Mistral's Kiss (Merry Gentry #5)(26)

He startled away from the touch of it as if it had burned him. He tried to turn too quickly, and it must have pained the open wound on his stomach, for he winced, sucking in his breath sharply. He fell back onto his side, the spear still gripped in one hand.
I held up the gold-and-silver cup so that it caught the light. It was really only then that it sank in that there was light here. It was sunlight, glinting on the cup, and warm on my skin.
For my life, I couldn’t remember if there had been sun a moment ago. I might have asked Sholto, but he was focused on what was in my hand, and whispered, “It can’t be what I think it is.”
“It is the chalice.”
He gave a small shake of his head. “How?”
“I dreamt of it, as I dreamt of Abeloec’s horn cup, and when I woke it was beside me.”
He leaned heavily on the spear, and reached toward the shining cup. I held it out toward him, but his fingers stopped just short of it, as if he feared to touch it.
His reluctance reminded me that things could happen if I touched one of the men with the chalice. But weren’t we in vision? And if so, would that hold true? I looked at Segna’s body, felt her blood drying on my skin. Was this vision, or was it real?“And is not vision real?” came a woman’s voice.
“Who said that?” Sholto asked.
A figure appeared. She was hidden completely behind the grey of a hooded cloak. She stood in the clear sunlight, but it was like looking at a shadow—a shadow with nothing to give it form.
“Do not fear the touch of the Goddess,” the figure said.
“Who are you?” Sholto whispered.
“Who do you think I am?” came the voice. In the past, she had always either appeared more solid or been only a voice, a scent on the wind.
Sholto licked his lips and whispered, “Goddess.”
My hand rose of its own accord. I held the chalice out to him, but it was as if someone else were moving my hand. “Touch the chalice,” I whispered.
He kept his grip on the spear, leaning on it, as he stretched out his other hand. “What will happen when I touch it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then why do you want me to do it?”
“She wants you to,” I said.
He hesitated again with his fingers just above the shining surface. The Goddess’s voice breathed around us with the scent of summer roses: “Choose.”
Sholto took in a sharp breath and blew it out, like a sprinter, then touched the gold of the cup. I smelled herbs, as if I had brushed against a border of thyme and lavender around my roses. A black-cloaked figure appeared beside the grey. Taller, broader of shoulders, and somehow—even shrouded by the cloak—male. As the cloak could not hide the Goddess’s femininity, so the cloak could not hide the God’s masculinity.
Sholto’s hand wrapped around the chalice, covering my hand with his, so that we both held the cup.
The voice came deep, and rich, and ever changing. I knew the voice of the God, always male, but never the same. “You have spilled your blood, risked your lives, killed on this ground,” he intoned. That dark hood turned toward Sholto, and for a moment I thought I saw a chin, lips, but they changed even as I saw them. It was dizzying. “What would you give to bring life back to your people, Sholto?”
“Anything,” he whispered.
“Be careful what you offer,” the Goddess said, and her voice, too, was every woman’s, and none.
“I would give my life to save my people,” Sholto said.
“I do not wish to take it,” I responded, because the Goddess had offered me a similar choice once. Amatheon had bared his neck for a blade, so that life could return to the land of faerie. I had refused, because there were other ways to give life to the land. I was descended from fertility deities, and I knew well that blood was not the only thing that made the grass grow. 
“This is not your choice,” she said to me. Was there a note of sorrow in her voice?
A dagger appeared in the air in front of Sholto. Its hilt and blade were all white, and gleamed oddly in the light. Sholto’s hand left the chalice and grabbed for the knife, almost by reflex. “The hilt is bone. It is the match to the spear,” Sholto said, and there was soft wonder in his voice as he gazed at the dagger.
“Do you remember what the dagger was used for?” said the God. “It was used to slay the old king. To spill his blood on this island,” Sholto replied obediently.
“Why?” the God asked.
“This dagger is the heart of the sluagh, or was once.”
“What does a heart need?”
“Blood, and lives,” Sholto answered, as if he were taking a test.
