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The Kiss of Shadows
"Homesick," I said. "What's wrong, Jeremy?"
He gave a small smile. "Can't fool you, can I, Merry?"
"No," I said.
"Nice outfit," he said.
I know, I know, why not go to Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs, get asylum? My relatives would probably kill me when they found me, but if I went public and aired our dirty laundry for the world media, they would most definitely kill me. And they'd kill me slower. So, no police, no ambassadors, just the ultimate game of hide-n-seek.
I smiled at Jeremy, and gave him what I knew he wanted, the look that said that I appreciated the slender potential of his body under his perfect suit. To humans it would have looked like flirting, but for the fey, any fey, it wasn't even close to flirting. "Thanks, Jeremy, but you didn't come in here to compliment my clothes."
He walked further into the room, running manicured fingers along my desk edge. "I've got two women in my office. They want to be clients," he said.
"Want to be?" I said.
He turned, leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest. Mirroring my stance at the windows, either unconsciously, or purposefully, though I didn't know why. "We don't usually do divorce work," Jeremy said.
I gave him wide eyes, pushing away from the windows. "Day one lecture, Jeremy, The Grey Detective Agency never, ever, does divorce work."
"I know, I know," he said. He pushed away from the desk and came to stand beside me, staring out into the fog. He didn't look any happier than I felt.
I leaned back against the glass so I could see his face better. "Why are you breaking your cardinal rule, Jeremy?"
He shook his head without looking at me. "Come meet them, Merry. I trust your judgment. If you say we stay out of it, we'll stay out of it. But I think you'll feel the same way I do."
I touched his shoulder. "And how are you feeling, boss, other than worried?" I ran my hand down his arm, and it made him look at me.
His eyes had gone dark charcoal grey with anger. "Come meet them, Merry, if you're as angry afterwards as I am, then we'll nail this bastard."
I gripped his arm. "Jeremy, relax, it's just a divorce case."
"What if I told you it was attempted murder?" His voice was calm, matter of fact, it didn't match the intensity in his eyes, the vibrating tension in his arm.
I moved back from him. "Attempted murder? What are you talking about?"
"The nastiest death spell that's ever walked into my office."
"Someone is, and the wife says it's the husband. The mistress agrees with the wife."
Or maybe something else was going on. Something that needed guns and muscle, and men with dead, emotionless eyes. Not a cheery thought.
I blinked at him. "Are you saying that the wife and the mistress are in your office?"
He nodded, and even through all the outrage, he smiled.
I smiled back. "Well, that's got to be a first."
He took my hand. "It might be a first even if we did do divorce work," he said. His thumb rubbed back and fourth over my knuckles. He was nervous, or he wouldn't be touching me this much. A way to reassure himself, like a touchstone. He raised my hand to his lips and planted a quick kiss on my knuckles. I think he'd noticed what he was doing, that his nerves were showing. He flashed me a white smile, the best caps money could buy, and turned towards the door.
"Answer one question first, Jeremy."
He adjusted his suit, small minute movements to tug it back into place as if it needed it. "Ask away."
"Why are you scared of this?"
The smile faded until his face was solemn. "I've got a bad feeling about this one, Merry. Prophecy isn't one of my gifts, but this one has a bad smell to it."
"Then pass it by, we aren't the cops. We do this for a very nice paycheck, not because we've sworn to serve and protect, Jeremy."
"If after you meet them, you can honestly walk away from it, then we will."
Caress of Twilight
For three years I'd stood on the shores of this ocean and died a little bit every day. Not literally, I'd have survived, but mere survival can get pretty lonely. I'd been born Princess Meredith NicEssus, a member of the high court of fairie. I was a real life fairie princess, the only one ever born on American soil. When I vanished from sight about three years ago, the media had gone crazy. Sightings of the missing Elven American Princess had rivaled Elvis sightings. I'd been spotted all around the world. In reality I'd been in Los Angeles the entire time. I'd hidden myself, been just plan Meredith Gentry, Merry to my friends. Just another human with fey ancestry working for Grey's Detective Agency, we specialized in supernatural problems, magical solutions.
Legend says that when a fey is exiled from fairie they whither and fade, die. That's both true and untrue. I have enough human blood in my background that being surrounded by metal and technology doesn't bother me. Some of the lesser fey would literally whither and die in a manmade city. But most fey can manage in a city, they may not be happy, but they can survive. But part of them does whither, that part that knows that not all the butterflies you see are actually butterflies, that part that has seen the night sky filled with a rushing of wings like a hurricane wind, wings of flesh and scale to make humans whisper of dragons and demons; that part that has seen the sidhe ride by on horses made of starlight and dreams. That part begins to die.
I leaned my back against the windows and the thick, hanging smog. The day was as grey as my boss, but his color was a cool, crisp grey, like clouds before a spring rain. What lay outside the window felt heavy and thick like something you would try to swallow, but you'd never get it down. It was a day to choke on, or maybe it was just my mood.
I hadn't been exiled, I'd fled, because I couldn't survive the assassination attempts. I just didn't have the magic, or the political clout to protect myself. I'd saved my life, but lost something else, I'd lost the touch of fairie. I'd lost my home.
Now, leaning on my window sill with the smell of the Pacific Ocean on the air, I looked down at the two men and knew I was home. They were both high court sidhe, Unseelie sidhe, part of that darkling throng that I might someday rule if I could stay ahead of the assassins. Rhys lay on his stomach, one hand hanging off the bed, the other lost under his pillow. Even in repose that one visible arm was muscled. His hair was a shining fall of white curls caressing his bare shoulders, trailing down the strong line of his back. With the right side of his face pressed to the pillow you couldn't see the scars that had taken his eye. His cupid-bow mouth was turned upward, half-smiling in his sleep. He was boyishly handsome and would be forever.
Nicca lay curled on his side. Awake his face was handsome, bordering on pretty, asleep he had the face of an angelic child. Innocent, he looked, fragile. Even his body was softer, less muscled. His hands were still rough from sword practice, and there was muscle under the velvet smoothness of his skin, but he was soft compared to the other guards, more courtier than mercenary. The face did, and did not, match the body. He was just over six feet, most of it long, long legs, and slender waist with long, graceful arms that balanced all that length. Most of Nicca was shades of brown. Most of his smooth skin was the color of pale milk chocolate, and the hair that fell in a straight fall to his knees was a rich, dark true brown, not brunette, but the color of fresh turned leaves that had lain a long, long time on the forest floor until when stirred they were a rich, moist brown, something you could plunge your hands into and come away wet and smelling of new life.
On his side in the moonlit dark I couldn't see his back, or even the tops of his shoulders clearly, most of him was lost under the sheet. It was his back that held the biggest surprise. His father had been something with butterfly wings, something not sidhe, but still fey. Genetics had traced his back with wings like a giant tattoo, except more vibrant, more alive than any ink or paint could make it. From his upper shoulders down his back across his buttocks flowing over his thighs to touch the backs of his knees was a play of color; buff brown, yellow tans, circles of blue and pink and black like eye spots on the wings of a moth.
He rested in the dark drained of color so that he and Rhys were like two shadows wrapped in the bed, one pale, one dark, though there was darker things to be had than Nicca, much darker.
The bedroom door opened soundlessly, and as if I'd conjured him by my thoughts, Doyle eased into the room. He shut the door behind him, as soundlessly as he'd opened it. I never understood how he did that. If I'd opened the door it would have made noise. But when Doyle wanted to, he moved like the fall of night itself, soundless, weightless, undetectable until you realized the light was gone and you were alone in the dark with something you couldn't see. His nickname was the Queen's Darkness, or simply Darkness. The Queen would say, where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness, and some one would bleed, or die. But now, strangely, he was my Darkness.
Nicca was brown, but Doyle was black, not the black of human skin, but the complete blackness of a midnight sky. But he didn't vanish in the darkened room, because he was darker than the moonlit shadows, a dark shape gliding towards me. His black jeans and black t-shirt fit his body like a second skin. I'd never seen him wear anything that wasn't monochromatic except jewelry and blades. Even his shoulder holster and gun were black.
I pushed away from the window to stand as he moved towards me. He had to stop gliding at the foot of the king-sized bed, because there was barely room to squeeze between the bed and the closet doors. It was impressive simply to watch Doyle slide along the wall without brushing the bed. He was over a foot taller than I was, and probably out-weighed me by a hundred pounds, most of it muscle. I'd have bumped into the bed a half dozen times, at least. He eased through the narrow space as if it were easy, and anybody should have been able to do it.
The bed took up most of the bedroom, so when Doyle finally reached me we were forced to stand nearly touching. He managed to keep a fraction of distance so that not even our clothing brushed. It was an artificial distance. It would have been more natural to touch, the very fact that he worked so hard not to touch me, made it the more awkward. But I'd stopped arguing with Doyle about his distance. It bothered me, but when questioned, he only said, I want to be special to you, not just one of the mob. At first it had seemed noble, now it was just irritating. The light was stronger here by the window, and I could see some of that delicate curve of his high cheekbones, the too sharp chin, the curved points to his ears, and the silver gleam of earrings that traced the cartilage all the way to small hoops in the very pointed tops. Only the pointed ears betrayed that he was a mixed blood like myself, like Nicca, he could have hidden the ears with all that hair, but he almost never did. His raven black hair was as it usually was in a tight, tight braid that made his hair looked clipped and short from the front, but the braid's tip hung to his ankles.
He whispered, "I heard something." His voice was always low and dark like thick candied liqueur for the ear instead of the tongue.
I stared up at him. "Something, or me moving around?"
His lips gave that twitch that was the closest he usually came to a smile. "You."
I shook my head, hands crossed over my stomach. "I have two guards in bed with me and that's not protection enough," I whispered back.
"They are good men, but they are not me."
I frowned at him. "Are you saying you don't trust anyone but you to keep me safe?" Our voices sounded quiet, peaceful almost, like the voices of parents whispering over sleeping children. It was comforting to know that Doyle was this alert. He was one of the greatest warriors of all the sidhe. It was good to have him on my side.
"Frost . . . perhaps," he said.
I shook my head, my hair had grown out just enough to tickle along my cheeks. "The Queen's Ravens are the finest warriors that fairie has to offer, and you say no one is your equal. You arrogant . . ."
He didn't so much step closer, we were standing too close for that, he merely moved, pressing close enough that the hem of my robe brushed his legs. The moonlight glinted off the short necklace he always wore, a tiny jeweled spider hanging from the delicate silver chain. He bent his face down so that his breath pushed against my face. "I could kill you before either of them knew what had happened."
The threat sped my pulse faster. I knew he wouldn't harm me. I knew it, and yet . . . any yet. I'd seen Doyle kill with his hands before, empty of weapons, only his strength of flesh and magic. Standing, touching in the intimate darkness, I knew beyond certainty that if he wished me dead he could do it and not I, or the two sleeping guards behind me would be able to stop him.
I couldn't win a fight but there were other things to do when pressed together in the dark, things that could distract, or disarm, as well, or better, than a blade. I turned minutely towards him so that my face was pressed into the curve of his neck, my lips moved against his skin as I spoke. I felt his own pulse speed pressed against my cheek. "You don't want to hurt me, Doyle."
His lower lip brushed the curve of my ear, almost, but not quite a kiss. "I could kill all three of you."
There was a sharp mechanical sound from behind us, the sound of a gun being cocked. It was loud enough in the stillness that I jumped. "I don't think you could kill all three of us," Rhys said. His voice was was clear, precise, no hint of sleep in it. He was simply awake, pointing a gun at Doyle's back, or at least I assumed that's what he was doing. I couldn't see around the bulk of Doyle's body. Doyle, as far as I knew, didn't have eyes in the back of his head, so he had to guess what Rhys was doing, too.
"A double action handgun doesn't need to be cocked to fire, Rhys," Doyle said, voice calm, even amused. But I couldn't see his face, to see if his expression matched his tone, we'd both frozen in our almost embrace.
"I know," Rhys said, "a little melodramatic, but you know what they say, one scary sound is worth a thousand threats."
I spoke, my mouth still touching the warm skin of Doyle's neck. "They don't say that." Doyle hadn't moved, and I was afraid to, afraid to set something in motion that I couldn't stop. I didn't want any accidents tonight.
"They should," Rhys said.
The bed creaked behind us. "I have a gun pointed at your head, Doyle," Nicca's voice, but not calm, no, a defiant thread of anxiety wove his words together. Rhys's voice had held no fear, Nicca's held enough for both of them. But I didn't have to see Nicca to know the gun was trained nice and steady, the finger already on the trigger. Afterall Doyle had trained him.
I felt the tension leave Doyle's body, and his raised his face just enough so he was no longer speaking into my skin. "Perhaps I couldn't slay you all, but I could kill the princess before you could kill me, and then you're lives would mean nothing. The Queen would hurt you much more than I ever could for allowing her heir to be slaughtered."
I could see his face now, even by moonlight he was relaxed, his eyes distant, not really looking at me anymore. He was too intent on the lesson he was teaching his men, to care about me.
I braced my back against the wall, but he paid no attention to the small movement. I put a hand in the middle of his chest and pushed. It made him stand up straighter, but there really wasn't room for him to go anywhere but on the bed. "Stop it, all of you," I said, and I made sure my voice rang in the room. I glared up at Doyle. "Get away from me."
He gave a small bow using just his neck for there wasn't room for anything more formal, then he backed up, hands out to his sides to show himself empty-handed to the other guards. He ended between the bed and the wall with no room to maneuver. Rhys was half on his back, gun pointed one-handed as he followed Doyle's movement around the room. Nicca was standing on the far side of the bed, gun held two-handed in a standard shooters stance. They were still treating Doyle like a threat, and I was tired of it.
"I am tired of these little games, Doyle. Either you trust your men to keep me safe, or you don't. If you don't then find other men, or make sure you, or Frost, is always with me. But stop this."
"If I had been one of our enemies your guards would have slept through your death."
"I was awake," said Rhys, "but truthfully I thought you'd finally come to your senses and was going to do her up against the wall."
Doyle frowned at him. "You would think something that crude."
"If you want her, Doyle, then just say so, tomorrow night can be your turn. I think we'd all step aside for an evening if you'd break your . . . fast." The moonlight softened Rhys's scars like a white gauzy patch where his right eye should have been.
"Put up your guns," I said.
They looked at Doyle for confirmation. I shouted at them. "Put up the guns. I am the princess here, heir to a throne. He's the Captain of my guard and when I tell you to do something, you will by Goddess, do it."
They still looked at Doyle. He gave the smallest of nods.
"Get out," I said, "all of you, get out."
