[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Excite her,” Rhys said.

  I shivered, and the moth fanned its wings, as if it felt my nervousness. Which made its body pull on my skin again. It was as if I could feel its legs inside my body. I had to swallow hard, to keep my stomach from being very unhappy with me.

  “Did it move again?” Galen asked.

  I nodded.

  “I do not like feeling its legs move inside my body.”

  I nodded again.

  “Don’t worry,” Rhys said, “they won’t stay this alive.”

  The door opened, and Adair stuck his helmeted head in to say, “The food has arrived, Doyle.” He looked at me, and added, “Good to see you awake, Princess.”

  “Good to be awake.” I frowned around at the room. “Though a little more light would be nice.” The light that was everywhere and nowhere in most of the sithen began to seep through the room.

  “My, my, my,” Rhys said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “When the lights went out in your room, the entire sithen went dark,” Doyle said.

  “Nothing we did could get the lights back on,” Rhys said.

  I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “Until . . .”

  “Until you requested a little more light,” Rhys said. “Yeah, the queen is going to have mixed feelings about the sithen’s new affection for you.”

  “Mixed how?” I asked.

  “Happy you’re so powerful, pissed that the sithen isn’t listening to her anymore.”

  I licked my dry lips.

  “Enough of this until after they’ve eaten.” Doyle called for the food to be brought in. Kitto came with a tray, and others followed behind with drink. Frost came as the first of the guards that just carried weapons. He looked at me, and gave me a smile that seemed to be reserved just for me. If he had any of Doyle’s qualms about the new “tattoos” of power, they did not show. Maybe he was simply too relieved to see me awake. Or perhaps he worried less about power than Doyle did. Or maybe I didn’t understand my two men as much as I thought I did. Me, not understanding the men in my life? That I believed.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE STEW WAS THICK WITH BEEF, THE BROTH DARK AND HEAVY with a faint tang of some meaty ale to balance the sweetness of the onions. Maggie May knew my favorite dishes, and this one had been on the list since before my father and I left faerie for the human world, when I was six. My eyes got hot, and my throat tight. It was the same stew it had always been, and it was nice to have something that hadn’t changed, something that was the same as it had always been.

  “Merry,” Galen said, “are you crying?”

  I shook my head, then nodded.

  He put his butterfly-free arm around my shoulders, hugging me close. I must have bent over too much, because the moth on my stomach fluttered frantically. The feel of it struggling in my skin made the good stew roll uneasily. I sat up very straight. I had good posture, but until the moth was truly a tattoo, no slumping.

  “Do you hurt?” Doyle asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You flinched,” he said.

  “The moth didn’t like me slumping,” I said. My voice was much steadier than my eyes. My voice didn’t sound like I was crying, not one little bit.

  Kitto moved between the table he’d set up, and raised his finger to my face. He came away with a tear shining on the tip of his finger. He raised it to his lips, and licked my tear from his skin.

  It made me smile, and the tears fell a little faster because of it, as if I’d been holding my eyes very still to keep the tears from falling. “The stew is one of my favorite dishes. It hasn’t changed. Everything else is changing, and I’m no longer certain that all the changes will be good.”

  I leaned into the warmth of Galen’s body, and gazed at the others. I suddenly knew what I wanted. “Kiss me,” I said.

  “Who are you speaking to?” Frost asked.

  “All of you.”

  Galen bent down toward me, and I raised my face to him. His lips touched mine, and my body moved of its own volition. My arms swept up his body, and we embraced as we kissed. My hands explored the naked warmth of his body, not as foreplay, but because twice in less than a day I had thought the darkness would take one or both of us, and we would never again hold each other this side of the grave.

  We kissed, and his hands were strong and gentle on my body, and the tears came faster.

  Galen broke the kiss first, but hugged me tighter, and said, “Merry, Merry, don’t cry.”

  “Let her cry,” Rhys said. “To have a woman waste tears over you is not a bad thing.” He stepped up to me, where I still sat on the edge of the bed. He wiped my face with his good hand. “Are any of these tears for me?”

