A Kiss of Shadows

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  But Siobhan’s magic was not natural, and she could not pass. Understanding even that much might—might give me the key to her destruction. But it was going to take someone more adept at offensive spells than I to unravel the key.

  There was movement beyond our little group. Cel and Siobhan turned to see this latest threat, and when they saw it was Doyle, their bodies didn’t relax. The prince and heir to the dark throne and his personal guard were afraid of the queen’s Darkness. That was interesting. Three years ago Cel had not feared Doyle. He had feared no one except his mother. Even there he did not fear death, because he was all she had to pass her blood along. Her only child. Her only heir. No one challenged Cel to a duel, ever, because you dared not win, and to lose might mean your own death. He’d passed through the last three centuries untouched, unchallenged, unafraid, until now.

  Now I saw, almost felt, Cel’s unease. He was afraid. Why?

  Doyle was dressed in a black, hooded cape that swept around his ankles and hid all of him. His face was so dark that the whites of his eyes seemed to float in the black circle of his hood. “What goes on here, Prince Cel?”

  Cel moved off the path so he could keep Doyle and the rest of us in sight. Siobhan moved with him. Keelin remained on the path, but the power was folding away, as if the power moved on the wind and was sweeping past us to travel elsewhere. It gave a last cool, spice-laden caress and slipped away.

  I was suddenly solid once more inside my own skin. There was a price for all magic, but not this. It had offered itself to me. I had not asked. Maybe that was why I felt strong and whole instead of exhausted.

  Keelin came down the path toward me, her primary hands held out toward me. She must have felt renewed as I did, because she was smiling and that awful pinched fear was gone, washed away in the sweet wind.

  I took her hands in mine. We kissed each other twice on both cheeks, then I drew her into the circle of my arms and she hugged me across the shoulders with her upper arms, around the waist with the smaller lower ones. We held each other so tightly that I could feel the press of her small breasts, all four of them. The thought came: Had Cel enjoyed being with someone with that many breasts? An image came on the heels of the thought. I squeezed my eyes tight as if I could rid myself of the image.

  I ran my hand down her back through her thick, furlike hair and realized I was already crying.

  Keelin’s sweet almost birdlike voice was comforting me. “It’s all right, Merry. It’s all right.”

  I shook my head and pulled back so I could see her face. “It’s not all right.”

  She touched my face, catching my tears on her fingers. She couldn’t cry. Some trick of genetics had left her without tear ducts. “You always cried my tears for me, but don’t cry now.”

  “How can I not?” I glanced back at Cel who was talking in low whispers to Doyle. Siobhan was looking at me, staring at me. I could feel her dead gaze through the helmet she wore, even if I couldn’t see her eyes. She would not forget that I had used magic against her and won, or rather not lost. She would neither forget nor forgive it.

  But that was a problem for another night. I turned back to Keelin. One disaster at a time, please. My hands went to the hardened leather collar around her neck.

  She touched my wrists. “What are you doing, Merry?”

  “Taking this off of you.”

  She pulled my hands down, gently. “No.”

  I shook my head. “How can you . . . How could you?”

  “Don’t cry again,” Keelin said. “You know why I did it. I only have a few more weeks, just until Samhain. Three years to the day. If I’m not with child, then I am free of him. If I am with child, he’ll have to treat me as a wife should be treated, or not touch me at all.”

  She was so calm about it, a terrible, solid calm, as if it were quite . . . ordinary. “I do not understand this,” I said.

  “I know. But you’ve always been of royal blood, Merry.” She reached up a free hand to touch my lips before I could protest, her other hands still holding my hands. “I know you have been treated like a poor relation, Merry, but you are a part of them. Their blood flows in your veins, and they . . .” She hung her head, dropping her hand from my mouth, but gripped my hands all the tighter. “You are a member of the club, Merry. You’re inside the great house, while we wait outside in the cold and the snow with our faces pressed to the glass.”

