[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Hafwyn’s voice came with a thread of anger to it. “Let me see the wound, Aisling.”

  “I dare not let you see more of my body.”

  “I am a healer. We are immune to most of the contact enchantments. If it were otherwise we could not heal the sidhe.”

  Aisling was holding his white cloak close around the bloody front of his tunic.

  “Take off your tunic so I may see your wound.”

  He shook his head, spilling his hood back, and revealing a veil like some of the Arabic countries make their women wear. It was a thin, gauzy, golden cloth, so you saw his head and face through the haze of it. Only his odd eyes were free of the cloth, showing pale skin, and a lace of pale eyelashes.

  “I’d forgotten that you covered your face,” I said, and hadn’t really meant to say it out loud.

  “Much is forgotten,” he said, hands still holding his cloak around his bloody side.

  “I said I forgot that you covered your face, not why.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hafwyn said, “the most beautiful man in the world. So beautiful that if a woman, or even some men, look upon your face they will be instantly besotted with you and unable to deny you anything.” She grabbed his cloak and tried to wrench it from his hands, and finished the rest through gritted teeth. “But I am not asking you to take off your veil, just your tunic.”

  “I fear what effect it would have upon a mortal.”

  Hafwyn stopped struggling with him, and leaned back on her heels, I think too surprised to know what to do. I realized then that he meant me. How could I ever truly rule here if they still thought of me as a human?

  Kieran spoke my thoughts out loud. “Even the guard itself thinks of you as only mortal, and not sidhe.”

  I would have argued with him, if I could have. “Are you saying, Aisling, that your bare chest is enough to bespell me?”

  “I have seen it happen before to humans.”

  I gazed up at him, Galen still in my lap. “Aisling, do you think of me as human?”

  He lowered his eyes and would not look at me, which was answer enough. “I guess that’s a yes.”

  “I mean no disrespect, Princess Meredith. If you are sidhe enough to look upon me, that would be a fine thing, but what if I did bespell you? There is only one remedy for the enchantment.”

  “And that would be?”

  “True love. You must be in love with someone else before you can look upon me.”

  “Not entirely true,” Hawthorne said from his place at Melangell’s side. “Aisling’s magic can overcome even true love if he wishes it and tries hard enough. Once he could make anyone fall hopelessly in love with him.”

  “Lust, not love,” Adair said. “There is a difference, you know, Hawthorne.”

  “It has been so long since I had either that I’m not sure I do remember the difference,” Hawthorne said.

  Adair leaned against the wall in the torn remnants of his padding and undershirt. He smiled, tiredly, with an edge of pain to it. “Aye, I hear you.”

  I had this horrible urge to kiss Adair, to take that edge of sorrow from his smile and see if I could get a real one.

  “Can you sit up?” I asked Galen.

  “Yes, but I’m enjoying the attention.” He grinned up at me.

  I bent over him, hugging him with all my body while he lay in my lap. I whispered against his skin, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

  He rubbed his face against my breasts, since they were so conveniently placed. “Me, too.”

  Galen sat up and I waited to make certain he was steady. Just seeing the blood painted on the back of his body tightened my chest all over again. I had to swallow past something hard and crushing in my throat.

  I turned to Adair, still bleeding, still hurting, because I gave an order. I didn’t strike the blow, but I’d put him in harm’s way. I knelt in front of him, reached out to touch his face. He actually flinched, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched, or wasn’t sure if it would hurt. Knowing my aunt, I could understand that.

  “You look sad,” I said. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

  “I’m too hurt to do much, Princess.” His eyes were wide, showing too much white.

  I shook my head. “Would she really offer you intercourse when you were this injured?”

  He understood who “she” was. “She has before, not to me, but . . . others.”

  Offer them sex after years of nothing, when they were too hurt to enjoy it, or too hurt to perform. Auntie Andais was a true sadist.

