Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(14)

“Her life is all I want, Kurag,” Rhys said.
A look of both pleasure and worry crossed Kurag’s face, as if he wasn’t sure whether it would be too much. His voice was careful as he began, “The life of one of the male goblins who enjoyed your company. Would that be worth Siun’s life?” He kept his face and voice as neutral as he could, but there was an eagerness to his orange-yellow eyes that said he enjoyed Rhys’s discomfort. I doubt that Kurag had watched Rhys used by men for the sex show, but for the power, for the sight of the mighty thrown low, oh, yes, Kurag had enjoyed that.
Rhys’s face clouded with the beginnings of anger, but he smoothed it away. He turned a thoughtful face to Kurag. “Is there some male in particular you’d offer in Siun’s place?”
Now it was Kurag’s turn to look thoughtful. “You remember any names?” His smile was close to his usual leer.
“Most wanted me to know who it was that would use me. I remembered Siun’s name.”
Kurag nodded, and his face sobered again, almost as if he’d said something he would take back if he could. There had to be a male among those who’d been with Rhys whom Kurag hated, or saw as a threat. That was the only thing that made sense. For the Goblin King to admit that anyone was a threat meant it was serious, maybe even dangerous. Goblins did not assassinate each other. It was considered cowardice. A king who resorted to letting others do his killing could be executed. But if Rhys did it now, as a wergild price, then Kurag would be blameless. Still, the fact that Kurag had suggested the name—that would be taken badly. So he stopped short of names. He would not name.
“Then name someone, white knight, name someone.”
Rhys shook his head. “If you had asked me to name the one goblin I wanted most to kill, it would be Siun.” He gestured at the trapped goblin as he said the last. “No one else’s death will satisfy.”
“What if the Goblin King could offer something other than a death?” Doyle asked.
Kurag looked at Doyle, but Rhys had eyes only for Siun. “What would you have, Darkness?”
Doyle allowed himself a small smile. “What would you offer?”
Rhys shook his head, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “No, Doyle, no, I want this death. I won’t trade it away.” He looked back at the tall, dark man, met Doyle’s unhappy gaze. “I am sorry, but not for politics. I won’t trade this death away for just politics.” 
“And if it could gain us some advantage for Meredith?”
He frowned, then finally shook his head. “No.” He looked at me, where I stood almost forgotten by the bed. “I’m sorry, Merry, but I will have this death.” He turned back to Doyle. “Trust me, Doyle, Siun dead will help us more than Siun alive.”
Doyle made a push-away gesture. “As you will.”
Rhys held his hand out to Kitto, who still stood frozen by the bed. “Come on, Kitto, let’s do this.”
Kitto was shaking his head over and over. “Can’t,” he finally said.
“Yes, you can,” Rhys said. He waggled his hand at him. “Come.”
Doyle held his hand out to me. “Come, Meredith, let’s put you out of the line of—fire.” He hesitated over the last word as if he would have said something else. I went to him, stepping carefully between Kitto and Rhys, and the naked blade in Kitto’s hand.
Rhys unsheathed the sword in his hand and flung the empty sheath toward Doyle, who caught it without looking, with his free hand. The other hand stayed in mine, and there was the faintest dew on his palm. Doyle was nervous. Why?
I was missing something. I had no idea what, but if it made Doyle nervous, it was probably a bad thing to miss. I was princess here, which meant I was supposed to be the ruler, but as so often seemed to happen, I was out of my depth. If I hadn’t had the touch of Doyle’s hand in mine, I would never have suspected he was nervous. That meant the goblins didn’t know it at all. We needed to keep it that way.
Rhys raised the long silver blade up over his head for a great downward strike. Siun pleaded, “My king, my king, help me!”
“I offered you his sex and his flesh, Siun. I didn’t tell you to maim him.” Kurag stroked her furry back one last time, then stepped back. “If you can kill sidhe, do it, but don’t fuck them up and leave them alive, because they never forget, and they never forgive.” He looked at Rhys. “She’s yours.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but he wasn’t brokenhearted, either. I don’t think he cared for Siun one way or the other. He’d tried to save her because she was one of his people, nothing more.
