A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(40)

“I don’t understand you, Princess.”
“Because she is not sidhe.”
“You asked what we are, Kieran.” I turned and looked at the kneeling man. “We are deities of nature. We are, in a way, nature personified. We are not humans, no matter how our form may ape them. We are something else, and too many of us have forgotten that.”
“How dare you lecture us on what the sidhe are, when you stand as the most human of us all, the most lesser of us all.”
I stood up, stretching my legs, which were a little stiff from holding the weight of Galen’s upper body. “When I was a child I would have given anything to be one of the tall slender sidhe, but as I have grown into adulthood I value more and more my mixed heritage. I value my brownie blood, my human blood, not just the sidhe blood that runs in my veins.
“Aisling, take off your shirt. If I am too mortal to look upon your chest, then I am too mortal to be your queen. Let Hafwyn see which of you is the more injured so one of you may be healed.”
He began to argue.
“I am Princess of Flesh and Blood, daughter of Essus, and I will be queen. You will do as I order. Adair loses blood while you act like some bashful maiden.”
Even through the veil I could tell that I’d pricked his pride, and all males are alike when it comes to that. He threw his cloak to the ground and jerked his tunic over his head in one quick motion. He didn’t wait for me to tell him to take off his underthings. He simply stripped them over his head, hesitating only at his face, so he could be sure of keeping his veil in place. I didn’t argue the veil; his face had once bespelled goddesses and sidhe alike.It wasn’t his chest that made me stare, though it was a very nice chest, with wide shoulders and a lovely stomach except for the cut that traced blood from his waist to his ribs. What made me stare was his skin, which looked as if it had been sprinkled with gold dust, shining and sparkling in the light. In sunlight he would dazzle the eye. I’d seen his nude back in the midst of all the other guards when the queen had been driven mad by a magical poisoning. She had ordered them all to strip and they’d done it for fear of her.
“It is as I have feared,” he said.
I shook my head. “I have seen you nude, Aisling, unless there is someone else with gold dust on their skin.”
“When she saved us,” Adair said, “you were on the floor.”
Aisling shivered, though whether from Hafwyn’s hands on his wound or the memory of what the queen had almost done I wasn’t sure. “I had forgotten.”
“Not so mortal, after all,” Galen said from where he’d moved to sit against the wall.
“Or perhaps the great Aisling has lost his power,” Melangell said, “and he hides behind his veil not because he can bespell us all, but because he cannot.”
He stiffened, and this time I was almost certain it wasn’t from anything Hafwyn was doing. “His wound is shallow. Adair needs the healing more.”
“Then do it. I’m needed with the police.”
Aisling hugged his bare upper body, as if something hurt him. Melangell laughed.
Hawthorne put his blade a little closer to her skin, and the laughter quieted, but still chuckled out from between her lips.
“Why did you attack Galen? Why him?”
Hafwyn answered, “He was chosen because he is the only one of your guards who is a green man.”
Melangell hissed, “You don’t know enough to help them.”
“She’s right,” Hafwyn said as she had Adair lift the cloth around his wound. “I know why they chose him, but not why him being a green man marked him.”
“Does Melangell know?”
Hafwyn nodded. “She knows almost everything that the guard plans. Perhaps not everything that the prince did before he was imprisoned, but most.”
I nodded. “Good.” I went to her, staying well out of reach because even with her hands bound I did not want to risk her touching me. She’d once been able to love a man to death. It wasn’t the sex, but the touch of her skin. She had lost the power, or so I’d been told, but caution was better.
“I give you one last chance, Melangell. Tell us why you targeted Galen, not once but twice, for we know that Cel paid the demi-fey to try to ruin him. Why is it so important to Cel that I not bed Galen?” I motioned Hawthorne back enough so she could talk if she wanted to. 
“I will not betray my master, for I did take oath to Cel. I never served your weak-willed father.”
I smiled at her sweetly. “My father is great enough to withstand petty insults. You refuse to answer my questions.”
“No magic or torture you can devise will make me forget my loyalties.” She shot a spiteful look at Hafwyn, who was busy healing Adair.