  “A kiss, Adair, nothing more. Just a kiss, because you seem to need it.”

  He gave me a puzzled look out of his triple yellow eyes. “Just because I need it. I don’t understand.”

  “Are you lesser fey now, to give a kiss because someone needed it,” Kieran said. “It is not a sidhe custom.”

  “No, it isn’t, because we’ve forgotten who we are,” I said, “what we are.”

  “And what are we?” Kieran asked, his voice sneering.

  I leaned in toward Adair. His eyes were still too wide. “The amount of power we raised earlier would hurt me now, Princess.” His voice was breathy, but he was against the wall, and there was nowhere else for him to go.

  “No power, just touch.” I laid a soft, chaste press of lips against Adair’s mouth. He stopped breathing for a moment, and I tasted more fear than desire in him. I drew back from him to watch his face and saw the fear turn to puzzled wonderment.

  “I don’t understand you, Princess.”

  “Because she is not sidhe.”

  “You asked what we are, Kieran.” I turned and looked at the kneeling man. “We are deities of nature. We are, in a way, nature personified. We are not humans, no matter how our form may ape them. We are something else, and too many of us have forgotten that.”

  “How dare you lecture us on what the sidhe are, when you stand as the most human of us all, the most lesser of us all.”

  I stood up, stretching my legs, which were a little stiff from holding the weight of Galen’s upper body. “When I was a child I would have given anything to be one of the tall slender sidhe, but as I have grown into adulthood I value more and more my mixed heritage. I value my brownie blood, my human blood, not just the sidhe blood that runs in my veins.

  “Aisling, take off your shirt. If I am too mortal to look upon your chest, then I am too mortal to be your queen. Let Hafwyn see which of you is the more injured so one of you may be healed.”

  He began to argue.

  “I am Princess of Flesh and Blood, daughter of Essus, and I will be queen. You will do as I order. Adair loses blood while you act like some bashful maiden.”

  Even through the veil I could tell that I’d pricked his pride, and all males are alike when it comes to that. He threw his cloak to the ground and jerked his tunic over his head in one quick motion. He didn’t wait for me to tell him to take off his underthings. He simply stripped them over his head, hesitating only at his face, so he could be sure of keeping his veil in place. I didn’t argue the veil; his face had once bespelled goddesses and sidhe alike.

  It wasn’t his chest that made me stare, though it was a very nice chest, with wide shoulders and a lovely stomach except for the cut that traced blood from his waist to his ribs. What made me stare was his skin, which looked as if it had been sprinkled with gold dust, shining and sparkling in the light. In sunlight he would dazzle the eye. I’d seen his nude back in the midst of all the other guards when the queen had been driven mad by a magical poisoning. She had ordered them all to strip and they’d done it for fear of her.

  “It is as I have feared,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I have seen you nude, Aisling, unless there is someone else with gold dust on their skin.”

  “When she saved us,” Adair said, “you were on the floor.”

  Aisling shivered, though whether from Hafwyn’s hands on his wound or the memory of what the queen had almost done I wasn’t sure. “I had forgotten.”

&
nbsp; “Not so mortal, after all,” Galen said from where he’d moved to sit against the wall.

  “Or perhaps the great Aisling has lost his power,” Melangell said, “and he hides behind his veil not because he can bespell us all, but because he cannot.”

  He stiffened, and this time I was almost certain it wasn’t from anything Hafwyn was doing. “His wound is shallow. Adair needs the healing more.”

  “Then do it. I’m needed with the police.”

  Aisling hugged his bare upper body, as if something hurt him. Melangell laughed.

  Hawthorne put his blade a little closer to her skin, and the laughter quieted, but still chuckled out from between her lips.

  “Why did you attack Galen? Why him?”

  Hafwyn answered, “He was chosen because he is the only one of your guards who is a green man.”

  Melangell hissed, “You don’t know enough to help them.”

