"Ethine. Be welcome.”
She frowned and opened her mouth, then hesitated. When she spoke, she merely said, "My Lady knows she dealt you a terrible blow.”
"I did not realize your Lady liked to brag, even by proxy. Come, have a bite of fruit, take something to cool your hot tongue.”
Ethine moved toward him stiffly and perched on the very edge of the lounge. He handed her an agate goblet. She took the shallowest of sips, then set it down.
"It chafes you to be polite to me," he said. "Perhaps Silarial should have taken your feelings into consideration when she chose her ambassador.”
Ethine contemplated the earthen ground, and Roiben stood.
"You begged her to let someone else go in your place, didn't you?" He laughed with vindictive certainty. "Perhaps even told her how much it hurt you to see what your brother had become?”
"No," Ethine said softly.
"No? Not in those words, but I'll wager you said it all the same. Now you see how she cares for those who serve her. You are one more thing with which to needle me and nothing more than that. She sent you despite your pleading.”
Ethine had closed her eyes tightly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers threaded together.
He took her glass and drank from it. She looked up, annoyed, the way she had once been annoyed when he'd pulled her hair. When they were children.
It hurt him to look at her as an enemy.
"I do not see that you care for my feelings any more than she does," Ethine said.
"But I do." He made his voice grave. "Come, deliver your message.”
"My Lady knows she dealt you quite a blow. She further knows that your control of the other faeries in your lands is spotty after the botched Tithe.”
Roiben leaned against the wall. "You even sound like her when you say it.”
"Don't jest. She wants you to fight her champion. If you win, she will leave your lands unmolested for seven years. If you lose, you will forfeit the Unseelie Court to her." Ethine looked at him with anguished eyes. "And you will die.”
Roiben barely heard her plea, he was so surprised by the Bright Queen's offer. "I cannot think but that this is either generosity or some cunning beyond my measure. Why should she give me this chance at winning when now I have near none?”
"She wants your lands hale and whole when she takes them, not weakened by a war. Too many great courts have fallen into rabble.”
"Do you ever imagine no court at all?" Roiben asked his sister quietly. "No vast responsibilities or ancient grudges or endless wars?”
"We have come to rely on humans too much," said Ethine, frowning. "Once, our kind lived apart from them. Now we rely on them to be everything from farmers to nursemaids. We live in their cast-off spaces and sup off their tables. If the courts fall, we will be parasites with nothing to call our own. This is the last of our old world.”
"I hardly think it is as serious as all that." Roiben looked past Ethine. He didn't want her to see his expression. "How about this. Tell Silarial that I will take her insulting and lopsided bargain with one variation. She must wager something too. She must put up her crown.”
"She will never give you—”
Roiben cut her off. "Not to me. To you.”
Ethine opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
"Tell her that if she loses, she makes you the Bright Queen of the Seelie Court. If I lose, I will give her both my crown and my life." It felt good to say, even if it were a rash wager.
Ethine rose. "You mock me.”
He made a dismissive gesture. "Don't be silly. You know very well that I do not.”
"She told me that if you wished to bargain, you must do so with her." She paced the room, gesturing wildly. "Why won't you just come back to us? Pledge yourself to Silarial, ask for her forgiveness. Tell her how hard it was to be Nicnevin's knight. She could not have known.”
"Silarial has spies everywhere. I very much doubt that she was ignorant of my suffering.”