A Kiss of Shadows

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Frost started to touch my hand as if to pat it, then let his hand fall back. “There are no words for how sorry I am that he did this to you.”

  I looked into Frost’s grey eyes. I saw compassion there, but one thing I didn’t see was anger. And right now that’s what I wanted.

  “Does the queen know about this?”

  “She knows,” Doyle said.

  I held it in my hands, wanting to open it, wanting to see what other pictures there were, and I couldn’t make myself open it. I couldn’t make myself look.

  I shoved the paper into Frost’s hands. “How bad is it?”

  He looked up at Doyle, then back to me. The arrogant, distant mask slipped a little, and the Frost that I’d woken up with peeked from his eyes. “The tabloid didn’t use any full frontal nudity. Other than that, it’s bad.”

  I hid my face in my hands, my elbows on my knees. “Oh, God, if Griffin would sell them to Jenkins, to the tabloids, then he might sell them anywhere.” I raised up like a swimmer coming out of deep water. It was suddenly hard to get my breath. “There are magazines in Europe that would publish all of the pictures. I didn’t mind the nude photos, but they were private—just for Griffin and me. If I’d wanted to publish photos, I’d have said yes to Playboy years ago. Lord and Lady, how could Griffin do this?” I had a horrible thought. I looked to Frost.

  “Please tell me that you got the camera and the film from the reporter you tried to strangle this morning?”

  He met my eyes, but he didn’t want to. “I’m sorry, Meredith, the camera should have been my first priority, but I let my anger better my judgment. I would do anything to make this up to you.”

  “Frost, they’ll publish the pictures, do you understand that? Pictures of you and me, and hell, Kitto, in bed together. They’ll plaster them over the tabloids, and the ones with nudity will go to Europe.” I would have liked to swear, or scream, but I couldn’t think of anything harsh enough to make me feel better.

  “Griffin would know what the queen would do to him for this,” Doyle said. “He’ll be lucky if she doesn’t kill him.”

  I nodded, trying to control my breathing, forcing myself to concentrate on the rise and fall of my own chest. I fought for calm, but it wasn’t happening today. I nodded again. “He’ll do as much damage as he can before they catch him.” I took three quick, gulping breaths, and my voice came out strained, but holding. “I assume he’s fled the area.”

  “We will find him,” Frost said. “The world is not that big.”

  That made me laugh, but the laughter turned into tears. I slid off the chair onto the floor among the scattered pieces of the Post-Dispatch. It hurt to land so hard on the floor. I was aching from the sex, bruised. The pain helped remind me that things were not that bad. Horrible, but I still had access to the men of the court. I was still welcome back in faerie. The queen had given her word—and her power—to keep me from harm. Things could be worse. Or at least that’s what I kept trying to tell myself.

  I got my breathing under control, but not my anger. “I did not mean him harm last night, but now . . .” I grabbed the tabloid from Frost and forced myself to look inside. It wasn’t the partial nudity that really cut me up. It was the happiness in our faces, our bodies. We’d been in love and it showed. But if he could do this to me, then he’d never really loved me. He’d lusted after me, desired me, wanted to own me, maybe, but love . . . love didn’t do things like this.

  I threw the pages up into the air and watched them flutter slowly back to Earth. “I want him dead for this. Don’t tell the queen that. In a few days I may change my mind, and I don’t want her doing anything dramatic.” My voice was cold with anger, the kind of anger that settles in your heart and never leaves. Hot rage runs through you, and is close kin to hot passion, but cold rage, that is close kin to hate. For this I hated Griffin, but not enough. “I don’t want her to send me his head or heart in a basket. I don’t want that.”

  “She may be planning to kill him anyway,” Doyle said.

  “Yes, but if she does, then it’s on her head, not mine. I won’t ask for his death. Let her come up with it on her own.”

  Frost knelt beside me, gazing up at me with those storm-grey eyes. He took my hands in his. His hands felt warm, which meant my hands were cold. Maybe I was more upset than I thought, maybe I was in shock.

  “I am sure our queen has already decided his fate,” Frost said.

