A Caress of Twilight mg-2

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I didn't have to ask him what he meant. At that very moment a pack of reporters, both print and film, was camped out in front of the office building. We kept the drapes closed at the apartment for fear of telephoto lenses.

  How could the media resist a royal prodigal daughter coming home after being given up for dead? That alone would have earned some uncomfortable scrutiny, but add a huge dose of romance, and the media couldn't get enough of me, or should I say, us? The public story was I'd come out of hiding to find a husband among the royal court. The traditional way for a royal of the high court to find a spouse was to sleep with them. Then if she became pregnant, she married; if not, she didn't. The fey don't have many children; the royals have even fewer, so a pairing, even a love match, that doesn't produce children isn't good enough. If you don't breed, you don't get to marry.

  Andais had ruled the Unseelie Court for over a thousand years. My father had once said that being queen meant more to her than anything else in the world. Yet, she'd promised to step down if either Cel or I would just produce an heir. Like I said, children are very important to the sidhe.

  That was the public story. It hid a lot, like the fact that Cel had tried to kill me and was even now being punished for it. There was lots the media didn't know, and the queen wanted it kept that way, so we kept it that way.

  My aunt told me that she wanted an heir of her own bloodline, even if that blood was tainted like mine. She once tried to drown me as a child because I wasn't magic enough and thus, to her, I wasn't really sidhe, though I wasn't really human either. It was good to keep my aunt happy; her happy meant fewer people died.

  "I can understand your employer not wanting to get caught up in the media circus outside," I said.

  Jeffery gave me that brilliant smile again, but his eyes were relieved not lustful. "Then you'll agree to meet with my employer someplace more private."

  "The princess will not meet your employer alone anywhere," Doyle said.

  Jeffery shook his head. "No, I understand that now. My employer simply wants to avoid the media."

  "Short of using spells that are illegal against the media," I said, "I don't see how we could possibly avoid them all."

  Jeffery was back to frowning again. I sighed. I just wanted Jeffery to go away at this point. Surely the next client of the day would be less confusing, Goddess willing. My boss Jeremy Grey had a nonrefundable retainer. We had more business than we knew what to do with. Maybe I could just tell Jeffery Maison to go home.

  "I'm not allowed to say my employer's name out loud. She said that would mean something to you."

  I shrugged. "I'm sorry, Mr. Maison, but it doesn't."

  His frown deepened. "She was very sure that it would."

  I shook my head. "I am sorry, Mr. Maison." I stood up. Kitto's hand slid down my leg so that he could hide himself completely in the little cave that my desk made. He didn't melt in sunlight, contrary to folklore, but he was agoraphobic.

  "Please," Jeffrey said. "Please, I'm sure it's because I'm not saying it right."

  I crossed my arms under my breasts and did not sit back down. "I'm sorry, Mr. Maison, but we've all had a long morning, too long a morning to play twenty questions. Either tell us something concrete about your employer's problem, or find another private detective firm."

  He put his hand out, almost touching the desk, then let his hand fall back to his well-tailored lap. "My employer wishes to see people of her own kind again." He stared at me as if willing me to finally catch on.

  I frowned at him. "What do you mean, people of her own kind?"

  He frowned, clearly out of his depth, but doggedly trying. "My employer isn't human, Ms. Gentry, she's... very aware of what high-court fey are capable of." His voice was hushed but sort of pleading, as if he'd given me the biggest hint he was allowed to give me, and he hoped I'd figure it out.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, I had figured it out. There were other fey in Los Angeles, but other than myself and my guards, there was only one high royal -- Maeve Reed, the golden goddess of Hollywood. She'd been the golden goddess of Hollywood for fifty years now, and since she was immortal and would never age, she might be the golden goddess of Hollywood a hundred years from now.

  Once upon a time she'd been the goddess Conchenn, until King Taranis, the King of Light and Illusion, had exiled her from the Seelie Court, exiled her from faerie, and forbidden any other fey to speak with her ever again. She was to be shunned, treated as if she had died. King Taranis was my great-uncle, and technically I was fifth in line to his throne. In reality I wasn't welcome among the glittering throng. They'd made it clear at an early age that my pedigree was a little less than ideal and that no amount of royal Seelie blood could overcome being half Unseelie.

