A Lick of Frost(45)

I stared into Crystall's luminous, hopeless eyes, and my throat tightened around the tears that I knew I could not afford to shed. Andais had left us a present to look at, but she'd be watching, and she would see tears as weakness. Crystall was her visual aid. Her example to us, to me. I wasn't certain what the message was supposed to be, but in her mind there was one. But, Goddess help me, other than her jealousy and hatred of rejection I couldn't see any message here.

"Oh, Crystall," I said. "I am sorry."

His voice had reminded me of the sound of chimes in a gentle wind. Now it was a painful croak. "You did not do this, Princess."

His eyes flickered toward what I knew was the outer door, though I could not see that part of the room. His face closed down, and for a moment where there had been hopelessness there was rage. A rage that he stuffed down, and hid behind eyes that showed as neutral a face as he could find.

I prayed that Andais hadn't seen that moment of rage. She'd try to beat it out of him if she had.

The queen swept into the room dressed in a loose, flowing black robe. It left open a triangle of white flesh, the flat perfection of her stomach and a trace of her belly button. There was a thin cord tied across the high, tight planes of her breasts that kept the front of the outfit from spilling open completely. There were long, wide sleeves that left most of her forearms bare. She must have been called away on important business to have put on that much clothing with Crystall still in her bed. He wasn't hurt enough for her to be finished with him.

She'd tied her long black hair back in a loose tail of hair. The ribbon she'd chosen was red. I'd never seen her wear red before, not even a spot of it. The only red the queen liked on her person was other people's blood.

I couldn't have explained it, but that red ribbon made my stomach clench tight, and my pulse speed. Andais slid onto the bed in front of Crystall, but close enough that she could stroke the untouched flesh of his back. She stroked him idly as you would a dog. He flinched at her first touch, then settled down and tried not to be there.

She looked at us with her tricolored eyes: charcoal, to the color of storm clouds, to a pale winter gray that was nearly white. Her eyes went so perfectly with the black hair and the pale skin. She was so made for Goth fashion, like Abe, except she was scarier than any Goth on the planet. Andais was serial-killer scary, and she was my father's sister, my queen, and there was nothing I could do about either.

"Aunt Andais," I said, "we have arrived from the hospital to tell you much news." We had already agreed that we needed to be clear from the beginning that we were telling her the news at the first opportunity.

"My queen," Doyle said, doing an awkward sitting bow as far as the bandages would allow.

"I have heard many rumors this day," she said, in a voice that some thought was a throaty, seductive sound, but that had always filled me with dread.

"Goddess knows what the rumor's are," Rhys said as he moved back to stand by the bed, near me. "The truth is weird enough." He said it with a smile and his usual teasing lightness.

She gave him a flat look that was anything but friendly. There would be no lightening her mood if that look was any indication. She turned those angry eyes back to Doyle. .

"What could possibly injure the Dark itself?" Her voice was angry, and almost disinterested. She knew, somehow she already knew. Who the hell had talked?

"When the Light appears, the Darkness must leave," Doyle said, in his best flat nothing voice.

She ran the bright redness of her lacquered nails down Crystall's back. She left red lines, though she didn't quite break the skin. Crystall turned his face away from the mirror and from her, afraid, I think, that he could not control his expression. "What light is bright enough to conquer the Darkness?" she asked.

"Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, is still potent in his hand of power," Doyle said, his voice even emptier than her own.

She dug fingernails into Crystall's back just below the shoulder blade, as if she meant to dig a handful of flesh out of his back. Blood began to show around her hand, like water filling a hole in the ground, slowly seeping upward.

"You seem preoccupied, Meredith. Whatever could be the matter?" Her voice was almost conversational, except for that edge of cruelty.

I decided to concentrate on the things that might distract her from tormenting the man in her bed. "Taranis attacked us through the mirror in the lawyer's office. He injured Doyle, and Abeloec. He was trying for me when Galen got to me safety."

"Oh, I doubt he meant to injure you, Meredith, even in his madness. I suspect he was trying for Galen."

I blinked at her. The way she said it meant that she knew something that we did not. "Why would he target Galen?"