  I nodded wordlessly, and touched his arm in its sling. He wiggled the fingers a little. “It will heal.”

  I nodded again. “I sent you out into the snow, and didn’t even say good-bye.”

  He frowned at me, his one good eye perplexed. “You don’t love me enough to shed tears at the thought of missing our last good-bye.” He wiped fresh tears away with his hand, still frowning.

  I searched his face, the scars that had stolen his eye long before I was born. I traced the lines of those marks in his skin. I put a hand on either side of his shoulders, and drew him close to me, until I could lay a kiss upon the smoothness of the scar where his other eye should have been.

  The thought that he was right, that I didn’t love him that much, made me cry harder, though I wasn’t sure why. It just seemed wrong. Wrong that I sent him out into the dark and the cold, and hadn’t cared enough to say good-bye. If someone’s willing to die for you, shouldn’t you care? Shouldn’t it matter more than that?

  I moved my face back enough to kiss him gently on the lips. He came to that kiss still puzzled, hesitating, so that even as we kissed, his body was stiff and uneasy. I balled my hands into the cloth of his suit jacket, pulling him down to me, forcing him to catch himself on the bed with his one hand.

  I kissed him as if I would climb inside him. He responded to the fierceness of my mouth with his own. He let me pull him down onto the bed, onto me, though he was awkward with the one arm in a sling. His body pressed against me, but it was as if his clothes offended me. I wanted bare flesh. I needed to feel his nakedness against me. To let me know he was real, and all right. That he was all right with being third in command. With not being my greatest love, and still having to risk his life as if he was. I wanted to hold him and tell him I was sorry that my heart didn’t have room for everyone, and most of all that he could have died out there in the dark and the cold, and we would never have known. That I wouldn’t have known. The Goddess had warned me to protect Galen and Barinthus. But it was as if Rhys wasn’t important enough to her to waste such power.

  I would never be able to send him away again without wondering if I sent him to his death. I pulled his shirt out of his pants. I had to touch more of him. I had to tell him with my hands and my body that he did mean something to me. That I did see him. That I never wanted him to die in the dark where I could not find him.

  He propped himself up on his good arm, so that I could slide the shirt free. I meant to run my hands over that pale skin, but Rhys let himself fall back upon my body, pressing his mouth hungrily against mine. I’d forgotten the moth. I’d forgotten everything but the feel of his body pressed against mine.

  Pain, sharp and immediate like tiny needles, pierced the skin of my stomach. Rhys cursed, and drew back from me, as if something had bitten him, and maybe it had.

  He raised up on his knees, and showed his stomach. It looked like a bloody version of the moth on my stomach. He touched it, and it was flat, one-dimensional. The skin around the outline and colors was ridged and red, puffy and swollen, but I could see the image of the moth on his stomach.

  The other men crowded round, and it was Galen who asked, “It’s not the same thing we have, is it?”

  “No.” Doyle touched it ever so gently, and even that made Rhys
flinch.

  “Ow,” Rhys said.

  Doyle smiled. “Either the moth did not like being crushed or . . .”

  “Yes,” Frost said.

  “It cannot be,” Hawthorne said.

  “It cannot be what?” Galen asked.

  “A calling.” Doyle was pulling his black T-shirt out of his pants. I was about to point out that he’d never get the shirt off without taking his shoulder holster off first, but he raised the neck of the shirt over his head so that it sat behind his shoulders, still covering his arms, but leaving his chest and stomach bare.

  “What is a calling?” I asked.

  “What were you thinking just before you kissed Rhys?” he asked.

  “That I didn’t want him to go into the dark alone, and not be able to find him.”

  Rhys slid off the bed, acting as if he hurt, but he was using both arms again. He noticed it, too, because he took his arm out of the sling, flexing his fingers. “Healed.” He looked down at the wound on his stomach, then up at me. “It’s always the doom of any relationship to get matching tattoos.” He tried to make a joke of it, but his face didn’t match the lightness of his words.

