A Kiss of Shadows mg-1

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I had no offensive magic. The gun wouldn't kill any of them, only hurt and slow them. I needed a better idea, and I couldn't think of anything. I tried talking. When in doubt, talk. You never know what the enemy might let slip.

  "Nerys the Grey, Segna the Gold, and Black Agnes, I presume."

  "Who are you? Stanley?" Nerys said.

  I had to smile. "And they say you have no sense of humor."

  "Who're they?" she asked.

  "The sidhe," I said.

  "You are sidhe," Black Agnes said.

  "If I were truly sidhe, would I be here on the shores of the Western Sea hiding from my queen?"

  "The fact that you and your aunt are enemies makes you suicidally foolish, but it doesn't make you one ounce less sidhe." Agnes stood so straight and tall, like a black pillar of cloth.

  "No, but the brownie blood on my mother's side does. I think the queen would forgive the human taint, but she can't forget the other."

  "You're mortal," Segna said. "That's the unforgivable sin for a sidhe."

  My hands were starting to cramp. My arms would start to tremble soon. I had to either shoot something, or lower the gun. Even a two-handed stance isn't meant to be held indefinitely.

  "There are other sins my aunt finds just as unforgivable," I said.

  A man's voice said, "Like having a nest of tentacles in the middle of all that perfect sidhe flesh."

  I turned the gun toward the voice, keeping my vision on the three hags. I was soon going to have so many targets in so many different directions that I'd never be able to shoot them all in time. At least the movement and the fresh rush of adrenaline had helped chase away the muscle fatigue. I was suddenly sure I could hold the shooting stance forever.

  Sholto was standing on the sidewalk, hands at his side. I think he was trying to appear harmless. He failed. "The queen said that to me once, that it was a shame that I had a nest of tentacles in the middle of one of the most perfect sidhe bodies she'd ever seen."

  "Great. My aunt's a bitch. We all knew that. What do you want, Sholto?"

  "Give him his title," Agnes said, that cultured voice holding an edge of anger.

  It never hurts to be polite, so I did what she asked. "What do you want, Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between?"

  "He is King Sholto." Segna spat the words at me, almost literally.

  "He's not my king," I said.

  "That could change," Agnes said, the implied threat nicely subtle.

  "Enough," Sholto said. "The queen wants you dead, Meredith."

  "We've never been friends, Lord Sholto. Use my title." It was an insult for him to have omitted my title after I'd used his. It was also an insult to insist on it from someone who was king of another people. But Sholto had always complicated his life by trying to play lord of the sidhe and king of the sluagh.

  A look passed over the strong bones of his face-anger, I think, though I didn't know him well enough to be sure. "The queen wants you dead, Princess Meredith, daughter of Essus."

  "And she sent you to fetch me home for the execution. I figured that much out."

  "You couldn't be more wrong," Agnes said.

  "Silence!" Sholto put the bite of command in that one word. The hags seemed to shrink in upon themselves, not bowing, but like they thought about it.

  The grinning man to my right stepped closer. I didn't take the gun off Sholto, but I said,

  "Take two big steps back or I shoot your king."

  I don't know what the man would have done because Sholto said, "Gethin, do what she asks."

  Gethin didn't argue, just stepped back, though I noticed out of the corner of my eyes that his hands were folded across his chest. He wasn't doing the hands on top of your head routine anymore. Fine as long as he stayed out of immediate reach. They were all too close. If everyone rushed me at once, it was over. But Sholto didn't want me crowded. He wanted to talk. Fine with me.

  "I don't want you dead, Princess Meredith," Sholto said.

  I couldn't keep the suspicion off my face. "You'd go up against the queen and all her sidhe to save me?"

  "Much has happened in the last three years, Princess. The queen relies more and more on the sluagh for her threat. I do not think she would start a war over you being alive if you were safely out of her sight."

  "I'm as out of her sight as I can get and still be on dry land," I said.

  "Ah, but perhaps there are others at court that whisper in her ear and remind her of you."

  "Who?" I asked.

