A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(39)

I stared at him, with Galen’s heartbeat under my hand. Was Kieran being that brave, or did he believe that the queen would do nothing to him? “You have attacked a royal guard. You will not be getting on with your night, Lord Kieran.”
“Siobhan nearly killed a royal heir, and yet she lives. Imprisoned, but she lives. The queen’s pet torturer fears the touch of Siobhan’s skin, so she has not even been tortured. She will sit in her cage until Prince Cel is released, then she will be his right hand again. If that is all the queen does to a would-be assassin of royalty, then what more can she do to us? Nerys’s house still lives, even though all of them turned traitor. They tried to kill both you and the queen herself, and they have lost nothing.” He sneered at me, all that beauty turning ugly.
“That is why you and Innis agreed to this,” I said. “You saw Nerys’s people go free, and you think you will go free, too.”
“The queen needs her allies, Princess.”
“How can you be her ally if you toadie for Cel?”
“I toadie to no one, but I admit to preferring him to you. There are many who feel the same.” 
“Of that I have no doubt.” I looked at him, so sure of himself, and I needed him not to be. I needed whatever information he possessed, and I needed the court to fear me. To fear harming my people. If the queen would not put that fear into them, then I had to figure out a way to do it myself.
There was a sound like a great hollow gong being struck.
“What is that?” I asked.
It sounded again before the first echoes had died.
Frost reached for a knife at his belt. “I have a call.” It was Rhys.
“What are you doing, Merry? It was all I could do to keep Walters and the police from running to check out your screams. Is Galen all right? You were screaming his name.”
Galen spoke from my lap. “I’m touched that you care.”
Rhys chuckled. “He’s fine.”
“He was attacked, though,” I said.
“Who?”
“Nobles and guess whose guards?”
“Let me think . . . Cel?”
“Who else?”
“But why does he keep picking on Galen?”
“I’m about to try to find out. How is the evidence collection going?”
“Okay. I put a guard on each of the humans, as per your order. We figured out how the reporter strayed outside the magical boundaries we set up.”
“How?” I asked.
“He had small iron nails in the soles of his shoes.”
“Cold iron,” I said. “He’d done his research.”
Rhys’s reflection wavered as he nodded. “And he came here planning to try to see something we didn’t want him to see.”
“I guess it is part of the job description for a reporter.”
“I guess so.” He sighed, and it was heavy.
“What’s wrong, Rhys?”
“Major Walters insists on seeing you in person. He says that the reflection could be an illusion.”
“I’m a little busy here.” I glanced at our prisoners.
“I figured that, but if you don’t put in an appearance soon, he’s going to want to come looking for you. Just a heads-up.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll try to keep him pacified.” The sword was suddenly empty, only my own distorted reflection showing.
I handed Frost’s blade back to him and looked at the prisoners. If I had been certain how the queen would take it, I would do something drastic to at least one of the nobles. But Kieran was right, the queen did need her allies. I didn’t think Kieran qualified, but Andais might, and I didn’t want her angry with me if I could avoid it. Still, Kieran’s reasoning meant that Andais was losing her hold on the court nobles. That was bad, because I didn’t have enough political clout on my own to compete for the throne, even though I was still of the ruling bloodline. If Andais failed as queen, they would see me as a threat, no matter who took the throne after her.
Hafwyn’s voice came with a thread of anger to it. “Let me see the wound, Aisling.”
“I dare not let you see more of my body.”
“I am a healer. We are immune to most of the contact enchantments. If it were otherwise we could not heal the sidhe.”
Aisling was holding his white cloak close around the bloody front of his tunic.
“Take off your tunic so I may see your wound.”
He shook his head, spilling his hood back, and revealing a veil like some of the Arabic countries make their women wear. It was a thin, gauzy, golden cloth, so you saw his head and face through the haze of it. Only his odd eyes were free of the cloth, showing pale skin, and a lace of pale eyelashes.“I’d forgotten that you covered your face,” I said, and hadn’t really meant to say it out loud.
