A Lick of Frost(75)

The Red Caps looked at Jonty. He looked at me.

"Why are you here, Jonty? Why did so many of your people come with you?"

"You I will answer," he said in that deep voice. He'd insulted everyone here. Ash and Holly, Onilwyn, everyone but me.

He came forward. Rhys and Frost moved a little in front of me. Some of the other guards moved out of their line behind us.

"No," I said. "He helped me save you all. Don't be ungrateful now."

"We're supposed to protect you, Merry. How can we allow that to approach you?" Rhys said.

I gave him an unfriendly glare. "He is not a 'that,' Rhys. He is a Red Cap. He is Jonty. He is a goblin. But he not a 'that.' "

My anger seemed to surprise him. He gave a small bow and moved back. "As my lady wishes."

Normally, I would have tried to ease his hurt feelings, but tonight I had other things on my mind than juggling the emotional relationships in my life.

I stood up and the silk robe I was wearing brushed the floor with a sound that was almost alive. The high-heeled sandals with their wraparound laces made a sharp sound on the marble.

High heels had been the only thing the twins had asked me to wear. The only request. I moved the robe so they got a flash of the four-inch heels, the laces that curved around my calf. I got a sound from Holly, low in his throat. Ash controlled himself better, but his face couldn't hold it all. They wanted my white flesh against their gold. They wanted to know sidhe flesh, and it wasn't all about power.

They, like me, knew what it was to be the outsider. To be always different from those around you.

Jonty dropped to his knees in front of me. Kneeling, he looked me in the eyes. He made me aware of how small I was.

"Jonty," I said.

"Princess," he said.

I studied his face. Up close the change was even more startling. His skin was smoother, a softer gray. He smiled at me, and the teeth that I remembered as a mouthful of fangs were straighter, whiter, less frightening, more like a person's mouth than an animal's.

"What has happened to you, Jonty?" I asked.

"You happened to me, Princess."

"I don't understand."

"Your hand of blood happened to us all in that winter's night."

I frowned a little and tried to think of a way to ask my question, but how do you ask a question when you have no idea what to ask?

"I do not understand, Jonty."

"Your hand of blood has brought us back into our power."

"You have not come back into your full power," Holly said.

Jonty turned an evil look on him. "No, as the halfling says, no. But it is more power than we have known in centuries." He turned back to me, the anger fading from his eyes as he beheld me. There was a softness to his look that you didn't see in most goblins' eyes. Red Caps were known for their ferocity, not their kindness.

"Why have you all come, Jonty?"

"They want you to touch them as you touched us. They want you to bring them into their power, too."

"Why did you not ask me sooner?"

"Would you have done it?"

"You saved us, Jonty. I know that. But more than that, my job, my task as princess is to bring power back to faerie. All faerie. That includes you and your men."

Jonty looked at the floor, and spoke as softly as his deep, deep voice would allow. "I knew you would not refuse us if we stood before you. I knew that your hand of blood called to us too strongly, if we were close to you, but I did not think you would simply say yes from a distance."

He looked up and his red eyes shimmered. Red Caps did not cry, ever.

A single tear slid from his eye. A tear the color of fresh blood. I did what I knew was custom among the goblins. Tears are precious, blood more precious yet. I touched my finger to his face and captured that single tear before it could mingle with and be lost in the blood that trailed down his face.

The tear trembled on my finger like a true tear, but it was red as blood. I raised it to my mouth, and drank his tear.





CHAPTER 21





THERE ARE MOMENTS WHEN THE WORLD HOLDS ITS BREATH. When the very air seems to pause, as if time itself has taken that last deep breath before…

The taste of salt and sweet metal slid across my tongue. The liquid seemed to grow, until when it glided down my throat it was like a drink of cool, clear water, if it could hold the salt of oceans and the taste of blood.

I saw the room in pieces, as if things were moving out of sync. A cloud of demi-fey flew into the room, though I knew they had been forbidden to come. Goblins thought them tasty. But the winged fey filled the room like a cloud of butterflies and moths, dragonflies and damsel-flies, and insects that had never appeared in nature. There seemed to be more of them than I knew had followed us into exile.