  So be it. I had a court to call home now. I didn't need them anymore. There'd been a time when I was younger that it had meant something to me, but I'd had to put away that particular pain years ago. My mother was a part of the Seelie Court, and she had abandoned me to the Unseelie to further her own political ambitions. I had no mother.

  Don't misunderstand, Queen Andais didn't like me much either. Even now, I wasn't completely sure why she'd chosen me as heir. Perhaps she was just running out of blood relatives. That tends to happen if enough of them die.

  I opened my mouth to say Maeve Reed's name, but stopped myself. My aunt was the Queen of Air and Darkness; anything said in the dark would eventually travel back to her. I didn't think King Taranis had an equivalent power, but I wasn't 100 percent sure. Caution was better. The Queen didn't care about Maeve Reed, but she did care about having things to negotiate with, or hold against, King Taranis. No one knew why Maeve had been exiled, but Taranis had taken it personally. It might be worth something to him to know that Maeve had done the forbidden. She'd contacted a member of the courts. There's an unspoken rule that if one court banishes someone from faerie, the other court respects the punishment. I should have sent Jeffery Maison running back to Maeve Reed. I should have said no. But I didn't. Once, when I was young, I asked one of the royals about Conchenn's fate. Taranis overheard. He beat me nearly to death; beat me the way you'd strike a dog that got in your way. And that beautiful, glittering throng had all stood and watched him do it, and no one, not even my mother, had tried to help me. I agreed to meet with Maeve Reed later that day because for the first time I had enough clout to defy Taranis. To harm me now would mean war between the courts. Taranis might be an egomaniac, but even his pride wasn't worth all-out war.

  Of course, knowing my aunt, it might not be war, at first. I was under the Queen's protection, which meant that anyone who harmed me had to answer to her personally. Taranis might prefer a war to the Queen's personal vengeance. After all, he'd be a King in the war, and Kings rarely see frontline action. If he pissed off Queen Andais enough, Taranis would be the front line all by his little lonesome. I was trying to stay alive, and they don't say knowledge is power for nothing.

  Chapter 3

  When the door closed behind Jeffery Maison, I expected the two guards to argue with me. I was half-right.

  "Far be it from me to question the princess," Rhys said, "but what if the King objects to you breaking Maeve Reed's exile?"

  I winced at the mention of the name out loud. "Does the King have the ability to hear everything said in daylight, the way the Queen hears after dark?"

  Rhys looked puzzled at me. "I don't... know."

  "Then let's not help him find out what we're doing by saying her name out loud."

  "I have never heard that Taranis has such a power," Doyle said.

  I turned in my chair to stare at him. "Well, let's hope not when you've just said his name out loud."

  "I have plotted against the King of Light and Illusion for millennia, Princess, and much of that plotting was done in broad daylight. Many of our human allies over the centuries have flatly refused to meet with the Unseelie after dark. They seemed to think that agreeing to meet during the day was a sign we trusted them, and tha
t they could trust us. Taranis never seemed to know what we were doing, day or night," Doyle said, head to one side, sending rainbows dancing through the room from the diamonds in his ears. "I believe that he does not have our Queen's gift. Andais may hear everything spoken in the dark, but I believe that the king is as deaf as any human."

  Anyone else I would have asked if he was sure, but Doyle never spoke unless he was certain. If he didn't know something, he'd say so. There was no false pride in him.

  "So the King can't hear us talking thousands of miles away," Rhys said. "Fine, but please tell Merry what a bad idea this is."

  "What is a bad idea?" Doyle asked.

  "Helping Maeve -- " Rhys glanced at me, then finished with, "the actress."

  Doyle frowned. "I don't remember anyone by that name ever being exiled from either court."

  I turned around in my chair and stared at him. His face was dark and unreadable against the bright sunlight. The glasses hid a great deal of his expression, but I was betting, glasses or no, he would have looked puzzled.

  I heard Rhys's silk coat whispering as he walked across the floor toward us. I glanced at him. He raised his eyebrows at me. We both looked at Doyle.

  "You don't know who she is, do you?" I asked.

  "The name you mentioned, Maeve something -- should I recognize it?"

