Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He rose onto his arms, the bigger tentacles helping support his weight above me, as he sucked all three spots expertly. He knew I liked to watch him going in and out of me, so he parted all those extras like a curtain so I could raise my head enough to look down the length of our bodies. I had begun by enjoying watching him go in and out between my legs, but now I also liked seeing where he sucked my breasts and between my legs, so it was all him, all long, and firm, and giving me pleasure.

  He had finally worked me open enough to move faster inside me. His body began to find its rhythm, and I felt the warmth begin to build between my legs from it, but the other building pressure of pleasure was coming faster.

  I found my breath enough to say, “I’m coming soon.” He liked to know.

  “Which?”

  “Upper,” I said.

  He smiled, and his eyes flashed to life, gold, amber, and yellow glowing above me, and suddenly his body was a glowing, vibrating thing. Magic struck gold and silver lightning along those extra parts of him. He caused my skin to glow, as if the moon were rising inside me to meet the glow and rise of him above me.

  I had enough energy left to raise my hands and touch the moving bits, and my soft glowing hands caused colored lights to burst under his skin, one magic calling the other. But it was the vibrating of his magic along his skin inside me, outside me, and against me that finally pushed that first wave of warm, bursting pleasure over my body, so that I screamed, writhing underneath him. My fingers found the hard, solidness of the heavy flesh and marked them. I painted my pleasure down the colored lights of the heavy tentacles, and where he bled the red glowed so that it spattered against my skin like rubies scattered across the moon.

  He fought his body to keep the slow, deep rhythm going between my legs. His head fell forward, his hair mingling with everything, and the hair filled with light so it was like making love inside something spun of crystal. And then between one thrust and the next he brought me, and we screamed together the light of our pleasure so bright that we filled the room with colored shadows.

  He collapsed above me, and for a moment I was buried underneath the weight of him, with his heart pounding so hard that it seemed to be trying to come out of his chest where the pulse of it beat against the side of my face. Then he moved enough of his upper body so I wasn’t trapped and I could breathe a little more easily. He pulled out from between my legs, the smaller pieces of him already faded, lying against me as if every bit of him were exhausted.

  He lay on his side next to me while we both relearned how to breathe. “I love you, Meredith,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too.” And in that moment it was as true as any words I had ever spoken.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SHOLTO AND I GOT DRESSED AND JOINED EVERYONE IN THE SMALL living room just off the kitchen and dining room. Since there were no walls to speak of, I thought it was just all the “great room,” but the ones living here called it the small living room, so that’s what we all called it.

  Hafwyn and Dogmaela were on the biggest couch. Dogmaela was still crying softly into the other woman’s shoulder. Their blond braids were intertwined and were so close to the same color that I couldn’t tell at a glance which hair belonged to whom.

  Saraid stood near the huge bank of windows with her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed over her chest, cradling her small, tight breasts. You didn’t need magic to feel the anger rolling off of her. The sunlight sparkled in her golden hair. As Frost’s was silver, hers was truly golden, as if the precious metal had been woven into hair. I wondered if her hair was as soft as Frost’s.

  Brii was standing beside her, his yellow hair seeming pale and unfinished next to her true gold. He tried to touch her shoulder, and she glared at him until he dropped his hand, but he kept speaking quietly to her. He was obviously trying to soothe her.

  Ivi was near the sliding-glass doors talking quietly and urgently to Doyle and Frost. Barinthus and Galen stood to one side. The bigger man was talking to Galen and obviously upset. But it had to be about Dogmaela and Ivi, because if he’d figured out that Galen had almost rolled his mind with glamour he’d have been more upset. It was a serious insult for one highborn sidhe to try to bespell another. It said clearly that the spell-caster felt superior and more powerful than the one they were bespelling. Galen hadn’t meant it like that, but Barinthus would most likely have taken it that way.

  Cathbodua and Usna were on the love seat, with her holding him. Cathbodua’s raven-black hair spilled only to her shoulders, part of it mingling with the black trench coat that she’d laid on the back of the love seat. The coat was a cloak of raven feathers, but like some other powerful items it could change, chameleonlike, into what worked best for the setting. Her skin looked paler against the pure blackness of the hair, though I knew it was no more white than my own. Usna was a contrast of colors compared to her. He looked like a calico cat, his white moonlight skin marked with black and red. Like the cat his mother had been shape-shifted into when she bore him, he was curled up in her lap, or as much of his six-foot-tall frame as would fit was curled up in her lap.

  He’d undone his hair so that it spilled around her black clothes and her stark beauty like a fur blanket. Cathbodua stroked his hair idly as they both watched the emotional show before them. His gray eyes, the most uncatlike thing about him, and her black ones had almost the same expression in them. They were enjoying the turmoil in that dispassionate way that some animals have. Once he’d been able to turn into the cat he was colored to match, and once she could shift into the shape of a raven or a crow, and not have to depend on borrowing the eyes of some true bird for her spying. It made them both a little less human, or sidhe, and something more basic.