  “No,” I said. I stood, pulling away from his hands, from his eyes. I hugged myself, because I knew I could trust my own arms; I was beginning to have doubts about everyone else’s. “No, if she catches him right away, she might kill him. But the longer he eludes capture, the more creative she’ll get.”

  Frost stayed kneeling on the ground looking up at me. “If I were he, I think I would prefer to be captured soon, while a quick death was still possible.”

  “He’ll run,” I said. “He’ll run as far and as fast as he can. He’ll delay and hope that some miracle will save him.”

  “You know him that well?” Frost asked.

  I stared down into his face, and laughed. The laughter had a wild edge to it. “I thought I did. Maybe I never knew him at all. Maybe it was all just lies.” I stared at Frost. I was glad I didn’t love him, glad that it was just flesh. At that moment, I trusted lust more than I trusted love.

  Doyle stood, taking my arms gently in his hands. “Don’t let Griffin make you doubt yourself, Meredith. Don’t let him make you doubt us.”

  I stared up into his dark face. “How did you know that was exactly what I was thinking?”

  “Because it’s exactly what I would be thinking in your place.”

  “No, it isn’t, you’d be planning to kill him.”

  Doyle hugged me to him, resting his face against my hair. I stayed tense against him but didn’t pull away. “Say that you wish his death and it will be so. Pick a body part of your choosing, and I will fetch it for you.”

  “We will fetch it for you,” Frost said, standing.

  I relaxed enough against Doyle to slide one arm around his waist. I leaned my face against the silk of his shirt. I could hear his heart beating, solid and a little fast.

  There was a knock on the door. Doyle nodded and Frost moved to answer it. Doyle drew his gun, then moved me to one side, still in the curve of his arm, so his body blocked me partially from view.

  “It’s Galen, open up.”

  Frost checked the peephole, a large nickel-plated .44 in one hand. “It’s him and Rhys.”

  Doyle nodded, lowering his gun but not putting it away. The tension level was high, very high. I think we were all expecting another attack from Cel and company. I know I was, and I was only paranoid by necessity. The guards were paranoid by profession.

  Kitto came in behind the two guards. He was dressed in dark blue jeans, a pale yellow polo shirt with a little alligator on the front, and white jogging shoes. Everything looked brand-new, stiff, and fresh out of the package.

  Galen glanced at the papers, then at me. “I’m so sorry, Merry.”

  Doyle let me slide out from behind him, so I could go to Galen. I buried my face against his chest, wrapped my arms around his waist and held on. I felt safe with Doyle, passion with Frost, but it was Galen’s arms that made me feel comfortable.

  I wanted to hold on to him, to close my eyes and just cling. But there was a press conference planned, and the queen wanted us at the court early so we could all discuss the version of the truth we were going to feed the media. I’d been going to press conferences since I was a child, and I’d never been to one yet where we told the truth, the whole truth, so help us Goddess. There was no way to clean up the mess that Griffin had made. He could be punished, but the story and the pictures were already out there, and nothing would change that. I still had no clue what sanitized version of the truth would account for the pictures of Frost, Kitto, and me naked together. But if anyone could come up with a necessary lie to cover it, it would be my aunt. Andais, Q
ueen of Air and Darkness, could put a spin on any scandal that would make the media’s head spin. Bedazzled by her charms, they tended to write what she told them to write, though making this particular scandal squeaky clean was going to stretch even her talents. I used to hope that I’d live to see my aunt fail badly. Now I was hoping she’d succeed brilliantly. Was that hypocritical of me? Maybe, or maybe it was just practical.

  Chapter 36

  BY MIDNIGHT THE LAST OF THE REPORTERS HAD DRIFTED AWAY FULL OF old wine, expensive hors d’oeuvres, and my aunt’s bullshit. But she did sling it with style. She’d dressed in a slinky black business suit and no blouse, so that her cleavage showed at the line of the jacket, call-girl chic. She was thrilled that I was home for a visit. Excited that I’d finally decided to settle down with some lucky sidhe. Saddened by Griffin’s betrayal. One reporter had asked her about the alleged faerie aphrodisiac that had caused a near riot at a Los Angeles police staion. She had no knowledge of it. Andais wouldn’t let anyone else but herself answer questions. I’m not sure she trusted what I’d say. The men were just window dressing—they never got to talk.