“You spilled blood and life on the island, but it is not alive.”
Sholto shook his head. “Segna was not a suitable sacrifice for this place. It needs a king’s blood.” He held the knife out toward the God’s shadowy figure. “Spill my blood, take my life, bring the heart of the sluagh back to life.”
“You are the king, Sholto. If you die, who will take back the spear, and bring the power back to your people?”
I knelt there, the blood growing tacky on my skin. I cradled the chalice in my hands, and had a bad feeling that I knew where this talk was going.
Sholto lowered the knife and asked, “What do you want of me, Lord?”
The figure pointed at me. “There is royal blood to spill. Do it, and the heart of the sluagh will live once more.”
Sholto stared at me, the look on his face full of shock. I wondered if my face had looked that way when the choice had been mine. “You mean for me to kill Meredith?”
“She is royal blood, a fit sacrifice for this place.”
“No,” Sholto said.
“You said you would do anything,” the Goddess said.
“I can offer my life, but I cannot offer hers,” Sholto said. “It isn’t mine to give.” His hand was mottled with the force of his grip on the hilt of the knife.
“You are king,” the God said.
“A king tends his people, he doesn’t butcher them.”
“You would condemn your people to a slow death for the life of one woman?”
Emotions chased over Sholto’s face, but finally he dropped the knife on the rock. It rang as if it were the hardest metal rather than bone. “I cannot, will not harm Meredith.”
“Why will you not?”
“She is not sluagh. She should not have to die to bring us back to life. It is not her place.”
“If she wishes to be queen over all of faerie, then she will be sluagh.”
“Then let her be queen. If she dies here, she will not be queen, and that will leave us with only Cel. I would bring life back to the sluagh and destroy all of faerie in one blow. She holds the chalice. The chalice, my lord. The chalice after all these years is returned. I do not understand how you can ask me to destroy the only hope we have.”
“Is she your hope, Sholto?” the God asked.
“Yes,” he whispered. There was so much emotion in that one word.
The dark figure looked at the grey. The Goddess spoke. “There is no fear in you, Meredith. Why not?”
I tried to put it into words. “Sholto is right, my lady. The chalice has returned to us, and magic is returning to the sidhe. You use my body as your vessel. I do not think you would waste all that on one bloody sacrifice.” I glanced at Sholto. “And I have felt his hand in mine. I have felt his desire for me. I think it would destroy something in him to kill me. I do not believe my God and Goddess so heartless as that.”“Does he love you then, Meredith?”
“I do not know, but he loves the idea of holding me in his arms. That I know.”
“Do you love this woman, Sholto?” the God asked.
Sholto opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “It is not a gentleman’s place to answer such questions in front of a lady.”
“This is a place for truth, Sholto.”
“It’s all right, Sholto,” I said. “Answer true. I won’t hold it against you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said softly.
The look on his face made me laugh. The laughter echoed on the air like the song of birds.
“Joy will suffice to bring this place back to life,” the Goddess said.
“If you bring life to this place with joy, then you will change the very heart of the sluagh. Do you understand that, Sholto?” the God said.
“Not exactly.”
“The heart of the sluagh is based on death, blood, combat, and terror. Laughter, joy, and life will make a different heart for the sluagh.”
“I am sorry, my lord, but I do not understand.”
“Meredith,” the Goddess said, “explain it to him.” The Goddess was beginning to fade, like a dream as dawn’s light steals through the window.
“I do not understand,” Sholto said.
“You are sluagh and Unseelie sidhe,” the God said; “you are a creature of terror and darkness. It is what you are, but it is not all you are.” With that, the dark shape began to fade, too.
Sholto reached out to him. “Wait, I don’t understand.”
The God and Goddess vanished, as if they’d never been, and the sunlight dimmed with them. We were left in gloom. It was the twilight of the underground of faerie these days—not the aberration of the momentous sunlight that had bathed us moments ago.
Sholto yelled, “My God, wait!”
“Sholto,” I said. I had to say it twice more before he looked at me.