  “She’s right,” Hafwyn said as she had Adair lift the cloth around his wound. “I know why they chose him, but not why him being a green man marked him.”

  “Does Melangell know?”

  Hafwyn nodded. “She knows almost everything that the guard plans. Perhaps not everything that the prince did before he was imprisoned, but most.”

  I nodded. “Good.” I went to her, staying well out of reach because even with her hands bound I did not want to risk her touching me. She’d once been able to love a man to death. It wasn’t the sex, but the touch of her skin. She had lost the power, or so I’d been told, but caution was better.

  “I give you one last chance, Melangell. Tell us why you targeted Galen, not once but twice, for we know that Cel paid the demi-fey to try to ruin him. Why is it so important to Cel that I not bed Galen?” I motioned Hawthorne back enough so she could talk if she wanted to.

  “I will not betray my master, for I did take oath to Cel. I never served your weak-willed father.”

  I smiled at her sweetly. “My father is great enough to withstand petty insults. You refuse to answer my questions.”

  “No magic or torture you can devise will make me forget my loyalties.” She shot a spiteful look at Hafwyn, who was busy healing Adair.

  “Aisling, are you well enough to come here for a moment?”

  “It is a scratch, nothing more.” If he’d been human he would have needed at least ten stitches, maybe more. I would not have called it a scratch, but it wasn’t my body. He came to me, his sword naked in his hand.

  “Put up the sword, Aisling.”

  He did, hesitating only a moment. “What would you have of me, Princess, if not my sword?”

  “If you show your face to a sidhe woman will she tell you anything you ask her?”

  “You mean to make her besotted, so we may question her?”

  “Yes.”

  Melangell’s eyes had gone a little wide.

  “I have never used my powers in that way.”

  “Would it work?”

  He thought about it. “Yes.”

  “Then let us see if she will tell us for lust what she will not tell for loyalty.”

  I motioned for the guard on Kanna, the other of Cel’s guard, to turn her to face the far wall. Dogmaela had already gone to the other end of the hallway. She may have had divided loyalties, but not enough to join her kneeling comrades. Or enough to protect them. Interesting that Melangell and Kanna had spoken only to Hafwyn, as if Dogmaela was not even there.

  Aisling’s hands rose to his golden veil. “You should look away, as well, Princess.”

  I nodded and moved back. Though I could admit to myself that there was an almost unbearable urge to look at his face. To look on someone so beautiful that one glimpse would make you fall instantly in lust with them. A beauty so great that one glimpse and you would betray all you held most dear. I did wonder.

  Frost knew me too well, took my arm to move me just a little more to Aisling’s back. He gave me a look, and I shrugged. What could I say?

  Aisling removed his veil, and all I could see was that his hair was yellow and gold, like streaks of honey, and, like the gold in his skin, shining together. It was braided in complicated knots so that it looked much shorter than the hair actually was. If no one could look upon his face, who did his hair?

  “She has closed her eyes,” he said.

  “Hawthorne, cut her eyelids off. They’ll grow back.”

  She did what I’d hoped she’d do; at the first touch of the knife tip, she opened her eyes. Her eyes blinked, and Hawthorne moved the knife back. Her gaze moved up Aisling’s body, as if drawn against her will. I knew when she reached his face because I saw it in her eyes. Saw the shock of it over her face. It was a frightened look, as if she looked not upon great beauty, but great ugliness.

  Hawthorne turned his face away. Lord Kieran did, too. Only Crystall looked upon Aisling’s naked face without flinching. He smiled, as if he saw something wonderful. His clear, white skin filled with radiance, as if the sight had kindled his magic. Only when his hair was shot through with color like prisms in the light did he turn away, as if he could not bear the sight any longer.

  Melangell screamed, and it was a sound of irretrievable loss. The echo of it died on the stones, and her eyes filled with . . . love. It wasn’t lust, no matter what Adair had said. Her eyes filled with the mindless devotion of teenagers in their first crush, or newlyweds on a perfect honeymoon. She looked at Aisling as if he were her entire world.