  Cel sat on her right, and I sat on her left. We smiled at each other. The three of us posed for pictures. Him in his monochrome black-on-black designer suit, me in a little black designer dress with a short jacket set with hundreds of genuine jet beads, Andais in her call-girl business suit. We looked like we were going to a very expensive, very chic, funeral. If I do ever get to be queen, I’m getting the court a new color scheme, anything but black.

  The court was very quiet tonight. Cel had been led away to be prepared for his punishment. The Queen had taken Doyle and Frost to her rooms for a debriefing. Galen had been limping by the time we finished the conference, so Fflur had taken him off for some ointment to help speed his healing. It left Rhys and Kitto, and Pasco, to guard me. Pasco had come to the hotel last night, but spent the night in the second room. His long pink-colored hair trailed to his knees like a pale curtain. Black was not his color. It made his skin look purplish, and his hair almost brown. In the right colors Pasco sparkled, but not tonight. Black looked better on Rhys, but what made the outfit was the blue shirt, a color to match his eye, that the queen allowed him.

  Rhys and Pasco paced behind me like good bodyguards. Kitto stayed at my side like a faithful dog. He had not been allowed on camera during the conference. Goblin prejudice runs strong in the courts. Kitto was the only one who had been allowed to keep his jeans and T-shirt. We were staying at the court tonight because it was the only reporter-free zone within fifty miles. Nobody would be breaking the queen’s windows or snapping pictures through the earthen mound.

  I was trying to find my old rooms, but there was a door in the middle of the hallway, a large wooden-and-bronze door. The Abyss of Despair lay behind the door. Last I’d seen this room, it had been near the Hallway of Mortality—read torture room. The Abyss was supposed to be bottomless, which was impossible had it been purely physical, but it wasn’t purely physical. One of the worst of our punishments was to be cast into the Abyss and to fall forever, never aging, never dying, trapped in free fall for all eternity.

  I stopped in the middle of the hallway, letting Pasco and Rhys catch up to me. Kitto moved to one side, out of Rhys’s reach, instinctively. Rhys had not so much as touched him, just looked at him. Whatever Kitto saw in that one blue-on-blue eye frightened the goblin.

  “What’s wrong?” Rhys asked.

  “What is this thing doing here?”

  He studied the door, frowning. “It’s the door to the Abyss.”

  “Exactly. It should be down three levels of stairs, at the very least. What’s it doing on the main floor?”

  “You say that as if the sithen made sense,” Pasco said. “The mound has decided to move the Abyss up to the top floor. Sometimes it does major rearranging like that.”

  I looked at Rhys. He nodded. “It does sometimes.”

  “Define sometimes,” I said.

  “About every millennium,” Rhys said.

  “I just love dealing with people whose idea of sometimes is every thousand years,” I said.

  Pasco grabbed the huge bronze door handle. “Allow me, Princess.” The door moved slowly open, proving beyond doubt that it was a very heavy door. Pasco was like most of the court in that he could have bench-pressed a small house if he could have found a convenient handhold, yet he opened this one door as if it had weight.

  The room beyond was a dim greyness, as if the lights that worked in the rest of the sithen didn’t quite work here. I stepped into the dimness with Kitto at my heels, darting just ahead of me, staying out of Rhys’s way, like a dog that’s afraid of being kicked. The room was just as I remembered it. A huge circular stone room with a round hole in the center of the floor. There was a white railing around that hole, a railing made of bones and silver wire, and magic. The railing glimmered with its own brand of glamour. Some said the railing was bespelled to keep the Abyss from flowing up through the floor and eating the world. The railing was bespelled to keep people from jumping over it, so no one could commit suicide in it, or fall by accident. There was only one way to go over the rail, and that was to be thrown over.

  I gave the glowing collection of bones a wide berth, and Kitto clung to my hand like a child afraid to cross the street by himself. There was another door on the far side of the room, and we walked toward it, my high heels making clackety echoes in the huge room. The door behind us closed with a huge clang that made me jump. Kitto tugged at my hand, urging me to move faster toward the far door. I didn’t need any urging, but I also wasn’t going to run in the high heels. I’d healed one sprained ankle this week—one was enough.