Siun tried to plead with Rhys, but to raise her one arm up to him she had to stretch her body upward. Her pale breasts flashed, and a look came over Rhys’s face, a look that I never, ever wanted to see directed at me. “Do you remember what you made me do with those?” he asked, in a voice that seemed to burn through the room.
“No,” she said, and she held out that arm, opened that mouth, and begged.
“I do,” Rhys said, and the blade flashed down. The sword bit into the back of her body with a sound like cracking plastic, and that sound alone let me know that whatever skeletal system Siun had, it wasn’t sidhe. But the blood was still red. Rhys chopped at her like you’d fight a tree that couldn’t fight back. One of her black legs with its dagger-like spurs slashed through his robe to the skin beyond. The second slash was down his side, and it made him hesitate, clutching at the wound.
Kitto was suddenly there, his clean silver blade catching a leg before it could slice at Rhys. He severed the leg with one blow, and it went spinning onto the carpet at our feet. Doyle moved me farther away from them, and I didn’t argue.
Frost started to cross the room, to join the fight, I think. Doyle stopped him with the sheath of Rhys’s sword, held like a barrier. He shook his head twice, and Frost stood beside us, one hand holding his other wrist, as if he had to hold something if he couldn’t fight.Kitto was screaming, a high, maddened wail. It was a battle cry of sorts, but the battle cry of the damned, the lost, the wounded, risen up to smite their masters. The sound raised the hair at my neck and made me huddle against Doyle’s body. He hugged me to him, wordless, his eyes on the fight.
Rhys stepped back from the body. He leaned against the wall, favoring his wounds, letting the gore drip down his sword. The front of his robe was soaked with Siun’s blood and his own. A splatter of crimson stained the side of his face and his white hair. He didn’t seem tired; he had just stopped fighting. Was he hurt?
Kitto alone struggled with the goblin, chopping and slicing, whittling her away a piece at a time. She’d tried to protect her head, rolling it under her body in a way that no human shape could have done, but Kitto split her head wide in a fountain of blood and thicker things. And still she lived.
Kitto was covered in blood and gore nearly from forehead to feet. His blue eyes looked so blue, it was like watching blue fire pool in a mask of blood.
I looked at Rhys, who was just leaning against the wall. He had to be hurt. I started to go to him, but Doyle held me back, shook his head.
“We have to help Kitto then,” I said.
Doyle just shook his head, his face grim.
I grabbed his arm. “Why not?” I turned back to watch Kitto struggling with the dagger-like legs that slashed and fought even as he cut them away. The goblin could still hurt him badly.
For the first time I wished Doyle had been wearing a shirt, so I could shake him by it. “He’ll get hurt.”
Doyle hugged me against his body, and it wasn’t exciting as it had been earlier, with Rhys, it was irritating. “Let me go.”
He leaned close and whispered against my face, “It is Kitto’s kill, Merry, let him have it.”
I stood pressed to his body, and didn’t understand. It wasn’t Kitto’s kill, it was Rhys’s. Then I looked at Rhys standing there, doing nothing. He watched Kitto. I remembered then what I’d forgotten. When my first hand of power had come in unexpectedly, Doyle had made me give true death to the hag I’d accidentally turned into a mass of living flesh. The hand of flesh is just that, it can take flesh and turn it inside out—a leg, an arm, a whole body. He gave me the choice of killing her, or leaving her like some inside-out ball of flesh forever. She’d never die, just remain. Even with a sword that was capable of giving death to the immortal, the blood had soaked through my clothes to my underwear. I’d been covered in it. When it was done, Doyle had informed me that you needed to bloody yourself in combat after the first hand of power manifests so that it would come again, a sort of blood sacrifice. I’d hated him for making me do that. I hated him and Rhys now, for doing the same to Kitto. 
Kitto gave his war cry until his voice broke. He chopped and sliced on the body until he couldn’t raise his arms higher than his waist, and fell to his knees on the blood-soaked carpet. He gasped for air, and it was almost loud enough to drown out Siun’s high-buzzing scream.
Rhys looked at Doyle, who nodded. Rhys pushed away from the wall and walked wide around what was left of the goblin. He knelt in the blood and hugged Kitto to him. I wondered if he was saying the same ritual words that Doyle had spoken to me that night.