A Caress of Twilight mg-2

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Yes," Maeve said. "He forced me out that same night."

  "For fear that you would tell someone," I said.

  "Surely I am not the only one to have suspicions," she said. "Adaria went on to have children with two others, but she was barren for centuries with our King."

  I understood now why I'd been beaten for asking about Maeve. My uncle's very life hung in the balance. "He could just step down from the throne," I said.

  Maeve lowered her glasses enough to give me a withering look. "Do not be naive, Meredith. It does not become you."

  I nodded. "Sorry, you're right. Taranis would never believe it. He would have to be forced to accept that he was sterile, and the only way to do so would be to bring him up before the nobles. Which means you'd have to find a way to convince enough of them to vote your way."

  She shook her head. "No, Meredith, I cannot be the only one who suspects. His death would restore fertility to our people. All our power descends from our king or queen. I believe that Taranis's inability to father children has doomed the rest of us to be childless."

  "There are still children at court," I said.

  "But how many of them are pure Seelie blood?"

  I thought for a second. "I'm not sure. Most of them were born long before I came along."

  "I am sure," she said. She leaned forward, her entire body language suddenly very serious, no flirting involved. "None. All the children born to us in the last six hundred years have been mixed blood. Either rapes during the wars of Unseelie warriors, or ones like yourself that are very mixed indeed. Mixed blood, stronger blood, Meredith. Our king has doomed us to die as a people because he is too proud to step down from the throne."

  "If he stepped down because he was infertile, the other royals could still demand he be killed to ensure the fertility of the rest."

  "And they would," Maeve said, "if they discovered that I told him of his little problem a century ago."

  She was right. If Taranis had simply not known, then they might have forgiven him and allowed him to step down. But to have known for a century and have done nothing... They would see his blood sprinkled over the fields for that.

  The murmur of voices made me turn around. A new man was speaking pleasantries to the men around the umbrella table. He turned toward us smiling, flashing very white teeth. The rest of him was so unhealthy that the artificially bright smile seemed to emphasize the sallowness of his skin, the sunken eyes. He was so eaten away by illness that it took me a few seconds to recognize Gordon Reed. He'd been the director who took Maeve from small parts to stardom. I had a sudden image of his body rotted away and those teeth the only thing left untouched in his grave. I knew in that instant that the macabre vision was a true seeing, and he was dying.

  The question was, did they know?

  Maeve held out her hand to him. He took her smooth golden hand in his withered one, laying a kiss on the back of that perfect skin. How must he feel to watch his own youth fade, to feel his body die, while she remained untouched?

  He turned to me, still holding her hand. "Princess Meredith, so good of you to join us today." The words were very civil, very ordinary, as if this were just another afternoon by the pool.

  Maeve patted his hand. "Sit down, Gordon." She moved to give him the lounge chair, while she knelt on the pool edge, much like Kitto had earlier. He sat down heavily, and a momentary flinching around his eyes was the only outward sign that he hurt.

  Maeve took off her sunglasses and kept looking at him. She studied what was left of the tall, handsome man that she'd married. She studied him as if every line of bone under that sallow skin was precious.

  That one look was enough. She loved him. She really loved him, and they both knew that he was dying.

  She laid her face on that withered hand and looked at me with wide blue eyes that shimmered just a little too much in the light. It wasn't glamour; it was unshed tears.

  Her voice was low, but clear. "Gordon and I want a child, Meredith."

  "How -- "I stopped; I couldn't ask it, not in front of both of them.

  "How long does Gordon have?" Maeve asked for me.

  I nodded.

  "Six..." Maeve's voice broke. She tried to regain herself, but finally Gordon answered, "Six weeks, maybe three months at the outside." His voice was calm, accepting. He stroked Maeve's silky hair.

  Maeve rolled her face to stare at me. The look in her eyes wasn't accepting, or calm. It was frantic.

  I knew now why, after a hundred years, Maeve had been willing to risk Taranis's anger to seek help from another sidhe. Conchenn, goddess of beauty and spring, was running out of time.