  I looked away from those tender brown eyes. “You’re using my own metaphor against me.”

  She touched my face with her left upper hand, her dominant hand. “I heard you use it often enough as we were growing up.”

  “If I had asked, would you have come with me?”

  She smiled, but even by moonlight it was bitter. “Unless you could be with me every hour of the day or night, you couldn’t use your glamour to protect me.” She shook her head. “I am far too hideous for human eyes.”

  “You are not—”

  She stopped me this time with only a glance. “I am like you, Merry. I am neither durig nor brownie.”

  “What of Kurag? He cared for you.”

  She lowered her face. “It is true that among a certain type of goblin I am considered quite striking. Having extra limbs, especially extra breasts is a mark of great beauty among them.”

  I smiled. “I remember the year you took me to the Goblin’s Ball. They considered me plain.”

  Keelin smiled but shook her head. “But they all tried to dance with you, ugly or not.” She looked up, gathering my gaze into hers. “They all wanted to touch the skin of a blooded royal princess, because they knew that short of rape it was as close as they would ever get to that sweet body of yours.”

  I didn’t know how to react to the bitterness in her voice.

  “It’s not your fault that you look as you do, and I look as I do. It’s no one’s fault. We are what we are. Through you I saw the court and all the gleaming throng. I couldn’t go back to Kurag and his goblins after the life you’d shown me. I would have been content to stand behind your chair at banquets for the rest of my days, but to have it suddenly gone . . .” She dropped my hands and moved back from me. “I could not bear to lose everything when you left.” She laughed; the laughter was still birdlike, but it was mocking now, and I heard Cel’s echo in it. “Besides, Cel likes a four-breasted woman and says he’s never slept with anyone that could wrap two sets of legs around his white body.”

  Keelin made a small dry sobbing sound, and I knew that she was crying. Simply because she had no tears didn’t mean she could not weep.

  She turned and walked back toward Cel. I let her go. She blamed me for showing her the moon when she could not have it. Maybe Keelin was right. Maybe I had used her ill, but I had not meant to. Of course, not meaning to did not make it hurt less.

  I took some very slow deep breaths of the autumn air, trying not to cry again. The air was still as sweet as before, but some of the pleasure had gone out of it.

  “I am sorry, Meredith,” Barinthus said.

  “Don’t be sorry for me, Barinthus, I’m not the one at the end of Cel’s leash.”

  Galen touched my shoulder, and started to hug me, but I held him away with one arm. “Don’t, please. If you comfort me, I’ll cry.”

  He gave a quick smile. “I’ll try to remember that for future reference.”

  Doyle glided toward us. He’d pushed the cloak hood back, but it was almost impossible to tell where his black hair ended and the black cloak began. What I could see was that the front part of his hair had been gathered in a small bun in the center of his head, leaving his exotic pointed ears bare. The silver earrings gleamed in the moonlight. He’d changed some of them to larger hoops so that they brushed together as he moved, making a small chiming music. When he was standing in front of us, I could see that he had hoops graced by feathers so long they brushed his shoulders.

  “Barinthus, Galen, I believe our prince gave you orders.”

  Barinthus moved forward to stand towering over
the smaller man. If Doyle was intimidated by the other’s sheer physical presence, it didn’t show. “Prince Cel said he would escort Meredith to the queen. I thought that unwise.”

  Doyle nodded. “I will escort Meredith to the queen.” He looked past Barinthus to me. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I think he gave that small, small smile of his. “I believe that our royal prince has had quite enough of his cousin for one meeting. I did not know you could call the Earth.”

  “I did not call it. It offered itself to me,” I said.

  I heard him draw a long breath and let it out. “Ah, that is different. In some ways not as powerful as those who can wrest the Earth from her course. In some ways more unsettling, because the land welcomed you home. It acknowledges you. Interesting.”

  He turned back to Barinthus. “I believe you are wanted elsewhere, both of you.” His voice was very quiet, but underneath the ordinary words was something dark and threatening. Doyle had always been able to control his men with his voice, inflicting the mildest words with the most ominous threats.