  "She's been the reigning queen of Hollywood for over fifty years," Rhys said.

  Doyle just looked at us. "People from this Hollywood have approached the Queen and the court over the years to come and make movies, or allow them to film movies of their lives."

  "Have you ever actually seen a movie?" I asked.

  "I have seen movies at your apartment," he said.

  I glanced at Rhys. "We have got to get all of them out to a movie."

  Rhys half leaned, half sat on my desk. "We could all use a night out."

  Kitto plucked at the hem of my short skirt, and I moved my chair so I could look down into his face. A bar of sunlight fell full across his face. For a second the light filled his almond-shaped eyes, turning the solid sapphire blue orbs paler as if they were water and I could see down, down into the sparkling blue depths to a place where white light danced. Then he closed his eyes, wincing against the brightness. He buried his face against my thigh, one small hand wrapped around my calf. He spoke without looking up. "I don't want to sss-ee a movie." He was slurring his Ss badly, which meant he was upset. Kitto worked very hard to talk normally. When you have a forked tongue, that's not easy.

  I touched his head; his black curls were so soft, soft the way that a sidhe's hair is soft, not the roughness of goblin hair. "It's dark in the theater," I said, stroking his hair. "You could curl up on the floor beside me and never look at the screen."

  He rubbed his head against my thigh like some giant cat. "Truly?" he asked.

  "Truly," I said.

  "You'll like it," Rhys said. "It's dark and sometimes the floor is so dirty that it sticks to your feet when you walk on it."

  "I'll get my clothessss dirty," Kitto said.

  "I wouldn't think a goblin would worry about staying clean. The goblin mound is full of bones and rotting meat."

  "He's only half goblin, Rhys," I said.

  "Yeah, his father raped one of our women." He was staring down at Kitto, though all he could have seen was perhaps a pale hand or arm.

  "His mother was Seelie, not Unseelie," I said.

  "What does it matter? His father forced himself on a sidhe woman." His voice held heat enough to scald.

  "And how many of our sidhe warriors took their pleasure on unwilling women, even goblins, during the wars?" Doyle asked.

  I glanced at Doyle and could see nothing through the dark glasses. I looked quickly at Rhys and saw a pale blush chase up his cheeks. He glared at Doyle. "I have never touched a woman who did not invite my attentions."

  "Of course not, you are a member of the Queen's Guard, her Ravens, and it is death by torture for one of her Ravens to touch any woman except for the Queen herself. But what of the warriors who are not members of the personal guards?"

  Rhys looked away, his blush darkening to a bright, deep red.

  "Yes, look away, as we've all had to look away over the centuries," Doyle said.

  Rhys's neck turned slowly, as if every muscle had gone suddenly tight with anger. Last night he'd had a gun in his hands and he hadn't been frightening. Now, just sitting on the edge of my desk, he was frightening.

  He did nothing; even his hands were loose in his lap, just that terrible tension in his back, the set of his shoulders, the way he held himself as if he were a blink away from some terrible physical action -- something that would rip the room apart and paint the sparkling glass with blood and thicker things. Rhys had done nothing, nothing, yet violence rode the air like a kiss just above the skin, something to make you shiver with anticipation, even though nothing had happened. Not yet, not yet.

  I wanted to look behind me at Doyle, but I couldn't turn away from Rhys. It was as if only my gaze kept him in check. I knew that wasn't true, but I felt that if I looked away, even for a moment, something very, very bad would happen.

  Kitto was pressed so close to my legs that I could feel a fine trembling all along his body. My hand was still on his curls, but I don't think it was a comforting touch anymore, because I could feel the tension in my arm, my hand.

  Rhys's face turned milky as if something white and luminous moved under his skin, like soft, glowing clouds -- moved not across his face but underneath the skin of his face. The brilliant cornflower blue around his pupil glowed like neon; the sky blue that circled it was a match for the sunny sky outside; and the last circle of winter sky shimmered like blue heat. The eye only glowed. The colors didn't swirl, and I knew they could. His hair was still just white curls; the glow hadn't spread to them. I'd seen Rhys when his power was full upon him, and this wasn't one of those times, but it was close, too close for the bright office and the man behind me.

