Swallowing Darkness (Merry Gentry #7)(20)

Yolland moved past us in his court finery, his iron sword bare in his hand. I couldn’t see what he did, but he said, “The green-haired guard has only the faintest pulse.”“What about Mistral?” Sholto asked.
“The same.”
“We have to get Mistral to a healer,” I said, still wrapped in the warmth of Sholto’s back, and other things.
“What of Onilwyn?” Sholto asked. I was pressed so close to his back that his words vibrated against my cheek.
I thought of the look on Onilwyn’s face, the hatred. He meant my death, and sparing his life wouldn’t change that determination in his eyes. He would see it as weakness. “He must die.”
I felt Sholto startle; even the tentacles reacted like a hand that almost draws back from yours. “We should ask the queen first, Meredith.”
“Are there healers at the sluagh?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then take Mistral and me there. I must get out of the cold, and he needs the killing metal out of his body.”
“Let us take you to the Seelie Court,” Yolland said.
I laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Without the power of the wild hunt, I would not enter there like this.”
“Then the Unseelie Court,” Sholto said.
“The men you killed were lords of that court, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then it is not safe. Take me to your kingdom, Sholto.”
“The sidhe are more fragile than the people of the sluagh. I am not certain our healers are the best for the Storm Lord.”
“He needs the metal out of him, and warmth; beyond that, we will see. But time is not his friend, or ours. Kill Onilwyn. When we have survived this night, we will seek an audience with the queen.”
“You cannot mean to end the life of one of the sidhe,” Turloch said. “My enemies are many, my friends are few. I must prove to the first that to come against me is death, and to the second that I am strong enough to rule here.” Then I hugged Sholto and told the truth. “I saw my death and the deaths of my unborn children in Onilwyn’s face. If I spare him, he will see it as weakness, not mercy. I do not want him at my back with that hot determination in his eyes. I am pregnant with twins. Would you risk the first royal babies since I was born to squeamishness?”
“It is not squeamishness, my lady,” Turloch said.
“Princess,” Sholto said. “She is Princess Meredith.”
“Fine. Princess Meredith, it is not squeamishness, but the thought of losing another lord of the sidhe. We are so few now, Princess. Even those who are twisted and Unseelie are precious to some of us, for many of them once walked the golden corridors of our court before they fell from favor.”
“I am aware that many of our lords and ladies were once yours, Lord Turloch. But that does not change Onilwyn’s fate.” 
“You are not my queen yet, and this I will not do,” he said.
Sholto started to speak, but I squeezed him tightly, and he took the hint. He let me speak instead. “I would think long, Lord Turloch, on the fact that I brought a sidhe lord down single-handedly with no weapon.”
“Is that a threat?” he asked.
“It is truth,” I said, and let him take it any way he wished.
“Do as she commands,” Sholto said. “You are still part of the hunt, and I am still the huntsman.”
“Only until dawn breaks,” he said.
“We will be free at dawn, but whether you are free or condemned to ride forever with the hunt remains to be seen,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“She is right,” Lord Dacey said, “for we attacked the hunt. Punishment can be to ride forever.”
“Only the huntsman can free you,” Sholto said, “so I would prove myself a good solider, Turloch, if I were you.” His voice was cold, and he was very certain of himself. Only I was close enough to feel his heartbeat speed up. Was he not certain of his words, or not certain what the sidhe would do? Or did he agree with the other men that Onilwyn should be spared? The prospect of being trapped in the hunt was a fate that might make them fight us. The magic of the hunt was beginning to fade; I could feel it. It wouldn’t be dawn that broke it. We could end up with a second fight on our hands.
We needed more allies who were ours by choice, not by threat. Mistral’s life was dripping away. I would not lose him because we hesitated.
I started to step back from Sholto. He held me close for a second, then let me move away from him. The tentacles caressed me reluctantly, like fingertips trailing down my arms.