Doyle shook his head. "I don't think that would be wise, princess."
Usually I tried to get them all to call me Meredith, but I had evoked my status. I couldn't take it back in the next sentence. "So my direct orders don't mean anything, is that it?"
Doyle's expression was neutral, careful. Rhys and Nicca had put up their guns, but neither one was meeting my eyes. "Princess, you must have at least one of us with you at all times. Our enemies are . . . persistent."
"Prince Cel will be executed if his people try and kill me while he's still being punished for trying to kill me last time. We have six months reprieve."
Doyle shook his head.
I looked at the three of them, all handsome, even beautiful in their own ways, and suddenly I wanted to be alone. Alone to think, alone to figure out exactly who's orders they were taking, mine, or Queen Andias's. I'd thought it was mine, but suddenly I wasn't so sure.
I looked at them, each in turn, Rhys met my gaze, but Nicca still wouldn't. "You won't take my orders, will you?"
"Our first duty is to keep you safe, princess, and only second to keep you happy," Doyle said.
"What do you want from me Doyle? I've offered you my bed, and you've refused."
He opened his mouth, started to speak, but I held a hand up. "No, I don't want to hear anymore of your excuses. I believed the one about wanting to be the last of my men, not the first, but if one of the others gets me with child according to sidhe tradition that person will be my husband. I'll be monogamous after that. You'll have missed your chance to break a thousand years of forced celibacy. You haven't given me a single reason good enough for that kind of risk." I folded my arms across my stomach, cradling my breasts. "Speak truth to me, Doyle, or stay out of my bedroom."
His face was almost neutral, but an edge of anger showed through. "Fine, you want truth, then look at your window."
I frowned at him, but turned to look at the window with it's gauze white drapes moving ever so gently in the breeze. I shrugged, arms still held tight. "So?"
"You are a princess of the sidhe, look with more than your eyes."
I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and tried not to respond to the heat in his words. Getting angry at Doyle never seemed to accomplish anything. I was a princess but that didn't give me much clout, it never had.
I didn't so much call my magic, as drop the shields I had to put in place so that I didn't travel through my day seeing mystical sights. Human psychics, and even witches, usually had to work at seeing magic, other beings, other realities. I was a part of fairie and that meant that I spent a great deal of energy not seeing magic, not noticing the passing rush of other beings, other realities, that had very little to do with my world, my purpose, but magic calls to magic, and without shields in place I could have drown in the everyday rush of the supernatural that played over the earth every day.
I dropped the shields and looked with that part of the brain that sees visions, and allows you to see dreams. Strangely, it wasn't that big a change in perception, but suddenly I could see better in the dark, and I could see the glowing power of the wards on the window, the walls. And in all that glowing power I saw something through the white drapes. Something small, pressed against the window. When I moved the drapes aside, there was nothing on the window, but the play of pale color from the wards. I looked to one side, letting the edge of my sight, my peripheral vision, look at the glass. There, a small hand print, smaller than the palm of hand, etched into the wards on the window. I tried to look closer at it, and it vanished from sight. I forced myself to look sideways at it again, but closer. The hand print was clawed and humanoid, but not human.
I let the drape fall shut, and spoke without turning around. "Something tried the wards while we slept."
"Yes," Doyle said.
"I didn't feel anything," Rhys said.
Nicca said, "Me, either."
Rhys sighed. "We have failed you princess. Doyle's right, we could have gotten you killed."
I turned and looked at them all, then I stared at Doyle. "When did you sense the testing of the wards?"
"I came in here to check on you."
I shook my head. "No, that's not what I asked. When did you sense that something had tested the wards?"
He faced me, bold. "I've told you, princess, only I can keep you safe."
I shook my head again. "No good, Doyle. The sidhe never lie, not outright, and you've avoided answering my question twice. Answer me now, for the third time, when did you sense something had tested the wards?"
He looked half uncomfortable, half angry. "When I was whispering in your ear."
"You saw it through the drapes," I said.
"Yes." One clipped, angry word.
Rhys said, "You didn't know that anything tried to get in, you just came through because you heard Merry moving around."
Doyle didn't answer, but he didn't need to it, the silence was answer enough.
"These wards are my doing, Doyle. I put them up when I moved in to this apartment. I redo them periodically, but it was my magic, my power, that kept this thing out. My power that burned it so that we have it's . . . finger prints."
"Your wards held because it was a small power," Doyle said, "something large would still get through any ward you could put in place."
"Maybe, but the point is that you didn't know anymore than we did. You were just as in the dark, as we were."
"You're not infallible," Rhys said, "nice to know."
"Is it?" Doyle said, "is it really? Then think on this, none of us knew that some creature of fairie crept to this window and tried to get in tonight. None of us sensed it. It may have been a small power, but it had big help to hide this completely."
I stared at him. "You think Cel's people risked his life tonight, by trying to take mine again."
"Princess, don't you understand the Unseelie court by now. Cel was the Queen's darling, her only heir for centuries. Once she made you co-heir with him, he fell out of favor. Which ever one of you gets with child first will rule the court, but what happens if both of you die? What happens if you are assassinated by Cel's people and the Queen is forced to execute Cel for his treachery. She's suddenly without heir."
"The Queen is immortal," Rhys said, "she's only agreed to step down for Merry or Cel."
"And if someone can plot the death of both Prince Cel and Princess Meredith, do you really think they will stop at the death of a Queen?"
We all stared at him. It was Nicca who spoke, voice soft, "No one would risk the queen's anger."
"They would if they thought they wouldn't get caught," Doyle said.
"Who would be that arrogant?" Rhys asked.
Doyle laughed, a surprised bray of sound, that startled us all. "Who would be arrogant enough? Rhys, you are a noble of the sidhe courts, the better question would be who would not be arrogant enough?"
"Say what you like, Doyle," Nicca said, "most of the nobles fear the Queen, fear her greatly, fear her much more than Cel. You have been her champion for eons, you don't know what's it like to be at her mercy."
"I do," I said. They all turned to me. "I agree with Nicca, I don't know anyone but Cel who would risk his mother's anger."
"We are immortal, princess, we have the luxury of biding our time. Who knows what trickery serpent has been waiting for centuries until the Queen was weak. If she is forced to kill her only son, she will be weak."
"I'm not immortal, Doyle, I can't speak for that kind of patience or cunning. All we know for certain is that something tried the wards tonight, and it will bear a burn on it's hand, or paw, or whatever, a mark. It can be tracked just like fingerprints."
"I've seen wards set up to harm something that tires to break them, or even mark them with a scar, or burn, but I've never seen anyone take imprints before," Rhys said.
"It was clever," Doyle said. Which from him was a great compliment.
"Thank you." I frowned at him. "If you've never seen anyone do something like this with a ward, how did you know what you were seeing through the drapes?"
"Rhys said that he had never seen anything like it, I did not say that."
"Where else did you see it?"
"I am an assassin, a hunter, princess, tracks are a very good thing to have."
"The print on it's hand will match this, but it won't leave tracks as it travels."
Doyle gave a small shrug. "A pity, it would have been useful."
"You can make a creature of fairie leave magical tracks?" I asked.
"Yes."
"But they would see them with their own magic and ruin the spell."
He shrugged. "I've never found the world big enough to hide quarry that I had tracked."
"You're always so . . . perfect," I said.
He glanced past me at the window. "No, my princess, I fear I am not perfect, and our enemies whoever they may be, know that now."
The breeze had become a wind, billowing out the white drapes. I could see the small clawed print frozen in the glittering magic. I was half a continent away from the nearest fairie strong hold. I'd thought L. A. was far enough away to keep us safe, but I guess if someone really wants you dead they'll catch a plane, or something with wings. After years of exile I finally had a little slice of home with me. Home never really changed. It had always been lovely, erotic, and very, very dangerous.
Seduced By Moonlight
Chapter 1
He wasn't black the way a human being is black, but more like a dog is black. True black like the darkest of nights, or so I'd thought. Watching the play of light on his skin, I realized I'd been wrong. His skin gleamed with blue highlights, a shine of midnight blue along the long muscular sweep of his calf; a flare of royal blue like a stroke of deep sky touched his back and shoulder. Purple to shame the darkest amethyst caressed his hip. How could I ever have thought his skin monochrome? He was a miracle of colors and light, strapped across a body that rippled and moved with muscles honed in wars fought centuries before I was born.
The braid of his black hair trailed across the edge of the lounge chair, fell over the side and curled beside him on the concrete like some patient serpent. His hair was the only thing that seemed black on black. There was no play of colors, only a gleam like a black jewel. It seemed like it should have been the other way around, that his hair should have held the highlights, and his body been all one color, but it wasn't.
He lay on his stomach, head turned away from me. He was pretending to be asleep, but I knew he wasn't. He was waiting. Waiting for the helicopter to fly over. The helicopter that would contain the press, people with cameras. We'd made a deal with the devil. If they press would just stay away enough for us to have some privacy, we'd make sure that at pre-arranged times they had something newsworthy to take pictures of. I was Princess Meredith NicEssus, heir to the throne of the Unseelie Court, and the fact that I'd surfaced in Los Angeles, California after a three-year absence was big news. People thought I'd died. Now I was alive and well, and living in the middle of one of the biggest media empires on the planet. Then I'd gone and done something that was even better tabloid fodder.
I was looking for a husband. The only fairie princess born on American soil was looking to wed. Being fey, especially a member of the sidhe, the highest of the high royals, I wasn't allowed to marry unless I was pregnant. The fey don't breed much, and the sidhe royals breed even less. My aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, would not tolerate anything less than a fertile match. Since we seemed to be dying out, I guess I couldn't blame her. But somehow the tabloids had gotten wind that I wasn't just dating my bodyguards, I was fucking them. Whoever got me with child, got a wedding. Got to be king to my queen.
The tabloids even knew that the Queen had made it a contest between me, and her son, my cousin, Prince Cel. Whoever got a baby first, won the throne. The media had fallen on us like a cannibalistic orgy. Not pretty, not pretty at all.
What the tabloids didn't know was that Cel had tried to have me assassinated more than once. They also didn't know that he'd been imprisoned by the Queen for six months as punishment. Imprisoned and tortured, for six months. Immortality and an ability to heal almost anything does have some downsides. Torture can last a very, very long time.
When Cel got out, he'd be allowed to continue the contest, unless I got pregnant first. So far, no luck, and it wasn't for lack of trying.
Doyle was one of five bodyguards, the Queen's own bodyguards, who had volunteered, or been volunteered, to be my lover. Queen Andais had had a rule that her bodyguards gave their seed to her body, or nobody. Doyle had been celibate for centuries. Again, immortality, if it goes wrong, can have some downsides.
We'd chosen one of the most persistent of the tabloids and made our arrangements. Doyle thought it was rewarding bad behavior; the Queen wanted us to show positive images to the media. The Unseelie Court of the sidhe has a reputation for being the bad guys. We can be, but I'd spent my fair share of time at the Seelie Court, the bright and shining court that the media thinks is so perfect, so joyous. Their King Taranis, the King of Light and Illusion, is my uncle. But I'm not in line to that throne. I had the bad taste to have a father that was full-blooded Unseelie sidhe, and that is a crime for which the glittering throng has no forgiveness. There was no prison that I could get to, no torture I could endure, that would cleanse me of this sin.
They can say that the Seelie Court is a beautiful place, but I learned that my blood was just as red on white marble as it was on black. The beautiful people made it very plain at a young age that I would never be one of them. I'm too short, too human looking, and worst yet, too Unseelie looking.
My skin is as white as Doyle's is black. Moonlite skin is what I have, a mark of beauty at either court, but I am barely five feet tall. No sidhe is that short. I have curves, and am a little too voluptuous for the sidhe, that pesky human blood, I guess. My eyes are tri-colored, two shades of green, and a circle of gold. The eyes would be welcome in the Seelie court, but not the hair. It's blood auburn, sidhe scarlet, if you go to a good salon and get the dye job. It's not auburn, and it's not human red. It's as if you took good red garnets and spun the jewels out into hair. It has one other nickname among the glittering throng - Unseelie red. The Seelie have red hair, but it's closer to human red, orangey, golden, true auburn, or true red, but nothing as dark as mine.
My mother made sure that I knew I was less. Less beautiful, less welcome, just less. She and I don't talk much. My father died when I was younger, and there is rarely a day that I don't miss him. He taught me that I was enough, beautiful enough, tall enough, strong enough, just enough.
Doyle raised his head, showing the black wrap around sunglasses that hid his own black eyes. The light glittered off the silver earrings that graced almost every inch of his ears, from lobe to pointed tip. The ears were the only thing that gave away the fact that Doyle wasn't pure Unseelie sidhe. Contrary to popular literature, and every wannabe fey with ear implants, real sidhe do not have pointed ears. Doyle could have hidden the ears and passed for pure sidhe, but he almost always wore his hair back so that that one imperfection showed. I think the earrings were so you wouldn't miss them.
"I hear the helicopter, where is Rhys?"
I didn't hear anything yet, but I'd learned not to question Doyle, if he said he heard something, he had. His hearing was better than a human's, and better than most of the rest of the guards. Probably something to do with his mixed heritage.
I sat up, and looked back towards the wall of glass that led into the house. Rhys appeared in the sliding glass doors before I could call for him. His skin was the paleness of mine, but there the sameness ended. His waist-length hair was a mass of tight white curls, that framed a face that was boyishly handsome and would be forever. His one eye was tri-colored blue, cornflower, and winter sky. His other eye was gone, lost long ago. Sometimes he wore a patch to cover the scars, but once he realized I didn't mind, he seldom bothered. The scars trailed down his face, but stopped short of his kissable, pouting lips. For sheer shape of the mouth, his was the prettiest. He was 5' 6", the shortest full-blooded sidhe I'd ever met. But every inch of him that showed was muscled. He seemed to try and make-up for the lack of height by being in better shape than the rest of the guards. They were all muscular, but he was one of the few that really took the weight-lifted seriously. He was also the only one with washboard abs. He had the towels he'd gone for, in front of those abs, and lower, and it wasn't until he dropped the towels beside my chair that I realized he'd left his bathing suit in the house. "Rhys! What are you doing?"
He grinned at me. "Bathing suits this small are like lies. It's a way for humans to be nude without being naked. I'd rather just be naked."
"They won't be able to print the pictures if one of us is nude," Doyle said.
"They'll print my ass, just not my front."
I looked up at him, suddenly suspicious. "And just why won't they be able to see the front of your body?"
He laughed, head back, mouth wide, a sound so joyous it seemed to make the day brighter. "I'll be hiding me against your gorgeous body."