  I both wanted to turn and see Doyle's face, and didn't. I really didn't want a full-out duel here and now, especially over something this stupid. "Rhys," I said softly. He didn't look at me. That one glowing orb was set on the man behind me, as if nothing else existed.

  "Rhys!" I said again, voice more urgent.

  He blinked, looked down at me. Having the full weight of all that anger directed at me made me scoot the chair back. The moment I realized what I'd done, I stopped myself..! couldn't take the movement back, but I could pretend I'd meant to do it. I stood up, and that was my biggest mistake. Standing up made Kitto scoot out from under the desk, trying to keep himself huddled around my legs. The moment the little goblin was visible, Rhys's angry gaze dropped down to that pale figure, dropped down and hardened.

  Kitto seemed to feel that gaze, because he wrapped his arms around my legs so tightly that I almost fell. I had to recover my balance, a hand on the desktop, and Rhys threw himself across the desk, glowing hands scrambling for Kitto. I felt Doyle stand behind me, but there was no time. I'd seen Rhys kill with a touch. I grabbed the front and back of his coat and used his own momentum to slide him off the desk and into the wall past Doyle's legs. The wall shuddered with the impact, and I had a second to wonder what would have happened if he'd hit the windows instead. I saw from the corner of my eye that Doyle's gun was out, but I was still moving, still carried along on my own momentum.

  I drew the knife at my thigh, and as Rhys came up on his hands and knees, shaking his head, I pressed the tip of the blade against the side of his neck. It would have been better if I could have pinned him, or done anything to make sure he couldn't simply turn and take my legs out from under me, but it was the best I could do in the time I had. I knew how quickly the guards recovered, and I'd had only seconds to do anything.

  Rhys froze, head down, breathing ragged. I could feel the line of his body tense against my legs. I was too close, so too close, but the blade was firm against the side of his neck. I could feel the skin give a little unde
r the blade tip and knew I'd bloodied him. I hadn't meant to; I was just too rushed to be careful. But he didn't know it was an accident, and nothing convinces people you mean business like their own blood.

  "I'd hoped you would grow more tolerant of Kitto as time ran on, but you seem to be getting worse." My voice was soft, almost a whisper, each word spoken very carefully, as though I didn't trust what I might do if I yelled. In truth I could barely speak past the pulse in my throat.

  Rhys shifted his head, and I kept the point where it was, letting him put a little more flesh on the blade. If he thought I'd move back, he was wrong. He stopped moving. "Understand this, Rhys, Kitto is mine, as you are all mine. I won't let your prejudices endanger him."

  His voice squeezed out, as if he was finally aware that I might use the blade as it was meant to be used. "You'd kill me over a goblin."

  "I'd kill you for harming what is mine to protect. By attacking him like this, you've shown me no respect, none. Last night Doyle showed me no respect. If I've learned anything from my aunt and my father, it's that a leader who is not respected by her people is just a figurehead. I will not be something you fuck and cuddle. I will be queen or I will be nothing to you." My voice had dropped down even lower, so that the last words were said in a hoarse whisper. And I knew in that moment that I meant it, that if spilling Rhys's blood would gain me the power I needed, I'd kill him. I'd known Rhys my entire life. He was my lover, and on some level, my friend. Yet I could kill him. I'd miss him, and I'd regret the necessity of having to do it, but I knew now that I had to make the guards respect me. I lusted after the guards; I liked the ones I was sleeping with; I even half loved one or two, but there were precious few I'd want to see on the throne. Absolute power, true life and death -- who would you trust with that kind of power? Which of the guards was incorruptible? Answer, none. Everyone has their blind spots, the place where they are so sure of themselves that they see only their own rightness. I trusted myself, yet there were days when I doubted me. I was hoping that doubt would keep me honest. Maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe no one can be given that kind of power and stay fair and just. Maybe that old saying is true; power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'd do my best, but I knew one thing for certain: if I didn't get a handle on the situation now, the guards would ride over me. I might gain the throne, but I'd lose everything else. I didn't even really want the throne; but I wanted to rule, to rule and try to make things better. And, of course, that very desire was probably my blind spot, and the beginnings of corruption. To think I knew what would be better for all the Unseelie. How terribly arrogant.