A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(31)

“Where does the light come from?” Polaski asked.
“No one really knows,” I told her.
“I thought this oil was supposed to make everything look ordinary,” Carmichael said.
“It is,” I said.
“Then why is he still so damned beautiful?” She pointed at Frost.
I smiled at his face going cold and arrogant. It didn’t make him one bit less attractive. Goddess had made it impossible for him to be anything else.
“Maybe ordinary is the wrong word,” I said. “The oil helps you see reality.”
Carmichael shook her head. “He can’t be real. His hair is metallic silver, not grey, not white, silver. Hair can’t be silver.”
“It’s the natural color of his hair,” I said.
“Should the rest of us be offended?” Rhys asked.
“Maybe you should be,” Ivi said, “but she hasn’t seen most of us out of armor and cloaks.” He pushed the hood of his cloak back, and drew off the muffler that had hidden most of his face. Ivi’s face was a little thin for my tastes, and I knew his shoulders weren’t wide enough for me, but the pale green of his hair was decorated with vines and ivy leaves, as if someone had painted his namesake on his hair. When the hair was free, it looked like leaves blowing in the wind as he walked. His eyes were the startling green of emeralds. I guess if you haven’t been raised around people with multicolored eyes, the vibrant green of his eyes was worth a stare or two. Carmichael seemed to think so because her gaze went to him as if she couldn’t help but stare.
Crystall swept his own cloak back to reveal hair that caught the dim light of the hall and turned it into rainbows, as if his hair were a clear prism that shattered light into colors. His skin was whiter than mine, a white so pure it looked artificial. He flung the lesser white of his cloak back over one arm, and that arm was bare. I had a moment to wonder what he was wearing under the long cloak and above the boots that I could see. His arm shone in the light, like white metal, a gleam that no true flesh ever held.The woman’s gaze went to him again, as if she could not help herself.
“Stop it, all of you,” I said. “Leave her alone.”
“I am doing nothing to her,” Frost said.
I looked at his arrogant face and knew he believed that. Knew that some part of him never understood how handsome he was, not really. The queen’s centuries of rejection had left their scars on our Killing Frost.
I patted his arm and turned to Rhys. “Since she seems less impressed with you and Arzhel, one of you gets to shepherd her through faerie.”
“Me, too,” Galen said.
I looked at him.
He gave a wry smile. “She isn’t drooling over me either.”
“Which one of us do you want to assign to her?” Rhys was shaking his head watching Carmichael look from one to the other of the men. The look on her face was somewhere between a kid overwhelmed in a candy store, or a small animal surrounded by predators; half eager yet half afraid.
“You choose, Rhys. You’re in charge of guarding the police while they’re inside.”
“Not Frost?”
“He’s in charge of guarding me until Doyle gets back.” The words made me wonder again where my Darkness was, and where his spell had led him.
It was as if Frost read my mind, because he said, “I will send someone to see where he is.”
I nodded.
“Galen,” he said. “Find out where Doyle is, and what he has discovered.”
I almost protested. If Doyle, Usna, and Cathbodua were all outgunned, then Galen was not enough to tip the balance, or so I feared.
I actually took a breath to say something, but Galen turned to me with a smile that wasn’t entirely happy. “It’s okay, Merry, I’ll do whatever needs doing to bring him back safe to you.”
I opened my mouth, and he touched his fingers to my lips. “Shhh,” he said, and leaned in to lay a kiss where his fingers had laid their warmth. “You showed the world how you feel about me. That’s enough. I don’t have to own your whole heart.” He left us at a jog, hand on his sword hilt, the thin braid of his hair bouncing against his back.
“Galen!” I said. But he didn’t look back, and then the hallway turned, and he was gone. A feeling of foreboding came over me. Prophecy had never been my gift, but now I was suddenly so afraid I couldn’t draw a good breath.
I grabbed Frost’s arm. “He shouldn’t be alone. Something bad. Something bad is coming.”
Frost didn’t argue. “Adair, Crystall, go with him.”