  He smiled, and it made that handsome face almost pleasant. "We have many things to discuss, Princess. I have a room in one of the better hotels. Shall we retire to it and discuss the future?"

  Something about the way he worded that bothered me, but it was the best offer I was going to get tonight. I lowered the gun. "Swear by your honor and the darkness that eats all things, that you mean all of what you just said."

  "I swear on my honor, and by the darkness that eats all things, that every word I have spoken on this street to you is the truth."

  I clicked the safety on the gun and tucked it at the small of my back. I picked my jacket up off the ground, shook it out, and slipped it on. It was a little wrinkled, but it would do.

  "How far is your hotel?"

  The smile this time was wider, it made him less perfect, but more... human. More real. "You should smile more often, Lord Sholto. It becomes you."

  "I hope to have reason to smile more often in the near future." He offered me his arm, even though he was yards away. I went to him because he'd sworn the Unseelie's most solemn oath. He could not break it without risking a curse.

  I slipped my hand in the crook of his arm. He flexed under my hand. Sometimes a male is a male is a male, no matter what flavor they are. "Which hotel are you staying at?" I smiled at him. It never hurts to be pleasant. I could always be unpleasant later if I needed to be.

  He told me. It was a very nice hotel.

  "That's a little far to walk," I said.

  "If you like, we can get a taxi."

  I raised eyebrows at that, because once inside the metal of a car he wouldn't be able to do major magic. Too much refined metal interfered with it. I could do major spells inside solid lead if I had to. My human blood was good for a few things. "Won't you be uncomfortable?" I asked.

  "It's not that far, and it's our mutual comfort I've come to see to."

  Again, I felt there were shades of meaning in his words that I was missing. "A taxi would be lovely."

  Agnes called after us. "What are we to do with Nerys?"

  Sholto looked back at them and his face was cold again, that carved handsomeness that made him seem distant. "Make your way back to your rooms any way you can. If Nerys had not tried to attack the princess, she wouldn't have been wounded."

  "We have served you for more centuries than that piece of white flesh will ever see, and this is the treatment you give us," Agnes said.

  "You get the treatment that you earn, Agnes. Remember that." He turned, patting my hand on his arm, smiling at me, but his triple-golden eyes still held the edge of that coldness.

  Gethin appeared at Sholto's side, floppy hat in his hands, a bow curving him toward the sidewalk. He had impossibly long ears, like those of a donkey. "What would you have of me, Master?"

  "Help them get Nerys to the rooms."

  "Happily." Gethin flashed another toothy grin as he stood, ears flapping down to frame his face almost like a dog's or maybe a lop-eared rabbit's. He turned and almost skipped back toward the hags.

  "I feel like I'm missing something," I said.

  His hand wrapped over my hand, warm, strong fingers sliding over mine. "I will explain all when we get to the hotel." There was a look in his eyes that I'd seen in other men's, but it couldn't mean the same thing. Sholto was one of the Queen's Guard, which meant he couldn't sleep with any sidhe except her. She didn't share her men, not with anyone. The punishment for breaking the taboo was death by torture. Even if Sholto was willing
to risk that, I was not. My aunt might execute me, but she'd make it quick. If I broke her most strict taboo, she'd still kill me, but it would not be quick. I'd been tortured before. It was hard to avoid it if you lived at the Unseelie Court. But I'd never been tortured at the queen's own hand. I had seen her handiwork, though. She was creative, very, very creative.

  I'd promised myself years ago that I would never give her an excuse to be creative on me. "I'm already under a death sentence, Sholto. I won't risk torture on top of it."

  "If I could keep you alive and safe, what would you risk?"

  "Alive and safe? How?"

  He just smiled, held his hand up, and yelled, "Taxi!" Three of them appeared within minutes on the empty street. Sholto just meant to call a taxi. He had no idea how impressive it was in Los Angeles to be able to call three taxis within minutes to an empty street. He could also reanimate corpses that hadn't grown cold yet, and that was impressive. But I'd lived for three years in the city, and a taxi when you wanted it was more impressive than a walking corpse. After all, I'd seen walking corpses before. A convenient taxi was a completely new animal.