  Two things happened at once. I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the side of the Abyss opposite us, a flicker of movement where nothing stood. The other was a small sound from behind us. I turned toward the noise.

  Rhys was on his knees, hands limp at his sides, an expression of bewilderment on his face. Pasco stood over him with a bloody knife in his hand. Rhys fell forward slowly, landing heavily, hands still at his side, mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled from the water.

  I moved toward the door, the wall at my back, Kitto beside me. But I knew—I knew that it was too late. The flicker on the other side of the room parted like an invisible curtain to reveal Rozenwyn and Siobhan. The two women divided the room, one moving left, the other right, coming to outflank me. Siobhan all pale and ghostly like a Halloween horror, and Rozenwyn all pink and lavender like an Easter-basket doll. One tall, one short, so much opposites, yet they moved like two pieces of a whole.

  I put my back against the wall, Kitto crouching beside me, as if trying to make himself smaller and more invisible. “Rhys isn’t dead. Even a heart blow won’t kill him,” I said.

  “But a trip into the Abyss will,” Pasco said.

  “I take it that’s my fate as well,” I said, my voice sounding terribly calm. My mind was racing, but my voice was calm.

  “We’ll kill you first,” Siobhan said, “then throw you over.”

  “Thanks bunches, how thoughtful of you to kill me first.”

  “We could let you die of thirst while you fell,” Rozenwyn said. “Your choice.”

  “Is there a third choice?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Siobhan said, the sibilance of her voice echoing in the room, as if it belonged here.

  They’d both crossed around the edge of the railing and were coming in on either side. Pasco stayed by Rhys’s gasping body. I had the two folding knives, but they had swords. I was outarmed, and about to be outflanked. “Are you so fearful of me that it takes three of you to kill me? Rozenwyn nearly killed me herself. I still bear her mark over my ribs.”

  Rozenwyn shook her head. “No, Meredith, you can’t talk us into a one-on-one duel. We were given very strict orders that we are simply to kill you, no games, no matter how fun they would be.”

  Kitto had pressed himself to the floor, hudd
led by my leg. “What are you going to do to Kitto?”

  “The goblin joins Rhys in the Abyss,” Siobhan hissed.

  I took out one of the folding knives, and they laughed. I called power to the other hand, called the hand of flesh deliberately for the first time. I waited for it to hurt, but it didn’t. Power moved through me like heavy water: smooth, alive, tilling my body, my hand, like something almost thick enough to throw.

  The two women knew I’d called some magic, because they glanced at one another. There was a moment of hesitation, then they moved forward again. They were only about ten feet away, when Kitto launched himself from his crouch like a leopard springing onto Siobhan. She stabbed him, the blade coming clean through his body, but it missed anything vital, and he rode her body slashing, biting, fighting like some small elegant animal.

  Rozenwyn rushed me, sword up, but I was expecting it, and I dived to the floor feeling the rush of air as the blade roared past me. I grabbed for her leg, touched her ankle, and her leg collapsed in upon itself. To do what I’d done to Nerys, I needed to hit in the center of her body, but Rozenwyn would never give me a chance at a mid-body blow.

  She fell to the ground, shrieking, watching her long beautiful leg shrivel up, roll bone and flesh in waves. I drove the folded blade into her throat, not to kill but to distract. I scooped the sword out of her suddenly nerveless hand. I heard Pasco running up behind me. I dropped to my knees, fighting the urge to look behind, but there was no time. I felt his blade go over my head, and drove Rozenwyn’s sword back and up, desperately seeking his body and finding it. The sword bit deep into his body and I said a quick breath of prayer as I rolled away from him. His own body weight carried him to the floor, drove the sword in hilt deep, while he made wet sounds deep in his throat. Then something happened that I hadn’t planned. Pasco rolled onto his sister’s damaged leg, and the rolling flesh poured over his face. He didn’t even have time to scream before his sister’s flesh covered his, and his body began to melt into her. His hands beat against the floor while his head was already swallowed into the lump of flesh that had become his sister’s lower body.