“Why is that less than comforting?” I asked.
Rhys flipped his head upside down to peer into my face again. “How do you think I feel? I’ll be sacrificing all this toned and muscled flesh just when I thought someone else might get to appreciate it.”
It made me smile.
He smiled at me upside down like the Cheshire cat. “If you’ll let go of my arms,” he said, “I promise to throw myself on top of you at the first hint of danger.” His smile widened to a grin. “In fact, with your permission I’ll throw myself on top of your body at every opportunity.”
It was almost impossible not to smile at him. If I was about to be torn limb from limb, I might as well go smiling as frowning. I let go of his arms. “Get off of me, Rhys.”
He kissed me lightly on the forehead and stood.
I was left lying on the floor all by myself. I rolled onto one side, gazing upward. The men had all gotten to their feet. They stood above me, but only Rhys was looking at me. The others were looking up at the thorns.
The thorns swayed gently above us as if they were dancing to some music that we could not hear.
“They don’t seem to be doing anything,” I said.
“Try standing.” Doyle held his hand down to me.
I looked at that perfectly black hand with its pale almost milky-white nails. I looked from the hand to Rhys. “You’ll throw yourself on top of me at the first hint of danger?”
“Quick as a little bunny,” he said.
I caught Galen giving Rhys a look. It was not a friendly look. “I heard that about you,” Galen said. “That you were quick.”
“If you want on bottom next time, help yourself,” Rhys said. “I’m more of an on-top man myself.” His teasing had a bite to it, and he didn’t look happy either.
“Children,” Doyle said, a soft warning in his voice.
I sighed. “The proclamation hasn’t even been formally announced and the bickering has already begun. And Rhys and Galen are two of the more reasonable ones.”
Doyle made a small bow, putting his hand just inches above me. “Let us take our problems one at a time, Princess. To do it any other way is to be overwhelmed.”
I stared into his dark eyes and slid my hand into his. His grip was firm and unbelievably strong as he lifted me to my feet almost faster than I could stand. It left me off center and wobbling, forced to catch his hand tight to keep from falling. His other hand came out to catch my arm. For a moment it was very close to an embrace. I glanced up at him. There was no hint on his face that he’d done it deliberately.
The thorns gave a furious hiss above our heads. I was suddenly looking upward, hands on Doyle’s arms, but not for support—I was frightened.
“Perhaps you should give us the knives you carry before we go farther?” he said.
I glanced at him. “How much farther are we going?”
“The roses desire a drink of your blood. They must touch you at the wrist or elsewhere, but usually the wrist,” he said.
I did not like the sound of that. “I don’t remember offering to donate blood again.”
“The knives first, Meredith, please,” he asked.
I looked up at the quivering thorns. One thin strand seemed lower than the rest now. I let go of Doyle and reached a hand inside my bodice for the knife within the bra. I brought it out, flicking it open. Frost looked surprised and not happy about it. Rhys looked surprised but pleased.
“I did not know that you could hide such a weapon under such a small piece of clothing,” Frost said.
“Maybe we won’t have to do nearly as much protecting as I thought,” Rhys said.
Galen knew me well enough to know I always went armed at court.
I handed the knife to Doyle and raised my skirt. By the time the skirt was to my knees I could feel the men’s attention like a weight on my skin. I looked up at them. Frost looked away as if embarrassed. But the others either looked at my leg, or my face. I know they’d seen more skin than this on longer legs. “If you keep watching me this closely, you’re going to make me self-conscious.”
“My apologies,” Doyle said.
“Why the sudden attention, gentlemen? You’ve seen the court ladies in much less than this.” I kept lifting the skirt until I bared the garter. They watched each movement the way that cats watch birds in a cage.
“But the court ladies are off limits to us. You are not,” Doyle said.