  Chapter 15

  It was dark by the time we arrived back at my apartment. I would have said home, but it wasn't that. It had never been home. It was a one-bedroom apartment originally intended for only one person. I wasn't even supposed to have a roommate in it. I was trying to share it with five people. To say we were a little cramped for space was a terrifying understatement.

  Strangely, we hadn't talked much on the drive back to work to exchange the van for my car, or afterwards during the drive to the apartment. I don't know what was bothering everyone else, but seeing Gordon Reed dying, practically before my eyes, had dampened my enthusiasm. Truth was, it wasn't really Gordon's dying, but the way Maeve had looked at him. An immortal in true love with a mortal. It always ended badly.

  I'd threaded my way through the traffic almost automatically, the trip livened only by Doyle's soft gasps. He was not a good passenger, but since he'd never had a license, he didn't have much choice. Usually I enjoyed Doyle's little panic attacks. It was one of the few times that I saw him completely unglued. It was strangely comforting, usually.

  Today when we stepped into the pale pink walls of my living room, I didn't think anything could comfort me. I was, as usual lately, wrong.

  First, there was the rich smell of stew and fresh baked bread. The kind of stew that simmers all day and just gets better. And there is no such thing as bad homemade bread. Second, Galen walked around the only corner in the main room from my tiny kitchen to the even tinier dining area. Usually, I notice Galen's smile first. He has a great smile. Or maybe the pale green hair that curls just below his ears. Tonight I noticed his clothes. He was not wearing a shirt. He was wearing a white lacy apron that was sheer enough that I could see the darker skin of his nipples, the curl of darker green hair that decorated his upper chest, the thin line of hair that traced the edge of his belly button and vanished inside his jeans.

  He turned his back to finish setting the table, and his skin was flawless, pearlescent white with the faintest tinge of green. The see-through straps of the apron did nothing to hide his strong back and broad shoulders, the perfect length of arm. The one thin braid of hair that still fell past his waist curved over his skin like a caress.

  I hadn't realized that I had stopped dead just past the door until Rhys said, "If you move a little bit farther into the room, the rest of us can get past."

  I felt my skin burn as I blushed. But I moved and let the others come past me.

  Galen continued coming and going out of the kitchen, as if he hadn't noticed my reaction, and maybe he hadn't. It was sometimes hard to tell with Galen. He never seemed to understand how beautiful he was. Which, come to think of it, might have been part of his appeal. Humility was a very rare commodity in a sidhe nobleman.

  "Stew's ready, but the bread needs to cool a bit before we cut it." He went back into the kitchen without really looking at any of us.

  There had been a time when I would have given and gotten a hello kiss from him. But there was a little problem. Galen had been injured during one of the court punishments just before Samhain, Halloween. I could still see the scene in my mind's eye: Galen chained to the rock, his body almost lost to sight under the slowly fanning butterfly wings of the demi-fey. They looked like true butterflies on the edge of a puddle, sipping liquid, wings moving slowly to the rhythm of their feeding. But they weren't
sipping water; they were drinking his blood. They had taken bites of his flesh with the blood, and for reasons that only Prince Cel knew, he'd ordered them to pay particular attention to Galen's groin.

  Cel had made certain that I would not be able to take Galen to my bed until he healed. But he was sidhe, and sidhe healed while you watched, their bodies absorbing the wounds like flowers blooming in reverse. Every dainty bite had vanished into that flawless skin, except the wounds on his groin. He was, for all intents and purposes, unmanned.

  We'd been to every healer we could find, both medical and metaphysical. The medical doctors had been baffled; the witches had only been able to say it was something magical. Twenty-first-century witches hesitate to use the word curse.

  No one did curses; they were too bad for your karma. You do a curse and it comes back on you, always. You can never do truly evil magic, the kind that has no intent but to harm, without paying a price. No one is exempt from that rule, not even the immortal. It's one of the reasons that a true curse is so rare.