"No," Doyle said.
"And are you going to do anything picture worthy?" Rhys asked, hands on his hips. He was totally comfortable nude. His body language never changed no matter what he was, or wasn't wearing. It had taken two days worth of arguing to get Doyle into the thong bikini bottoms he was wearing. He'd never participated in the courts casual nudity.
Doyle stood, and the front of the suit was tiny enough, and close enough in color, that I could see Rhys's point. If you didn't know how magnificent Doyle looked nude, you might think this was it, at a glance. From the back he looked almost as nude as Rhys. "I am wearing this, and I am in public view."
"You're cute," Rhys said, "but if we want the tabloids to stop trying to snap pictures through the bedroom windows, we need to play fair with them. We need to give them a show." He spread his arms wide when he said the last, turning his back to me, so I got the full view of the back of his body. The view was better without the bathing suit to break up the clean, muscled lines of him. He still had a wonderful ass, unlike some of the bodybuilders that have taken the lack of body fat to a point where there is nothing soft on their bodies. You need a little softness to hide the lines of muscles, or it just looks wrong.
I could hear the helicopter now. "We're running out of time gentlemen. I do not want to go back to having the photographers camped out in the trees outside the wall."
Rhys glanced back at me. "If we don't give the first tabloid a good show, they'll tell the rest that we lied, and we'll have them climbing all over us again." He sighed, and not like he was happy. "I'd rather flash my ass to the entire country than have another photographer break his arm falling off the roof."
"Agreed," I said.
Doyle took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slow through his mouth. "Agreed." How little he liked it, showed in the lines of his body, the way he stood. If he couldn't act better than this, Doyle would have to be excused from future photo opportunities.
Rhys came to the foot of my lounge chair, and didn't so much kneel on it, as go to all fours, with his hands on the chair arms. He was grinning at me, and I knew he'd find a way of enjoying this. It might be duty, and he might prefer to just shoot the helicopter out of the sky, but he'd play fair, and he'd find a way to make it fun, if he could.
I gazed down the line of his body, because I couldn't help it. I couldn't not look at him dangling there, close enough to fondle, close enough for so much. My voice was a little less than steady, when I asked, "Do you have a plan?"
"I thought we'd make out."
"And what am I supposed to be doing?" Doyle asked. He didn't sound angry now, just disgusted with the entire situation. He loved being my lover, loved the possibility of being king; he hated the publicity, and everything that went with it.
"You can take one end, I'll take the other."
The helicopter was close now, perhaps only hidden by the line of tall Eucalyptus trees that bordered the estate. Doyle suddenly flashed a smile, white and sudden as lightning in the darkness of his face. He moved with that liquid grace and speed, that I could never match, and was just suddenly kneeling beside my shoulder. "If I must, then I would have the sweet taste of your mouth."
Rhys darted a quick lick across my bare stomach, that made me writhe, and giggle. He raised his face enough to say, "There are other tastes just as sweet." The look in his eye, his face, held a heat and knowledge that stole the laughter from my throat, and brought my pulse racing.
Doyle brushed his lips across my shoulder. The movement brought my gaze to his, and there was that same dark knowledge. A knowledge borne of nights and days of skin and sweat and bodies, of tangled sheets and pleasure.
My voice came a little shaky. "You've decided to play, what made you change your mind?"
He whispered against my cheek, and just his breath hot against my skin made me shudder. "Because this is a necessary evil, and if you must parade yourself for the media, than I will not abandon you." That flash of a smile came again, like a surprise across his face. It made him look younger, almost like someone else entirely. It had only been in the last month, or so; that I'd known Doyle had a smile like that inside him. "Besides, I cannot leave you to Rhys. Goddess knows what he would do out here on his own."
Rhys ran a finger along the edge of my bikini bottom. "Such a tiny piece of cloth, they'll never see it if we're careful."
I frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
He dropped lower on the lounge chair, so that his face was above that tiny piece of cloth, his hands sliding under my slightly raised thighs, so that his hands came up over my hips and hid the bright red cloth of the bikini bottom. He lowered his face just over my groin, and his hair spread across my thighs like a curtain.
I didn't have time to protest, or even decide if I was going to, the helicopter cleared the trees, and that was how they found us. Rhys with his face buried in my groin, his legs bent at the knees, feet kicking slightly over his bare ass, like a child with a piece of good candy.
I thought Doyle would protest, until he pressed his face into my neck, and I realized he was laughing. Silently, shoulders shaking. He eased me down onto the lounge so that I was lying down again, still laughing, but hiding it from the cameras. I started to smile, and was glad my sunglasses were back in place. The smile started to turn into a laugh, as the helicopter circled overhead, close enough to chop the water of the pool, and send Rhys's hair tickling along my skin. My hair flared in the artificial wind like bloody flames.
I was laughing full out now, which made other things besides my shoulders shake.
Rhys licked across the front of my groin, and even through the cloth, it slowed the laughter, brought a catch to my breath. He rolled his eye up the line of my body, and the look was enough, he didn't want me laughing. He set his teeth into the cloth and grazed me, delicately with his teeth. The sensation made me shudder, spine bowing enough to spill my head backwards, and open my mouth in a throaty gasp.
Doyle squeezed my shoulder, brought me back into my head a little. I was still shaky, and had trouble focusing on his face. "I think we have had enough of a show for one day." He laid one of the towels across my stomach. He handed the other one to Rhys.
Rhys looked up at him, and I saw the thought cross his face, to argue, but in the end he simply began to get up, spreading the towel as he moved, so that the cameras didn't get a glimpse of the bikini bottoms. I'd half expected him to move and flash the camera, show the joke, but he didn't. He very carefully covered me with the towel, while the helicopter swirled overhead, and the wind beat our hair around us. On his knees, he was fully exposed, and I wondered if there'd be photos with him politely fuzzed out, or whether they'd sell them to the European papers and not worry about it.
When I was covered completely, from thighs to just under the red bikini top, he scooped me up in his arms.
I had to shout to be heard above the sound of wind and machinery. "I can walk."
"I want to carry you." He seemed so serious when he said it, and it cost me nothing to let him do it.
I nodded.
Rhys carried me towards the house with Doyle walking a little behind and to one side of us. Doyle was being a good bodyguard, bringing up the rear, but he was also walking to one side, instead of directly behind us, so that he didn't ruin the photo opportunity.
He stopped at his chair and scooped up a third towel, and moved smoothly towards the house. I caught a glimpse of the gun wrapped in that towel. The helicopter circling overhead never knew that any of us were armed. They also couldn't see Frost standing just inside the sliding glass doors, hidden by a spill of drapes. He was fully dressed, and very fully armed. I think the reason I didn't mind the media games so much, was that if no one tired to kill me, it was a good day. When that's your criteria for a good day, what's a few helicopters, and some racy photos? Not much.
He was handsome in his anger, but he was always handsome. Goddess had made it so that he couldn't be anything else. He was all cheekbones and flawless lines that would make a plastic surgeon cry with envy. Skin like snow, hair like silver frost glittering in moonlight, broad of shoulder, slim of waist, narrow-hipped, long of leg and arm. Clothed he was handsome, nude he was breathtaking.
He watched us walk across the cool tile floor with a look like a petulant child. He was the moodiest of the guards. The first to anger, the last to forgive, and he pouted. It seemed wrong the wrong word for a warrior who had defended his queen for more than a thousand years, but it was the right word. Frost pouted and it made me tired to see it. He was amazing in bed, a wonderous warrior, but shoveling his emotional shit was nearly a full-time job. There were days when I wasn't sure I wanted the job.
"The Goblin King has called on the mirror," he said in a voice as sullen as his eyes.
"How long ago?" Doyle asked.
"He's talking to Kitto now."
Doyle started toward the far bedroom, then stopped and glanced down at what he was wearing - or rather not wearing. He sighed, heavily, then padded barefoot across the tiles. He remarked over his shouler. "If Meredith were dressed thus, it might gain us some advantage, but Kurag does not care for a man's flesh." "That is not true." Rhys said, and the bitterness in his voice made me turn and look at him. I was still in his arms, so just turning my head was somehow intimate. "The goblins love a bit of sidhe flesh."
Doyle stopped long enough to frown at him. "I did not mean to feast upon."
"Neither did I." Rhys said.
That stopped Doyle firmly on his barefeet, so dark against the white and blue tiles. "What are you saying Rhys?"
"I am saying that there were many goblins who had not never tasted the pleasure of sidhe flesh, male or female, and there were those who did not care that it was male flesh." He rubbed the side of his face against my hair and shoulder, a comfort gesture.
"Kurag..."Frost began, but he couldn't finish the sentence. The anger at Rhys, the reports or whatever was gone. His face displayed the outrage they were probably all feeling.
I stroked Rhy's curls, so soft, and molded myself more tightly in his arms. I drew my fingers down the curve of his neck and shoulder. When the fey are anxious, we touch each other. I think humans would do it too, if their culture didn't confuse touch with sex so often. Touch can lead to sex but at that moment I wanted to hold Rhys and take that look off his face.
Doyle came back a few steps, one hand on a slender hip. "Are you saying Kurag....outraged you?"
Rhys raised his face from the curve of my neck. "He never touched me, but he watched. He sat on his throne and ate snacks as if it were a show."
"We have all had to sit through entertainments at our own court., Rhys. No one speaks of it, but how many of our fellow guards have agreed to a little one-on-one together for the queen's pleasure, if it would free them from celibacy even for an hour or two?"
"I never did it." His hands convulsed around me, fingers digging in painfully.
"Nor I," said Doyle. "but I did not fault those who did."
"Rhys you're hurting me," I said softly.
He put me down gently, carefully, as if he didn't trust himself. "It would be one thing to choose it. It is another to be bound and..." He shook his head.
I let the towel fall to the floor "Rape is always ugly Rhys."
He gave a smile so bitter that it made me hug him, to comfort him, and so I wouldn't have to see that look on his face.
"A lot of the guards don't agree with that Merry. You're too young, you don't remember what we we're like during a war."
I stayed clinging to him, trying to will him happier just by pressing my skin against his. I didn't want to know that my guards had done horrible things. No, that wasn't it. I didn't want to know that the men I shared my bed with had done horrible things. Then I remembered a conversation I had overheard months ago.
I pulled back enough to look in Rhys' face. "I remember this conversation, Rhys. You said you'd never touched a woman who didn't welcome your touch. Doyle said, outright, that the penalty for the queen's guards to touch any woman but the queen still applied to rape. You go to any other woman and it's death by torture for you and the woman."
Rhys's face was suddenly paler even than normal.
It was Frost who said, "not all the Unseelie sidhe warriors are members of the Queen's Ravens."
I looked at him. "I know." I felt like I was missing soemthing. I stpped back from Rhys completely, so I could look at all three of them easily. "What am I not understanding here?"
"That nothing of which Rhys is accusing the goblins is something that members of the Unseelie have not done,"Doyle said. He shook his head. "I must go and speak with Kurag. He seemed about to say something, then stopped and simply turned and walked toward the hallway and its string of bedrooms.
I looked at both the other men, still feeling as if they'd stopped the conversation early, as if there were secrets they would all keep to the death. The sidhe are a big one for secrets, but I was their princess, and perhaps one day their queen. That they kept secrets from me seemed a bad idea.
I let out a breath, and even to me the sound was impatient. "Rhys, I told you once that the goblin culture may not give you a choice on sexual contact, but they do let the 'victim' set the rules. They can demand intercourse, but you dictate how much damage they do to you.
"I know, I know," he said, avoiding my gaze and starting to pace the room. "You've told me before that if I had known more of their culture I wouldn't be short an eye." He looked at me and the anger was back, but it was not directed at me.
He didn't have any right to be angry with me. Rhys was totally reasonable on almost every topic, except the goblins. The goblins were my allies for two more months. For two more months if the Unseelie happened to go to war you would ask me, not Queen Andias, for goblin aid. Moreove, my enemies were the goblin's enemies for two more months. I believed, and Doyle believe and Frost believed, oh hell, even Rhys believed it was this alliance that had kept the assassination attempts to a bare minimum.
I was in the middle of trying to negotiate for more time on the alliance. We needed the goblins. We needed them badly. Every time I thought Rhys had worked through his issues on this topic, I was wrong. "You're right on one thing Rhys, the goblins do not see same-sex sex as a bad or shameful thing. If it is the way you swing, it is they way you swing. They are also much more likely than the side to be opportunistically bi-sexual. If they have the chance to enjoy something they have never had or something they may never get again, they'll take it."
Rhys had gone to the huge bank of windows that looked out over the pool. He gave me a view of his lovely backside, but his arems were crossed and his shoulders hunched with his anger.
"But just as you can negotiate for no damage done to your body you can negotiate on the sex of your partners. There are some amongst the goblins even who are simply too heterosexual to be interested in exploring the possibilities. If you had negotiated then no male could have touched you."
Frost made some small movement, as if he wanted to go to Rhys. He gave me a look that wasn't entirely friendly.
Rhy's voice brought us back to him. "Do you delight in reminding me that my worst nightmare was my own doing? That if I hadn't been such an arrogant sidhe who couldn't be bothered to learnin about any people but my own, I might have known that I had rights among the goblins. That even the victims of torture have rights." He turned, and rage filled his single blue eye with light. The circle of sky blue, the ring of winter sky, and the brilliant line of conrflower around the pupil blazed. The separate colors literelly glowed with his rage, and a faint milky light begain to flit behind his skin. His power rasied with his anger.
There was a time when I'd feared Rhys when he was like this, but I'd seen his anger too often to fear it. As Frost with his pouting, so Rhys with his anger, it was just a part of them. You accepted it and moved on.
If Rhys had suddenly blazed to life like some pale sun, then I'd have been worried. But this was a small display, and it meant nothing.
"You're still being arrogant about their culture, Rhys. You act as if what they did to you is nothing that could ever have happened in the high courts of the sidhe. If the Queen of Air and Darkness bid it, or the King of Light and Illusion wanted it, it would be done. And the sidhe have no laws protecting victims of torture. You're just tortured. The goblins may do more torture, maining and arape than the sidhe, but they've got more laws in place to protect the people who end up on the wrong end of the punishment. You get fucked over by the sidhe, and they fuch you any way they want to. So you tell me, Rhys, which race is more civilized?"
"You cannot compare the sidhe to the goblins." Frost said, his voice dripping with that arrogance that has ben more than one sidhe's undoing, I guess if you;ve been the ruling class for a few thousand years, you forget what it's like to be ruled.
"You can't, honestly, mean that you prefer the goblins world to ours," Rhys said, and his surprise, was overcoming his anger. "I didn't say that."
