A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(23)

“Good question,” I said and looked at Doyle.
He gave a small nod and said, “Why did you abandon us, Onilwyn?”
“I had no interest in watching the princess perform with someone else. The queen cured me of voyeurism a very long time ago.”
None argued with that, but Doyle asked, “So you came ahead to begin questioning the witnesses on your own, without either of your captains’ or even your officers’ permission?”“You all seemed . . . busy.” And even with the broken nose the sarcasm came through loud and clear.
“You didn’t hit him hard enough, Merry,” Galen said, and my gentle knight had a decidedly ungentle look on his face.
“Did you come ahead to seek answers, or to hide them?” Doyle asked.
“I was not the lover of anyone. And I would most certainly not risk the queen’s mercy for anything less than a sidhe.” The disdain in his voice was thick enough to walk on.
“Did any of the rest of you know that Beatrice had a sidhe lover?” Doyle asked.
Maggie May said, “No, I’ve told all mah’ people that you leave the big ones alone. Only grief comes of it.”
“So, if Beatrice had taken a sidhe,” I said, “she’d have hidden it from you?”
“Ah, most like.”
I looked to the dainty blue figure that was almost hidden behind Galen’s neck. “Mug?”
Galen had to say, “The princess is asking you a question, Mug.”
She’d been too busy playing in the curls at the back of his neck to pay attention to anything else. She wasn’t stupid, but I’d seen her like this before, as if the touch of a sidhe was intoxicating to her.
She peered around his neck, her wings flicking nervously. “What?” she asked.
“Did Beatrice have a lover that you know of?”
She pointed to Harry. “Him.”
“Did she have a sidhe lover?” I asked.
Mug’s eyes went wide. “A sidhe for a lover? Beatrice . . .” She shook her head. “If I had known, I would have asked her to let me touch him.”
“Beatrice would never have told Mug,” Peasblossom said.
I looked for her and found her perched on the pots that hung from hooks on the near wall. “Did she tell you?”
“She did.”
“Who was her sidhe lover?” Harry asked, voice eager.
None us said anything, because it was one of the things we all wanted to know.
“She wouldn’t tell me, said he made her promise not to tell anyone or he would break off the relationship.”
“Why would that end the relationship?” Doyle asked. “Unless . . .”
Frost said it. “Unless he was a royal guard.”
“Who would risk death by torture for less than sidhe flesh?” Amatheon said.
I gave him an unfriendly look.
“I do not deserve that look, Princess; it is only truth.”
I started to argue but hesitated. I had had lesser fey lovers in Los Angeles, and it had been wonderful, but . . . but I had craved other flesh. Once you have had the full attention of another sidhe, all else was truly lesser. I wanted to argue with Amatheon, but I could not, not and be truthful. 
“I will not argue with you, Amatheon,” I said.
“Because you cannot,” he replied. He kept his grip on Onilwyn, but his attention seemed all for me.
I acknowledged the truth of it with a nod.
“But if not a guard,” Galen asked, “then why would he care if others knew of his relationship with Beatrice?”
I looked at him, searching his face for any hint that he knew how naïve that question was, but there was nothing in his face that said he understood anything.
Mug cuddled in against his neck and spoke for most of us. “That is so sweet.”
“What?” Galen asked.
“A fair few dabble among us lesser folk,” Maggie May said, “but few wish to acknowledge us publicly.”
Galen frowned. “Why not?”
Amatheon said, “Have you been living in the same court as the rest of us?”
Galen shrugged, almost unseating Mug. He helped her catch her balance by holding up his fingers so she could catch herself. “Love is too precious to be ashamed of.”
If I hadn’t already loved him, I would have in that moment.
“You are right, my friend,” Doyle said, “but that is not always how our free brethren feel about such things.”
“Arrogance, such arrogance, to be ashamed of that which the rest of us would give so much to have,” Adair said.
“Who would admit to bedding something with wings?” Onilwyn said.
“Good enough to fuck, but not to love?” Maggie May asked.
Some of the men would not meet her gaze. Doyle had no trouble meeting those hard golden eyes. “Was Harry Hob her lover?”
She nodded. “Aye.”