  Chapter 11

  AN HOUR LATER SHOLTO AND I WERE SITTING IN TWO LOVELY BUT UNcomfortable chairs around a small white table. The room was elegant, if a little too pink and gold for my tastes. There'd been wine and a tray of hors d'oeuvres waiting on the table. The wine was a very sweet dessert wine. It complemented the cheese on the tray but clashed with the caviar. Of course, I'd never tasted anything that could make caviar palatable. No matter how expensive it was, it still tasted like fish eggs.

  Sholto seemed to like the caviar and the wine. "Champagne would have been more appropriate, but I've never liked it," he said.

  "Are we celebrating something?" I asked.

  "An alliance, I hope."

  I took a minute sip of the too-sweet wine and looked at him. "What sort of alliance?"

  "Between the two of us."

  "That much I'd assumed. The big question, Sholto, is why would you want an alliance with me?"

  "You're third in line to the throne." His face had become very closed, very careful, as if he didn't want me to know what he was thinking.

  "And?" I said.

  He blinked those triple-golden eyes at me. "Why wouldn't a sidhe want to join himself to the woman who is only two steps away from the throne?"

  "Normally, that would be fine reasoning, but you and I both know that the only reason I'm still third in line for the throne is that my father got the queen's oath before he died. She'd have had me disqualified on the grounds of my mortality alone, except for that. I have no standing at the court, Sholto. I am the first princess of the line who has no magic."

  He sat his wineglass carefully on the table. "You are one of the best of all of us at personal glamour," he said.

  "True, but it's the greatest of my powers. For Goddess sake, I am still called NicEssus, daughter of Essus. A title that I should have lost after childhood when I came into my power. Except I didn't come into my power. I may never come into my power, Sholto. That alone could have gotten me removed from the line of succession."

  "Except for the oath the queen made to your father," Sholto said.

  "Yes."

  "I am aware how much your aunt loathes you, Meredith. Much the same way she loathes me."

  I sat the wineglass down, tired of pretending to enjoy it. "You have magic enough for a court title. You're not mortal."

  He looked at me, and it was a long, hard, almost harsh look. "Don't be coy, Meredith, you know exactly why the queen can't stand the sight of me."

  I met that hard glance, but it was... uncomfortable. I did know, all the court knew.

  "Say it, Meredith, say it out loud."

  "The queen disapproves of your mixed blood."

  He nodded. "Yes." He seemed almost relieved. The harshness in his eyes had been uneasy to see, but at least it had been genuine. For all I knew everything else was false. I wanted to see what truly lay behind that handsome face.

  "But that's not why, Sholto. There's more mixed blood among the sidhe royals now than pure."

  "Fine," he said, "she disapproves of my father's bloodline."

  "It's not the fact that your father is a nightflyer, Sholto."

  He frowned. "If you have a point, make it."

  "Except for the odd pointy ear, until you came along sidhe genetics won out no matter what we mated with."

  "Genetics," he said. "I forget that you are our first modern college graduate."

  I smiled. "Father was hoping I'd be a doctor."

  "You can't heal with your touch, what kind of doctor is that?" He took a big drink of wine, as if he were still agitated.

  "Someday I must take you on a tour of a modern hospital," I said.

  "Whatever you wish to show me would be a pleasure." Whatever real emotion had almost peeked through, vanished in a wave of double entendre.

  I ignored the double meaning and went back to digging. I'd seen real emotion, I wanted to see more of it. If I was going to risk my life I needed to see Sholto without the masks that the court taught us to wear. "Until you, all the sidhe looked like sidhe no matter what we mated with. I think the queen sees you as proof that the sidhe blood is growing weak, just as my mortality shows the blood is thinning."

  That handsome face grew tight with anger. "The Unseelie preach that all fey are beautiful, but some of us are only beautiful for a night. We are diversions, but nothing more."

  I watched the anger eat across his shoulders, down his arms. His muscles tightened as the anger flowed over him. "My mother," and he spat that last word out, "thought she would have a night of pleasure and pay no price. I was that price." He bit off the words, rage intensifying the light in his eyes so that the rings of color in them blazed like yellow flame and molten running gold.