The moment the other two men vanished around the corner the panic eased. I could breathe again. And something heavy dropped into my other hand, the one that was still hidden under the furred cloak. I grasped the heavy metal stem of the chalice. I let go of Frost, and put both my hands under the cloak to help hold the heavy cup. I’d never realized how heavy it was until that moment. Power is a burden. 
“Are you all right?” Rhys asked.
I nodded. “Yes, yes.” I did not want everyone in the hallway to see what I held, but I also knew that if my panic was true, it was because the chalice had warned me. I had meant to tell the queen that the chalice had come to me, but the time never seemed right to tell her. All right, she never seemed sane long enough to have a metaphysical and political discussion. Now the chalice had materialized in my hand, and that usually meant it had an agenda. Something it wanted, at this moment. Something I needed to do. If it had just wanted to help Galen, it wouldn’t have been heavy in my hand. The chalice was quite capable of helping out magically without materializing. So why was it here now? What was about to happen? The tightness between my shoulder blades said, something bad.
I took a deep breath, and used my cloak and Frost’s coat to give him and Rhys a flash of gold metal under my cloak. Rhys’s eye went wide, and Frost’s face went even more arrogant, more angry. Rhys turned surprise to that joking half smile that he wore when he wanted to hide what he was thinking. It had taken me months to realize what that smile meant.
It was Ivi’s voice, full of laughter and with an edge of that joking that hid so much. “Oh, my,” Ivi said, and I knew that he’d seen it, too. I half expected him to tell the rest of the hallway what he’d glimpsed, but he didn’t. He just looked at me with that surprised laughter all over his face, as if he had beheld some wonderful private joke.
Hawthorne and Amatheon stood to either side of him, and they said nothing. Amatheon’s pale face had gone bloodless inside the hood that he had kept in place to hide his beauty from the woman. His flower-petal eyes went wide, but I doubted anyone but myself and Frost could see his face past the hood. Hawthorne’s reaction, or even if he had seen, was hidden behind his helmet.
“What is wrong?” Arzhel asked.
Amatheon said, “Nothing. I simply was not aware the princess was gifted with prophecy, that is all.” His voice sounded a little breathy, but otherwise normal, maybe even a little bored. You do not survive in the high courts of faerie by giving things away. We are the hidden people, and most of us earn that name.
Arzhel put his head to one side, as if he wasn’t entirely certain he believed Amatheon, but he said nothing. I did not know Arzhel that well, but I was certain he’d never guess that I held the chalice under my cloak.
Carmichael approached Ivi the way you’d sneak up on a statue in an art museum, afraid to touch it, compelled to run your hands down the smooth, hard curve of it. Afraid someone will tell you to stop.
“Carmichael,” Dr. Polaski said. “Carmichael.” She touched the other woman’s arm, but she might as well have been touching the wall for all the good it did her.
“Rhys, choose someone other than Ivi to watch her,” I said.
Rhys grinned, and moved himself between the woman’s hesitating hand and Ivi’s body. “Andais would have ordered me. I like a queen who delegates.”
“She’s not queen yet,” Ivi said. The bright green of his eyes still held that flash of humor that had covered his surprise.
“What’s wrong with her?” Walters asked. He’d gone to help Polaski, taking Carmichael’s other arm. She didn’t fight them, but she didn’t look away from the men either.
“She’s elf-struck,” Rhys said.
“Elf-struck,” Walters said, “but that takes sex with one of you, right?”“Normally,” I said, “but our history is littered with people who caught a glimpse of us in the woods and spent the rest of their lives fascinated with the fey.” I sighed at the looks on most of the faces that were suddenly turned to me. “My oath, that it never occurred to me that any of you would be that susceptible to faerie.”
“The princess is right,” Amatheon said. “It has been centuries since I’ve seen any human so overwhelmed by merely entering the land.” He spoke for them, but his face was all for me and Frost, who was standing behind me. Amatheon’s face tried to ask a dozen questions that his words only hinted at. If he hadn’t seen this reaction in centuries, what had changed? I’d known that power was returning to the sidhe, but I hadn’t understood what that would mean for the humans I had so blithely invited inside. What had I done? And was it fixable?
“She has to leave,” I said, “now.”