Ah. I lifted the knife, hilt and all, from around the garter. I let the skirt fall back into place and watched their eyes following the movement of the cloth. I enjoy being noticed by men, but this level of scrutiny was almost unnerving. If I survived the night, I’d have a talk with them about it. But as Doyle said, one problem at a time or you are overwhelmed. “Who gets this knife?”
Three pale hands reached out for it. I looked at Doyle. He was, after all, captain of the Guard. He nodded, as if he approved of my looking to him for the choice rather than making it myself. I knew who I liked the best of the three, but I wasn’t sure who was the best with a blade.
“Give it to Frost,” Doyle said.
I handed the knife to him handle first. He took it with a small bow. I noticed for the first time that there were faint blood stains on his pretty shirt. He’d been pressed against Galen’s back wounds. He’d need to soak the shirt or the bloodstains would set.
“I realize that Frost is worth a stare or two tonight, Meredith, but you are stalling,” Doyle said.
I nodded. “I suppose I am.” I looked up at the dangling thorns. My stomach was tight, my hands cold. I was afraid.
“Hold your wrist out to the vine that is the lowest. We will protect you to the last breath in our bodies. You know that.”
I nodded. “I know that.” I did know that. I even believed it, but still . . . I watched the thorns and my gaze slid upward into the dimness. Vines as wide as my leg twisted and turned upon themselves like a knot of sea serpents. Some of the thorns were as big as my hand, catching the light in a dull black gleam.
I brought my gaze back down to the thin tiny thorns on the vines directly over my head. They were small, but there were a lot of them, like a bristling armor of tiny pins.
I took a deep breath and blew it out. I started raising my hand slowly upward, hand balled into a tight fist. My hand was barely even with my forehead when the vine poured downward like a snake down a hole. The brown thing wrapped around my wrist, and the thorns set in my skin like hooks in a fish’s mouth. The pain was sharp and immediate, coming a second before the first trickle of blood slid onto my wrist. The blood tickled down my skin like tiny fingers caressing the skin. A fine crimson rain began to glide down my wrist, thick and slow.
Galen hovered by me, hands fluttering around me as if he wanted to touch me but was afraid to. “Isn’t that enough?” he asked.
“Apparently not,” Doyle said.
I looked where his gaze was fixed and found a second thin tendril hanging above my head. It stopped as the first one had stopped—waiting. Waiting for my invitation to come closer.
I looked at Doyle. “You must be joking.”
“It has been long since it fed, Meredith.”
“You’ve endured more pain than a few thorns,” Rhys said.
“You even enjoyed it,” Galen said.
“The context was different,” I said.
“The context is everything,” he said, softly. There was something in his voice, but I didn’t have time to decipher it.
“I would give my wrist in your place, but I am not heir,” Doyle said.
“Neither yet am I.”
The vine moved lower, tickling against my hair like a lover trying to caress his way to the promised land. I offered my other arm, fist closed. The vine wrapped around my wrist with an eager speed. The thorns sank into my flesh. The vine pulled tight. It brought a gasp from my throat. Rhys was right. I’d endured greater pain, but every pain is singular, a unique torture. The vines pulled themselves taut, raising my hands tight
above my head. There were so many thorns that it felt like some small animal was trying to bite through my wrists.
Blood ran down my arms in a fine, continuous rain. I’d been able to feel each individual line of blood at first, but my skin grew dead to so much sensation. The pain in my wrists drew all my attention. The vines raised me up on tiptoe, until their grip was all that kept me from falling. The sharp biting pain began to fade into a burning. It wasn’t poison. It was just my body reacting to the damage.
I heard Galen’s voice as if from a distance. “That’s enough, Doyle.” It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I’d closed my eyes. Closed my eyes and given myself to the pain, because only by embracing it could I rise above it, travel through it, to the place where there was no pain and I floated on a sea of blackness. His voice brought me back, wrenched into the kiss of thorns and the spill of my own blood. My body jerked with the suddenness of it, and the thorns answered that movement by jerking me into the air, free of ground.
I cried out.