  “Do I have your word that she will come to no harm?” Barinthus asked.

  Galen moved up beside Barinthus. He touched the taller man’s arm. Asking such a thing was almost the same as questioning orders. That could get you flayed alive.

  “Barinthus,” Galen said.

  “I give you my word that she will arrive in the queen’s presence unharmed.”

  “That is not what I asked,” Barinthus said.

  Doyle stepped close enough to Barinthus that his cloak mingled with the taller man’s coat. “Have a care, sea god, that you do not ask more than you should.”

  “Which means that you fear for her safety at the queen’s hand, as do I,” Barinthus said, voice neutral.

  Doyle raised a hand that was outlined with green fire. I was walking toward them before I had time to think of anything good to say when I got there.

  Barinthus kept his attention on Doyle and that burning hand, but Doyle watched me stride toward them. Galen stood near them, obviously unsure what to do. He started to reach for me, to stop me, I think.

  “Stand aside, Galen. I don’t plan to do anything foolish.”

  He hesitated, then stepped back and left me to face the other two men. The fire on Doyle’s hand painted them both with greenish-yellow light shadows. Doyle’s eyes didn’t so much reflect the fire as seem to burn in sympathy with it. This close I could feel not just his power like a march of insects down my skin, but the slow rise of Barinthus’s power like the sea pulling toward the shore.

  I shook my head. “Stop it, both of you.”

  “What did you say?” Doyle asked.

  I pushed Barinthus back, hard enough for him to stumble. Maybe I couldn’t lift small cars and beat people to death with them, but I could put my fist through a car door, all the way through, and not break my hand. I pushed him again and again, until there was enough distance that I wasn’t afraid they were about to come to blows.

  “You have been ordered once by the royal heir, and once by the captain of your guard. Obey your orders and go. Doyle has given you his word that I will come to the queen in safety.”

  Barinthus looked at me. His face was neutral, but his eyes were not. Doyle had always been one of the obstacles between the queen and an untimely death. For a moment I wondered if Barinthus was looking for an excuse to try the queen’s Darkness. If so, I wasn’t going to give it to him. To kill Doyle would be the beginning of a revolution. I stared into Barinthus’s face and tried to understand what he was thinking. Had it been the land’s welcome to me? Or was there some new tension between the two men, that I had not been told about? It didn’t matter.

  “No,” I said. I kept our gazes locked, and said again, “No.”

  Barinthus looked past me to set those eyes on Doyle.

  Doyle turned his free hand so that it came together with the burning one to form a single wick of both hands.

  I stepped between him and Barinthus. “Stop the theatrics, Doyle. I’m coming.”

  I could feel the two of them watching each other like a weight pressing in the air. There’d always been tension between them, but not like this.

  I walked to Doyle until the colored fire cast sickly shadows on my face and clothes. I stood close enough that I could feel that the fire gave nothing, no heat, no life, nothing, but it was not illusion. I’d seen what Doyle’s fire could do. As with Siobhan’s hands, it could kill.

  I had to do something to break the tension between them. I’d seen too many duels start over less. Too much blood, too much death over such stupid things.

  I touched each of Doyle’s elbows and moved my hands slowly up his forearms. “Seeing Keelin has taken some of the heart from me, as Andais knew it would, so take me to her.” My hands slid slowly up his arms, and I realized that his black skin was bare; he was wearing short sleeves under that long cloak.

  “The land welcomes you, little one, and you grow bold,” Doyle said.

  “That wasn’t bold, Doyle.” My hands were almost at his wrists, almost inside the sickly flames. There was no heat to warn me off, only my own memories of watching a man writhe and die covered in crawling green flame. “This—is bold.” I did two things simultaneously. I brought my hands sliding upward into where the flame was and blew a breath out like blowing out a candle.

