It was Orlando, next to me, who said, “I can still breathe.”
I didn’t answer. I was afraid to talk, as if my words would frighten the stag, make it run like the animal it was. My hand found the rapid beat of its heart against my palm. I wanted to wrap my arm around its neck, hold it tightly, but I was afraid that it would climb to its feet and run. How much of my Frost was in there? I had seen him watching me, but did he understand, or had the Goddess just sent the stag to help us?
I whispered, “Oh, Frost, please, please hear me.”
The stag shook, as if something that it didn’t like had touched it, and it got to its feet. My hand was just on its leg as I struggled to my feet in my long coat, with no hand to help me hold the hem, but I was afraid to lose my grip on either warmth that my hand touched. The stag because it was the closest I’d been to Frost since he had vanished, and Orlando’s hand because it had been that touch that had made me fight. A human hand that had made me realize that a queen does not despair as long as her people are in danger. You fight, you fight even if your heart is broken, because it’s not just about your happiness anymore. It’s about theirs, too.
I stumbled on the hem of my coat, and Orlando’s hand steadied me as I righted myself by the stag’s side. It shifted nervously, as if getting ready to bolt. I knew he was a stag, and I knew he wasn’t really in there, but this was the closest I had come to him, and I wanted him to stay. This curve of fur and warmth was all I had left of him.
The stag began to walk. I kept my hand on its side, and pulled Orlando with me. I felt a tugging, and thought that Orlando had someone else by the hand. The stag pranced nervously, and I felt the presence of someone else on its other side. We touched the stag, and held hands like children, as it led us forward in the dark.
It was Sergeant Dawson who said, “Weapons off. Safe. When we can see again, fire. Don’t give her a chance to use her magic again.”
Andais was queen and my aunt. My father had refused to kill her and take her throne. That bit of mercy had probably cost him his life, because once the rebels offer you a throne, even if you don’t take it, there are those who fear that you will. He had loved his sister, and even his nephew. I realized in that moment that I did not. They had both made certain that there was no love between us. Some would say I had a duty to my queen, but my duty was to the men crowded around me in the dark. My duty was to the stag who led us forward, and what was left of my Frost. My duty was to the children inside me, and anyone who would steal them away was my enemy. War in the abstract is a confusing thing. War on the ground, in the middle of a battle, is not. When someone shoots at you, they are your enemy, and you shoot back. When someone tries to kill you, they are your enemy, and you try to kill them first. War is complicated, battle is not. She was going to kill us, even knowing I held the grandchildren of her brother inside me. In that moment I had only one duty, for all of us to survive.
If she used her magic again there might not be a second miracle to save us. Goddess helps those who help themselves. We were armed with automatic weapons; we’d help ourselves.
I felt the soldiers around me shifting, and thought they were readying their guns. Orlando squeezed my hand one last time, then took his hand into the dark. He was getting ready to kill my queen. Would she still be where we’d left her? “The queen may not be standing where we last saw her,” I said.
Dawson gave orders for the men to cover a circle around us, because there was no cover save the darkness that held us. Once free of that, we would be naked to the view of all.
We stepped into the moonlight, and it seemed unbearably bright, bright enough to make me blink. I was still blinking into the brightness when the first gunshots exploded around me. It made me jump, but the stag jerked so violently that for a moment I thought he had been hit. Then he bounded away, a blur of white, streaking away from the noise, the guns, the violence.
I yelled his name. I could not help it. “Frost!” But there was no one inside that body to answer the sound of human words. The stag vanished into the tree edge, and I was alone again.
Dawson yelled beside me, “Field of fire, the black area. Suppressive bursts with rifle, squad weapons, give me ten seconds of raking fire. She’s hiding behind it.”
I turned and looked at the battlefield. I turned and looked at my aunt and my cousin and the nobles from the court I was supposed to be fighting to rule, and I cared more about the stag leaving than about them dying.
Andais had called darkness, like a mist to hide herself and Cel and the other nobles. Dawson and the rest were firing into it. If they were still there, the bullets would find them, but there was no way to tell what lay in the dark. Had she fled?
I looked behind us, and found that the men who had been given the job of watching the back of the circle were doing just that. They were letting the others fire into the dark, but they watched to see whether the darkness was a trick, whether our enemies were trying to sneak up behind us.
What could I do to help them?
“They’re behind us!” someone yelled, and I turned with that yell.
I had time to knock the rifle to point at the ground, and move myself into the line of fire. I could have tried yelling, but watching the Red Caps move out of the darkness, I knew that words wouldn’t have kept the men from firing on them. The Red Caps were small giants, seven to twelve feet tall, and all of them wore close-fitting caps on their heads that bled fresh blood down their faces and bodies. Before magic returned to faerie, their hats were dry, and only fresh death helped them wet them again. My hand of blood had given them back their own blood magic. But there was no time to explain all that in the middle of battle. I did the only thing I could think of; I stood between the two groups with my hands outspread. It kept the soldiers from firing and gave Dawson time to turn around and give orders.
I yelled, “They are allies, friends!”