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I'm saying that this attitude the sidhe have that nothing and no one is as good as they are, isn't necessarily so. My father used to say that the goblins are the foot soliders of the sidhe armies. That without the goblins as our allies the Unseelie would have been destroyed by the Seelie centuries ago."
"The goblins and the sluagh," Rhys said.
The sluagh were the nightmares of the Unseelie court. They were all that was most frightening, most monsterous. All fey, sidhe, or no, feared the sluagh. They were the Unseelie's version of the wild hunt, and there was nowhere you could hide, no place you could run to, that sluagh would not find you. On rare occassions it had taken years, but the sluagh never give up, unless called off by the Queen of Air and Darkness. The sluagh was the Queen's big scary gun. It is said that even King Taranis himself fears the sound of wings in the dark.
"Yes, the sluagh, those of our kind that most sidhe would rather not admit even belong in fairie, let alone that we could share a bloodline or two."
"We are not related to those creatures," Frost said.
"Their king, Sholto, is half sidhe, Frost. You've seen him. His mother was Unseelie sidhe."
"Him, perhaps, but not the rest."
I shook my head. "The sluagh are the Unseelie, Frost, more than the sidhe themselves. Our one strength as a court is that we take in anyone. The Seelie Court keeps rejecting anyone that isn't good enough for them, and that has been the Unseelie's strength for centuries. We take in the fey they don't want, it's what makes us different from them, better, I think."
"What do you want from us?" Rhys asked, and he wasn't so much angry now, as puzzled.
"Kurag is like s school yard bully. He only continues to pick at you because he gets such nice reactions from you. If you could act as if it didn't bother you, then he'd tire of the game."
Rhys hugged himself tighter. "It isn't a game to me."
"It is to him, Rhys. It's wonderful that you've overcome your feelings enough to sit beside me when I speak with the goblins, but, truthfully, I spend so much time worrying about your feelings, that I'm not as focused as I need to be."
"Fine," he said, "I won't go in with you. Consort knows, I'd rather not have to see his ugly face."
"When you're not there, Kurag spends time asking after you. He keeps asking, where's my delicious guard. The pale one."
"I didn't know he did that," Rhys said.
I shrugged. "He does."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Doyle said, it would just upset you, and there wasn't anything you could do about it." I closed the distance between Rhys and me, laid a hand on his crossed arms. "I disagree. I think you're stronger than Doyle knows. I believe that you can swallow this hurt, and help me turn the tables on Kurag."
He looked suspcious. "How?"
I dropped my hand from his arm. "Never mind, Rhys." I turned towards the hallway.
"No, Merry, I mean it. How could I help you negotiate with . . . him?"
"Doyle's right, if I loose most of my swimsuit it will make it easier to negotiate with Kurag. He's a terrible lech."
Rhys shrugged. "And where do I come in?"
"Put on a robe, and flash some of that gorgeous white flesh if Kurag gets stubborn. If you could keep your temper, no matter what he said, you beside me like this would distract him, not because of sex, but all goblins love the taste of sidhe flesh. One of the things the goblins hated the most about making peace with the sidhe was that they couldn't eat us anymore."
"You ask too much," Frost said.
I looked at that handsome arrogant face, and shook my head again. "I haven't asked anything of you Frost."
"How can you ask Rhys to sit there and let a goblin think of him as food. It is beneath us."
"If Kurag agrees to lengthening the alliance I'll be beneath a lot of goblins." I'd said the last almost to be cruel. I was tired of hearing how much they hated my plan.
Frost's face showed the disgust, he felt. "The thought of any sidhe woman giving herself to goblin men is repulsive. The thought of a princess of the blood, and a future queen, laying with them is beyond anything I have words for. Even Queen Andias, has never stooped so low to gain the goblin's favors."
"Kitto is half goblin and half sidhe, and for better, or worse, I brought him into his powers, full sidhe powers, through sex. No one thought that any goblin half-breed could be full sidhe."
"They're blood is not pure enough," Frost said.
"I may hate it," Rhys said, "but Kitto's magic is the magic of our blood. I've seen him glow with it." He looked suddenly tired. "Kitto's not even half bad for a goblin."
"Merry," Frost said, and took a step towards me, "Merry, please don't do this. Don't say that you will bring over more of the goblin half-breeds. You have not seen them. Few of them are as fair as Kitto. Most are much more goblinlike than sidhelike."
"I know, Frost."
"Then how can you offer yourself?"
"First, I want the alliance lenghtened, at almost any cost. Second, the sidhe have been dieing out for centuries, but if Kitto can be full-sidhe, then maybe other half-sidhe could be brought into their full powers. It would mean that the Unseelie court would suddenly be stronger than it has ever been."
"The Queen is exicted about Merry bringing Kitto to us," Rhys said, "The Queen wants Merry to try other half-breeds in her bed."
“And what if one of them gets you with child?” Frost asked. “No sidhe will accept a half-goblin king.”
“At this point, Frost, I’d settle for just being pregnant. It’s been four months of sharing my bed with all of you, and there’s no child. I think I’m going to worry about winning the race first, then I’ll worry about who sits beside me.”
“The sidhe will not accept a goblin king,” he said it with such finality.
“I hate the plan as much as Frost does, maybe more, “Rhys said, “but it’s not my lily white body that’s being bartered over.” He took a deep shaking breath, as if he pulled the air from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. He finally said, in a voice that was so calm, it was empty of all emotion, “If you can agree to fuck them, I guess I can flaunt myself in front of their king.”
“Rhys!” Frost said, and he looked as shocked as that one word sounded.
He looked at the bigger man. “No, Frost, it’s time. Merry is right.” He looked at me, and the ghost of his usual grin flickered on his mouth. “How distracting to Kurag will it be to see me nearly nude?”
“About as distracting as this.” I ran my hands over the mounds of my breasts where they lay barely contained in the red bathing suit. My hands slid lower, down my ribs, my waist, to frame my hips. Rhys’s gaze followed my hands like a starving man. Nude, as he was, he couldn’t hide how watching me touch my body affected him.
He was one of those men who looked small until he grew, then you knew he wasn't small in anything but stature. It was Rhys's laugh that brought my gaze back to his face. "Consort thank you, I love seeing that look on a woman's face."
A human would have blushed to be caught staring, but my cheeks held no heat as I raised my eyes to meet his laughter. Among us if I had not stared at Rhys's lovely body, it would have implied that he wasn't worth noticing. My eyes held all the heat, that would have blushed across my face if I'd been just a little more human, a little less fey. The heat in my eyes, sobered his face, drenched his tri-colored eye in heat of it's own.
He had to clear his throat to say, “As distracting as all that, my, my.”
The grin smile flashed across his face. “So you’re the tits and I’m the ass?”
That made me laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
He stepped closer to me, not touching but letting his eyes linger in one of those looks that is almost more intimate than a touch. A look that made my skin begin to glow, softly, as if I’d swallowed the moon and it was shining underneath my skin. It raised the hair along my body, caught my breath in my throat. All this from a look.
I had trouble focusing on him, as he smiled down at me. “To see your body react to my gaze, like that,” he let out a shaking breath, “I’d face a thousand oggling goblins to watch the play of light under your skin.”
My voice came out breathy, very early Marilyn Monroe, but I couldn’t seem to help it. “Why is it, that you’re the only one that can do that with just a look?”
His smile quirked into a grin, and his gaze slid briefly towards Frost who was scowling at us both. “I could say it was because I’m the best lover you have.” He held up a hand, as Frost took a step forward. “But I’d rather not have to fight a duel later.”
“Then why?” I breathed.
The humor faded, replaced by a deepth of emotion, intelligence, and everything, that Rhys had managed to hide for centuries. A month ago, more by accident than design, Rhys had recovered powers that had been stripped from him centuries ago. All of the guards had recovered lost magic, but it was Rhys who had recovered the most. Because it was Rhys that had been stripped of most of his power. The price for the fey coming to the United States after they’d been kicked out of Europe was that there was to be no more large scale fights between us. If we went to war against one another on American soil, they’d exile us, and we were out of countries that would take us. The answer to keep that from happening had been the Nameless; a creature made up of the wildest magic the sidhe of both courts had left. But like all spells dealing with wild magic, it was unpredictable. Some sidhe had barely lost any powers, other’s had been nearly stripped dry. The Nameless wasn’t the first time the sidhe had done this. The first time was trying to stay in Europe after the great human-fey war. That one didn’t take, but Rhys had lost a lot in the first great spell. The Nameless had taken most of the rest. He’d gone from being a major diety, to being one of the less powerful of the sidhe. He’d lost so much, he would no longer allow anyone to mention his old name. Out of respect, and horror that it might have been one of them, all the sidhe honored his wish. He was simply Rhys now, and what he had been was lost.
A month ago he'd recovered himself. He was simply more. He could call light into my skin by looking at me. I wasn't sure if he was truly more powerful magically, or if it was the nature of his magic. I thought the former, rather than the later, because he was a death diety, not a fertility god. Surely my body should have reacted more to life than death.
His voice came soft and low, "What do you want me to do?"
For a moment I couldn't think what he meant. It took all my concentration not to buckle at the knees. "What?" I asked.
Frost made a disgusted noise. "She's power drunk, Rhys, you really must be more careful."
"It's been almost seven hundred years since I had this much power. I'm a little rusty."
"You enjoy how you effect the princess," Frost said. He was closer now, but it would have been too much effort to turn my head and look at him.
"Wouldn't you?" Rhys said.
"It's been almost seven hundred years since I had this much power. I'm a little rusty."
"You enjoy how you effect the princess," Frost said. He was closer now, but it would have been too much effort to turn my head and look at him.
"Wouldn't you?" Rhys said.
Frost hesitated, then said, "Perhaps, but we have no time for it, Rhys."
I felt Frost's strong hands on my arms as he turned me slowly to face me. "Find robes for both of you, while I fix this."
I thought I heard Rhys move away into the room, but I wasn't sure. I was too busy staring at Frost's chest. His white shirt was buttoned all the way up to the rounded collar. I knew what lay under that tightly buttoned cloth. I knew the swell of his chest as I knew my own hand. I felt heavy and thick, not just thick-headed, but as if the hand I raised towards him, was heavier than it should have been.
He caught my hand before it touched his chest. My red finger-nail poilish seemed brighter against his white skin, like startled drops of blood. "If there was more time," he spoke low, just above a whisper, "I would wake you from this befuddlement with a kiss, but I would not trade one bemusement for another." He bent close, whispering against my face, "And if my kiss has not the power to befuddle you, I do not wish to know it."
started to say, something romatic and silly, like his kiss was always magical, but his hand where it touched mine had gone cold. Ice, his hand was like ice. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I’d have jerked back, before he finished; but, of course, if I’d been thinking clearly Frost wouldn’t have done what he did. Cold shot through my body, a cold to freeze the skin, and ice the blood. A cold so intense that it stole my breath, and when I could breath again, it came from my lips in a white fog. I jerked free of him, and he let me go. I was no longer befuddled. No, I was clear headed, and shivering with cold.
I fought chattering teeth to get out, "Damnit, Frost, you didn't have to freeze me."
"My apologies, princess, but I like Rhys have not had my full powers in centuries. I am still relearning the nicieties of it." His gray eyes were full of snow, as if the iris of his eye was one of those snow globes that you shake up to see the snow fly. Almost every other sidhe I'd known glowed with his power, and Frost could glow with the best of them, but when he called cold, his eyes filled with snow. Sometimes I thought if I gazed into those gray, snow-flecked, eyes long enough I'd see a landscape done small, see the place where he'd begun, see a time before I was born.
I looked away, my nerve broke everytime, because I wasn’t entirely sure where those winter eyes would lead me, or what secrets they might reveal. There was something in the snow that frightened me. There was no reason for it. No logic to it, but I did not like the snow.
If I’d been human I’d have accussed myself of being unnerved by the strangeness of it, but I wasn’t human enough for that, and Goddess knows, I’ d seen stranger things than snow fall in someone’s eyes.
I was already warmer. The cold never lasted long, but I didn’t like it. He had used it as foreplay once in our lovemaking, and though interesting, I didn’t want to repeat it. To hide the fact that I was unnerved by his magic, in a most unsidhe-like way, I said, “Why is it that only Rhys’s magic bemuses me like that?” I didn’t meet his eyes as I asked. Eventually, his eyes would return to their normal gray.
“None of us had lost as much as Rhys, and he was once a diety to rival any.” ,br> That made me look up. His eyes held a sense of movement, but were gray again. “None of you talk about what it was like before.”
“It is hard to speak of that which is lost, and can never be regained.”
“Are you saying that Rhys was more powerful than any of the rest of you?”
“He was the Lord of Death, himself. Death followed at his step, if he willed it. When he was great among us, Meredith, none could withstand us.”
“Then why didn’t the Unseelie destory the Seelie?”
“Rhys was not always Unseelie.”
That surprised me, and I let it show on my face. “He was Seelie court?”
Frost nodded, then frowned. He frowned so much, that if he’d been able to wrinkle he would have had grooves in his forehead, around his mouth, by now, but his face was smooth and flawless, and always would be. “Rhys was a power apart. He was the ruler of the land of the dead and that is not truly Unseelie, or Seelie. He was welcome at the Shining court, but he was truly a thing apart, as were some of the rest of us. The system of two courts of the sidhe is realitively rescent. Once there were many courts. The humans chose to call those of the fey that were beautiful and did them no harm, Seelie. Those that they found ugly, or harmed them, they named Unseelie. But it was not so clean a line, once. There were many, many courts once.”
“Like the goblins and the sluagh, now?”
"More like the goblins. The King of the Sluagh is a noble of the Unseelie Court. They are no longer truly separate. King Kurag holds no title among us, nor does any sidhe hold title in his court."
Rhys came back in with a white terry-cloth robe belted around his body. It was long enough that it came nearly to his ankles. It would have draped the floor on me. His white curls looked darker against the white of the robe, the difference between fresh snow and ivory. Shades of white.
He held the robe that matched my bikini. It was red, and meant more to decorate the body than to cover, so that most of the robe was sheer, like seeing your skin through a haze of fire. Rhys looked from one to the other of us. "Why do you both look so solemn? Nobody died while I was gone, did they?"
I shook my head. "Not that I know of." I took the robe, and slipped in between the patches of silk, and the scratchier sheerness. The next robe I got was going to be just silk, or satin, something that didn't feel like it was catching on my skin as I moved.
“So what do you want me do once we’re in talking to Kurag?” Rhys asked.