Someone grabbed my legs, supporting my weight. I blinked down to find Galen holding me. “It’s enough, Doyle,” he said.
“They never drank so long from the queen,” Frost said. He’d moved up to us, my knife in his hand.
“If we cut the vines, they will attack us,” Doyle said.
“We have to do something,” Rhys said.
Doyle nodded.
The sleeves of my jacket were blood-soaked. I thought vaguely that I wished I’d worn black. It didn’t show blood as badly. The thought made me giggle. The grey light seemed to be swimming around us. I was dizzy, light-headed. I wanted the blood loss stopped before I got nauseated. There was nothing like nausea induced by blood loss. You felt too weak to move and still wanted to spill your stomach onto the floor. My fear was fading into a light, almost shining, sensation, as if the world were edged with fog.
I was perilously close to passing out. I’d had enough of the thorns. I tried to say “enough,” but no sound came out. I concentrated on my lips and they moved, forming the word, but there was no sound.
Then there was a sound, but it wasn’t my voice. The vines hissed and shivered above me. I looked upward, my head falling back bonelessly. The vines rolled above me like a black sea made of rope. The thorns around my wrist pulled upward with a sharp hiss. Only Galen’s arms on my legs kept me from being lifted into the nest of thorns. The vines at my wrists pulled, and Galen held, and my wrists bled.
I screamed. I screamed one word: “Enough!”
The vines shuddered, trembling against my skin. The room was suddenly thick with falling leaves. A dry brown snow filled the air. There was a crisp sharp smell like autumn leaves, and under that, like a second wave of scent, was the rich smell of fresh earth.
The thorns lowered me toward the ground. Galen cradled me, picking me up in his arms as the vines let me down, slowly. Both Galen’s arms and the vines themselves seemed strangely gentle, if teeth could be gentle while they tried to bite your arm off.
The sound of the door banging back against the wall was the first hint I had that the vines had pulled back from the door.
Galen was holding me in his arms with the vines still pulling my wrists above my head when we all turned to the spill of light from the open doors.
The light seemed brilliant, dazzling, with an edge of soft mist. I knew the light only appeared bright after the dimness, and I thought the edge of mist was just my ruined vision—until a woman stepped out of that light with smoke rising from her fingertips as if each pale yellow finger were a snuffed-out candle.
Fflur moved into the room dressed in a gown of unrelieved black that made her yellow skin the bright color of daffodils. Her yellow hair fanned around her dress like a shining cloak twisting in a wind of her own power.
The guards spilled out to either side of her. A handful had weapons; the rest came into the room bare-handed. There were twenty-seven men in the Queen’s Guard and the same number of women in the King’s Guard, which now answered to Cel because there was no king. Fifty-four warriors, and less than thirty came through the doors.
Even through the faintness I tried to memorize each face, tried to remember who came to our aid and who stayed behind in safety. Any guard that hadn’t come through those doors had lost any chance they had at my body. But I couldn’t focus on all the faces. A flood of new forms swept in behind the Guard, most of them shorter and much less human.
The goblins had come.
The goblins were not Cel’s creatures. That was my last thought before darkness spilled over my vision and ate the mist across my eyes. I sank into that blissful darkness like a stone thrown in deep water that could only fall and fall because there was no bottom.
Chapter 31
THERE WAS A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. A PINPOINT OF WHITENESS THAT floated toward me, growing larger and larger. And I could see that it wasn’t light but white flames. A ball of white fire swept through the darkness, swept toward me, and I could not escape it because I had no body. I was just something floating in the cool dark. The fire washed over me and I had a body. I had bones and muscles and skin and a voice. The heat ate over my skin, and I felt my muscles cooking, popping from the heat. The fire ate into my bones, filled my veins with molten metal, and began to peel me apart from the inside out.
I woke shrieking.
Galen was bending over me. His face was all that kept me from total panic. He was cradling my head and upper body against his thighs, stroking my forehead, smoothing my hair back from my face. “It’s all right, Merry. It’s all right.” His eyes glittered with unshed tears, gleaming like green glass.
