revelation. It was only as I'd grown older that she complained about my looks. Oh, the hair, she'd always hated the hair, and she'd always been unkind, but the worst insults had begun when I was ten or eleven years old. She'd felt threatened. I'd never realized until this moment — as she sat there in her Seelie finery, and I stood in casual street clothes — that I was prettier than my mother.

I stared at her, just stared for a time, because it was like rewriting a part of my childhood in a space of heartbeats.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen my mother. Perhaps she couldn't either, because for a moment she stared, seemed surprised, even shocked. I think she'd somehow convinced herself I didn't look like this shining thing. She recovered quickly, because she is, beyond all else, the ultimate court politician. She can school her face to whatever whim of the king without mussing an eyelash.

"Daughter, how good to see you."

"Princess Besaba, the Bride of Peace, greetings." I had deliberately omitted our blood ties. The only mother I'd ever truly had was Gran, my mother's mother. She, I would have welcomed; the woman sitting in the silk-draped chair was a stranger to me, and always had been.

She look startled and didn't quite recover her expression, but her words were pleasant enough. "Princess Meredith NicEssus, greetings from the Seelie Court."

I had to smile. She'd insulted me in turn. NicEssus meant daughter of Essus. Most sidhe lost such a last name at puberty, or at least in their twenties, when their magical powers manifested. Since mine had not manifested in my twenties, I'd been NicEssus into my thirties. But the courts knew that my powers had come at long last. They knew I had a new title. She'd forgotten on purpose.

Fine. Besides, I'd been rude first. "I will always be my father's daughter, but I am no longer NicEssus." I put a pensive look on my face. "Has the king, my uncle, not told you that my hand of power has manifested?"

"Of course he told me," she said, sounding defensive and contrite all at the same time.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Since you did not use my new title, I assumed you did not know."

She let the anger show on that lovely, careful face for an instant, then smiled, a smile as sincere as her love for me. "I know that you are now Princess of Flesh. Congratulations."

"Why, thank you, Mother."

She shifted in the small chair, as if I'd surprised her again. "Well, daughter, we should not let it be so long between talks."

"Of course not," I said, and kept my face pleasant and unreadable.

"I have heard that you are invited to this year's Yule ball."

"Yes."

"I look forward to seeing you there, and renewing our acquaintance."

"I am surprised that you have not also heard that I had to decline the invitation."

"I had heard and find it hard to credit." Her hands stayed gracefully poised on the arms of the chair, but her body leaned forward just a bit, spoiling that perfect posture. "There are many who would do much to be so honored with an invitation."

"Yes, but you do know that I am now heir of the Unseelie Court, do you not, Mother?"

She sat up straight again and shook her head. I wondered if all that gold leaf on her hair was heavy. "You are coheir, not true heir. Your cousin is still true heir to that throne."

I sighed and stopped trying to look pleasant, settling for neutral. "I'm surprised, Mother. You are usually better informed."

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"Queen Andais has made Prince Cel and me equals. It remains only to see which of us produces a child first. If I take after you, Mother, it will surely be me."

"The king is most eager that you attend our ball."

"Are you listening to me, Mother? I am heir to the Unseelie throne. If I travel home for any Yule celebrations, it must be the Unseelie ball."

She made a small movement with her hands, then seemed to remember her poise, and placed them carefully back on the arms of the chair. "You could be back in the king's good graces if you but come to our ball, Meredith. You could be welcome at court again."

"I am already welcome at court, Mother. And how can I be back in the king's good graces, when to my knowledge I've never been in his good graces to begin with?"

She again waved that away, and even forgot to place her hands back on the chair. She was more agitated than she appeared, to forget and talk with her hands. She'd always hated the fact that she spoke with her hands; she thought it was a common thing to do.

"You could come back to the Seelie Court, Meredith. Think about it, truly a Seelie princess at last."

"I am heir to a throne, Mother. Why should I want to rejoin a court where I am fifth from the throne, when I can rule another?"

She waved it away. "You cannot compare being part of the Seelie Court to anything having to do with the Unseelie Court, Meredith."

I looked at her, so carefully beautiful, so stubbornly biased. "Are you saying it would be better to be the least of all the royals at the Seelie Court, instead of ruler of the Unseelie Court?"

"Are you implying that it is better to rule in hell than be in heaven?" she asked, almost laughing.

"I have spent time at both courts, Mother. There is not a great deal to choose between the two."

"How can you say that to me, Meredith? I have done my time at the dark court, and I know how hideous it is."

"I have spent my time in the shining court, and I know that my blood is just as red on shining gold-laced marble as it is on black."

She frowned, looked confused. "I don't know what you mean."

"If Gran had not interceded for me, would you really have let Taranis beat me to death? Beat your own daughter to death in front of your eyes?"

"That is a hateful thing to say, Meredith."

"Just answer the question, Mother."

"You had asked a very impertinent question of the king, and that is not a wise thing to do."

I had my answer, the answer I'd always known. I moved on. "Why is it so important to you that I attend this ball?"

"The king wishes it," she said. And she, like me, moved on from the earlier, more painful questions.

"I will not insult Queen Andais and all my people by snubbing their Yule celebration. If I come home, it will be for their Yule ball. Surely you see that that is the way it has to be."

"I see nothing but that you have not changed. You are still as willful and determined to be difficult as always."

"And you have not changed either, Mother. What did the king offer you to persuade me to come to his ball?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do. It's not enough for you to have the title of princess. You want what goes with the title, power. What did the king offer you?"

"That is between him and me, unless you come to the ball. Come, and I will tell you."

I shook my head. "Poor bait that, Mother, very poor bait."

"What is that supposed to mean?" She was very angry and made no attempt to hide it, which, from a social climber of her stature, was the supreme insult. I wasn't worth hiding her anger from. I was perhaps one of the very few sidhe whom she would have so insulted. Her own sister was someone she tiptoed around.

"It means, dear Mother, that I will not be attending the Seelie Yule ball." I motioned to Doyle, and he cut the transmission abruptly, leaving my mother in midword as she faded.

The mirror rang almost immediately with that bell sound, that clarion of trumpets, but we knew who it was now, and we weren't home to her.