  I watched Galen bustling about the kitchen in his peekaboo apron, careful not to look at me, and my heart hurt.

  I went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing my body against the warmth of his back. He went very still under my touch, then slowly his hands came up to slide along my arms. He hugged my arms against his body. I cuddled my cheek against the smooth warmth of his back. It was the closest to a hug that I'd gotten from him in weeks. He'd found any interaction painful, in more than one way.

  He began to pull away and I tightened my grip. He could have forced me away from him, but he didn't. He just stood there and dropped his hands from mine. "Merry, please." His voice was so soft.

  "No," I said, holding him tight, tight against me. "Let me contact Queen Niceven."

  He shook his head, sending his braid spilling against my face. The scent of his hair was sweet and clean. I remembered when his hair had draped to his knees like most of the high-court sidhe. I'd mourned when he cut it.

  "I will not let you put yourself in that creature's debt," he said, and his voice held a solemnity that was so unlike him.

  "Please, Galen, please."

  "No, Merry, no." He tried to push me away again, but I wouldn't let go.

  "And what if there is no cure without Niceven's help?"

  He put his hands on my arms, not to caress this time but to pry them apart so he could move away. Galen was a sidhe warrior; he could punch holes through the sides of buildings. I could not hold him if he would not be held.

  He moved into the mouth of the narrow kitchen, out of my reach. He would not look at me with his pale green eyes. He studied the painting on the dining room wall: a picture of butterflies in a grassy meadow. Did the butterflies remind him of the demi-fey, or did he even see the painting? Or was it simply better to look anywhere than at me?

  I'd been begging Galen's permission to go to Queen Niceven and find out what she'd done to him. He'd forbidden it. He didn't want me to put myself in her debt just to help him. I'd tried pleading, crying, which I think on anyone else would have worked, but he had held firm. He would not be responsible for me owing Niceven and her demi-fey a debt.

  I stood there staring at him -- that beautiful body that I had loved since I was a child. Galen had been my first crush. If he was healed, we could cool the heat that had been between us since I hit puberty.

  I realized suddenly that I'd been going about this all wrong. Kitto had told me that Doyle thought I was just going to fuck everyone and not use the power I'd gained. He wasn't just referring to the goblins. Was I the future queen of the Unseelie or not? If I was to be queen, what was I doing asking anyone's permission for anything? Who I put myself in debt to was none of Galen's business. Not really.

  I turned away from Galen, back into the room. The rest of the men were watching us. If they'd been human, they would have pretended not to watch, been reading magazines, or pretending to, but they were fey. If you did something in front of the fey, they watched. If you wanted privacy, you wouldn't be doing it where they could see you; that was our culture.

  Only Kitto was missing, and I knew where he was, in his oversize, fully covered cloth dog bed. It was like a small, snug tent. It sat in the far corner of the living room positioned so he could watch the television, which was one of the few technological wonders that Kitto seemed to appreciate.

  "Doyle," I said.

  "Yes, Princess." His voice was neutral.

  "Contact Queen Niceven for me."

  He simply bowed and went for the bedroom. It was the largest mirror in the apartment. He would try to contact the demi-fey first through the mirror as you would contact another sidhe. It might work, it might not. The demi-fey didn't stay inside the faerie mounds very much. They liked the open air. If they weren't near a reflective surface, the mirror spell wouldn't work. There were other spells to try, but he would start with the mirror. We might get lucky and catch the little queen flying by a still pool of water.

  "No," Galen said. He took two quick strides, not to me, but to Doyle. He caught the other guard's arm. "No, I won't let her do this."

  Doyle met Galen's eyes for a second, and Galen didn't flinch. I'd seen gods flinch from that look on Doyle's face. Either Galen was braver than I'd thought, or stupider. I was betting on the latter. Galen simply didn't understand politics, personal or otherwise. He would grab Doyle's arm, prevent him from leaving the room, even though that might mean a duel between the two of them. I'd seen Doyle fight, and I'd seen Galen fight. I knew who would win, but Galen wasn't thinking. He was reacting, and that, of course, was Galen's great weakness, and why my father had given me to another. Galen didn't have it in him to survive court intrigue; he just didn't.

