A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry #9)(67)

“Let me help her undress, Frost, please?”
“It doesn’t do any good for you to be here if you reopen a wound,” Galen said.
Frost frowned like he’d pout, which he’d done a lot once upon a time, but then he found the room’s only chair and sat gingerly on the edge of it. Was his back hurt, too? I didn’t remember any of the scratches being there, but I was having trouble remembering everything that happened in the last hour, and that was days ago. How could I remember something that far back?
Cathbodua had shooed everyone else out and closed the door behind her. It was then that Nurse Nancy seemed to figure out that five of the men were staying and helping her undress me. “OK, gentlemen, the rest of you can go on out with the rest of them,” she said.
Ivi said, “You said we could stay.”
“No, I said only the people that had seen her nude could stay.”
“Well, then we can all stay,” Ivi said. He wasted a smile on her and flipped his nearly ankle-length hair so that the pattern of ivy leaves that climbed all that paler green hair showed clearer. Humans were always thinking that Ivi had somehow decorated his hair with the pattern of ivy vines and leaves, but it was natural, an outward sign of his inner nature.
But Nurse Nancy was made of sterner stuff than some and didn’t respond to the flirting. “I know the fey are more comfortable with nudity than most humans, but I didn’t just mean that. I meant …” The nurse seemed lost for words. She was ignoring the flirting, but her discomfort was real.
Brioc moved where I could see him and where he could help Ivi flirt and intimidate the nurse. Brioc was as tall, slender, and muscled as Ivi, but Brioc’s hair was a bright yellow blond, his skin a pale grayish white like some of the Red Caps had, but Brioc was pure sidhe. His skin was the color of cherry tree bark, just like the incredible red of his full lips wasn’t due to lipstick of any kind. He was the cherry tree made flesh and blood, as Ivi was for his namesake. Vegetative deities were always interesting. Brioc said, “You meant her lovers could stay.”
“Yes, that is what I meant,” the nurse said.
“We assumed that is what you meant,” Ivi said.
I couldn’t see the nurse’s face, but I heard her silence, even through my shivering and chattering teeth. “Are you saying that you’re all … lovers?”
“Yes,” Ivi said.
“Ex-lovers,” Brioc said, “but yes, so we can guard the princess no matter her state of undress.”
Galen and Nicca had peeled off the wet top and the bra. For some reason my bare breasts seemed to galvanize Nurse Nancy. “The hospital gown is on the bed, it closes in the back, just open the door when she’s dressed … undressed … redressed.” She fled. Apparently, five lovers was a few too many over the nurse’s comfort zone. Under other circumstances it might have been amusing; now it just seemed like another reminder that I would never completely understand human culture.
I was in shock, as in the kind of shock that needed a bedsize heating pad under me, warm blankets, and an IV to give me fluids. I felt fragile and very human ending up in a hospital bed just from shock. There was nothing wrong with me; I hadn’t been the one who got shot. I didn’t have a scratch on me, though they’d probably been aiming at me. Had the bullet been for me, and Sholto just got in the way? No one wanted to kill Sholto, but plenty of people wanted to kill me.The bed was warm, I was warm, and I was suddenly so tired. Frost sat beside the bed, his hand in mine, and my eyes were fluttering shut. I managed to ask, “Did they give me something?”
“What do you mean, give you something?” Frost asked.
“To sleep. Did they give me something to make me sleep?”
Galen came to stand on the other side of me, stroking his hand across my forehead. “Yes.”
“I’m not hurt. I don’t need to sleep.”
“We agreed with the doctor,” Galen said, voice soft.
“Damn it,” I managed to say as my eyes fluttered closed again.
He leaned down to lay a soft kiss on my lips. “I love you, Merry.”
“I love you, too,” and that was the last thing I remembered, before sleep came and I could not fight it.
CHAPTER
FORTY
THE DREAM BEGAN innocently enough, but like all innocence it could not last. I stood in the high, round room of a tower that I had never seen before. There were beautiful tapestries on the walls, rugs bright as stained glass on the floor, and through the room’s two windows the sunshine was golden and thick like honey for the eyes. It was beautiful, peaceful, so why was I afraid?