“Just flaunt yourself, maybe flash your ass, or upper thigh. They’re supposed to be two of the prime cuts of meat that you can carve off our bodies.”
Rhys put his head to one side, as if thinking. “Will it bother him to see meat he can’t taste?”
“It will be a little bit of torture, and I don’t use the word lightly. The worst thing you can do to a goblin is show him something he wants and deny it to him. Showing Kurag his wildest desire, and he knows he can’t have it, it’ll drive him mad.”
“Or make him so angry he walks away from the negotiations,” Frost said.
“No, Frost, if we make Kurag loose control that badly, he won’t walk away. He’ll respect the fact that we beat him this round. He’ll try and find something else to distract us for next time, but he won’t hold it against us. Goblins love a good game of one upmanship. If we beat him fairly, he won’t get mad, he’ll be flattered, that we went to the trouble.”
“I do not understand the goblins,” Frost said.
“You don’t have to,” I said, “my father made sure I did.”
Frost looked at me, and there was something I could’t read on his face.
“Prince Essus raised you as if he were grooming you to rule the courts, yet he knew that Cel was heir, and not you. If Cel had produced even one child, the queen would never have offered you this chance.”
“You’re right on that.”
“Why do you think he taught you to rule, if you were never going to mount the throne?”
“My father was second borne and never going to rule, yet his father raised him to be a ruler. I think he raised me the only way he knew how.”
“Perhaps,” Frost said, “or perhaps, Prince Essus, did not loose all his prophetic abilities when the rest of us did.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, and I don’t have time to worry about it.”
Doyle came to the front of the hallway. “Kurag is willing to talk to you, Meredith, but he is not happy about it.”
“I didn’t expect him to be.”
“He fears your enemies,” Frost said.
“That makes two of us,” I said.
“Three,” Rhys said.
“Four,” Doyle said.
Frost shook his head, his hair glittering like a curtain of Christmas tree tinsel. “Five, I fear for your safety. If we loose the goblins’s threat, Cel’s allies will move against us.”
“Then we’re agreed,” I said.
Doyle was looking from one to the other of us. “What have we agreed to?” “I’m going to play hordourve for the goblin king,” Rhys said.
Doyle’s black on black eyes brows raised up nearly to his hairline. “I have missed something.”
“Rhys is going to help me negotiate with Kurag,” I said.
“Help how?” Doyle asked.
Rhys dropped the robe off one pale shoulder, flashing down to one tight nipple. He grinned and shrugged back into the robe.
Doyle raised dark eyebrows. “Do not take this in the spirit which it is not meant, but you have been a stumbling block to our work with Kurag. He has chided you, fully clothed, and you have practiicually foamed at the mouth like a ill-used dog. What makes you believe you can do . . .” He seemed to be searching for a word. He finally settled for, “What makes you believe you can stand up to Kurag’s teasing on this day?”
“I’ll be teasing back today. Merry said, Kurag is like a school-yard bully, and she’s right. Besides if Merry can do it, so can I.” He looked suddenly fierce again. All the humor gone, leaving his face bleak. “Though I’d much rather kill goblins than negotate with them.”
“Funny,” Doyle said, “that’s exactly what King Kurag said, about the sidhe, only moments ago.”
“Perfect,” I said, “let’s all go and irritate each other.”
Doyle led the way down the hallway. He looked terribly nude from the back. I realized that Kurag would have more than just Rhys and I too oggle. I wondered if Doyle thought of himself as a potential sex partner, or as a meal? I guess that all depended on how Kurag felt about sidhe men, and if he preferred dark meat to light.
Seduced By Moonlight
Our court publicist, Madeline Phelps, pointed to the first reporter, and the questions began.
"Princess Meredith, you had blood on your face yesterday, but today the only sign of injury is your arm in a sling. What were your injuries yesterday?"
My left arm was in a green cloth sling that matched my suit jacket near perfectly. I was dressed in Christmas, Yule, red and green. Cheerful, and it was that time of year. My hair was a deeper red than the Christmas red of my blouse. My hair is the most Unseelie part of me, Sidhe scarlet, red hair for someone who looks good in black. Not the gold or orangey red of human hair. The green jacket brought out the green in two out of three circles of color in my iris. The gold circle would flash in the camera light sometimes like it truly was metallic. The eyes were pure Seelie sidhe, the only part of me that showed that my mother had been of the golden court. Well, at least half.
I didn't recognize the reporter that had asked the question. He was a new face to me, maybe new since yesterday. I'd thought I'd seen a mass of reporters before, but since yesterday's assassination attempt had happened in front of the media, on camera, well, we'd had to turn down some of the reporters, because the big room wouldn't hold more. I'd been doing press conferences since I was a child. This was the biggest one I'd had, including the one after my father was assassinated, when I was a child. I'd been taught to use names for reporters when I knew them, but to this one I could only smile, and say, "My arm is only sprained. I was very lucky yesterday."
Actually, my arm hadn't been injured in the assassination attempt that the media got on film. No, my arm had been hurt on the second, or was that third attempt on my life, yesterday. But those attempts had happened inside the sithen, where I was supposed to be safe. The only reason the Queen and my bodyguards thought I was safer here than outside in the human world, was that we had arrested or killed the traitors behind the attempts on me, and the attempt on the Queen. We'd damned near had a palace coup yesterday, and the media didn't have a hint of it. One of the old names for the fey, is the hidden people. We've earned the name.
"Princess Meredith, was it your blood on your face, yesterday?" A woman this time, and I did know her name.
"No," I said.
I smiled for real, as I watched her face fall when she realized she might just be getting a one word answer. "No, Sheila, it wasn't mine."
She smiled at me, all blond and taller than I would ever be. "May I add to my question, Princess?"
"Now, now," Madeline said, "one question per."
"It's okay, Madeline," I said.
Our publicist turned to look at me, she actually flipped off the switch at her waist so her microphone would not pick up. I took the cue and covered mine with my hand and moved to one side of it.
Madeline leaned in over the table. Her skirt was long enough that she was in no danger of flashing the reporters down below the dais. Her skirt was the absolute latest hem length of the moment, as was the color. Part of her job was paying attention to what was in and what was out. She was our human representative, much more than any ambassador that Washington had ever sent.
"If Shelia gets to add to her question, then they will all do it. That will make everything harder, for you, and for me."
She was right, but . . . "Tell them that this is the only question that we'll let someone add on to. Then move on."
She raised perfectly plucked eyebrows at me, then said, "Okay." She turned back, hitting the switch on her mike, as she turned and smiled at them. "The princess will let Sheila add on to this question, but after that you'll have to keep it to the original rule. One question per." She pointed to Sheila and gave a nod.
"Thank you for letting me add on to my question, Princess Meredith."
"You're welcome."
"If it wasn't your blood yesterday, then whose was it?"
"My guard, Frost."
The cameras flashed to life, so that I was blinded, but the attention of everyone had moved behind me. My guards were lined up along the wall, spilling down the edges of the dais, to curl on either side of the table and floor. They were dressed in everything from designer suits to full plate armor, to Goth club wear. The only thing that all the outfits had in common was weaponry. Yesterday we'd tried to be district about the weapons. A bulge that ruined the line of the jacket, but nothing overt. Today there were guns under jackets or cloaks, but there were also guns in plain sight, and swords, and knives, and axes, and shields. We'd also more than doubled the number of guards around me.
I glanced back at him. The Queen had ordered me to not play favorites among the guard. She'd gone so far as to tell me not to give any long lingering glances to one guard over another. I'd thought it was an odd order, but she was queen, and you argued with her at your peril. But I glanced back, after all, he'd saved my life. Didn't that earn him a glance? I could always justify it to the queen, my aunt, that the press would think it strange if I hadn't looked back. It was the truth, but I looked because I wanted to look.
His hair was the silver of Christmas tree tinsel, shiny and metallic. It fell to his ankles like decoration, but I knew that it was soft and alive, and felt oh, so warm, across my body. He'd put the upper layer of his hair back from his face with a barrette carved from bone. The hair glittered and moved around his charcoal grey Armani suit that had been tailored over his broad shoulders, and the athletic cut of the rest of him. The suit had also been tailored to hide a gun in a shoulder holster and a knife or two. It had not been designed to hide a gun under each arm, or a short sword at his hip, with a leather NOTE. Strapped tight to his thigh. The hilt of a second sword rode over his shoulder, peeking through all that shining hair. He bristled with knives, and Frost always had other weapons that you couldn't see. No suit was designed to cover that much armament and hold it's shape. His jacket couldn't be buttoned at all, and the guns and sword and one knife glinted in the camera's flash.
Cries of, Frost, Frost, filled the room, while Madeline picked a question. The man was another one I didn't know. Nothing like an assassination attempt to attract the media.
"Frost, how badly were you hurt?"
Frost is a little over six feet, and since I was sitting down, and the microphone was made to my height, it meant he had to bend down, way down. With a weapon of any kind he was graceful. But bending low over that mike he was awkward. I had a moment to wonder if he'd ever been on mike before, then his deep voice was answering the question.
"I am not hurt." He stood back up, and I could see the relief on his face. He turned, away from the cameras, as if he thought he'd get away that easily. I knew better.
"But wasn't it your blood on the princess?"
His hand was gripping the pommel of his short sword. Touching his weapons unnecessarily, was a sign of nerves. He leaned over the mike again, and this time he bumped my bad shoulder with his body. I doubted the press saw it, such a small movement, but it was too clumsy for words, for Frost. He braced a hand flat against the table, steadying himself. He turned eyes the grey of a winter sky to me. The look, asked silently, "Did I hurt you?"
I mouthed, no.
He let out a sigh and leaned back to the microphone. "Yes, it was my blood." He actually stood back up, as if that would satisfy them. He should have known better. He had been decorative muscle for the queen at enough of these over the years, to know that he was being a little too concise. At least he didn't try and go back to his spot behind me this time.
A reporter I did know, Simon McCracken, was next. He'd covered the fairie courts for years. "Frost, if you are not hurt, then where did your blood come from and how did it get on the princess?" He knew how to word the question just right, so we couldn't tap-dance around it. The sidhe don't lie, but we'll paint the truth red, purple, and green, and convince you that black is white, but we won't actually lie.
Frost leaned over the mike again, his hand pressed to the table. He'd moved minutely closer to me, careful not to brush my hurt arm, but he'd moved close enough that his pants leg touched my skirt. His sword was almost trapped between our bodies. That would bad if he had to draw the weapon. I looked at his hand, so big and strong on the table, and realized his fingertips were mottled. He was gripping the table, not to steady, but the way you grip a podium when you're nervous.
"I was shot." He had to clear his throat sharply to continue. I turned my head just enough to see that perfect profile, and realized it was more than nerves. Frost, the Queen's Killing Frost, was afraid. Afraid of public speaking; oh, my. "I have healed. My blood covered the princess when I shielded her from harm."
He started to stand back up, but I touched his arm. I covered the mike with my hand, and leaned in against him, so I could whisper against the curve of his ear. I took in a deep breath of the scent of his skin, and said, "Kneel or squat, or sit."
His breath went out so deep that his shoulders moved with it. But he knelt on one knee beside me. I moved the microphone a little closer to him.
I slid my hand under the back of his jacket, so that I could lay my hand against the curve of his back, just below the side sweep of the big sword sheath. When fey are nervous, any fey, we take comfort from touching each other. Even the mighty sidhe, feel better with a little contact. Though not all of us will admit it, for fear of blurring the line between royalty and commoner. I had too much lesser fey blood in my veins to worry about it. So I was able to lay my hand against the warmth of him, and feel the sweat that was beginning to trickle down his spine.
Madeline started to come closer to us. I shook my head. She gave me a questioning look, but didn't argue. She picked another question from the throng. "So you took a bullet to protect Princess Meredith?"
I leaned into the mike, putting my face very close to Frost's, touching carefully, so I didn't get make-up on him. The camera's exploded in bursts of white light. Frost jumped, and I knew that was going to be visible to the cameras. Oh, well. We were blinded, vision ruined in bursts of white and blue spots. His muscles tightened, but I wouldn't have known it, if I hadn't been touching him.
"Hi, Sarah, and yes, he took a bullet for me," I said.
I think Sarah said hi, princess back, but I couldn't be sure, since I still couldn't see well enough, and the noise of so many voices raised, was too confusing. I'd learned to use names when I knew them. It made everyone feel more friendly. And you need all the friendly you can get at a press conference.
"Frost, were you afraid?"
He relaxed minutely against me, into the touch of my hand, and my face. "Yes," he said.
"Afraid to die," someone yelled out without being called on.
Frost answered the question anyway, "No."
Madeline called on someone, who asked, "Then what were you afraid of?"
"I was afraid Meredith would be harmed." He licked his lips, and tensed again. I realized he'd used my name without my title. A faux paux for a bodyguard, but of course, he was more than that. Every guard was technically in the running for being prince to my princess. But we were sidhe, and we don't marry until we're pregnant. A non-fertile couple is not allowed to wed, so the guards were doing more than just 'guarding' my body.
"Frost, would you give your life for the princess?"
He answered without hesitation, "Of course." His tone said, clearly, that that had been a silly question.
A reporter in back that had a television camera next to him, asked the next question. "Frost, how did you heal a gun shot wound in less than twenty-four hours?"
Frost gave another deep, shoulder-moving sigh. "I am a warrior of the sidhe." The reporters waited for him to add more, but I knew he wouldn't. To Frost, the fact that he was sidhe was all the answer he needed. It had only been a through and through bullet wound, with a handgun, and no special ammunition. It would take a great deal more than that to stop a warrior of the sidhe.
I hid my smile, and started to lean in to the mike, to help explain that to the press, when the sweat along his spine suddenly stopped being wet and warm. It was as if a line of cold air swept down his spine. Cold enough that I moved my hand back, startled.
I glanced down at his big hand on the table and saw what I'd feared. Whiteness, spreading out from his skin. A white rime of frost was drifting out from his hand. I thanked Goddess that the cloth on the table was white. Only that was saving us from someone noticing. They might notice later when they went back over the camera footage, but that I could not help. I had enough to worry about without thinking that far ahead. In a way this was my fault. I'd accidentally brought Frost into a level of power that he'd never known. It was a blessing of the Goddess, but with new power, comes new responsibilities, and new temptations.
I moved my hand from under his jacket to cover his hand with mine, as I spoke into the reporter's puzzled murmur. I was braced for his hand to be as cold as that slide of power down his back, but surprisingly, his hand wasn't nearly that cold.
"The sidhe heal almost any injury," I said.
