Mistral's Kiss (Merry Gentry #5)(37)

There was a flight of cranes then: my father’s bird, one of his symbols. The cranes flew low and seemed to dip their wings at us, almost in a salute.
“They fall!” shouted Bithek.
I looked where he pointed. The storm cloud had vanished, and with it most of the creatures. There had been so many, a writhing mass of them, but now there were only a few—less than ten, maybe—and one of them had already crashed through the trees. A second fell earthward, and I heard the sharp crack of the trees breaking under the weight like a cannon shot, and men scattered, too far away for me to know who was who. Was Doyle safe? Was Mistral? Had the magic worked in time?Inside my head, I could finally admit, it was Doyle I most needed to survive. I loved Rhys, but not like I loved Doyle. I let myself own that. I let myself admit, at least inside my own head, that if Doyle died, part of me would die as well. It had been the moment at the car, when he’d shoved Frost and me inside and given me to Frost. “If not me, it must be you,” he’d said to Frost. I loved Frost, too, but I’d had my revelation. If I could have chosen my king this moment, I knew who it would be.
Pity that I wasn’t the one doing the choosing.
Figures started toward us, and the goblins parted to form a corridor for my guards. When I finally recognized that tall, dark figure, something in my chest eased, and I was suddenly crying. I started walking toward him, then. I didn’t feel the frozen grass under my bare feet. I didn’t feel when broken stubble cut me. Then I was running, with the Red Caps jogging beside me. I picked up the edges of the borrowed coat like a dress, and held it out of my way so I could run to him.
Doyle wasn’t alone; dogs, huge black dogs milled around his legs. Suddenly I remembered a vision I’d had of him with dogs like this, and the ground tilted under my feet, vision and reality melding before my eyes. The dogs reached me first, pressing warm muscled fur against me where I knelt, their great panting breath hot on my face as I held my hands out to touch them. Their black fur ran with a tingling rush of magic.
The bodies writhed under my hand, the fur growing less coarse, smoothing, the bodies less dense. I looked up into the face of a racing hound, white and sleek, with ears a shining red. The other hound’s face was half red and half white, as if some hand had drawn a line down the center of it. I’d never seen anything so beautiful as that face.
Then Doyle was standing in front of me, and I threw myself into his arms. He lifted me off the ground and hugged me so hard it almost hurt. But I wanted him to hold me hard. I wanted to feel the reality of his body against me. I wanted to know he was alive. I needed to touch him to know it was true. I needed him to touch me, and let me know that he was still my Darkness, still my Doyle.
He whispered into my hair, “Merry, Merry, Merry.”
I clung to him, wordless, and wept.
CHAPTER 22
EVERYONE LIVED, EVEN THE HUMAN POLICEMEN, THOUGH some were driven mad by what they had seen. Abeloec fed them from his cup of horn and they fell into a magical sleep, destined to wake with no memory of the horrors they had seen. Magic isn’t always bad.
The black dogs were a miracle: They changed depending on who touched them. Abe’s touch turned the great black dogs into lapdogs to lie before a cozy fire, white with red markings—faerie dogs. Mistral’s touch turned them to huge Irish wolfhounds, not the pale, slender ones of today, but the giants that the Romans had feared so much—these were the hounds that could snap the spine of a horse with their bite. Someone else’s touch turned a dog into a green-furred Cu Sith that loped off toward the Seelie mound. What would their king, Taranis, think of its return? He’d probably try to take credit for it, claim it as proof of his power. 
In the midst of the return of so much that was lost, other things much more precious were returned to me. Galen’s voice shouting my name turned me in Doyle’s arms. He was running across the snowy field with flowers following in his wake, as if wherever he stepped, spring returned. All the rest who had vanished into the dead gardens were with him. Nicca appeared with a following of the winged demifey. Amatheon was there with the tattoo of a plow gleaming like neon blood on his chest. I saw Hawthorne, his dark hair starred with living blossoms. Adair’s hair burned around him like a halo of fire, so bright it obscured his face as he moved. Aisling walked in a cloud of singing birds. He was nude, except for a piece of black gauze that he’d wrapped around his face.