  I touched the moth on me, and it still flicked its wings, irritated at the touch. “Mine’s still alive.”

  Doyle crawled up on the bed, and for once I moved back from him. “Explain, Doyle.” I put a hand up, not touching, but ready to keep him away from my body.

  “It may be that your mark of power simply struck out in irritation. They can do such things.” He was above me now, on all fours, so that his body straddled mine but did not quite touch me. “But if it is a calling, then it will enable you to do just what you wish. You will be able to find Rhys in the dark or the light. You will have only to think of him, and your mark will guide you to him. Some of them would alert the bearer of the mark if the one they had called was in danger or injured.”

  “A true calling could do many things,” Frost said.

  “There has not been a true calling among us for centuries,” Hawthorne said.

  “How can you doubt,” Adair said, and he had removed his helmet, so I could see him smiling. He looked so sure of it all. “She is our ameraudur.”

  Doyle started to lie down on top of me, but I kept my hand in the way. I had more questions before we continued with our little experiment. The moment my hand touched his bare chest, the pain was sharp and immediate. But it wasn’t my hand that hurt, it was my chest, exactly where I touched Doyle. Blood trickled down his chest, just below the silver nipple ring. Other than a tightness around his eyes, he didn’t react to the pain at all.

  “That answers one question.” Nicca moved to the far side of the bed, lounging and seemingly perfectly at ease. “It isn’t just the mark not wanting to be touched.”

  Doyle bent down to give me a quick kiss. Nothing hurt, and a tightness in my shoulders eased that I hadn’t even realized was there.

  He smiled down at me, a quick flash in his dark face. “You did say you wanted a kiss.”

  “Why does this please you so much? It bloody hurts.”

  The smile faded. “I am never happy to cause you pain, Meredith, but that you are marking us, that is a great thing.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It means you are a power.” Rhys did not look pleased. “Once I marked others, but when I joined the queen’s service, she marked me. Then even that faded, and there were no more marks, not like this.” He ran his fingers lightly over the raised and reddened skin.

  Hafwyn spoke in a low voice. “Do you want me to bandage them?”

  “Until they heal, yes,” Doyle said, and slid off the bed.

  “The queen will be pleased, but others will not be,” Hawthorne said. “There are those who always believed the marks were a sign of servitude to one greater than themselves. A mark that said plainly, this person is my master.”

  I looked at him still covered in armor, helmet in place. “Is that how you feel about it?”

  “I did once,” he said.

  Frost pushed up his jacket sleeve to bare his lower arm. “If the marks work as they should, it will be important to be able to see them. They will carry messages between us, warnings. As much as I would love to press my body against yours, I would rather the sign be on my arm where it is easily seen.”

  Doyle sighed. “Better strategy than the chest. I did not think.”

  “You were befuddled with her beauty and the promise of power.”

  Doyle sighed again. “Yes.”

  Frost held his arm out toward me. I sat up carefully, still not wanting the moth to struggle. “Why does it hurt me every time? There are no marks on my skin.”

  “You already bear the mark,” Frost said. “As for the pain . . .” He smiled at me gently, his eyes full of some knowledge that I did not have. “Merry, you should know by now that no power comes without a price.”

  I would have liked to argue, but I couldn’t. He was right. I stared at his pale, muscular arm, waiting. I took a deep breath, and let it out as I laid my hand on him. His breath hissed out between his teeth.

  I made no sound for a moment, then my breath came back in a gasp. I looked at Galen and Nicca still on the bed. “If we all three have marks, then what happens if we touch each other?”

  “Let us not find out, not tonight,” Doyle said. “I do not know if it would work as it should between the three of you, not with all of you so . . . fresh.”

  Kitto came to stand beside Frost. “I would gladly carry your symbol, Merry.”

  I had to smile at him. If the marks really could help us keep track of one another, I didn’t want to leave Kitto out. “Your arm, then.”