“Fuck that,” someone said.
I couldn’t blame them for the fear in those words. It looked like every Red Cap the goblin kingdom could boast was coming toward us across the field. There were dozens of them, armed to the teeth, covered in blood, and coming for us. If I hadn’t been certain they were on our side, I’d have shot them too. Shot them, and run for my life.
When I was sure that my people wouldn’t shoot them, I walked to meet the Red Caps. Jonty was in the front. He was nearly ten feet tall, with scaly gray skin, and a face nearly as wide as my chest. His mouthful of jagged teeth and nearly lipless mouth had become something more human, more…handsome. My magic had changed the Red Caps to something more Seelie, though I had not done it on purpose. Jonty wasn’t the largest of them, but my eyes went to him first. Maybe it was because I knew him and he me, but the other Red Caps let him be ahead of them without arguing. Goblins are all about strength, the ultimate survival of the fittest, and Red Caps are the most violent, the most wedded to power and strength. For them all to fall back and let him lead them said that it wasn’t just my eyes that saw the power in Jonty. Of course, I sensed it; the Red Caps had probably made him fight for those few feet of respect.
Dawson was beside me when Jonty and I met in the field. The wizard trusted me, but he had brought soldiers with guns, just in case. Jonty smiled down at me through his mask of blood. I tried to see that smile the way Dawson and the other humans must see it. Frightening, I supposed, but I could not see it that way. It was Jonty, and the blood flowing down him called to my hand of blood, so that I held that hand out to him. He put his large fingers against my palm, and magic jumped between us, tingling and rushing, like warm champagne with a little electricity in it.
“What was that?” Dawson asked, which meant he’d felt something, too.
“Magic,” I said.
The blood ran faster, thicker, from Jonty’s cap, so that he had to wipe his hand across his forehead to keep his eyes free of blood. He laughed, a great, rumbling, joyous sound. The other Red Caps began to crowd around, to touch the blood on him. Those who touched bled mo
re.
“What is happening?” one of the other soldiers asked.
“I carry blood magic, and the Red Caps react to it.”
“She is too modest,” Jonty said. “She is our mistress. The first sidhe with a full Hand of Blood in centuries. We felt her call to our blood, and we came to join the battle.” He frowned then. “The other goblins did not feel the call of blood.”
“I have a treaty with Kurag. He should have still sent men.”
“The goblin king knew who you fought, and he would not stand boldly against the queen.”
“Coward,” one of the other Red Caps muttered.
“You went against your king to come here,” I said.
Jonty nodded. “We cannot go back to the goblin mound.”
I looked at them, dozens of the most dangerous warriors that the goblins could boast. I tried to picture them permanently stationed in Los Angeles. I couldn’t quite picture it. But I couldn’t leave them homeless. They had shown more loyalty than most of the sidhe to me. I would reward that, not punish it.
Orlando called out. “The darkness is fading.”
We turned, and found that he was right. The darkness was fading like some polluted mist. Andais was gone, and so were Cel and several of the other armored figures, but not all. Had she left them as a punishment or because she could not transport all of them? She had gained in power like most of faerie, but not to the point that she had once been, when she could make entire armies of the Unseelie appear and disappear. Andais might try to make a reason for leaving some of Cel’s allies behind, but in the end, I knew she had left them because she wasn’t strong enough to save them. For she would be certain that any left behind would be killed. It’s what she would do.
In truth, there was only one figure on that side of the field that I cared about. Whether the rest lived or died was nothing to me. Only Doyle mattered. If he lived, then it was all good; if he was…not alive, then I wasn’t sure what I’d do. I couldn’t think past the need to cross the field and see if his heart still beat.
Dawson stopped me from taking the lead, and put some of his men in a line of guns pointing at the wounded sidhe. Jonty stayed at my side, and the Red Caps came at our backs. I started to say that we should put the Red Caps in front. They were a lot harder to kill than humans, but we were almost there. I didn’t want to do anything to delay touching Doyle. In that moment, I was not a leader of men, I was a woman who wanted the man she loved. In that moment, I understood that love is as dangerous as hate. It will make you forget, make you weak. I did not push the soldiers aside and run for Doyle. That took all the control I had left. Beyond that, there was nothing but the fear that crushed my chest tight, and the ache in my hands to touch his skin. If he were dead, I wanted to touch him while his skin still felt like him. A body doesn’t feel like your loved one once it grows cold. It’s like touching a doll. No, I have no words for what it feels like to touch someone you love once their body has given up its warmth. All the wonderful memories of my father, and the one that haunts is his skin under my hands, cold and unyielding with death. I did not want my last touch of Doyle to be like that. I prayed as we closed that distance. I prayed for him to be alive, but something made me pray for warmth too. Did that mean I already knew the truth? Did that mean he was already gone, and I was simply bargaining for what that last caress would be like?
There was a pressure building inside my head, pushing at my eyes. I would not cry, not yet. I would not shed tears when he might still live. Please, Goddess, please, Mother, let him be alive.
The wounded sidhe cried out, “Mercy, mercy on us, Princess. We followed our prince, as we would follow you.”
