A Caress of Twilight mg-2

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I'd done my best reasoning, she'd even agreed with it, and it hadn't helped us. I looked from one man to the other. "At this point, I'm open to suggestions." I hoped Andais thought I meant suggestions on who to invite in or who to replace. But I hoped that the men understood that I was still wanting a way out of all this.

  "Nicca is less dominant," Frost said slowly.

  Had he understood what I meant?

  "Or Kitto," Doyle said.

  "Kitto had his turn today, and Nicca isn't due for two more nights. I think everyone would agree on Nicca being moved ahead before they would agree to Kitto being allowed two turns back-to-back."

  "Agree?" the queen said. "Why do the men have to agree to anything? Don't you just pick among them, Meredith?"

  "Not really. We've got a schedule and we usually stick to it."

  "A schedule, a schedule?" She began to smile, then to grin. "And how did you arrive at this schedule?"

  "It was alphabetical," I said, trying not to sound as puzzled as I felt.

  "She has an alphabetical schedule, alphabetical." She began to laugh, a low trickle of sound at first, then it grew into a huge genuine belly laugh. She half doubled over, clutching at her sides, laughing until tears trailed out of her eyes to trickle through the blood.

  Belly laughs are usually infectious; strangely, this one was not. Or rather, it wasn't to us. I could hear others behind her joining in. Ezekiel and his assistants probably thought it was a hoot. Torturers have such an odd sense of humor.

  The laughter slowed, and finally Andais stood up again, wiping at her eyes. I think we were all holding our breaths, wondering what she'd say. She managed to gasp, laughter still thick in her voice, "You have given me the first true pleasure of the day, and for that I will give you all a reprieve. Though I fail to see what is so wrong with doing in front of me what you will do when I leave you. I do not see the difference."

  Wisely, we kept our opinions to ourselves. I think we all knew that if she didn't already understand the difference, there was no way to explain it to her.

  The queen went away, leaving the three of us to stare into the mirror. I looked shell-shocked, stunned by our near miss. Doyle's face showed almost nothing. Frost got to his feet and screamed, a sound of such rage that it reverberated through the room and brought the others to the door with guns drawn.

  Rhys looked around the room, puzzled. "What's happened?"

  Frost wheeled toward him, naked, unarmed, but there was something fearsome in him. "We are not animals to be paraded for her amusement!"

  Doyle stood up, motioning the others back. Rhys looked at me, and I nodded. They left, closing the door softly behind them.

  Doyle spoke softly to Frost. Some of it was simple soothing talk, but some was more insistent. "We are safe now, Frost," I heard Doyle tell him. "She cannot hurt us here."

  Frost raised his head and grabbed Doyle by the shoulders. The pressure of his pale hands mottled Doyle's dark skin. "Don't you understand yet, Doyle? If we are not the one who fathers Merry's child, then we are back to being Andais's playthings, her neglected playthings. I don't think I could bear it again, Doyle." He shook him, just a little. "I can't go back to that, Doyle, I can't!" He shook the other man, back and forth, back and forth.

  I kept expecting Doyle to break his grip, to force him away, but he didn't. He'd raised his forearms to grip Frost's arms. Other than that he'd remained immobile.

  I caught the shine of tears through the silver of Frost's hair. He slowly fell to his knees, his hands sliding down Doyle's arms, but never losing contact. He pressed the top of his head against the other man, his hands holding on. "I can't do it, Doyle. I cannot do it. I'd rather die. I'll let myself fade first."

  With that last choked word he began to cry in earnest, great racking sobs that seemed to come from deep, deep inside him. Frost cried as if it would break him in two.

  Doyle let him cry, and when he had quieted, Doyle helped me get Frost into bed. We laid him between us, Doyle spooning from the back, and me entwined from the front. There was nothing sexual about it. We held him while he cried himself to sleep. Doyle and I gazed at each other over Frost's curled body. The look in Doyle's eyes, his face, was more frightening than the sight of Andais covered in gore.

  I watched a fearful purpose be born that night. Maybe it had been born a long time ago, and I just hadn't noticed. Doyle wouldn't go back, either. I saw it in his eyes. We held Frost; and finally we both slept, as well.

  Sometime during the night Doyle got up and left us. I woke up when he moved, but Frost did not. Doyle kissed me gently on the forehead, then laid his hand against the soft glimmer of Frost's hair.

  He spoke softly, his deep voice like a purr, more than a whisper. "I promise."

  I raised up enough to ask, "Promise what?"

  He just smiled, shook his head, and left, closing the door softly behind him.

  I snuggled down beside Frost, but sleep eluded me. My thoughts weren't friendly enough for sleep. Dawn's light had greyed the window before I drifted into a fitful rest.

  I dreamed that I stood beside Andais in the Hallway of Mortality. All the men were chained to the torture devices, untouched, unharmed, the only shining clean things in all that dark place. Andais kept trying to get me to join her in torturing them. I refused, and I wouldn't let her touch them. She threatened me and them, and I kept refusing her, and my refusal somehow made it so she couldn't touch them. I refused until Frost's small whimpering woke me. He was twitching in his sleep, struggling. I woke him as gently as I could, stroking down his arm. He woke with a scream half-choked in his throat, eyes wild.

  The scream had brought the other men to the door. I waved them away as I hugged Frost to me. "It's all right, Frost, it's all right. It was just a dream."

  He choked on that and spoke fiercely, his face buried against my body, his arms hugging me so tight it hurt. "Not a dream, real. I remember it. I will always remember it."

  Doyle was the last one in the doorway, closing it slowly. I met his dark eyes, and I knew what he'd promised.

  "I'll keep you safe, Frost," I said.

  "You can't," he said.

  "I promise I'll keep you safe, all of you."

  He raised his hand, covered my mouth with his fingers. "Don't promise, Merry, don't promise that. Don't be forsworn for something you have no hope of doing. No one else heard. I forgive it. You never said it."

  Doyle's face was just a dark shape in the nearly closed door. "But I did say it, Frost, and I meant it. I will make the Summerlands into a wasteland before I let her have you back," I said. The moment the words left my mouth, there was a slight sound, though not a sound, it was almost as if the very air held its breath. It was as if in that moment reality itself froze, and then remade itself, just a little bit different than it had been.

  Frost crawled out of bed and wouldn't look at me. "You're going to get yourself killed, Merry." He walked into the bathroom without looking back. I heard the shower a few moments later.

  Doyle opened the door enough to salute me with his gun, as if it had been a sword, touching the side of the weapon to his forehead, then bringing it out and down. I nodded my acknowledgment of the gesture. Then he blew me a kiss with his other hand and closed the door.

  I didn't understand completely what had just happened. I knew what it meant, though. I was now sworn to protect the men from Andais. But I had felt the world shift, as if fate itself had shivered. Something had changed in the well-orchestrated run of the universe. It had changed because I vowed to protect the men. That one statement had changed things. I had made the fates blink, but I wouldn't know if I'd bettered myself or worsened until it was far, far too late.

  Chapter 32

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

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

  "Who is it?" Rhys asked.

  "Meredith's mother." He sounded puzzled.

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

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

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

  "Would you like more company?" Doyle asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Daughter, how good to see you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Why, thank you, Mother."

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

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

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

  "Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Just answer the question, Mother."

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

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

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

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