The frost was spreading out, the edge of it caught the microphone, and began to climb it. The mike crackled with static, and I squeezed Frost's hand. He saw it then, what his fear was doing. I'd known it wasn't on purpose. He balled his hand into a fist, but with my hand on top of his, it ended with my fingers entwined with his. I did not want anyone to notice the frost, before it melted.
I turned my face towards his, and he faced me. His eyes weren't simply grey now, there was a snow falling in his iris, like a tiny grey snow globe set in his eyes. I leaned in and kissed him. It surprised him, because he'd heard the queen's admonition about not showing favoritism, but Andais would forgive me, if she gave me time to explain. She'd have done the same, or more, to distract the press from unwanted magic.
It was a chaste press of lips. First, because Frost was that uncomfortable in front of all these strangers. Second, because I was wearing a red lipstick that would smear like clown makeup, if we did a tonsil cleaning kiss. I saw the explosion of the cameras like an orange press against my closed eyelids.
I drew back from the kiss first. Frost's eyes were still closed, his lips relaxed, almost open. His eyes blinked open. He looked startled, maybe from the lights, or maybe from the kiss. Though, goddess, knows I'd kissed him before, and with a great deal more body English. Did a kiss from me still mean that much to him, when we'd kissed so much I couldn't count them all?
The look in his eyes, said, more clearly than any words, yes.
Photographers were kneeling as close as the other guards would let them get to the front of the table. They were taking pictures of his face, and mine. The frost had melted while we kissed, only a light wetness around our hands left. It barely darkened the white cloth. We'd hidden the magic, but we'd opened up Frost's face to the world. What do you do when a man lets the whole world see just how much your kiss affects him? Why kiss him again, of course. Which I did, and this time I didn't worry about clown make up, or the Queen's orders. I simply wanted, always, to see that look on his face when we kissed. Always, and forever.
I could have worn glamour instead of make up in the first place, but it took concentration, and I'd wanted all my concentration for the questions. Besides if there was another assassination attempt, the glamour would go, and the Queen was just vain enough that she'd ordered me into make up, just in case. I guess so that if the worst happened, I'd look good dead. Or, maybe, I was just being cynical. Maybe she simply didn't trust my abilities at glamour. Maybe.
I told Frost that he'd answered enough questions for one day, and it was a feeding frenzy of, "Frost, Frost," there were even a few rude enough to shout out questions like, "Is she good in bed . . . How many times a week do you get to fuck her?" Gotta love the tabloids, esepcially some of the European ones. They make our American tabloids look downright friendly.
We all ignored such rude questions. Frost took his post behind me against the wall. I could feel the small magic around him. If he walked too far from me, the glamour would break, but this close, this close I could hold it, not forever, but long enough to get us through this mess.
Madeline chose one of the mainstream newspapers, ----, but his question made me wonder if we'd been better off answering the tabloids. "I have a two part question . . . Meredith, if I may?" He was so courteous, I should have known it was leading up to something that wouldn't be pleasant.
Madeline looked at me, I nodded. He asked, "If the sidhe can heal almost any wound then why is your arm not healed?"
"I'm not full-blooded sidhe, so I heal slower, more like a human."
"Yes, you're part human and part brownie, as well as sidhe, but my question is this Princess; isn't it true that some of the noble sidhe of the Unseelie court are concerned that you are not sidhe enough to rule them? That even if you gain the throne, they will not acknowledge you as queen?"
I smiled into the flash of lights, and thought furiously. Someone had talked to him. Someone who should have known better. Because some of the sidhe did fear my mortality, my mixed blood, and thought if I sat the throne I would destroy them. That my mortal blood would take their immortality. It had been the reason behind at least one, maybe both, of the extra attacks yesterday. We had an entire noble house, and the head of another, in prisoned now, awaiting sentencing. No one had briefed me on what to say if the question arose, because no one had dreampt that any sidhe, or lesser fey, would have dared talk to the press, not even to hint.
I tried for half truth. "There are some among the nobility that see my human and lesser fey blood as not good enough. But there are always racisists, Mr . . . "
"O'Connel," he said.
"Mr. O'Connel," I said.
"Do you believe that it is racism then?"
Madeline tried to stop me, but I answered, because I wanted to know how much he knew. "If not pure racism, then what, Mr. O' Connel? They don't want some mongrel half-breed on their throne." Now if he pushed it, he'd look like a racisit. Reporters from the -----, don't want to look like racisits.
"That's an ugly accusation," he said.
"Yes," I said, "it is."
Madeline stepped in, and said, "We need to move on, next question." She pointed to someone else, a little too eagerly, but that was alright. We needed to change topics. Of course, there were other topics that were almost as bad.
"Is it true that a magic spell made the policeman shoot at you, Princess Meredith?" This from a man in the front row, that looked vaugely familiar in the way that on air personalities often do.
The sidhe do not lie. We make a sort of national sport out of almost lieing. We can lie. But if we do, then we are foresworn. Once upon a time you were kicked out of fairie for that. The answer to the question was, yes, but I didn't want to answer it. So I tried not to. "Let's drop the princess, guys. I've been working as a detetective in L. A. for three years. I'm not used to the title anymore."
It wasn't the yes, to the spell, it was the asking who did it. The spell had been part of the attempted palace cue. We were so not sharing that it had been a sidhe noble that did the spell, that made one of the police helping guard me, try to kill me.
Madeline picked up her cue perfectly, she picked a new reporter, with a new question. "This is quite a display of sidhe muscle, Princ . . . Meredith," the woman said. I could actually see her enough to know she was blond and taller than me. She smiled, when she left off the princess. I was hoping they would like that. And I didn't need the title to know who I was. "Is the extra muscle, because you fear for your safety?"
"Yes," I said, and Madeline moved us on.
It was a different reporter, but he repeated the dreaded question, "Was it a spell that caused the policeman to shoot at you, Meredith?" He'd even left off the princess so I couldn't distract by talking about it.
I drew breath, not even sure what I was going to say, when I felt Doyle move up beside me. He leaned over the microphone like a black statue carved all of one piece; black designer suit, black high collored dress shirt, shoes, even his tie, the same unrelieved blackness. "May I take this question, Princess Meredith?" The silver earrings that traced the curve of his ear, all the way up to it's point, flashed in the lights. Contrary to all the fairie wannabes with their cartiledge implants, the pointy ears marked him as not pure high court, but as something less, something mixed like me. His black hair was ankle-length, and he could have hidden his 'deformity' but he almost never did. His hair was pulled back in it's usual braid. The diamond stud in his earlobes glittered next to my face.
Most of his weapons were as monocrhome as the rest of him, so it was hard to spot the knives and guns, darkness on darkness. He had been the Queen's Darkness, her assassin, for over a thousand years. Now he was mine.
I fought to keep my face as blank as his, and not let the relief show. "Be my guest," I said.
He leaned all six foot of him down to the microphone infront of me. "The attempt on the princess's life yesterday is still under investigation. My apologies, but some details are not ready to be discussed publically." His deep voice, resonated over the mike. I saw some of the female reporters shiver, and it wasn't fear. I'd never realized he had a good voice for a microphone. I think he, like Frost, had never been on mike before, but unlike Frost it didn't bother him. Very little did. He was Darkness, and the dark isn't afraid of us, we're afraid of it.
"What can you tell us about the assassination attempt?" another reporter asked.
I wasn't sure who the question was directed at, Doyle, or me. I couldn't see his eyes through the wrap around black on black sunglasses, but I swear I felt him look at me. I leaned into the mike. "Not much, I'm afraid, as Doyle says, it's an on-going investigation."
"Do you know who was behind it?"
Doyle leaned into the mike again. "I am sorry, ladies and gentleman, but if you insist on asking questions that we are not free to answer for fear of hindering our internal investigation, then this press conference is over."
On one hand, it was neatly done, on the other hand, he'd said a bad word; internal.
"So it was sidhe magic that bespelled the policeman," a woman yelled.
Shit, I thought.
Doyle had caused it, he tried to clean it up. "By internal I meant that it involves Princess Meredith, the potential heir to Queen Andais's throne. It does not get much more internal than that. Especially not for those of us who belong to the princess." He'd done that last deliberately. He was quietly trying to distract them into asking about my sex life with my guard. A much safer subject.
Madeline cooperated by picking one of the tabloid reporters for the next question. If anyone would fall for the bait of sex, over the switch of internal politics, it was the tabloids.
They swallowed the bait. "What do you mean, you belong to the princess?"
Doyle leaned in closer to the mike, close enough that his shoulder brushed against mine. It was very subtle, and very deliberate. It would probably have been more eye cathcing if Frost and I hadn't played kissy-face first, but Doyle knew more how to play to the press. You had to start slow and give yourself someplace to go. He'd only started playing to the media in the last few weeks, but that, as with everything, he learned quickly, and did it very well. "We would give our life for her."
"The secret service are sworn to give their life for the president but they don't belong to the president." The reporter emphasized the word 'belong'.
Doyle leaned closer to the mike, forcing him to put one arm against the back of my chair, so I was framed in the curve of his body. The cameras exploded so that I was blind again. I allowed myself to lean in against Doyle, partly for the picture, and partly because I liked it.
"Perhaps, I misspoke," Doyle said, with all my Christmas brightness framed against his blackness.
"Are you having sex with the princess?" a female reporter asked.
"Yes," he said, simply.
They actually almost sighed in eagerness, as a group. Another woman, "Frost, are you sleeping with the princess?"
Doyle stepped back and let Frost come up to the mike again, though I would have preferred keeping him away from it. But he was brave and he came and bent over the mike, bent over me. But Frost wouldn't play for the cameras. His face was arrogant, and perfect, and showed nothing, even though his grey eyes were bare to the camera's glare. He said, he thought it was beneath us to play to the media. But I knew now, that it wasn't arrogance that made him not play, it was fear. A phobia, if you will, for cameras and reporters and crowds. He leaned over stiffly, and said, "Yes."
This shouldn't have been news to any of them. Publically I returned to fairie to seek a husband. The sidhe don't breed much, so the royals only get to marry if they get pregnant first. The Queen and I had explained this at another press conference when I first visited home. But she'd kept the guards away from the mikes, and there was something about them admitting it, on mike, that excited the media. Almost as if it were dirtier because they were saying it.
"Are the two of you having sex with the princess at the same time?"
"No," and he fought not to frown. We were lucky the reporter hadn't asked if they slept together with me. Because that we did. The fey sleep in big puppy piles, it's not always about sex, sometimes it's about safety and comfort.
Frost stepped back to the wall, stiff and unhappy. The reporters were yelling even more sexy questions at him. Madeline helped us out. "I think our Killing Frost is a little shy at the mike, boys and girls. Let's pick on someone else."
So they did.
They yelled out the names and questions to the men. Though truthfully, one or two of the guards on stage had never been paraded infront of the media at all. I wasn't certain that Adair or Hawthorne had ever seen a television, or a movie. They were the two in full-plate mail. Though Adair's looked like it was formed of gold and copper, and Hawthorne's was a rich crimson, that no metal had ever been. Adair's was metal, Hawthorne's just looked like metal, though beyond knowing that it wasn't metal, I couldn't say what it was made out of. Something magical. They had both chosen to keep their helmets own. Adair, I believe, because the Queen had shorn his hair, as a punishment for trying to refuse my bed. Hawthorne's hair still fell in thick black-green waves to his ankles. I had no idea why he kept his helmet on. Neither one of them had ever been infront of this many eletric lights. They must have been roasting, but having decided to wear the helmets, they'd wear them until they fainted. Probably, alright, Adair would, I didn't know even that much about Hawthrone. They knew what a camera was because the queen was fond of her polaroid, but beyond that, and indoor plumbing, technology was a stranger to them. I wondered how they felt about being thrown to the lions. Their faces would show nothing, they were the Queen's Ravens, they knew how to hide what they felt.
Thankfully, no one yelled their name, probably because no one knew who they were.
Madeline finally, picked a question, and a victim for them. "Sheila, you had a question for Rhys."
The reporter stood up a little taller, and most of the others sat down like disappointed flowers. "Rhys how was it being a real detective in Los Angeles?"
Rhys was on the far end near the edge of the dias. He was the shortest of the purebred sidhe, 5' 6". His white curls fell to his waist, capped with a crème fedora with a slightly darker band. The trench coat he wore over his suit matched the hat. He looked like a cross between an old time detective with better fashion sense, a male stripper, and a pirate. The stripper came from the pale blue silk t-shirt that clung to his muscular chest and wash-board abs. The pirate part from the fact that he wore a patch over one eye. It wasn't effectation, but to save the press from seeing what was left where a goblin had torn out his eye, laid scars down a boyishly handsome face. The eye that was left was three rings of blue; NOTES; COLOR OF RHYS'S EYES. He could have used glamour to hide the scars, but when he realized the scars didn't bother me, he'd stopped bothering. He thought the scars gave him character, and they did.
Rhys had always been a huge film noir fan, so the question meant that the reporter remembered that. I liked her better for it.
He put one hand flat on the table and the other across my shoulders as he moved into the mike. Simular to what Doyle had done, but Rhys knew how to play to the camera better. He'd been willing to do it longer. He took off the fedora, and shook his hair out, so it fell around his shoulders in thick white curls.
"I loved being a detective in L. A."
"Was it like in the movies?" someone asked.
"Sometimes, but not very much. I ended up doing more bodyguard work than actual detective work."
The next question was interesting, "There were rumors that some of the stars you and the other guards bodyguarded, wanted more body than guarding?"
That was a hard one, because some of the clients had asked, or made it clear they would say yes, to sex. The men had either ignored the invitation or said, no. But a lot of the clients had wanted it. So technically the question was yes, but if he said yes, then all the semi-famous, or even famous that Rhys had bodyguarded for, would be in the tabloids tomorrow, and it would be our fault. Our former boss, Jeremy Grey, deserved better than that from us. So did our clients. And the right kind of clients would stay away from Grey's Detective Agency, and the wrong kind would come and be disappointed.
I leaned into the microphone, and said, in a rich suggestive voice, "I'm afraid that Rhys was too busy bodyguarding me," and I made sure that 'bodyguarding' sounded dirty,"to bodyguard anyone else."
That got me laughter and distracted them all. We were back to sex questions about us, and that we could answer.
"Is Rhys good in bed?"
"Yes," I said.
"Is the princess good in bed?"
"Very."
See, easy questions.
"Rhys, have you ever shared a bed with the princess and one of the other guards?"
"Yes."
Then the reporters started to work together, too. The first reporter tried to ask, who with, but Madeline said, no, he'd had his question. They next reporter she picked, asked, "Rhys, who did you share the princess with?"
