Ash shook his head. “We have survived together, Holly, and we will continue to survive together. I have heard the tales of our storytellers. I have glimpsed what once we were, and you and I will bring those glory days back to the goblins.” He walked toward his brother, walking around Creeda as if she weren’t there. She hissed at him as he strode past. The blade in her hand flashed silver but she put it away, in a sheath that was lost to sight among her nest of arms.
He got to Holly and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I will stand by you in all things, even your anger at our king, but do not get us killed when we are about to go on to such glory as the goblins have not seen in more than two thousand years.” Somewhere in that speech was his acknowledgment that he wouldn’t have let Kurag kill Holly; that he would have backstabbed the king before he’d have allowed that.
Holly made a violent motion to point toward us, his arm flailing. He shot a glance our way that was venomous in its hatred. “They left us to die. How can you go to their beds?”
Ash grabbed his brother’s arms, fingers digging in deeply enough that you could see it from a distance. He shook him, just a little. “These sidhe did nothing to us. None of them is mother or father to us.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Look at them, Holly, look at them with something other than your hatred.” He actually turned his brother around to face us, and the look on that one’s face was such a mixture of pain and rage that it was hard to meet. “There is no golden skin and hair among them. They are Unseelie sidhe, and they did nothing to us.”
Holly looked almost ready to cry. Something I thought I’d never see on a goblin’s face. Kitto cried, but that was Kitto. He’d ceased to be a goblin to me, and was simply himself. No matter how sidhe Holly looked, he was still a goblin to me. Genetically he was half-sidhe, but culturally and morally he was goblin. I’d treat him that way until he convinced me otherwise.
“I do not believe that this goblin can shine like a sidhe,” Holly said, his voice angry and desperately stubborn.
“Make him shine, Merry,” Kurag said. “He needs convincing.”
“If we have your guarantee that Kitto will not be meat for every goblin who wants a taste of sidhe flesh, then I will make him shine for you. Without that guarantee, I think his fear may prevent it.”
Kitto shivered against me. He’d turned his head enough to peek at the mirror again, but he clung to me limpet-like, as if afraid the tide would drag him away.
“No,” Holly said, and tore away from his brother’s restraining hands. “No, if he gets safe passage then all the trulls will want it.” He shook his head, making his blond hair fly.“Sadly, I agree with Holly, Merry. If one gains it, then it is a slippery slope.”
I frowned at them, then said, “I am his lover. Does that make me his protector?”
Kurag looked like he wasn’t sure what to say. Ash shook his head and said, “She doesn’t understand what she’s asking.”
Kurag looked at Doyle. “Darkness, the princess is sidhe, but she is not you, or even the pale prince. She has not the strength of arm to withstand every goblin who will want to taste Kitto.”
“She has spoken,” Holly said. “She is his protector, let it stand.”
“Yes,” Creeda said, “let me be the first to fight her when she comes. I will have Kitto, and if I get to cut that pure flesh, so much the better.”
I knew then I’d misspoken, but wasn’t sure how to undo it.
“We will not bring the princess to your hall if she must spend all night fighting duels,” Doyle said. “We would be poor bodyguards indeed to do that.”
“Holly is right. If I grant Kitto safety, then the others like him will want the same. We are a more democratic people than you, and I am more ruled by my people’s voice than any sidhe ruler.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It works well for us, but Merry is not goblin. She would not survive the night.”
“Are sidhe such fragile things?” Holly said, voice full of scorn.
“Don’t make me cuff you again,” Kurag said.
“I’m mortal,” I said.
Holly’s face showed his surprise, but it was Ash who spoke. “We thought that was an evil rumor bandied about by your enemies. You are truly mortal then?”
I nodded.
Ash looked perplexed. “Then you would die protecting the trulls.”
Rhys moved up behind me, his arms sliding over not just me, but Kitto as well. He leaned his chin on the top of my head but let his hands wander over the smaller man’s back.
“We are his protectors,” Rhys said. His voice was very clear, and empty of emotion.
Kitto glanced up at him, and I was thankful that no one in the mirror could see the look of shock on his face. Rhys didn’t look at him, just kept that blank face toward the mirror and Kurag.
For once the goblin king was speechless. I think we all were. Well, not all.
