He started to stand back up, but I touched his arm. I covered the mike with my hand, and leaned in against him, so I could whisper against the curve of his ear. I took in a deep breath of the scent of his skin, and said, “Kneel or sit.”
His breath went out so deep that his shoulders moved with it. But he knelt on one knee beside me. I moved the microphone a little closer to him.
I slid my hand under the back of his jacket, so that I could lay my hand against the curve of his back, just below the side sweep of the big sword sheath. When fey are nervous, any fey, we take comfort from touching one another. Even the mighty sidhe feel better with a little contact, though not all of us will admit it for fear of blurring the line between royalty and commoner. I had too much lesser fey blood in my veins to worry about it. I could feel the sweat that was beginning to trickle down his spine.
Madeline started to come closer to us. I shook my head. She gave me a questioning look but didn’t argue. She picked another question from the throng.
“So you took a bullet to protect Princess Meredith?”
I leaned into the mike, putting my face very close to Frost’s, touching carefully, so I didn’t get makeup on him. The cameras exploded in bursts of white light. Frost jumped, and I knew that was going to be visible to the cameras. Oh, well. We were blinded, vision blurred in bursts of white and blue spots. His muscles tightened, but I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t been touching him.
“Hi, Sarah, and yes, he took a bullet for me,” I said.
I think Sarah said “Hi, Princess” back, but I couldn’t be sure, since I still couldn’t see well enough, and the noise of so many voices was too confusing. I’d learned to use names when I knew them. It made everyone feel more friendly. And you need all the friendly you can get at a press conference.
“Frost, were you afraid?”
He relaxed minutely against me, into the touch of my hand and my face. “Yes,” he said.
“Afraid to die,” someone yelled out without being called on.
Frost answered the question anyway. “No.”
Madeline called on someone, who asked, “Then what were you afraid of?”
“I was afraid Meredith would be harmed.” He licked his lips, and tensed again. I realized he’d used my name without my title. A faux pas for a bodyguard, but of course, he was more than that. Every guard was technically in the running to be prince to my princess. But we were sidhe, and we don’t marry until we’re pregnant. A nonfertile couple is not allowed to wed, so the guards were doing more than just “guarding”my body.
“Frost, would you give your life for the princess?”
He answered without hesitation. “Of course.” His tone said clearly that that had been a silly question.
A reporter in back who had a television camera next to him asked the next question. “Frost, how did you heal a gunshot wound in less than twenty-four hours?”
Frost gave another deep, shoulder-moving sigh. “I am a warrior of the sidhe.” The reporters waited for him to add more, but I knew he wouldn’t. To Frost, the fact that he was sidhe was all the answer he needed. It had been only a through and through bullet wound from a handgun and no special ammunition. It would take a great deal more than that to stop a warrior of the sidhe.
I hid my smile and started to lean into the mike, to help explain that to the press, when the sweat along his spine suddenly stopped being wet and warm. It was as if a line of cold air swept down his back. Cold enough that I moved my hand away, startled.
I glanced down at his big hand on the table and saw what I’d feared. A white rime of frost was drifting out from his hand. I thanked Goddess that the cloth on the table was white. Only that was saving us from someone noticing. They might notice later when they went back over the camera footage, but that I could not help. I had enough to worry about without thinking that far ahead. In a way this was my fault. I’d accidentally brought Frost into a level of power that he’d never known. It was a blessing of the Goddess, but with new power comes new responsibilities, and new temptations.I moved my hand from under his jacket to cover his hand with mine, as I spoke into the reporters’ puzzled murmur. I was braced for his hand to be as icy as that slide of power down his back, but surprisingly, his hand wasn’t nearly that cold.
“The sidhe heal almost any injury,” I said.
The frost was spreading out. The edge of it caught the microphone and began to climb it. The mike crackled with static, and I squeezed Frost’s hand. He saw it then, what his fear was doing. I’d known it wasn’t on purpose. He balled his hand into a fist, but with my hand on top of his, my fingers entwined with his. I did not want anyone to notice the frost before it melted.