  The flames vanished as if I’d snuffed them out, which I had not. Doyle had killed them a fraction of a heartbeat before my skin touched them.

  I was close enough that by moonlight I could see he was shaken, frightened at what I’d almost done. “You are mad.”

  “You gave your word I would reach the queen unharmed. You always keep your word, Doyle.”

  “You trusted me to not harm you.”

  “I trusted your sense of honor, yes.”

  He glanced back at Cel and Siobhan. Keelin had joined them again. Cel was staring at us. There was a look on his face that said he almost believed I’d done exactly what it looked like I’d done—blown out Doyle’s flame.

  I kept one hand on Doyle’s wrist and blew my cousin a kiss with my free hand.

  He actually jumped as if that windblown kiss had struck him. Keelin had cuddled close to him and was staring back at me with what I knew now were not entirely friendly eyes.

  Siobhan stepped in front of them, and this time she drew her sword in a shining line of cold steel. I knew the handle was carved bone, and the armor was bronze; but for killing we used steel or iron. She had a bronze short sword at her side, but she’d drawn the steel blade that rested against her back. For defense she’d have drawn the bronze, but she had drawn steel. She drew to kill. Nice to know she was being honest.

  Doyle grabbed me by both arms and turned me to face him. “I do not want to fight Siobhan tonight because you have frightened your cousin.”

  His fingers dug into my skin and I knew I’d be bruised, but I laughed. And it had a bitter edge that reminded me of someone—someone with tearless brown eyes. “Don’t forget I’ve frightened Siobhan, too. That’s much more impressive than frightening Cel.”

  He shook me once, hard. “And more dangerous.” He let me go so suddenly I stumbled, nearly falling. Only his hand on my elbow saved me from a fall.

  He looked behind me. “Barinthus, Galen, go, now!” There was real anger in his voice, and he rarely let such raw emotion show through. I was unsettling everyone, and a small dark part of me was pleased.

  Doyle kept his grip on my arm and began leading me up the path.

  I didn’t look back to see Barinthus and Galen going, or to give Siobhan another worry. It wasn’t caution. I didn’t want to see Keelin holding Cel in her arms again.

  I stumbled, and Doyle had to catch me again. “You’re going too fast for the shoes I’m wearing,” I said. Truthfully it was the ankle holster combined with the long hem. But I’d blame it on the shoes if I could. I was walking beside the person who’d take the gun away if he found it.

  He slowed. “You should have
worn something more sensible.”

  “I’ve seen the queen force sidhe to strip and go naked to the banquet when she didn’t like their clothes. So forgive me, but I want her to like the outfit.” I knew I couldn’t break his grip on my elbow without an actual fight. Even then I might lose. I tried reason. “Give me your arm, Doyle; escort me like a princess, not a prisoner.”

  He slowed further, looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. “Are you quite through with your own theatrics, Princess Meredith?”

  “Quite through,” I said.

  He stopped and offered me his arm. I slipped my arm under and over his to rest my hand lightly on his wrist. I could feel the small hairs on his arm under my fingers.

  “A little cold for short sleeves, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, gaze traveling down my body. “Well, at least you chose well for yourself.”

  I put my free hand on top of the hand I had resting on his arm, giving a sort of double hug, but nothing that wasn’t allowed. “Do you like it?”

  He looked down at my hand. He stopped walking and grabbed my right hand, and the moment his skin touched the ring it flared to life, washing us both with that electric dance. Whatever magic was in the ring, it recognized Doyle as it had recognized Barinthus and Galen.

  He jerked his hand back as if it had hurt, rubbing it. “Where did you get that ring?” His voice sounded strained.

  “It was left in the car for me.”

  He shook his head. “I knew it had gone missing, but I did not expect to find it on your hand.” He looked at me, and if it had been anyone else, I’d have said he was afraid. The look vanished as I was still trying to puzzle it out. His face became smooth and dark and unreadable. He gave a formal bow and offered me his arm as any gentleman would.