Fflur leaned over me. “Poor greeting I bring, Princess Meredith, but answer to our queen, I must.” Translated, that meant she had called me out of the darkness, forced me awake, and at the queen’s bidding. Fflur was one of those who tried very hard to live as if the year had never gone to four digits. Her tapestries had been displayed in the St. Louis Art Museum. They’d been photographed and written up in at least two major magazines. Fflur had refused to look at the articles, and under no circumstances could she be persuaded to go to the museum. She’d turned down interviews from television, newspaper, and the aforementioned magazines.
It took two tries to get my voice to work in something other than a scream. “Did you clear the door of roses?”
“I did,” she said.
I tried to smile at her and didn’t quite make it. “You risked much to aid me, Fflur. You have no apologies to make.”
She glanced up and around at the crowding faces. She placed a fingertip on my forehead, and thought one word: “Later.” She wanted to speak to me later, but wanted no one to know. She was a healer, among other talents. She could have checked my health with the same gesture, so no one was the wiser.
I didn’t even dare risk a nod. The best I could do was stare into her black eyes, a startling contrast to all that yellow, so that they looked like the eyes of a doll. I looked into her eyes and tried to tell her with a glance that I’d understood. I hadn’t even seen the throne room yet and I was already neck deep and rising in court intrigue. Typical.
My aunt knelt beside me in a cloud of leather and vinyl. She took my right hand in hers, petting it, getting blood all over her leather gloves. “Doyle tells me that you pricked your finger on a thorn, and the roses sprang to life.”
I looked up at her, tried to read her face, and failed. My wrists ached with a sharp burning that seemed to go all the way down to the bone. Her fingers kept playing over the fresh wounds, and every time the leather passed over it, it made me twitch. “I pricked my finger, yes. What caused the roses to come to life is anyone’s guess.”
She cradled my hand in both of hers, gently now, gazing down at the wounds with a look of . . . wonderment on her face. “I had given up hope of our roses. One more loss in a sea of loss.” She smiled, and it seemed genuine, but I’d seen her use the same smile while torturing someone in her bedchamber. Just because the smile was real d
idn’t mean you could trust it.
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” I said, my voice as empty as I could make it.
She laughed then, pressing her hands together over the wounds. I was suddenly very aware of every seam in the leather gloves as they pressed into my flesh. She pressed with a slow steady pressure until I made a small pain sound. That seemed to make her happy, and she let me go. She stood with a swish of skirts.
“When Fflur has bound your wounds, you may join us in the throne room. I am eager for your presence at my side.” She turned and the crowd parted before her, forming a tunnel of light that led into the throne room beyond. Eamon moved from the crowd like a black leather shadow to take her arm.
A small goblin with a ring of eyes like a necklace across its forehead knelt beside me, crowding the edge of Fflur’s black skirts. The goblin’s eyes flicked to me, flicked to her, to me, to her, but what it was really looking at was the blood. It was a small goblin, barely two feet tall. The ring of eyes marked it as handsome among the goblins. They literally called such a marking a “necklace of eyes,” and said it in tones that humans reserved for large breasts or a tight ass.
The queen could think what she wanted about the roses. I didn’t believe that one drop of my blood had inspired the dying roses. I did believe that my royal blood had saved me, but the initial attack . . . I suspected another spell, hidden somewhere in the thorns. It was doable if someone were powerful enough.
I had enemies. What I needed was friends—allies.
I let my hand slide down my hip as if I were faint. The fresh wound was only inches from the little goblin’s mouth. He darted forward and licked a rough tongue like a cat’s across the wound. It brought a small sound from my throat, and he cringed.
Galen swung at him the way you’d chase an unwanted dog away. But Fflur grabbed the goblin by the scruff of the neck. “Greedy gut, what mean you with such impertinence?” She started to cast him away.
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