  Melangell had never liked Aisling, never had much use for him. Now she looked at him the way a flower gazes at the sun, and it made me sick to see it. I didn’t like Melangell, but this was . . . wrong. If there was no cure for it, then I had done something far worse to her than any torture I could have devised. To be hopelessly, completely in love with someone who hated you. There isn’t even a level in Dante’s hell for that.

  Frost seemed to understand because he said, “Aisling, ask her the question.”

  “Why did you attack Galen?”

  “To kill him.” Maybe she wasn’t as totally besotted as she appeared.

  “Why did you want to kill him?”

  “Because Prince Cel wants him out of Meredith’s bed.”

  “Why does he want that?”

  Melangell shook her head hard, as if trying to clear her thoughts.

  Aisling knelt in front of her, putting his face and upper body close to her. “Why does Cel want Galen out of Princess Meredith’s bed?”

  She’d closed her eyes again. “No,” she said, “no.”

  “You cannot close me out of your mind, Melangell. You have seen me. You cannot unsee me now.” His voice was a whisper, but it seemed to trail down my skin. It made me shiver and it wasn’t directed at me.

  Frost whispered against my ear, “Her power was once similar to his; it may mean she can escape him.”

  “She could kill with her touch.”

  “But how do you get a man to touch you, Meredith? By making them want you.”

  It made sense, though frankly Melangell was beautiful enough without the extra lure.

  He leaned in and I thought he would kiss her, but she pushed backwards as far as Hawthorne would let her go. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  “You said my power had faded, Melangell. Why fear my touch if I am but a ghost of what I was? Why does Cel want Galen out of Meredith’s bed?” He grabbed her face between his hands, and she screamed, though not in pain. “I am willing to test my magic against yours, Melangell.” He kissed her, long and lingering.

  Frost had tensed beside me. Which meant that once even a kiss from Melangell had been a dangerous thing. That I had not known. Dangerous indeed.

  Aisling drew back, and her face was raw with need. “My sweet, tell me, why does Prince Cel want Galen out of Meredith’s bed?”

  She swallowed hard enough that I heard it across the room, but she answered, “The prophecy said the green man would bring life back to the court.”

  “What prophecy?” Aisling asked.

  “
Cel paid a prophet to tell him if Meredith would be a true threat. She would bring life back to the court with the help of the green man and the chalice. Galen was the only green man that she took with her. When we saw what she did at the press conference, we knew that he was her green knight.”

  “Has it occurred to any of you that green man is a metaphor for vegetative deities, or even another name for the consort?” I asked.

  Melangell ignored me, but when Aisling asked the same question, she answered, “Prince Cel said the prophecy meant Galen.”

  “And do you believe everything Cel tells you?” I asked. When Aisling repeated the question, she answered, “Yes.”

  “Fool,” Hafwyn said from behind us.

  “What else did the prophecy say?” Aisling asked.

  “That if someone of flesh and blood sat on the throne, Cel would die.”

  “What did he think ‘flesh and blood’ meant?”

  “Mortal.”

  “You all must have been frantic when the princess returned with flesh and blood as her hands of power.”

  “Yes,” Melangell said.

  “Is there anything else Cel has done that we should know about?” Aisling asked, and I made a mental note that he was a thorough man.

  She bent forward as if in pain. Hawthorne had moved back, as if he wasn’t comfortable touching her. His power was not similar to either of theirs, so maybe he was in danger of being bespelled by Melangell. Whatever the reason, when her hands moved, the cloth that tied them unwound, and since Hawthorne was turned away, he did not see it. Aisling went for his sword, but he was kneeling and at a bad angle. Her hands came up, and she clawed her eyes out while we watched. Only when blood and wet liquid ran down her face did she stop.

  “You cannot force more secrets from me now,” she said, and her voice was full of her usual rage.