Creeda jumped up on the chair so she could get a better view, or be better viewed. “Did we give you a taste for goblin flesh, white knight?”
“Kitto is sidhe,” Rhys said in a flat voice, “so say I.”
“So mote it be,” Doyle said.
There was a ringing in the air, not of actual bells or anything you could hear with your ears, but the words had weight and reverberated through the room. Kurag’s face showed that he sensed it, too. Something important had happened. Something fated, some piece of prophecy had either begun or been changed so completely that the fates of all had changed in that moment. You can feel the weight of it, but you never truly know what it means, not until it’s too late to do anything to change it. It could be days, or years, before we knew what had happened in those few words.
There was a sound from deeper in Kurag’s room. It was a clattering noise with an edge of slithering, like a many-legged snake. I didn’t know what the sound was, but Kitto went pale, bloodless in my arms, his body suddenly limp. If I hadn’t been holding him, he’d have fallen to the floor. Rhys was on his knees, his hands on my shoulders, but kneeling tall behind me. I could feel the tension singing through his hands.
I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn’t want us to appear weak in Kurag’s eyes. Then Kurag answered the question for me, even unasked.
“I didn’t call you yet.” Kurag was angry, but there was an edge of resignation to it. As if the anger were mainly formality. Real anger, but he didn’t have much hope it would help things. I’d never seen Kurag so . . . defeated.
A voice came just out of sight of the mirror. It was high and hissing, and first I thought snake, but it held that metallic buzzing to it that Creeda had, and there was no snake goblin in the queen. The voice said, “You wanted to show me off, didn’t you Kurag? Show the princesssss that not all are asss ssidhe ass Holly and Asshh.”
“Yes,” Kurag said, and turned to the mirror. He looked solemn. “Know this, Merry: Not all sidhe-sides have taken after their sidhe parentage. Before you agree to this, you should see what will come to your bed.” He looked at Rhys now, but that teasing edge was gone. “And not all our half-breeds are male.”
“Don’t do this, Kurag,” Rhys said, and his voice was empty, but that emptiness was full of something, something that frightened me.
“She is part sidhe, white knight, and she wants her chance at bedding you again.”
That clattering, slithering noise came closer, as if something were crawling and dragging itself along at the same time.
Kitto was making a high-pitched noise deep in his throat, a helpless keening. I held him tight, and it was as if he couldn’t feel me. His body still lay limp in my arms, as if he was withdrawing into himself.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Rhys said one word, a name, with such hatred that it hurt to hear it. He said the name just as something crawled upon Kurag’s great chair. Something that looked as if it had been sewn together from different nightmares.
“Siun.”
Kitto screamed.
Chapter 5
Kitto’s screams were high and piteous like the sounds a baby rabbit makes when the cat’s got it. He scrambled out of my lap, across the bed, to fall over to the other side.
Frost rushed into the room with a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. He searched for an enemy, then just frowned at us all when there was nothing to shoot. “What’s happened? What’s wrong with Kitto?”
“Doesn’t my little trullup want to greet his master? Have you forgotten everything I taught you, Kitto?” the thing on the chair said.
Doyle had gone to kneel by Kitto, and was trying unsuccessfully to soothe him. I heard the deep voice through the screams, but when Kitto finally found his words again, it was to say, “No, no, no, no, no.” Over and over and over.
I’d tried to turn and help Kitto, but Rhys’s hands had tightened on my shoulders. One glance at his face, and I knew that Kitto wasn’t the only one who needed help. I didn’t know what to do, but I stayed where I was, with Rhys kneeling so that his body touched the back of mine. I stayed there so he could lean against me and not fall over.I turned back to the goblin in the chair and waited for my eyes to make sense of it. At first it looked like a huge black, hairy spider. A spider the size of a large German shepherd. But the head had a neck, and there was something vaguely human about the mouth; it had lips and fangs. There were huge black legs on either side of the bloated body that were pure spider, but the two hands that stuck out of the front of it weren’t. It seemed to have eyes everywhere, and every one of them was tricolored in rings of blue. It raised up as if trying to get more comfortable on the chair, and flashed a glimpse of pale breasts. Female. I couldn’t bring myself to call it a woman.