I didn’t answer, because I simply didn’t care. I knew they had betrayed me, and they knew I knew it. They were painting the best picture they could because we had filled them with bullets, had injured them until they could not flee. Their queen and their prince had left them to my mercy. They had nothing else to count on but the possibility that I was my father’s daughter. He would have spared them; such gestures of mercy were what made everyone love him. His mercy was also the thing his assassin had most likely used to lure him to his death. In that moment, for the first time, I saw my father’s mercy as weakness.
“Move away from Doyle,” I said, and my voice was choked with emotion. That I could not help. I wanted to run to him, to throw myself on him, but my enemies were too close. If Doyle were dead, then my death and the death of our children would not bring him back. If he still lived, then a few minutes of caution would not change that. Part of me screamed inside, hurry, hurry, but there was a larger part of me that was strangely calm. I felt icy, and somehow not quite myself. Something about tonight had stolen me away, and left a colder, wiser stranger in her place.
My father once said that as a ruler shapes a country, so the people of a country shape a ruler. The nobles on the ground, who were crawling, limping, and dragging their wounded away from Doyle’s still form, had helped bring me to this cold stranger. We would see how cold my heart would stay.
Jonty said, “Princess Meredith, we would protect you from their magic.”
I nodded.
“We are protecting the princess,” Dawson said.
“They can put their bodies between me and the hands of power of the nobles here. They would kill or maim you, but Red Caps are a tougher lot, Sergeant. They can be our shields.”
Dawson looked up at the towering figures. “You’ll be our meat shields?”
Jonty seemed to think about it, then nodded.
Dawson glanced at me, then shrugged as if to say, “If they’re willing to take the hit, better them than my men.”
“Okay” was what he said out loud.
The Red Caps moved around us so that they shielded both me and the soldiers. The humans were a little nervous, and several of them asked, “They’re on our side, right?”
Dawson and I assured them that, yes, Jonty and the rest were on our side. I wasn’t as reassuring as I might have been, because most of my attention was on the glimpses of Doyle that I kept getting as everyone moved around us. In that moment, I wasn’t sure I cared about anything, or anyone else. My world had narrowed down to that spill of black hair on the frost-rimmed grass.
My hands tingled with the need to touch him, long before Dawson and Jonty felt that it was safe. Finally, the way was clear, and I was able to hold up the leather skirt and run to him. I collapsed beside him, the skirt protecting me from the winter-rough grass. I reached for him, then hesitated. It seemed ridiculous that a moment before all I had wanted was to touch him, and now that I could, I was afraid. I was so afraid I could barely breathe through the tightness in my throat. My heart couldn’t decide if it was beating too fast, or forgetting to beat, so that my chest hurt with it. I knew that it was the beginning of a panic attack, not a heart attack, but a tiny part of me wasn’t sure I cared which it was. If he was dead, and Frost was lost, then….
I fought my breathing until it came more smoothly. I fought until my breath was deeper, more even. I would not lose control of myself. Not in front of the men. Later, in private, if….
I cursed myself for a coward and made myself reach out those last few inches to that long, black hair. The hair was thick and rich and perfect as it moved under my hands, so I could find his neck, and check his pulse. My fingers brushed something hard. I moved back and stared at the smooth line of his neck, exposed to the moonlight. There was nothing there but the collar of the designer suit that Doyle had borrowed from Sholto.
I shook my head and reached for his neck again. My eyes told me I was touching skin, but my fingers told me there was something in the way. Something hard, but cloth-covered, something…. There was only one reason that my eyes and my fingers weren’t telling me the same thing.
I fought down the first flutter of hope, squashed it flat, and had to calm myself for a very different reason. Positive emotions can blind you as surely as negative ones. I had to see the truth, had to touch the tr
uth, whatever it might be.
I closed my eyes, for they were what was being fooled. I reached for the side of his neck, and found that hard cloth again. With my eyes closed, I could feel it better, because my sight wasn’t arguing with my sense of touch. I pushed past whatever piece of clothing it was, and found the neck. The moment I touched the skin, I knew it wasn’t Doyle. The skin texture wasn’t his. I searched for the big neck pulse, and found none. Whoever was under my fingertips was dead; still warm, but dead.
I kept my eyes closed and moved my hands upward, to find very short hair, and the roughness of the beginnings of stubble, and a face that was not the face I loved. It was illusion, really good illusion, but in the end, it was magic, not reality.
I had a moment of relief so complete that I half fell onto the body. It wasn’t Doyle. He wasn’t dead. I let myself collapse onto the body. I hugged it to me, my hands searching for the uniform, the weapons they hadn’t even bothered to remove. Such disdain, such arrogance.
Dawson knelt on one side of me, and Jonty came to the other. “I am so sorry, Princess Meredith,” Dawson said, touching my back.
“The Darkness was a great warrior,” Jonty said in his deep voice.
I shook my head, pushing myself up from the body. “It’s not him. It’s not Doyle. It’s an illusion.”
“What?” Dawson said.
Swallowing Darkness_A Novel Page 30