He could have tap danced around that one, and either made it worse, or better, by saying all, but he chose truth, because why not?
"Nicca."
The cameras and attention turned to Nicca like lions spotting a new wounded gazelle. This particuliar gazelle was six feet tall, with deep even brown skin, rich chestnut hair that fell to his ankles, thick and straight, held back only by a thin copper daidom. He was naked from the waist up except for the rich gold silk suspenders that graced his chest, and caught the faint yellow pattern in the rich brown of his suit pants. He had two 9 mm guns in the front of his pants, because no one could figure out how to get him in his shoulder holster, or how to strap on his armor, or his swords, without damaging his wings.
They towered above his shoulders, and a little above his head. They swept out and down to his calves, so that the edges of them almost swept the floor. They were huge moth wings, as if a half dozen different kinds of giant silk moths had had sex one dark night with a fairie. Only two days ago the wings had been a birth mark on the back of his body, but during sex the wings had suddenly burst forth from his skin, and become real. The back of his body was now one smooth brown piece.
He moved to join us while the cameras made us go blind again. Rhys stayed with me, waiting for him to join us. Nicca just stood beside us, towering over us both. He looked out at the crowd, but his face wasn't impassive, more puzzled. He wasn't accustomed to being front and center for the queen, or me.
"Nicca, do you really sleep with the princess and Rhys?"
He bent over towards the mike. So he was on one side and Rhys on the other. The wings fanned out above my head. "Yes," he said. Then he stood back up.
The cameras clicked and reporters shouted questions, and Madeline picked someone. "How did you get wings?"
Good question, we didn't have a good answer. I answered it, "You want the truth?" I asked. They coursed, yes. "We're not sure."
"Nicca, what were doing when the wings appeared?"
Nicca knelt back over, and the wings flexed this time, so that for a moment I was backdropped against one of them. I couldn't see anything but flashes. "Having sex with Meredith."
The reporters did everything but giggle like junior high school kids. The American reporters, and some of the European, had never quite gotten used to the fact that the fey as a whole, don't see sex as bad. So admitting to sex with someone, unless it makes your lover uncomfortable, isn't bad, or scandulous.
"Was Rhys with you?"
"Yes." A human would have explained that Rhys had been beside the bed, not in it, but Nicca didn't see a reason to quibble.
"Was anyone else in the bed with you and the princess when it happened?"
"Yes," Nicca said, and didn't add to it. That was Nicca, and very sidhe. You either distracted with a story that had nothing to do with what was asked, or you answered exactly what was asked, and absolutely nothing else. Nicca wasn't good at stories, so he stuck to truth.
"Who?" someone yelled.
Nicca glanced at me, and he shouldn't have. The glance was enough to let the reporters know that he wasn't sure I wanted him to tell the name. As if I wasn't sure that I wanted him to admit in public that we'd had sex with this someone. Shit. The reporters thought I was ashamed of it, and I wasn't. Nicca had looked to me, because most sidhe women do not like admitting that they've fucked a lesser fey. The reporters would make more of that one glance than there was to make. Damn.
The trouble was Sage wasn't on the stage. He wasn't sidhe, and his own Queen had demanded him at her side. Besides our queen didn't want him on stage with me. In Andais's own words, "Oral sex, fine, but he doesn't get to fuck you. No demi-fey no matter how tall is sitting on my throne as anyone's king." So Sage got to stay out of sight. Which made this moment even more interesting.
"The other third, or would that be fourth," I said with a smile, "isn't on stage today. He's not certain he wants the media attention."
"Is he going to be one of your lovers, and potential kings?"
"No." Which was the truth.
"Why not?" someone else shouted out. I wouldn't have answered it, but Nicca did, "He's not sidhe."
Oh, hell. That started another frenzy of shouted questions. I leaned into Nicca and asked him to go back to his piece of wall on the dias. Rhys went back to his section on the edge where he could watch the crowd. He was trying not to laugh. I guess it might as well be funny. But Nicca had to stay away from the mike from now on. I wasn't ashamed of what I'd done with Sage, but I wasn't sure how much of it my aunt, the queen, wanted me to explain to the media. She did seem embarrassed about it.
Madeline finally found a question that she thought I would be able and willing to answer. She was wrong. "Which of them is the best in bed, Meredith?"
I fought not to glance at Madeline, what was she doing taking that as a question? She knew better. "Look at them all, how could anyone choose just one?"
Laughter, but they didn't let it go. "You seemed to have a preference for Frost ealier, princess."
It wasn't a question so I didn't answer it. Anotehr reporter asked, "Fair enough, princess, but if not just one, who are your multiple favorites?"
That was trickier. "Everyone that I've had sex with is special to me in their own way." Truth.
"How many have you had sex with?"
I leaned into the mike. "Gentleman, if you would just take a step, or two forward."
Rhys, Nicca, Doyle, and Frost moved forward. Only three extra men stepped away from the wall. Galen's skin was almost as white as my own, but in the right light there was an undercast of green to that paleness. His curls were green in any light, except in the dark where it looked blonde. He had cut his own hair just above his shoulders, leaving only one thin braid to remind me that once it fell to his ankles. Of the men of fairie, only the sidhe, were allowed to grow their hair long. Galen had cut his hair voluntarily, unlike Adair. Or Amatheon, who stood next to him. Amatheon's rich red hair had been French-braided so that the reporters would have a harder time realizing that his hair only touched his shoulders now. He'd given in to the Queen's order, sooner than Adair had. The fact that cutting the men's hair had been a punishment, a humiliation, that presauded them to do as the Queen bid, said how very odd it was that Galen had done it on his own. He was the youngest of the Queen's Ravens, only seventy-five years older than me. Among the sidhe it was almost like being raised together. I'd thought that open, handsome face, the perfect fact since I was fourteen, or maybe younger. It was Galen that I wanted my father to let me be engaged to, but he had chosen another. That engagement had lasted seven years, but there had been no children, and in the end, he had told me I was too human for him. Not sidhe enough. It had made me wonder even more why my father wouldn't let me have Galen in the first place.
He turned lovely green eyes to me, and smiled, and I smiled back. He was as armed as any of them with blade and guns, but there was a softness to him, that most of the others had lost centuries before either he, or I, was born. He'd give his life for me, and would have when I was a child, unlike the rest of them. But as a politician he was something of a disastor, and that could be fatal in the high courts of fairie.
Someone touched my shoulder. I jumped, and found Madeline with her hand over my mike. She leaned in and whispered, "You're staring at him. Let's not repeat the Frost incident, shall we?" She stepped back with a smile already for the press, hitting the switch at her waist, so that her mike was back on as she finished her turn.
I had to keep my face turned away from the crowd, because I was blushing. I didn't blush much, and it wasn't too dark by human standards, sidhe skin just doesn't flush the way human skin tones do. Of course, keeping my face away from the cameras meant that Galen could see me. Somedays its only a choice of embarrasments, not an escape from them.
Madeline was saying, "Princess Meredith, is getting a little tired. We may have to cut this short, guys, sorry."
There was a general out cry, and a renewed flash of cameras, which was bad, because Galen came to me. He knelt infront of me, beside my chair, and was tall enough that from the shoulders up, he was still clearly visible to them. He touched my chin, so gently, with just the tips of his fingers. It made me look at him. It made me forget that that put us both in profile to the cameras. He leaned his face closer to me, and that made me forget that we were on stage. I leaned in towards him, and his hand cupped the side of my face. That made me forget everything else. I have no explantion for it. We'd shared a bed for months. He was a disastor politically, and showing him this much favor infront of everyone could endanger him, but I wasn't thinking that when we kissed. I wasn't thinking anything, and all I could see was the pleased look on his face, the look in his eyes. He'd loved me since I was about seveneteen, and that was in his eyes, as if nothing had changed, and no time had passed.
The Queen had ordered me not to show favortism. She was going to be angry with me, with him, with us, but with Frost's little incident, as Madeline called it, what was one more? It was bad, and still I kissed him. Still I wanted to kiss him. Still, for just a moment, the world narrowed down to Galen's face, his hand against my skin, and his mouth on mine.
It was a soft, chaste kiss, I think because he knew if he kissed me too hard, I'd loose my hold on the glamor that kept Frost and I from looking like lipstick casualties. Galen drew back, and his eyes held that soft surprise that they did sometimes, as if he still couldn't believe he was allowed to kiss me, allowed to touch me. I'd caught the same look on my face in the bedroom mirror a time or two.
"Do we all get a kiss?" The voice was deep and held the rough, sloughing of the sea. Barinthus moved towards us in a swirl of his hair, the color of oceans. The turquoise of the Mediterranean; the deeper medium blue of the Pacific; a stormy greyish-blue like the ocean before a storm, sliding into a blue that was nearly black, where the water runs deep and thick like the blood of sleeping giants. The colors moved and flowed into one another so that the actual where and what his hair looked like, was ever-chaning like the ocean itself. He'd once been a god fo the sea. I'd only recently discovered that he had been Mannan Mac Lir, but that was a secret. He was Barinthus, a fallen god of the sea. He moved gracefully across the stage, all near seven feet of him. His eyes were blue but with a slit pupil like a cat or a deep sea animal. He had a second clear membrane that could close over his eye when he was under water, and would often flicker when he was nervous. It flickered, just a touch now.
I wondered if anyone in the crowd of reporters knew how much it cost this very private man, to have suggested a kiss, and make himself the target of all these cameras?
Galen had realized he'd misbehaved, because he showed me with his eyes that he was sorry. Unfortunately, his face wasn't that hard for anyone to read, including the reporters. The queen had said no favorites. Our behavior was going to force me to try and prove I had none. After what Galen and I had just done, that was going to be difficult.
There were a lot of the men standing with me that would have played for the cameras, and it would have cost them, or me, nothing. Barinthus was not one of them. He'd been my father's friend, and frankly, by American standards we hadn't had sex. Not even by Clinton standards. If I'd been him, I would have stayed against the wall, but he held to a higher standard of truth even than most of the sidhe.
I looked up at Barinthus, and it took a while to get all the way to his face with me sitting and him standing. "If you like." I kept my voice light and my face pleasant. I learned how to smile and smile and be thinking all sorts of unpleasant things. Barinthus and I had never kissed, and the first kiss should not be on film.
It was Rhys who saved the day, "If Barinthus gets a kiss, then so do I."
Doyle said, "To be fair, it should be all of us."
Barinthus gave a slight smile. "I would bow to the larger need, and take my kiss in private."
"Galen and Frost have already had theirs," Rhys said, and as Galen went back to his place in line Rhys pretended to box his ears.
Barinthus did a very graceful bow, and tried to sink back to his place. But that wasn't happening. A reporter asked, "Lord Barinthus, have you decided to go from being kingmaker to being king?" No sidhe would have called him kingmaker to his face, or queenmaker either. But the media, well, he couldn't box their ears.
He raised up, and finally knelt beside me, rather than lean into the mike. Kneeling his head was about even with me sitting. "I doubt I will stay with the Princess as a perment member of her guard."
"Why not?"
"I am needed elsewhere."
Truth was that before Queen Andais had accepted him into the Unseelie Court after the Seelie Court kicked him out, Barinthus had had to promise that he would never accept the throne here, not even if it was offered. He'd been Mannan Mac Lir, and the Queen and her nobles all feared his power. So he'd given his most solemn oath that he would never, personally, sit on our throne.
He bowed to the room in general and simply went back against the wall. He made it clear that he was done with questions for the day. Kitto, the half-goblin sidhe, had already moved back to his place in the wall. He was only four feet tall, and that made a lot of the media try to protray him as childlike. He was old enough to remember what the world was like before Christianity was a religion. But his appearance made the media uncomfortable with him. His short black curls, pale skin, and sunglasses made him look ordinary in his jeans and t-shirt. The Queen didn't have a designer suit to fit someone so short. There hadn't been time even for the Queen's seamstress to make those kinds of alterations. He got away with hugging his section of the wall.
"Princess Meredith, how will you choose your husband from among all these gorgeous men?" a reporter was asking.
"The one who gets me pregnant, wins the prize," I said, smiling.
"What if you are in love with someone else? What if you don't love the one who gets you pregnant?"
I sighed, and didn't fight the smile slipping away. "I am a princess, and heir to a throne. Love has never been a preriquisite for royal marriages."
"Isn't it traditional to sleep with one fiance at a time, until you either get pregnant or don't get pregant."
"Yes," I said, and cursed that anyone knew our customs that well.
"Then why the marathon of men?"
"If you had the chance, wouldn't you?" I asked, smiling, and that got them laughing. But it didn't distract them.
"Would you marry a man that you didn't like, just because he was the father of your child?"
"Our laws are clear," I said, "I will marry the father of my child."
"No matter who it is," another reporter asked.
"That is our law."
"What if your cousin Prince Cel gets one of his female guards pregnant first?"
"Then, according to Queen Andais, he will be king."
"So it's a race to get pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Where is Prince Cel? No one has seen him in nearly three months?"
"I'm not my cousin's keeper." Truth, he was in prison for trying to kill me one too many times, and for other crimes that the Queen didn't want even the court to know. He should have been executed for some of them, but she'd bargained for her only child's life. He was to be locked away for six months, tortured with the very magic he had used against sidhe ancestored humans. Branwyn's Tears, one of our most guarded ointments. It was an aphrodisiac that truly worked, even against someone's will. But more than that, it made your body crave to be touched, to be brought. He was chained and covered in Branwyn's Tears. There were bets around the court that what little sanity he'd been born with, would not surivive it. The Queen had given into one of his guards only yesterday, to let the woman slack Cel's need, save his sanity. And suddenly I had not one, but two, no three attempts on my life, and one on the Queen's. It was more than a coincidence, but the Queen loved her son.
Madeline was back in front of me, looking at me. "Are you alright, princess?"
"Sorry, I'm getting a little tired. Did I miss a question?"
She smiled and nodded, as if, poor thing. "I'm afraid so."
They repeated it, and I wished I'd missed it again. "Do you know where your cousin the prince is?"
"He's here in the sithen, but I don't know what he's doing this exact moment. Sorry."
I needed off this subject, off this stage. I signaled to Madeline, and she closed it down with a promise of a photo op in a day or two, when the princess was fully healed.
A tiny fairie with butterfly wings fluttered into camera range. This was a demi-fey. Sage, who'd I'd 'slept with' could make himself human tall, but most of the demi-fey were permenantly about the size of Barbie dolls, or smaller. The Queen would not be happy about the little fairie fluttering infront of the cameras. When there was press in the sithen, the less human looking stayed away from them, and especially away from cameras, or faced the Queen's wrath.