A man’s voice came from behind me, “I can keep you safe, Meredith, you and our children.”
My throat closed tight, and I couldn’t breathe for a second, because I knew that voice. I turned as one does in a horror movie, slowly, unwilling, because you know the monster is right there—behind you.
Taranis stood in a bright swath of sunlight, most of him lost in the light, so that he seemed to be forming from the light itself as he stepped farther into the room. He held his hand out to me, a smile curling his lips, and it was as if that smile were some happy jewel set between the red-gold of his mustache and beard. His hair flowed in matching curls and waves as if his hair couldn’t decide how curly it wanted to be. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him when his hair wasn’t perfectly styled. This careless play was somehow more pleasing, and more real. His eyes looked just a brilliant green rather than the green of many flower petals in every shade of green known under the sky, and those more human eyes smiled kindly at me.
I actually took a step toward him, but I stumbled on the edge of my floor-length skirt. I looked down and found myself in a dress that matched the tower room. I was dressed like some fairy-tale princess waiting to be rescued. My heart climbed into my throat, so that I was choking on it.
“Meredith.” And the moment he said my name, the fear receded. I gazed up at him and found this new, more human Taranis comforting. Part of me knew that was wrong, that he wasn’t comforting, but it was as if I couldn’t think the thought all the way through. 
He crossed the room and touched my cheek, ever so gently, with the back of his hand. “Come to me, Meredith, come and be my queen and I will keep you safe from all that would harm you.”
His tone was sweet, but his words jarred me, because they did not ring true with my own memories. I moved my face back from that touch and said, “You’re part of what I need to be protected from.”
He looked puzzled, as if my words made no sense. “Meredith, I would never hurt you.”
I looked up into that handsome face and thought, He would never hurt me, of course he would never hurt me. I said, “No,” not because I believed it in that moment, but as a place to start. No, he was wrong somehow. No, I shouldn’t be here. No, just no.
“Oh, Meredith, I want to take care of you, you and our children.”
I shook my head. “No … not …” Not what, I thought? What was he not? What was not true? That was it, something he’d just said wasn’t true, but what was it? Why couldn’t I think?
He touched my face again, and I started to rub my face against his hand, but stopped in midmotion, because there was nothing familiar about his hand on my face. I had so many men who touched my face, who held me, who kept me safe, but this hand wasn’t one of them. This man wasn’t one of them. Who was he then, what was he to me? Why couldn’t I think?
I shook my head hard enough that he had to move his hand. I tried to back away from him but tripped over the hem of the dress, falling to the floor hard enough that it jarred me, and I tasted blood, from biting my tongue. A single pink rose petal drifted down into my lap, and a tiny drop of blood began to fall from my lip, and it was as if time stretched forever as that drop fell in slow motion down, down, to finally land on that pink petal.
It was as if time, sound, reality all resumed with a rush that should have had a sound to it like the Doppler shift of a car speeding past me in the dark, so near that its wind ruffles my hair, tugs at my clothing, and leaves me gasping at the nearness of it.
I looked up at him, and said, “I know who you are.”
He knelt beside me, smiling. “Of course you know me, I am your beloved.”
“You are Taranis, King of Light and Illusion; you beat me and you raped me, and everything else is a lie.”
His smile faded around the edges; that pleasant face flickered, like a TV set that wasn’t quite on one station, so you got the ghost of other images, and then he was back to pleasant, smiling, handsome, but harmless. I could change my physical appearance using glamour, but I couldn’t add an emotion to it and make someone feel things they didn’t actually feel. Was that all that his illusions were, just personal glamour with the addition of being able to project thoughts and feelings?
“Meredith, Meredith, see how much I love you.”
I looked into his face and saw … love. He loved me, of course he loved me. He had always loved me … and the moment I thought that, I knew it was wrong. I remembered him beating me as a child. I remembered how terrified I had been of him. I remembered reaching out to my mother and she had turned away. It had been my grandmother, her mother, who had saved me from the king’s anger.