Sholto and the doctor were stripping him of the last of his clothes. I remembered him as so strong, so very alive. He lay on the bed as immovable as the dead. His chest rose and fell, but his breaths were shallow. His skin still had that unhealthy gray pallor to it. Without the clothes in the way you could see how many wounds marred his body. I counted seven separate ones before Sholto came to me. He grabbed my arm and turned me from the bed.
“You look pale, My Princess. Sit down.”
I shook my head. “It’s Mistral who’s hurt.”
Sholto took both my hands in his, and looked into my face. He seemed to be studying me. He let go of one hand so he could touch my forehead. “You feel cool to the touch.”
“I’ve been out in the winter cold, Sholto.” I tried to see around his body to the bed.
“Meredith, if it comes to a choice between having the healer look at you and the babes you carry or saving Mistral, I will choose you and the babies. So sit down and prove to me that you are not going back into shock. Riding with the wild hunt is not often an occupation for women, and I have never heard of a pregnant woman or goddess doing it at all.”
I heard his words, but all I could think of was that Mistral might be dying.
He squeezed my hand hard. The pain was enough to make me frown up at him and try to pull away. “You’re hurting me,” I said.
“I would shake you, but I don’t know what that would do to the babies. Meredith, I need you to take care of yourself so we can take care of Mistral. Do you understand that?”
He let go of my hand, and led me gently by the elbow to a chair that must have been there all along. It was as if I hadn’t seen the room until that moment, as if all I could see was Mistral, Sholto, and, vaguely, the healer. Was I in shock? Had I gone back into shock as the magic receded? Or were all the events of the evening simply catching up with me?
The chair Sholto sat me in was large. The arms under my hands were carved wood, smooth from years of other hands caressing it. The cushions underneath me were soft, and the draperies that were curled over the back of the chair were silk, a deep purple like ripe grapes or the darker color of wine. I looked around the room and found that most of the room was done in shades of purple and burgundy. I think I’d expected black and gray the way the Queen’s room was done. Sholto spent so much time in the Unseelie Court trying to be as good as, and fit in with, the Unseelie nobles that I’d just assumed that the black he wore at court was what he would have done his home in, but now I was here, and it was nothing like I’d imagined.
Among the burgundy and purple there were hints of red and lavender, gold and yellow here and there, interwoven with the darker colors. My apartment in Los Angeles had been mostly burgundy and pink. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that whoever I married would have a say in the decor of our home. I was pregnant with their children, but I didn’t really know their favorite colors, except for Galen. I’d known that Galen liked green since I was small. But the rest of the men, even Doyle and my lost Frost, hadn’t had time to tell me their likes and dislikes of small things. Colors, cushions, rugs, or bare wood; what did they prefer? I had no idea. We’d gone from emergency to emergency for so long, or been working to make ends meet, that there hadn’t been time to worry about the typical things couples discuss.
I’d spent my early life with my father out among the humans, American humans, so I knew how to be a couple, but I had the same problem that all royals had. We could try to be ordinary, but in the end, it wasn’t truly possible. What we were would always overwhelm who we were.
Sholto appeared in front of me with a cup in his hand. Steam rose from it, and it smelled thick, warm, sweet. I could identify some of the spices in it, but not all.
“Mulled wine, but I can’t drink, not while I’m pregnant.”
The healer spoke from the bed. “Did you see the servant bring in the wine?”
I blinked at him, past Sholto’s shoulder. “No,” I said.
“You must have something to help you, Princess Meredith. I believe you are going into shock again, and how many shocks can you take in one night while pregnant with twins? It’s a hard thing on a body, and although the fact that you are descended from fertility deities is a help to you, you are also part human, and part brownie. Neither of them is free from complications.”“What do you know of brownies?” I asked, as Sholto wrapped my hands around the cup. I needed both hands for the smooth wood.
“Henry has treated many of the lesser fey while he has been with us,” Sholto said. “One of the reasons he came to our court was his curiosity about our many forms. He thought he could learn more here.”