The ground was colder as I walked away from Sholto. His magic had been keeping me warm. As I moved across the frozen ground, the three sidhe lords watched me, as if I were something to be cautious of, almost as if they were afraid of me. It wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on the faces of the noble sidhe. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I knew I needed it. People only follow you for two reasons, love and fear. Money didn’t mean anything in faerie. I preferred love, but tonight my enemies had proven that there were more of them than I had known and that there were too many plots to reason with them all. When love and sweet reason will not work, you are left with fear and ruthlessness.
I put my hand over my stomach, still barely different, but I’d heard their heartbeats, saw them moving like some magical, almost unreal shapes on the ultrasound. They were inside me, and I had to protect them. I’d honestly believed that once I was with child the sidhe would value that life, not mine but the children’s. I knew I was wrong now, and I could not afford to be soft. Flinching was no longer an option. They say that being pregnant makes women softer, gentler, but in that moment I understood why so many religions have goddesses who are both creators and destroyers. I was barely pregnant, and I was already willing to do things that once would have made me hesitate. The time for hesitation was past.
Yolland had moved Onilwyn off Mistral, so that the Ash Lord lay on his back in the frosted grass. I picked up Onilwyn’s dropped sword. “It is cold iron, sidhe lords. He meant to sheath it inside my body. I will give him back his blade.”
I raised it two-handed, and I prayed for strength, the strength to protect myself and my children. The strength to protect the fathers of my children, and the people I loved. I prayed, and drove the blade down into his body. The blade pierced his chest just under the sternum. I drove it up through the softer tissue under the ribs. I drove it up into his heart, and left it there, as he’d meant to do to me.I stood up with blood on my hands and arms, spattering my white gown. “Tell the other lords and ladies that I am with child. I am remade, reborn, and threats to my children and my kings will be met with the utmost severity.”
I looked at them, and held out my bloody hands. My skin began to glow through the blood. The power came over me, and I was warm once more. The scent of roses filled the air, and petals began to fall from the sky like pink rain.
A golden cup appeared in the air in front of me. The chalice that had been lost from the Seelie Court centuries before hovered before me. The chalice was to me as the spear and dagger were to Sholto. It appeared and disappeared at whim. It came to my bloody hands, and it was as bright and shining a magic as it had ever been. Blood and death were not evil, but just another part of life.
The petals filled the chalice, and the Goddess moved in my mind. I knelt beside Mistral’s still form, and dipped my fingers into the petals, but when my fingers came out they dripped with liquid, and I smelled wine. I touched it to his lips, and he groaned.
“Take the arrows out of him,” I said.
It was the dark-haired lord, Yolland, who knelt and began to obey. Turloch said, “It cannot be the chalice.”
“Do not trust your eyes; trust your skin, your bones,” Lord Dacey said. “Can you not feel the thrum of its magic?”
Dacey joined Yolland. Mistral moaned as they jerked the arrows free. His hands convulsed with the pain, but at least he was still mostly unconscious. As the arrows came out, I touched the liquid from the chalice to each wound. They did not heal completely, for they were made by cold iron, but they did close partially, as if they had had days of healing. The two sidhe lords knelt in the cold, and watched the chalice work its magic. When I had touched every wound on Mistral’s body, I turned to the kneeling lords. Sholto had stood and watched, because the chalice was not his magic but mine.
I offered the cup with its flower petals to the lords, and they drank from it. Their lips came away touched with a different color of liquid each time. One smelled of ale, another of beer. Turloch knelt at last, tears shining on his face.
“Goddess save us.”
“She’s trying to,” I said, and let him drink.
The scent of something sweet and unknown to me flowed up.
The petals had begun to sprout small thorny vines, roses growing in the winter cold. We knelt surrounded by the beginnings of a thicket, as green and real as any summer day, as snow began to fall from the cold sky.
“Go back to the sidhe and tell them the wild rose has returned.”
Lord Yolland said, “I would bear your mark, my goddess.”
“So be it,” I said.
A thin vine wrapped around one of his wrists. He flinched, and I knew the thorns cut him, then the living vine was a tattoo around his wrist, as perfect and delicate as the tendril it had been but a moment before. Yolland stared at the mark, wiping away the blood that was still on his white skin.