“Much is forgotten,” he said, hands still holding his cloak around his bloody side.
“I said I forgot that you covered your face, not why.”
“Yes, yes,” Hafwyn said, “the most beautiful man in the world. So beautiful that if a woman, or even some men, look upon your face they will be instantly besotted with you and unable to deny you anything.” She grabbed his cloak and tried to wrench it from his hands, and finished the rest through gritted teeth. “But I am not asking you to take off your veil, just your tunic.”
“I fear what effect it would have upon a mortal.”
Hafwyn stopped struggling with him, and leaned back on her heels, I think too surprised to know what to do. I realized then that he meant me. How could I ever truly rule here if they still thought of me as a human?
Kieran spoke my thoughts out loud. “Even the guard itself thinks of you as only mortal, and not sidhe.”
I would have argued with him, if I could have. “Are you saying, Aisling, that your bare chest is enough to bespell me?”
“I have seen it happen before to humans.”
I gazed up at him, Galen still in my lap. “Aisling, do you think of me as human?”
He lowered his eyes and would not look at me, which was answer enough. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“I mean no disrespect, Princess Meredith. If you are sidhe enough to look upon me, that would be a fine thing, but what if I did bespell you? There is only one remedy for the enchantment.”
“And that would be?”
“True love. You must be in love with someone else before you can look upon me.”
“Not entirely true,” Hawthorne said from his place at Melangell’s side. “Aisling’s magic can overcome even true love if he wishes it and tries hard enough. Once he could make anyone fall hopelessly in love with him.”
“Lust, not love,” Adair said. “There is a difference, you know, Hawthorne.”
“It has been so long since I had either that I’m not sure I do remember the difference,” Hawthorne said.
Adair leaned against the wall in the torn remnants of his padding and undershirt. He smiled, tiredly, with an edge of pain to it. “Aye, I hear you.”
I had this horrible urge to kiss Adair, to take that edge of sorrow from his smile and see if I could get a real one.
“Can you sit up?” I asked Galen.
“Yes, but I’m enjoying the attention.” He grinned up at me.
I bent over him, hugging him with all my body while he lay in my lap. I whispered against his skin, “I’m so glad you’re alive.” 
He rubbed his face against my breasts, since they were so conveniently placed. “Me, too.”
Galen sat up and I waited to make certain he was steady. Just seeing the blood painted on the back of his body tightened my chest all over again. I had to swallow past something hard and crushing in my throat.
I turned to Adair, still bleeding, still hurting, because I gave an order. I didn’t strike the blow, but I’d put him in harm’s way. I knelt in front of him, reached out to touch his face. He actually flinched, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched, or wasn’t sure if it would hurt. Knowing my aunt, I could understand that.
“You look sad,” I said. “I don’t want you to be sad.”
“I’m too hurt to do much, Princess.” His eyes were wide, showing too much white.
I shook my head. “Would she really offer you intercourse when you were this injured?”
He understood who “she” was. “She has before, not to me, but . . . others.”
Offer them sex after years of nothing, when they were too hurt to enjoy it, or too hurt to perform. Auntie Andais was a true sadist.
“A kiss, Adair, nothing more. Just a kiss, because you seem to need it.”
He gave me a puzzled look out of his triple yellow eyes. “Just because I need it. I don’t understand.”
“Are you lesser fey now, to give a kiss because someone needed it,” Kieran said. “It is not a sidhe custom.”
“No, it isn’t, because we’ve forgotten who we are,” I said, “what we are.”
“And what are we?” Kieran asked, his voice sneering.
I leaned in toward Adair. His eyes were still too wide. “The amount of power we raised earlier would hurt me now, Princess.” His voice was breathy, but he was against the wall, and there was nowhere else for him to go.
“No power, just touch.” I laid a soft, chaste press of lips against Adair’s mouth. He stopped breathing for a moment, and I tasted more fear than desire in him. I drew back from him to watch his face and saw the fear turn to puzzled wonderment.