  Of course, I hadn’t realized until that moment that they’d been sleeping together. They’d been partners on guard duty, but until I saw the distant and somewhat scary Cathbodua petting him, I hadn’t realized it was more. They had hidden it well.

  Sholto seemed to understand, or maybe I looked surprised because he said, “You letting the other guards sleep together made them reveal their own liaison.”

  “Nothing makes either of them do anything. They chose to share because they thought it was safe.”

  Sholto nodded. “Agreed.” He moved forward farther into the room, and since I had my arm in his, he moved me with him like it was the beginning of a dance.

  Galen started toward us, smiling, and then Barinthus moved in a blur that I couldn’t follow with my eyes. Galen was suddenly airborne and heading toward the big glass windows and the sea, and rocks, below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  GALEN HIT THE CORNER OF WALL JUST TO THE SIDE OF THE WINDOWS. The wall cracked with the impact of his body, crumbling around him like one of those cartoon moments where people go through walls. It wasn’t a perfect outline of his body, but as he sagged against the wall, I could see where his arm had flung out and back trying to take some of the impact.

  He was shaking his head, trying to get up as Barinthus strode toward him. I tried to run forward, but Sholto held me back. Doyle moved faster than I ever could to put himself in the bigger man’s path. Frost went to Galen.

  “Get out of my way, Darkness,” Barinthus said, and a wave rose against the glass, spilling across it. We were far too high for the sea to reach us without aid.

  “Would you steal a guard from the princess?” Doyle asked. He was trying to look at ease, but even I could see his body tensed, one foot dug into the floor in preparation for a blow, or some other very physical action.

  “He insulted me,” Barinthus said.

  “Perhaps, but he is also the best of us at personal glamour. Only Meredith and Sholto can compare with him for disguise, and we need him to use his magic this day.”

  Barinthus stood in the middle of the floor glaring down at Doyle. He took a deep breath, then let it out in one sharp gust. His shoulders lowered visibly, and he shook himself hard enough to make all that hair ruffle like feathers
, though no bird I’d ever known could boast so many shades of blue on them.

  He looked across the room at me with Sholto’s hand still holding my arm. “I am sorry, Meredith. That was childish. You need him today.” He took another deep breath and let it out again so that it was loud in the thick silence of the room.

  Then he looked past Doyle’s still-ready form. Frost was helping Galen to his feet, though he seemed a little unsteady, as if without Frost’s hand he might have been unable to stand.

  “Pixie,” Barinthus called out, and the ocean slapped against the windows higher and stronger this time.

  Galen’s father had been a pixie who had gotten the queen’s lady-in-waiting pregnant. Galen stood a little straighter, the green of his eyes going from its usual rich green to something pale and edged with white. His eyes going pale was not a good sign. It meant that he was well and truly pissed. I had only seen his eyes that pale a handful of times.

  He shook Frost’s hand off, and the other man let him go, though his face showed clearly that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

  “I’m as sidhe as you are, Barinthus,” Galen said.

  “Don’t ever try to use your pixie wiles on me again, Greenman, or the next time I won’t miss the windows.”

  I realized in that moment that Rhys had been right. Barinthus was beginning to take on the role of king, because only a king would have been so bold to the father of my child. I could not let it stand unchallenged. I could not.

  “It wasn’t the pixie in him that let him almost bespell the great Mannan Mac Lir,” I said.

  Sholto’s hand squeezed my arm, as if trying to tell me that he wasn’t sure this was a good idea. It probably wasn’t, but I knew I had to say something. If I didn’t I might as well concede my “crown” to Barinthus now.

  Barinthus turned those angry eyes on me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that Galen has gained powerful magic through being one of my lovers, and one of my kings. He’d have never come so close to fogging the mind of Barinthus before.”

  Barinthus gave a small nod. “He has grown in power. They all have.”

  “All my lovers,” I said.

  He nodded, wordlessly.

  “You truly are angry that I have not taken you to my bed at least once, not because you want sex from me, but because you want to know if it would give you back everything you have lost.”

  He would not look at me, and his hair washed around him again with that sense of underwater movement. “I waited until you came back into the room, Meredith. I wanted you to see Galen put in his place.” He looked at me then, but there was nothing I could understand on his face. My father’s best friend and one of the most frequent visitors to the house we had lived in in the human world was not the man before me now. It was as if his few weeks here by the sea had changed him. Was this arrogance and pettiness what he’d been like when he first came to the Unseelie Court? Or had he already been diminished in power even then?

  “Why would you want me to see that?” I asked.

  “I wanted you to know that I had enough control not to send him out the window, where I could use the sea to drown him. I wanted you to see that I chose to spare him.”

  “To what purpose?” I asked. Sholto drew me in against his body so that I wrapped my arms around him almost absently. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to protect me or just to comfort me, or maybe even just to comfort himself, though touch is more comfort to the lesser fey than to the sidhe. Or maybe he was warning me. The question was, warning me about what?

  “I wouldn’t drown,” Galen said.

  We all looked at him.