  He held his arm out, so trusting. I braced for it, and laid my hand on his arm. He hissed, like an angry cat, but did not pull away. When I drew back the moth was bloody on his skin.

  I touched my own arm where it hurt. “Let’s change arms for the next one, okay?”

  “And who will be next?” Ivi said. “Nothing personal, Princess, but I bargained for sex, not slavery.”

  I frowned at him. “What do you mean by ‘slavery’?”

  “The marks mean we are your men,” Doyle said. “They are proof that the Goddess has chosen us for you.”

  “So this won’t work with just anyone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Only with those who are truly meant to be yours.”

  “Define ‘mine’?” I asked.

  Doyle frowned. “I am not sure how to define it, in truth. Sometimes a fighter would come just when you needed him, and he would take oath. Sometimes it was a seeress, but they would be exactly who and what you needed to succeed at whatever quest had begun.”

  “The marks only start collecting people when there’s great need,” Rhys said.

  “But once marked, it cannot be undone,” Hawthorne said.

  “The queen’s marks faded,” I said.

  “Best not say we told you that,” Rhys said. “Not outside this room.”

  “I will gladly take oath to the princess,” Adair said. He laid his helmet on the bedside table and began unfastening the armor at his hands and arms. Frost moved to help him. It was easier to get in and out of plate armor with help.

  I pressed my hand to Adair’s bare forearm, but nothing happened.

  “Shit,” Rhys said.

  Doyle nodded. “To join Andais and prove worthy of her mark, we had to fight.”

  “I do not think fighting will win them Merry’s mark,” Frost said.

  “How important is it to mark them tonight?” Galen asked.

  “The queen will be coming to fetch her for the call,” Frost said.

  “I would feel better if we did at least one. If she lies with Adair and still his skin does not take the mark, then perhaps she has called all she needs to win.” Doyle moved to Adair’s other side to help hurry him out of his armor. Frost, after a moment, went back to working on the other side. They began dismantling Adair’s armor, exposing bits of skin and the undergar
ments that kept the metal from rubbing.

  He looked from one to the other of them, and said, “You are jesting with me?”

  “We do not jest,” Doyle said, as he and Frost undid the straps that held the cuirass. They lifted together and peeled him out of most of the ornate armor. There was still a bandage on his side where Hafwyn had conserved her magic and not healed him completely.

  “I do not share Meredith lightly,” Frost said. He got the last of the armor off the other man. He began to help strip away the cut and bloodstained padding. “But what if we lose our battle because we lack one strong warrior more?” He shook his head hard enough to make his silver hair sparkle in the dim light. “I will not have my jealousy risk her safety, or the safety of my brother guards.” He gazed down at the still bloody wound on his arm. “Meredith is a fertility goddess, among other things, but primarily that is where her power lies. Fighting will not win you her mark.”

  He and Doyle both stepped back, leaving Adair to finish the last of the undergarments himself.

  “If you can win the lady’s favor, then do it,” Frost said, and his voice was almost empty of resentment. He was truly trying.

  Adair looked to Doyle one last time. “And if the mark still does not touch me?”

  “Then you will have ended your long fast, and drunk deep of our lady. For she is our lady. Whether she is yours as well remains to be seen.” Then he stepped away, as had Frost on the other side. Galen and Nicca slid off the bed. Nicca said, “It’s a big bed, but the first time should either be with someone who’s sharing with you, or just you and the lady.”

  I realized then that Biddy was not in the room. I started to ask where she was, then Adair was beside the bed. He was nude. He must have stripped while I was looking across the bed at Nicca.

  I had seen him nude before, and recently. The queen had made certain he met me at the court naked except for his weapons. Andais was never subtle, and she had been determined that I make love with as many of the vegetative gods as possible. I don’t know if she’d thought their being nude would make us quicker, or if she had believed the sight of them nude would inspire lust in me. He was as beautiful now as he had been then. I expected to see lust, or at least eagerness on his face, but his eyes were downcast, and if anything he seemed reluctant.