Onilwyn was the only one who did not come. I thought the garden had kept him, until I heard another voice shrieking my name in the distance. Then I heard Onilwyn’s frantic cry: “No, my lord, no!”
“It cannot be,” I whispered, looking up at Doyle, watching fear cross his face, too.
“It is he,” Nicca said.
Galen wrapped himself around me as if I were the last solid thing in the world. Doyle moved so he could embrace me as well. “It’s my fault,” Galen whispered, “I didn’t mean to do it.”
Aisling spoke, and the flock of birds sang as if they were moved to joy by the sound of his voice. “We reemerged in the Hallway of Mortality.”
“Major magic doesn’t work there; that’s why we’re all so helpless to stop the torture,” Rhys said.
“We came out of the walls and floors—and trees and flowers, and shining marble came with us,” Aisling said. “The hallway is forever changed.”
Galen started to shake, and I held him as hard as I could. “I was buried alive,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t need to breathe, but my body kept trying to do it. I came up through the floor screaming.” He collapsed to his knees while I fought to hold him.
“The queen was walling up Nerys’s clan alive,” Amatheon said. “Galen did not take well to that after his time in the earth.”
Galen shook as if he were having a fit, as if every muscle were fighting itself, as if he were cold, though fevered. It was too much power and too much fear.
Adair’s glow had dimmed enough so that I could see his eyes. “Galen said ‘No prisoners, no walls.’ The walls melted away, and flowers sprang up in the cells. He hadn’t understood how much power he had gained.”
Another shriek approached in the distance. “Cousin!”
Doyle said, “Galen’s exhortation, ‘No prisoners,’ freed Cel.”
Galen started to cry. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Onilwyn and the queen herself—and some of her guard—are wrestling Cel even now,” Hawthorne said, “or he would be here already, trying to harm the princess.”
“He is quite mad,” Aisling said, “and he is intent on hurting all of us. But most especially you, Princess.”
“The queen told us to run back to the Western Lands. She’s hoping he’ll grow more calm with time,” Hawthorne said. Even by starlight, he looked doubtful.
“She has admitted before her nobles that she cannot guarantee your safety,” Aisling said.“We should flee, if we are going to,” Hawthorne said.
I realized what he meant. If Cel attacked me now, here, like this, we would be within our rights to kill him, if we could. My guards were sworn to protect, and Cel was no match for the strength and magic that stood with me now. Not alone, he wasn’t.
“If I thought the queen would allow his death to go unpunished, I would say, Stay, fight,” Doyle said.
One of the great black mastiffs nudged Galen. He reached for it, almost automatically, and it changed before my eyes. It became a sleek white hound with one red ear. It licked the tears from Galen’s face and he stared at it in wonder, as if he hadn’t seen the dogs until that moment.
Then came Cel’s voice, broken, almost unrecognizable. “Merry!” His screams broke off abruptly. The silence was almost more frightening than the shouting, and my heart was suddenly pounding hard in my chest.
“What happened?” I called out.
Andais walked over the rise of the last gentle hill, following Galen’s trail of flowers. She was alone, save for her consort, Eamon. They were almost the same height, their long black hair streaming out behind them in a wind that came from nowhere. Andais was dressed as if she were going to a Halloween ball—and you were meant to fear her beauty. Eamon’s clothes were more sedate, and also all black. The fact that Andais arrived with only him at her side meant she didn’t want extra witnesses. Eamon was the only one who knew all her secrets.
“Cel will sleep for a time,” she called, as if in answer to a question we hadn’t asked.
Galen fought to stand while I steadied him. Doyle moved a little in front of me. Some of the others did, too. The rest looked behind us into the night, as if they suspected their queen of treachery. Eamon might be on my side some of the time—he might even hate Cel—but he would never go against his queen.
Andais and Eamon stopped far enough away that they were out of easy weapon range. The goblins watched them, and us, from a tight huddled knot, as if they weren’t sure whose side they were on. I didn’t blame them, for I’d be going back to L.A. and they would be staying here. I could force Kurag, their king, to lend me warriors, but I couldn’t expect his men to follow me into exile.
“Meredith, niece of mine, child of my brother Essus, greetings.” She’d chosen a greeting that acknowledged I was her bloodline. She was trying to be reassuring; she was just so bad at it.