I turned my face toward his, and he faced me. There was a snow falling in his iris, like a tiny grey snow globe set in his eyes. I leaned in and kissed him. It surprised him, because he’d heard the queen’s admonition about not showing favoritism, but Andais would forgive me, if she gave me time to explain. She’d have done the same, or more, to distract the press from unwanted magic.
It was a chaste press of lips because Frost was that uncomfortable in front of all these strangers. Plus, I was wearing a red lipstick that would smear like clown makeup if we did a tonsil-cleaning kiss. I saw the explosion of the cameras like an orange press against my closed eyelids.
I drew back from the kiss first. Frost’s eyes were still closed, his lips relaxed, almost open. His eyes blinked open. He looked startled, maybe from the lights, or maybe from the kiss. Though Goddess knows I’d kissed him before, and with a great deal more body English. Did a kiss from me still mean that much to him, when we’d kissed so many times I couldn’t count them all?
The look in his eyes said yes more clearly than any words.
Photographers were kneeling as close to the front of the table as the other guards would let them get. They were taking pictures of his face and mine. The frost had melted while we kissed, leaving only a light wetness around our hands. It barely darkened the white cloth. We’d hidden the magic, but we’d exposed Frost’s face to the world. What do you do when a man lets the whole world see just how much your kiss affects him? Why, kiss him again, of course. Which I did, and this time I didn’t worry about clown makeup, or the queen’s orders. I simply wanted, always, to see that look on his face when we kissed. Always and forever.
CHAPTER 2
WE HAD RED LIPSTICK SMEARED OVER BOTH OUR FACES, BUT WE were sidhe, and one of the lesser powers we possessed was glamour. A little concentration, and I simply made my lipstick look perfect, though I could feel it smeared around my mouth. I spilled the small magic across Frost’s face, so that he looked as he had before, and not like he’d laid his face into a pot of red paint and rubbed back and forth.
It was illegal to use magic on the press. The Supreme Court had declared that it infringed on the first amendment, freedom of the press and all that. But we were allowed to use small magic on ourselves for cosmetic purposes. After all, there was no difference between that and regular makeup or plastic surgery for celebrities. The court wisely didn’t try to open that particular can of movie-star worms.
I could have worn glamour instead of makeup in the first place, but it took concentration, and I’d wanted all my concentration for the questions. Besides, if there was another assassination attempt, the glamour would go, and the queen was just vain enough that she’d ordered me into makeup, just in case. I guess so that if the worst happened, I’d look good dead. Or maybe I was just being cynical. Maybe she simply didn’t trust my abilities at glamour. Maybe.
I told Frost that he’d answered enough questions for one day, and it was a feeding frenzy of “Frost, Frost.” There were even a few rude enough to shout out questions like “Is she good in bed . . . ? How many times a week do you get to fuck her?” Gotta love the tabloids, especially some of the European ones. They make our American tabloids look downright friendly.
We all ignored such rude questions. Frost took his post behind me against the wall. I could feel the small magic around him. If he walked too far from me, the glamour would break, but this close I could hold it. Not forever, but long enough to get us through this mess.
Madeline chose one of the mainstream newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, but his question made me wonder if we’d have been better off answering the tabloids. “I have a two-part question . . . Meredith, if I may?” He was so courteous, I should have known he was leading up to something that wouldn’t be pleasant.
Madeline looked at me, and I nodded. He asked, “If the sidhe can heal almost any wound, then why is your arm not healed?”
“I’m not full-blooded sidhe, so I heal slower, more like a human.”
“Yes, you’re part human and part brownie, as well as sidhe. But isn’t it true that some of the noble sidhe of the Unseelie Court are concerned that you are not sidhe enough to rule them? That even if you gain the throne, they will not acknowledge you as queen?”
I smiled into the flash of lights and thought furiously. Someone had talked to him. Someone who should have known better. Some of the sidhe did fear my mortality, my mixed blood, and thought that if I sat on the throne I would destroy them. That my mortal blood would take their immortality. It had been the reason behind at least one, maybe both, of the extra attacks yesterday. We had an entire noble house, and the head of another, imprisoned now, awaiting sentencing. No one had briefed me on what to say if the question arose, because no one had dreamt that any sidhe, or lesser fey, would have dared talk to the press, not even to hint.