“So you’ve helped brownies birth babies?” I asked.
Sholto used one hand to start the cup toward my mouth. My hands stayed around the cup, but didn’t help him. I felt strangely passive, as if nothing mattered that much. They were right. I needed something.
“I have,” the doctor said, “and I promise you, Princess, that one cup of mulled wine will not harm you or your children. It will help you think more clearly, and warm you from the terrible things you have seen this night.” He sounded very kind, and his brown eyes were full of sincerity.
“You’re a witch,” I said.
“A good one, I promise, but I did train as a doctor, and I am a healer. But, yes, I am what the humans call a psychic now. Back in my mortal day I was a witch, and that, along with the hump on my back, put me in grave danger of being killed for dealing with the devil.”
“The old king of the sluagh,” I said.
He nodded. “I was seen with some of the sluagh one night, and that sealed my fate among the humans. Now drink. Drink and be well.” There was more to his words than just kindness. There was power. Drink and be well. I knew there was magic and will in his words, and more than just spices in the wine.
Sholto helped me drink it, and from the first touch of the warm, spicy liquid on my tongue I felt a little more alert. Swallowing it spread warmth through my entire body, in a rush of comfort. It was like being wrapped in a favorite blanket on a winter’s night, with a cup of hot tea in one hand, a favorite book in the other, and your beloved lying with his head in your lap. It was all that in one cup of warm wine.
I drank, and by the end of the cup Sholto was no longer having to guide my hands.
“Better?” the doctor asked.
“Much,” I said.
Sholto took the cup from me, and put it on a tray on the small table beside the chair. There was even a lamp beside the chair, curved up over the back of it. It was a modern lamp, which meant that this room at least was wired for electricity. As much as I had missed faerie in my exile on the West Coast, seeing the lamp, and knowing that I could turn it on with the flip of a switch, was very comforting. There were moments lately when magic seemed so plentiful that a little technology was not at all a bad thing.
“Do you feel well enough to join us at the bed?” the doctor asked.
I thought about it before answering, then nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“Bring her, My King, for I need your help.”
Sholto helped me stand. I had a moment of dizziness. His hand was very solid in mine, his other hand on my waist. The room stopped moving, and I wasn’t certain if that was because of the wine, the magic in the wine, the night, or something about carrying two lives inside my body. I knew that if I was human, truly human, twins were supposed to be hard on the body. But it was very early in the pregnancy, wasn’t it?
Sholto led me to the bed, and there was a ramp up to it so that it was on a dais, but with no steps. I wondered if the last king of the sluagh hadn’t found steps to his liking. The pure-blooded nightflyers didn’t have feet to use steps, so a ramp would work better. Of course, they could fly, so maybe the ramp had been meant for some even older king.
Someone snapped their fingers in my face. It startled me, made me see the doctor’s face close to mine. “The wine should have taken care of this distraction. I am not certain she is well enough to help us, My King.” The doctor, Henry, looked worried, and I could feel his concern. I realized that he could project his emotions. If he could choose what emotions to share with his patients, it must have made his bedside manner amazing.
“What do you need us to do, Henry?” Sholto asked.
“I have put a poultice on each wound, and it will draw some of the poison out, but all the denizens of faerie are magic. They need it to survive the way humans need air or water. I’ve long maintained that the reason cold iron is so deadly to faerie is that it negates magic. In effect, the iron in his body is destroying the magic that makes him live. We need to give him other magic to replace it.”
“How do we do that?” Sholto asked.
“This is magic of a higher order than I have in my poor repertoire. It needs the magic of the sidhe, and I will never be that.” There was a taste of regret to his words, but no bitterness. He had made peace with who and what he was long ago.
“I am not a healer,” Sholto said.
The smell of roses and herbs returned. “It isn’t healers who are needed, Sholto,” I said. “Your doctor is a great healer.”
Henry bowed to me. His twisted spine made it a shallow bow, but it was as graceful as any I’d been given. “You are most generous with your praise, Princess Meredith.”