A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(38)

She gave a small smile. “Good.” She took a deep breath and let it out as if she were steeling herself for some great effort. “Queen Andais announced to the court today that you needed more guards. She said that any who wished to could offer their services to you, but that only the ones who bedded you could stay with you.”
“I knew about the first part, but not the second,” I said.
“She said all guards.”
“What are you asking me, Hafwyn?”
She leaned in toward me, hands at her sides. I fought the urge to lean away from her. I saw Hawthorne look to Frost, as if asking what to do. I couldn’t see what Frost told him, because Hafwyn’s face was all I could see. She kissed me gently, eyes open. There was no passion to the kiss, no promise of anything, just a touch of lips.
“Take me,” she whispered, “take me to your bed, take me here, take me anywhere, but please, Goddess, please, don’t leave me here for Cel. I owe him no vow, so I break no vow by asking this of you. I served Prince Essus as his healer for centuries. When he went into exile when you were six, if I had known she would give me to Cel, I would have gone into exile with you. But I thought that exile from faerie was the worst of fates. I ask you, as his daughter, do not leave me here. Now that the queen has opened the way for me to ask, I ask, I beg.” Her eyes glittered with tears and when she could not keep them from falling, she bent her head down so I would not see.It was Galen who reached for her first, but I was only moments behind. She collapsed into us both. Her shoulders shook with the emotion of her sobs, but she was absolutely silent. How many years had it taken for her to learn to cry silently? To hide away this much pain.
I stroked her yellow hair, and said the only thing I could say, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 21

ADAIR STUMBLED AS HE ROSE FROM BESIDE US, CATCHING HIMself against the wall. Blood was seeping out from underneath his breastplate. “You are hurt,” I said.
“Innis’s warriors are as skilled as ever,” he said, in a voice that was a little tight with pain.
I felt a little spurt of surprise. Innis had always been among the most neutral of nobles. He hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other who ruled, as long as he and his clan were left alone. They specialized in necromancy of one kind or another. Once upon a time, some of them could raise true armies of the dead. Innis’s skill had always been to raise phantom armies that could bleed you, kill you. You could cut them, but they could not die. I understood now why he was the one on the ground. They had had to hurt him badly enough to stop him doing magic.
Hafwyn raised her head from Galen’s chest. Tears still traced the pale gold of her skin. “I have some healing left to me tonight. I could not bring another back from so close to the veil, but I can look at your wound.” She looked at me. “I can be of use to you, Princess Meredith, I swear that I can.”
“I believe you, Hafwyn. Attend to Adair’s wounds, unless someone else is hurt worse.” I looked at Crystall, who was still standing with a weapon pointed at Kieran. After Adair’s show of bravado, I thought I’d better simply ask. “Is anyone else wounded?”
Kanna, the only one of the prisoners without a sword at her throat, spoke up, “Lord Innis, Conjuror of Phantoms, is badly injured.” Her voice was very neutral as she said it. Her long brown hair was coming loose from its ponytail, beginning to show the heavy fall of it around her pale face. Her eyes were wide, as if she might be in shock, but her voice gave none of that away.
“Why should I care if he is injured?” I asked.
“He is a free lord of the court you seek to rule,” she said.
“He is merely one lord among many, Kanna. I see no extra value in him, merely because he had enough power and political savvy to stay out of the guards.”
“Others see the free lords as more valuable than we of the guard.”
“That is because they have forgotten that once it was considered an honor to be asked to join the royal guard. Once it was not a punishment, but a reward.” 
“You speak of things too old to bear remembering,” Kanna said. “You were not there. You cannot know.”
“I listen to our stories, Kanna. I remember our history. Many of our best and most accomplished warriors were not forced into the guard, but invited. It only became a burden and a punishment . . . later.”
“You would leave a free lord to bleed to death, then?”
“If it is a choice between a man who risked his life on my order to save one that I love, and a man who tried to take the life of the one I love, then yes, let him die if he can. Wasn’t it you, Lord Kieran, who said a sidhe who can die from blood loss is no sidhe at all?”