The figure was a pale bluish-pink with wings an irredescent blue. She fluttered through a barage of flashbulbs, shielding her eyes with a tiny hand. I thought she'd land on me, or maybe Doyle, but she flew the length of the stage to land on Rhys's shoulder.
She was landed on his shoulder, hiding herself in his long white curls. She whispered something in his ear, most likely, though I couldn't see, and neither could anyone else. She was using his hair and hat as a shield. Rhys stood up and came to us smiling.
Doyle was standing beside me, but even that close I couldn't hear what Rhys whispered to him.
Doyle gave a small nod, and Rhys left the room ahead of us with the tiny fey still tangled in his hair. I wanted to ask, what could be important enough for Rhys to leave early infront of the press.
Someone shouted, "Rhys, why are you leaving?"
Rhys left the room, with a wave and a smile.
Doyle helped me stand, then the rest of the guards closed around me like a multi-colored wall.
"Doyle, Princess, what's happened?"
"What did the little one say?"
The press conference was over, we got to ignore them. It might have been wise to give them an exscuse but Doyle either didn't think we needed to bother, or he didn't know what to say. There was a tension in his arm where he touched me, that said, whatever Rhys had shared with him, had shaken him. What does the Darkness fear?
My wall of bright colored muscle marched me down the steps and out. When we were in the hallway clear of the media, but I still whispered, modern technology was a wonderful thing, we didn't need some sensitive microphone picking us up. "What's happened?"
"There are two a dead bodies in one of the hallways near the kitchen."
"Fey?" I asked.
"One, yes," he said.
I stumbled in my high heels, because I tried to stop moving, but his arm on mine kept us all moving. "One. What about the other?"
He nodded. "Yes, exactly."
"Is it one of the reporters? Did one of them go wondering?"
Frost leaned in from the line of men. "It cannot be. We had spells that would make them unable to leave the safe path inside the sithen. We guarded against them wondering about." Doyle glanced at him. "Then explain a dead human in our sithen with a camera beside his hand."
Frost opened his mouth, then closed it. "I cannot."
Doyle shook his head. "Nor can I."
"Well, isn't this going to be a disastor," Galen said.
We had a dead reporter in the Unseelie sithen, and a mass of live reporters still on the premises. Disastor didn't even begin to cover it.
Mistral's Kiss
They moved around with skin the color of darkest night, whitest snow, the pale of newborn leaves, the brown of leaves that have gone down to die on the forest floor, a rainbow of men moving nude around the kitchen. The real apartment kitchen would have barely held three of us, but in the dream everyone walked through that narrow space between sink and stove and cabinets as if there were all the room in the world.
We were having cookies because we'd just had sex and it was hungry work, or something like that. The men moved around me graceful and perfectly nude. Several of the men were ones I'd never seen nude. They moved with skin the color of summer sunshine, the transparent white of crystals, colors I had no name for, for the colors did not exist outside of faerie. It should have been a good dream, but it wasn't. I knew something was wrong, that feeling of unease that you get in dreams when you know that the happy sights are just a disguise, an illusion to hide the ugliness to come.
The plate of cookies was so innocent, so ordinary, but it bothered inc. I tried to pay attention to the men, touching their bodies, holding them, but each of them in turn would pick up a cookie and take a bite, as if I weren't there. Galen with his pale, pale green skin and greener eyes bit into a cookie, and something squirted out the side. Something thick and dark. The dark liquid dripped down the edge of his kissable mouth and fell onto the white countertop. That single drop splattered and spread and was red, so red, so fresh. The cookies were bleeding.
I slapped it from Galen's hand. I picked up the tray to keep the men from eating any more. The tray was full of blood. It dripped down the edges, poured over my hands. I dropped the tray, which shattered, and the men bent as if they would eat from the floor and the broken glass. I pushed them back, screaming, "No!"
Doyle looked up at me with his black eyes and said, "But it is all we have had to eat for so long"
The dream changed, as dreams with I stood in an open field with a ring of distant frees encircling it. Beyond the trees, hills rode up into the paleness of a moonlit winter's night. Snow lay like a smooth blanket across the ground. I was standing ankle-deep in snow. I was wearing a loose sweeping gown as white as the snow. My arms were bare to the cold night. I should have been freezing, but I wasn't. Dream, just a dream
Then I noticed something in the center of the clearing. It was an animal, a small white animal, and I thought, That's why I didn't see it, for it was white, whiter than the snow. Whiter than my gown, than my skin, so white that it seemed to glow
The animal raised its head, sniffing the air. It was a small pig, but its snout was longer, and its legs taller, than those of any pig I'd ever seen. Though it stood in the middle of the snowy field, there were no hoofprints in that smooth snow, no way for the piglet to have walked to the center of the field. As if the animal had simply appeared there I glanced at the circle of trees, for only a moment, and when I looked again at the piglet, it was bigger. A hundred pounds heavier, and taller than my knees. I didn't look away again, but the pig just got bigger. I couldn't see it happening, it was like trying to watch a flower bloom, but it was growing bigger. As tall at the shoulder as my waist, long and broad, and furry. I'd never seen a pig so fuzzy before, as if it had a thick winter coat. It looked positively pettable, that pelt. It raised that strangely long-snouted face toward me, and I saw tusks curving from its mouth, small tusks. The moment I saw them, gleaming ivory in the snow light, another whisper of unease washed through me.
I should leave this place, I thought. I turned to walk out through that ring of trees. A ring of trees that now looked entirely too even, too well planned, to be accidental.
A woman stood behind me, so close that when the wind blew through the dead trees her hooded cloak brushed against the hem of my gown. I formed my lips to say, Who? but never finished the word. She held out a hand that was wrinkled and colored with age, but it was a small, slender hand, still lovely, still full of a quiet strength. Not full of the remnants of youthful strength, but full of the strength that comes only with age. A strength born of knowledge accumulated, wisdom pondered over many a long winter's night. Here was someone who held the knowledge of a lifetime-no, several lifetimes.
The crone, the hag, has been vilified as ugly and weak. But that is not what the true crone aspect of the Goddess is, and it was not what I saw. She smiled at me, and that smile held all the warmth you would ever need. It was a smile that held a thousand fireside chats, a hundred dozen questions asked and answered, endless lifetimes of knowledge collected and remembered. There was nothing she would not know, if only I could think of the questions to ask.
I took her hand, and the skin was so soft, soft the way a baby's is. It was wrinkled, but smooth is not always best, and there is beauty in age that youth knows not.
I held the crone's hand and felt safe, completely and utterly safe, as if nothing could ever disturb this sense of quiet peace. She smiled at me, the rest of her face lost in the shadow of her hood. She drew her hand out of mine, and I tried to hold on, but she shook her head and said, though her lips did not move, "You have work to do."
"I don't understand," I said, and my breath steamed in the cold night, though hers had not.
"Give them other food to eat."
I frowned. "I don't understand
"Turn around," she said, and this time her lips did move, but still her breath did not color the night. It was as if she spoke but did not breathe, or as if her breath were as cold as the winter night. I tried to remember if her hand had been warm or cold, but could not. All I remembered was the sense of peace and rightness. "Turn around," she said again, and this time I did. A white bull stood in the center of the clearing-at least that's what it looked like at first glance. Its shoulder stood as tall as the top of my head. It must have been more than nine feet long. Its shoulders were a huge broad spread of muscle humped behind its lowered head. The head raised, revealing a snout framed by long, pointed tusks. This was no bull, but a huge boar-the thing that had begun as a little pig. Tusks like ivory blades gleamed as it looked at me.
I glanced back, but knew the crone was gone. I was alone in the winter night. Well, not as alone as I wanted to be. I looked back and found the monstrous boar still standing there, still staring at me. The snow was cold under my bare feet now. My arms ran with goose bumps, and I wasn't sure if I shivered from cold, or fear. I recognized the thick white hair on the boar now. It still looked so soft But its tail stuck straight out from its body, and it raised that long snout skyward. Its breath smoked in the air as it sniffed. That was bad. That meant it was real-or real enough to hurt me, anyway.
I stood as still as I could. I don't think I moved at all, but suddenly it charged- Snow plumed underneath its hooves as it came For me.
It was like watching some great machine barreling down. Too big to be real, too huge to be possible. I had no weapon. I turned and ran. I heard the boar behind me. Its hooves sliced the frozen ground. It let out a sound that was almost a scream. I glanced back; I couldn't help it. The gown tangled under my feet, and I went down. I rolled in the snow, fighting to come to my feet, hut the gown tangled around my legs- I couldn't get free of it. Couldn't stand. Couldn't run.
The boar was almost on top of me. Its breath steamed in clouds. Snow spilled around its legs, bits of frozen black earth sliced up in all that white. Iliad one of those intenninable moments where you have all the time in the world to watch death come for you. White boar, white snow, white tusks, all aglow in the moonlight, except for the rich black earth that marred the whiteness with dark scars. The boar gave that horrible screaming squeal again.
Its thick winter coat looked so soft. It was going to look soft while it gored me to death and trampled me into the snow. I reached behind me, feeling for a tree branch, anything to pull myself up out of the snow. Something brushed my hand, and I grabbed it. Thorns cut into my hand. Thorn-covered vines filled the space between the trees. I used the vines to drag myself to my feet. The thorns were biting into my hands, my arms, but they were all I could grasp. The boar was so close, I could smell its scent, sharp and acrid on the cold air. I would not die lying in the snow.
The thorns bled me, spattered the white gown with blood, the snow covered in minute crimson drops. The vines moved under my hands like something more alive than a plant. I felt the boar's breath like heat on the back of my body, and the thorny vines opened like a door. The world seemed to spin, and when I could see again, be sure of where I was again, I was standing on the other side of the thorns. The white boar hit the vines hard and fast, as if it expected to tear its way through. For a mon-ient I thought it would do just that; then it was in the thorns, slowing. It stopped rushing forward and started slashing at the vines with its great snout and tusks It would tear them out, trample them underfoot, but its white coat was bedecked with tiny bloody scratches. It would break through, but the thorns bled it.
I'd never owned any magic in dream, or vision, that I didn't own in waking life. But I had magic now. I wielded the hand of blood. I put my bleeding hand out toward the boar and thought, Bleed. I made all those small scratches pour blood. But still the beast fought through the thorns. The vines ripped from the earth. I thought, More. I made a fist of my hand, and when I opened it wide, the scratches slashed wide. Flundreds of red mouths, gaping on that wlute hide. Blood poured down its sides, and now its squeal was not a scream of anger, or challenge. It was a squeal of pain. The vines tightened around it of their own accord. The boar's knees buckled, and the vines roped it to the frozen ground. It was nolonger a white boar, but a red one. Red with blood.
There was a knife in my hand. It was a shining white blade that glowed like a star I knew what I needed to do. I walked across the blood-spattered snow. The boar rolled its eyes at me, but I knew that if it could, even now, it would kill me. I plunged the knife into its throat and when the blade came out, blood gushed into the snow, over my gown, onto my skin. The blood was hot. A crimson fountain of heat and life.
The blood melted the snow down to rich black earth. From that earth came a tiny piglet, not white this time, but tawny and striped with gold. It was colored more like a fawn. The piglet cried, but I knew there would be no answer. I picked it up, and it curled up in my arms like a puppy. It was so warm, so alive. I wrapped the hooded cloak I now wore around us both. My gown was black now, not black with blood, but simply black. The piglet settled into the soft warm cloth. I had boots that were lined with fur, soft and warm. The white knife was still in my hand, but it was clean, as if the blood had burned away. I smelled roses. I turned back and found that the white boar's body was gone. The thorny vines were covered in green leaves and flowers. The flowers were white and pink, from palest blush to dark salmon. Some of the roses were so deeply pink, they were almost purple.
The wonderful sweet scent of wild roses filled the air. The dead trees in the circle were dead no more, but began to bud and leaf as I watched. The thaw spread from the boar's death and that spill of warm blood. The tiny piglet was heavier. I looked down and Found that it had doubled in size. I put it onto the melting snow, and as the boar had got[en bigger, so now this piglet grew. Again, I could not see the change, but like a flower unfurling undetectably, it changed all the same.
I began to walk over the snow, and the rapidly growing pig came at my side like an obedient dog. Where we stepped the snow melted, and life returned to the land. The pig lost its baby stripes, and grew black and as tall at the shoulder as my waist, and still it grew. I touched its back, and the hair was not soft, but coarse. I stroked its side, and it nestled against me. We walked the land, and where we walked, the world became green once more. We came to the crest of a small hill, where a slab of stone lay grey and cold in the growing light. Dawn had come, breaking like a crimson wound across the eastern sky. The sun returns in blood, and dies in blood. The boar had tusks now, small curling things, but I wasn't afraid. He nuzzled my hand, and his snout was softer, and more nunble, more like a great finger, than any pig's snout I'd ever touched. He made a sound that was pleasant and made me smile. Then he hirned and ran down the other side of the hill, with his tail straight out behind him like a flag. Everywhere his hooves touched, the earth sprang green.
A robed figure was beside me on the hill, but it was not the grey-robed figure of the crone Goddess in winter. This was a male fig-ure was taller than I, broad of shoulder, and cloaked in a hood as black as the boar that was growing small in the distance.
He held out his hands, and in them was a horn. The curved tusk of a great boar. It was white and fresh, with blood still on it, as if he had just that moment cut it from the white boar. But as I moved over toward him, the horn became clean and polished, as if with many years of use, as if many hands had touched it. The horn was no longer white, but a rich amber color that spoke of age. Just before I touched his hands, I realized the horn was set in gold, formed into a cup. I laid my hands on either side of his and found that his hands were as dark as his cloak, but I knew this was not my Doyle, my Darkness. This was the God. I looked up into his hood and saw for an instant the boar's head; then I saw a human mouth that smiled at me His face, like the face of the Goddess, was covered in shadow-for the face of deity was ever a mystery.
He wrapped my hands around the smooth horn of the cup, the carved gold almost soft under my lingers. He pressed my hands to the cup. I wondered, where had the white knife gone?
A deep voice that was no man's voice and every man's voice said, "Where it belongs" The knife appeared in the cup, blade-down, and it was shining again, as if a star had fallen into that cup of horn and gold. "Drink and be merry." He laughed then at his own pun. I-te raised the shining cup to my lips and vanished to the warm sound of his own laughter. drank from the horn and found it full of the sweetest mead I had ever drunk, thick with honey, and warm as if the heat of the summer itself slipped across my tongue, caressed my throat. I swallowed and it was more intoxicating than any mere drink. Power is the most intoxicating drink of all.
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