  But Doyle didn't take offense. His gaze slid from Galen to me. He arched an eyebrow, as if asking what to do.

  "You act as if you are already king, Galen," I said, and it sounded harsh even to me, because I knew he was thinking no such thing. But I had to get him under control before Doyle stepped in, I had to lead here, not Doyle.

  The look of astonishment on Galen's face as he turned to me was so genuine, so Galen. Almost any other of the Queen's Ravens would have been able to guard their expression better than that. His emotions had always been painted on his face.

  "I don't know what you mean." And he probably didn't.

  I sighed. "I gave one of my guards an order, and you have stopped him from carrying out that order. Who but a king would supercede the orders of a princess?"

  Confusion chased across his face, and his hand fell slowly away from Doyle's arm. "I didn't mean it that way." His voice sounded young and unsure of itself. He was seventy years older than me, yet politically he was still a child, and always would be. Part of Galen's charm was his innocence. It was also one of his most dangerous flaws.

  "Do as I bid, Doyle."

  Doyle gave me the lowest and most courtly bow he'd ever given me. Then he went for the bedroom door and the mirror beyond.

  Galen watched him go, then turned back to me. "Merry, please don't put yourself in that creature's power because of me."

  I shook my head. "Galen, I love you, but not everyone is as inept politically as you are."

  He frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means, my sweet, that I'll negotiate with Niceven. If what she asks is too great a price, I won't pay it. But trust me to take care of things. I won't do anything stupid, Galen."

  He shook his head. "I don't like this. You don't know what Niceven's become since Queen Andais has been losing some of her hold on the court."

  "If Andais lets her power slip, then others will hurry to grab it up. I know that, Galen."

  "How? How do you know that, when you've been away while it's all been happening?"

  I sighed again. "If Andais's power has slipped so that her own son, Cel, would plot around her, if her power has deteriorated to the point where the sluagh are being used to police her court instead of being the ultimate threat
that they should be, then everyone must be scrambling to pick up the pieces. And they will do their best to keep the pieces they grab."

  Galen looked at me, uncomprehending. "That's exactly what's been happening for three years, but you haven't been there. How did you..." A look of astonishment showed, and then, "You had a spy."

  "No, Galen, I had no spy. I don't have to be there to know what the court will do if the queen is weak. Nature abhors a vacuum, Galen." He frowned at me. He had no desire for power, no political ambitions. It was as if that part of him was missing; and because it was totally lacking in him, he did not understand it in others. I'd always known this about him, but I'd never realized just how profound his lack of understanding was. He couldn't conceive of me seeing all the puzzle without having seen all the pieces first. Because he couldn't have done it, he couldn't understand someone else doing it.

  I smiled, and it felt sad. I went to him, touched his face with my fingertips. I needed to touch him to see if he was real. It was as if I'd finally realized just how profound his problem was, and knowing it, it seemed as if I'd never really known him at all.

  His cheek was just as warm, as real, as ever. "Galen, I will negotiate with Niceven. I will do it because to leave one of my guards so crippled is an insult to me and all of us. The demi-fey should not be able to unman a sidhe warrior."

  He flinched at that, gaze sliding away from me. I touched his chin, moved him back to look at me. "And I want you, Galen. I want you as a woman wants a man. I won't mortgage my kingdom to cure you, but I will do my best to see you whole."

  A faint flush climbed up his face, darkening the green cast to his skin so that it was almost orange, instead of red. "Merry, I don't -- "

  I touched my fingertips to his lips. "No, Galen, I will do this, and you will not stop me, because I am the princess. I am the heir to the throne, not you. You are my guard, not the other way around. I think I forgot that for a while, but I won't forget again."