Crystall had to move his sword back a little to give him breath and space to talk. “Innis is of the purest blood, not some pixie half-breed.”
“Funny how all blood looks the same when it is spilled upon the ground,” I said. “Are any of my people hurt besides Adair?” I looked at Kieran when I spoke, watched his face. I was rewarded because he looked puzzled.
“You truly would let Innis die.”
“Give me a reason not to let him die,” I said.
“He is not important enough to me to bargain for,” Kieran said.
“Then he will lie there and bleed until I decide otherwise.”
“Innis’s clan is powerful, Princess. You do not want them as your enemies.”
I laughed at that. “He has already proven himself my enemy.”
“We did not attack you,” Kieran said.
Adair was still leaning against the wall, bleeding. “Look at his wound, see how bad it is, and I ask for the last time are any of the rest of you hurt?”
Aisling spoke still wrapped in his cloak, so that most of him was hidden. “I let this one get past me.” He emphasized his words by driving the edge of his sword a little tighter against Melangell’s throat. Enough that a thin edge of crimson began to flow.
“Was it you that nearly cleaved her helmet to her skull?” I asked.
“Yes, but only after she bloodied me.” He sounded disgusted with himself.
“Frost, choose someone to take Aisling’s place, so we can see to his wounds.”
“Hawthorne,” Frost said, and one word was enough. He put his helmet back on, and went to take Aisling’s place.
Dogmaela was standing there between the two groups, as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Melangell was her captain of the guard. Unless she was willing to make the same offer that Hafwyn had made, she would have to go back under Melangell’s rule. In the middle of such a power struggle was a tricky place to be. Dogmaela was like Galen, you could see her struggle with the problem on her face, in the posture of her body. She had fought with the others, but now she didn’t know where her loyalties lay. The fact that she was so divided made me put her in the untrustworthy category.
Hafwyn and the other wounded moved to one side, leaving me with Galen cradled in my lap. I slid my hands down the front of his shirt. “You need to start wearing armor.”
“Unless it was enchanted armor, it would not have helped,” Adair said. Hafwyn and Aisling were helping him remove his armor in pieces. The padding underneath was soaked crimson with blood. The wide, clean cut was plain in the padding, low on his side. “He was able to do this to me, even with the armor.”
“Your armor is still worthy of its maker,” Kieran said. “I could not pierce it. I had to find a seam.”
“No true sword could have found the opening you used,” Adair said. The padding peeled off in layers. The linen shirt next to his skin was a ruined red mass.
“That is why magic will always win against weaponry,” Kieran said.
“It was not magic that stopped Innis,” Crystall said.“It was human magic,” Kieran said.
“Guns are not magic,” Crystall argued, “they are weapons.”
Kieran shook his head. “What is human science but another name for magic? Even now, the princess has brought human spell casters into our sithen. She allows human magic free range inside the only refuge we have left.”
“That’s a reason to attack me,” I said, “but not a reason to attack Galen. Why him?”
“Perhaps we are attacking all your guards, if we find them alone,” Kieran said.
“No,” Galen said with his head still in my lap, “when I came around the corner Melangell said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you, green man,’ then you hit me in the back. Where were you hiding? I must have passed right by you.”
“Innis can hide in plain sight,” Frost said, “and he can hide one or two with him, if none of them moves.” Frost was still very much on alert, guarding me. He hadn’t looked at a wound, or participated in the conversation. He was working and it showed.
“So Kieran, why Galen?” I asked.
“Lord Kieran,” he corrected me.
I shook my head, my hand sliding a little farther down Galen’s chest, so I could feel his heart beating against my palm. “Fine, Lord Kieran Knife-Hand, answer my question.”
He looked at me, his face arrogant and handsome in the way that most of the sidhe were. But his was a cold beauty, or maybe I was just projecting. “You have captured me, but you cannot make me answer your questions. Take me to Queen Andais so I may get on with my night.”