“Aisling, are you well enough to come here for a moment?”
“It is a scratch, nothing more.” If he’d been human he would have needed at least ten stitches, maybe more. I would not have called it a scratch, but it wasn’t my body. He came to me, his sword naked in his hand.
“Put up the sword, Aisling.”
He did, hesitating only a moment. “What would you have of me, Princess, if not my sword?”
“If you show your face to a sidhe woman will she tell you anything you ask her?”
“You mean to make her besotted, so we may question her?”
“Yes.”
Melangell’s eyes had gone a little wide.
“I have never used my powers in that way.”
“Would it work?”
He thought about it. “Yes.”
“Then let us see if she will tell us for lust what she will not tell for loyalty.”
I motioned for the guard on Kanna, the other of Cel’s guard, to turn her to face the far wall. Dogmaela had already gone to the other end of the hallway. She may have had divided loyalties, but not enough to join her kneeling comrades. Or enough to protect them. Interesting that Melangell and Kanna had spoken only to Hafwyn, as if Dogmaela was not even there.
Aisling’s hands rose to his golden veil. “You should look away, as well, Princess.”
I nodded and moved back. Though I could admit to myself that there was an almost unbearable urge to look at his face. To look on someone so beautiful that one glimpse would make you fall instantly in lust with them. A beauty so great that one glimpse and you would betray all you held most dear. I did wonder.
Frost knew me too well, took my arm to move me just a little more to Aisling’s back. He gave me a look, and I shrugged. What could I say?
Aisling removed his veil, and all I could see was that his hair was yellow and gold, like streaks of honey, and, like the gold in his skin, shining together. It was braided in complicated knots so that it looked much shorter than the hair actually was. If no one could look upon his face, who did his hair?
“She has closed her eyes,” he said.
“Hawthorne, cut her eyelids off. They’ll grow back.”
She did what I’d hoped she’d do; at the first touch of the knife tip, she opened her eyes. Her eyes blinked, and Hawthorne moved the knife back. Her gaze moved up Aisling’s body, as if drawn against her will. I knew when she reached his face because I saw it in her eyes. Saw the shock of it over her face. It was a frightened look, as if she looked not upon great beauty, but great ugliness.
Hawthorne turned his face away. Lord Kieran did, too. Only Crystall looked upon Aisling’s naked face without flinching. He smiled, as if he saw something wonderful. His clear, white skin filled with radiance, as if the sight had kindled his magic. Only when his hair was shot through with color like prisms in the light did he turn away, as if he could not bear the sight any longer.
Melangell screamed, and it was a sound of irretrievable loss. The echo of it died on the stones, and her eyes filled with . . . love. It wasn’t lust, no matter what Adair had said. Her eyes filled with the mindless devotion of teenagers in their first crush, or newlyweds on a perfect honeymoon. She looked at Aisling as if he were her entire world.Melangell had never liked Aisling, never had much use for him. Now she looked at him the way a flower gazes at the sun, and it made me sick to see it. I didn’t like Melangell, but this was . . . wrong. If there was no cure for it, then I had done something far worse to her than any torture I could have devised. To be hopelessly, completely in love with someone who hated you. There isn’t even a level in Dante’s hell for that.
Frost seemed to understand because he said, “Aisling, ask her the question.”
“Why did you attack Galen?”
“To kill him.” Maybe she wasn’t as totally besotted as she appeared.
“Why did you want to kill him?”
“Because Prince Cel wants him out of Meredith’s bed.”
“Why does he want that?”
Melangell shook her head hard, as if trying to clear her thoughts.
Aisling knelt in front of her, putting his face and upper body close to her. “Why does Cel want Galen out of Princess Meredith’s bed?”
She’d closed her eyes again. “No,” she said, “no.”
“You cannot close me out of your mind, Melangell. You have seen me. You cannot unsee me now.” His voice was a whisper, but it seemed to trail down my skin. It made me shiver and it wasn’t directed at me.
Frost whispered against my ear, “Her power was once similar to his; it may mean she can escape him.”
“She could kill with her touch.”