Mug and Peasblossom answered together, “Yes.”
Doyle turned back to Harry. “It’s not every hob who gets to share a mistress with a sidhe.”
“Mistress, nay, I loved the girl.”
“How did you feel about sharing the girl you loved with another?”
“Beatrice had broken up with Harry,” Peasblossom said.
“But we was back together,” Harry said.
Peasblossom acknowledged that was true.
“She had broken up with the sidhe,” he said.
“Dumped a sidhe for you?” Mug said, and laughed, a high twittering sound.
“Don’t you laugh at him, Mug,” Maggie May said. “Sometimes love is more than a magic or grand power.”
“Did you know that Beatrice had let Harry go?” I asked.
“Aye, and that she’d taken ’im back, too.”
“If she’d broken with him,” Doyle said, “why did Harry expect him down in the kitchens?”
“Beatrice said he wanted her to do awful things for him. She’d agreed at first, then changed her mind.”
“What kind of awful things?” Doyle asked.
“She wouldna’ tell me. Said it was so awful, no one would believe it of him.”
We were Unseelie not Seelie, which meant we were willing to admit most of what we wanted. What could be so terrible that it wouldn’t be believed? What perversion that Beatrice had turned from it in fear?
“Her sidhe lord had demanded one last meeting, to try and persuade Beatrice to reconsider. I begged her not to meet with him.”
“Why? Did you fear for her safety?” Doyle asked.
“No, not that. If I had ever dreamed such a thing, I would never have let her meet him alone,” Harry replied.
“Then why didn’t you want them to meet?”
“I was jealous, weren’t I? I feared he’d win her back. Goddess help me, but all I could see was my jealousy.”Doyle must have given some signal, for Frost and Galen let go of Harry’s arms. He stood there rubbing the arm that Frost had held.
“And you hid when you saw Onilwyn, because you thought he was her lover.”
“We thought he’d come back to kill Harry,” Peasblossom said. “If she’d have told anyone the secret it would have been Harry. I told him to hide.”
“If you feared only Onilwyn, why didn’t you come out when you knew we were all here?” Doyle asked.
“Would you want anyone to know that you hid, ’stead of fight the man you thought had killed the woman you loved? Did I want the Darkness or the Killing Frost to know I was such a coward?” Tears gleamed in his eyes. “I didna’ know meself I was such a coward.”
“Onilwyn,” Doyle said, “the real reason you came ahead?”
He opened his mouth, had to clear his throat sharply before he said, “Truth then, I know the princess loathes me. With this many men at her beck and call, she could keep me from her bed for some time. I wanted to touch a woman again. I thought if I found some clue, helped solve this mess, it might help my cause.”
I stared at his bloody face, those angry eyes. He met my gaze.
“Why don’t I believe you?” I asked.
His eyes were angry and sullen in the bloody mask of his face. “Would I admit such weakness to you, if it were not true?”
I thought about that for a second or two. “You hate me, too,” I said.
“I would do near anything to end this need, Princess. Whatever I felt once, the chance to slake this thirst outweighs whatever loyalty I thought I held.”
We stared at each other, and I didn’t know what I would have replied because suddenly Doyle said, “Do you smell that?”
CHAPTER 11

DOYLE SNIFFED THE AIR, AND A MOMENT LATER I SMELLED IT, TOO. Fresh blood. I moved toward him. “What do you smell, Darkness?” Maggie May asked.
He put his hand to his sword, and the other men were suddenly unsheathing weapons. I don’t think any of them had smelled what we had, but they trusted Doyle’s instincts.
“It’s all right,” he said, but he unsheathed his sword, and that didn’t comfort anyone in the room. When he had the blade completely free of its sheath, blood welled on the naked blade, as if the sword were bleeding.
Harry stumbled back away from him and that dripping sword. I couldn’t blame him. Peasblossom screamed, and Mug hid her face against Galen’s neck.
“Goddess save us,” Frost said. “What is it?”
“Cromm Cruach,” Doyle said. 
It took me a second to realize he was using Rhys’s original name, when he’d been a deity. Cromm Cruach, red claw. As I watched the blood drip on the scrubbed kitchen floor, I began to understand where the name may have come from.