  He repeated it. “I am sidhe. Nothing of the natural world can kill me. You could shove me under the sea but you couldn’t drown me, and I wouldn’t explode from pressure changes either. Your ocean can’t kill me, Barinthus.”

  “But my ocean can make you long for death, Greenman. Trapped forever in the blackest depths, the water made near solid around you as secure as any prison, and more torturous. The rest of the sidhe cannot drown, but it still hurts to have the water go down your lungs. Your body still craves air and tries to breathe the water. The pressure of the depths cannot crush your body, but it still presses down. You would be forever in pain, never dying, never aging, but always in torment.”

  “Barinthus,” I said, and that one word held the shock I felt. I clung to Sholto now, because I needed the comfort. It was a fate truly worse than death that he threatened Galen with, my Galen.

  Barinthus looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face didn’t please him. “Don’t you see, Meredith, that I am more powerful than many of your men?”

  “Are you doing this in some twisted bid to make me respect you?” I asked.

  “Think how powerful I could be at your side if I had my full powers.”

  “You’d be able to destroy this house and everyone in it. You said as much in the other room,” I said.

  “I would never harm you,” he said.

  I shook my head, and pulled away from Sholto. He held on to me for a moment, then he let me stand on my own. It was how this next part had to be done.

  “You would never hurt my person, but if you had done that terrible thing to Galen, stolen him as husband and father for me, it would be harming me, Barinthus. Surely you see that?”

  His face fell back into that handsome unreadable mask.

  “You don’t understand that, do you?” I asked, and the first trickle of real fear wormed its way up my spine.

  “We could form your court into a force to be feared, Meredith.”

  “Why would we need it to be feared?”

  “People only follow out of love or fear, Meredith.”

  “Don’t go all Machiavellian on me, Barinthus.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean by any of the things you’ve done in the last hour, but I do know that if you ever harm any of my people and condemn them to such a terrible fate, I will cast you out. If one of my people vanishes and we can’t find them, I will have to assume that you’ve done what you threatened, and if that happens, if you do that to any of them, then you will have to free them, and then …”

  “And then what?” he asked.

  “Death, Barinthus. You would have to die or we would never be safe, especially not here on the shores of the Western sea. You’re too powerful.”

  “So, Doyle is the Queen’s Darkness, still to be sent out to kill on command like the well-trained dog he is.”

  “No, Barinthus, I will do it myself.”

  “You cannot stand against me and win, Meredith,” he said, but his voice was softer now.

  “I have the full hands of flesh and blood, Barinthus. Even my father didn’t have the full hand of flesh, and Cel didn’t have the full hand of blood, but I have both. It’s how I killed Cel.”

  “You would not do such a thing to me, Meredith.”

  “And moments ago I would have said that you, Barinthus, would never have threatened people I loved. I was wrong about you; do not make the same mistake.”

  We stared at each other across the room, and the world narrowed down to just the two of us. I met his gaze, and I let him see in my face that I meant what I’d said, every word of it.

  He finally nodded. “I see my death in your eyes, Meredith.”

  “I feel your death in my heart,” I replied. It was a way of saying that my heart would be happy to have his death, or at least not sad.

  “Am I not allowed to challenge those who insult me? Would you make a different kind of eunuch out of me than Andais did?”

  “You can protect your honor, but no duel is to the death, or to anything that will destroy a man’s usefulness to me.”

  “That leaves little that I can do to protect my honor, Meredith.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not your honor I’m worried about, it’s mine.”

  “What does that mean? I have done nothing to bes
mirch your honor, only the pixie brat.”

  “First, never call him that again. Second, I am the royal here. I am the leader here. I have been crowned by faerie and Goddess to rule. Not you, me.” My voice was low and careful. I didn’t want it to break with emotion. I needed control in this moment. “By attacking the father of my child, my consort, in front of me, you proved that you have no respect for me as a ruler. You do not honor me as your ruler.”

  “If you had taken the crown as it was offered, I would have honored what Goddess chose.”

  “She gave me a choice, Barinthus, and I have faith that she wouldn’t have done that if the choice offered was a bad one.”

  “The Goddess has always allowed us to choose our own ruin, Meredith. Surely you know that.”

  “If by saving Frost I chose ruin, then it was my choice, and you will either abide by that choice or you can get out of my sight, and stay out of it.”

  “You would exile me?”

  “I would send you back to Andais. I hear she has been in a blood-lust since we left faerie. She mourns her only child’s death in the flesh and blood of her people.”

  “You know what she is doing to them?” He sounded shocked.

  “We still have our sources at court,” Doyle said.

  “Then how can you stand there, Darkness, and not want us all brought back into our power so we can stop the slaughter of our people?”

  “She has killed no one,” Doyle said.

  “It is worse than death what she does to them,” Barinthus said.

  “They are all free to join us here,” I said.

  “If you bring us all into our power then we can go back and free them from her dungeon.”

  “If we rescued her torture victims we’d have to kill her,” I said.

  “You freed me and everyone else in her Hallway of Mortality when you left this last time.”

  “Actually, I didn’t,” I said. “That was Galen’s doing. His magic freed you and the others.”