  I'd broken through that so careful exterior and found a nerve. "I would say that you're the one that paid the price, not your mother," I said. "Once she gave birth to you, she went back to the court, to her life."

  He looked at me, the rage still naked on his face.

  I talked carefully to that anger, because I didn't want it to spill over on me, but I liked the anger. It was real, not some mood calculated to get him something. He hadn't planned this mood, it had just come over him. I liked that, I liked that a lot. One of the things I'd loved about Roane had been that his emotions were so close to the surface. He never pretended anything he did not feel. Of course, that was the same trait that had allowed him to go off to the sea with his new sealskin, and never bother to say good-bye. No one was perfect.

  "And she left me with my father," Sholto said. He looked down at the table, then slowly raised those extraordinary eyes to me. "Do you know how old I was before I saw another sidhe?"

  I shook my head.

  "I was five. Five years old before I saw anyone with skin and eyes like mine." He stopped talking, eyes distant with remembering.

  "Tell me," I said, softly.

  His voice came soft, as if he were talking to himself. "Agnes had taken me into the woods to play on a dark, moonless night."

  I wanted to ask if Agnes was the hag Black Agnes that I'd met tonight, but I let him talk. There'd be time for questions when his mood had changed, and he stopped telling his secrets. It had been surprisingly easy to get him to open up to me. Usually when it's this easy to peel away someone's protections they want to talk, need to talk.

  "I saw something shining through the trees as if the moon had come down to Earth. I asked Agnes, what is that? She wouldn't tell me, just took my hand and led me closer to the light. At first, I thought they were human, except humans didn't glow like they had fire beneath their skins. Then the woman turned her face toward us, and her eyes..." His voice trailed off, and there was such a mixture of wonder and pain in him that I almost let it go, but I didn't. I wanted to know, if he wanted to tell me.

  "Her eyes..." I prompted.

  "Her eyes glowed, burned, blue, darker blue, the
n green. I was five, so it wasn't her nakedness, or his body on top of hers, but the wonderment of that white skin and those swirling eyes. Like my eyes, like my skin." He stared past me as if I weren't there. "Agnes dragged me away before they saw us. I was full of questions. She told me to ask my father."

  He blinked and took a deep breath as if he were literally coming back from someplace else. "My father explained about the sidhe, and that I was one of them. My father raised me to believe I was sidhe. I could not be what he was." Sholto gave a harsh laugh. "I cried the first time I realized I would never have wings."

  He looked at me, frowning. "I've never told anyone at court that story. Is this some kind of magic that you have over me?" He didn't actually believe it was a spell, or he'd be more upset, maybe even frightened.

  "Who else at the court but me would understand what the story meant?" I asked.

  He looked at me for a long moment, then slowly nodded. "Yes, though your body is not marred as mine, you, too, do not belong. They won't let you belong." That last was said for both of us, I think.

  His hands lay on the table so tightly clasped that they were mottled. I touched his hands, and he jerked away as if I'd hurt him. He'd slid his hands out of reach, but stopped in midmotion. I watched the effort it took for him to put his hands back within my reach. He acted like someone who expected to be hurt.

  I covered his large hands with one of mine, or covered as much as I could. He smiled, and it was the first real smile I'd seen, because this one was uncertain, not sure of its welcome. I don't know what he saw on my face, but whatever it was it reassured him, because he opened his hands, and took my hand in his, raising it slowly to his lips. He didn't so much kiss my hand, as press his mouth to it. It was a surprisingly tender gesture. Loneliness can be a bond stronger than most. Who else at either court understood our hearts better than each other? Not love, or friendship, but a bond nonetheless.

  His gaze rose to meet mine, as he raised his face from my hand. The look in his eyes was one I rarely saw among the sidhe, open, raw. There was a need in his eyes so large it was like staring into an endless void, a deep yawning pit of some missing thing. It made his eyes wild like some creature's, or a feral child's. Something untamed, but badly wounded. Did my eyes ever look like that? I hoped not.