A Caress of Twilight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I only give that which I own.”

  “The Prince thinks he owns all the court.”

  “I know that I own only the body I inhabit. Anything else is hubris.”

  The Queen laughed. “Will you come home so that I may feed?”

  “Do you agree that another feeding is worth my knight’s cure?”

  She nodded. “I agree.”

  “Then what would a feeding once a week be worth?”

  I felt the men behind me tense. The atmosphere of the room was suddenly thicker. I was careful not to look at them. I was princess, and I didn’t need the permission of my guards to do anything. I either ruled, or I did not.

  Niceven’s eyes narrowed into pale little flames. “What’s that supposed to mean, a feeding once a week?”

  “It means exactly what I said.”

  “Why would you offer to make a weekly blood offering to me?”

  “For an alliance between us.”

  Frost pushed toward me over the bed. “Meredith, no …”

  He was going to say something unfortunate and ruin everything. I had the beginnings of an idea and it was a good one. “No, Frost,” I said, “you do not tell me no. I tell you no or yes. Don’t forget that.” I gave him a look that I hoped he understood, which was shut the fuck up, and don’t ruin this.

  He closed his mouth into a tight, thin line, so obviously unhappy, but he sat there, sulking. At least he was quiet about it.

  I heard Doyle take in a breath, and I just looked at him. The look was enough. He gave a small nod of his head and let Rhys begin to brush out his long hair. There was a wave to all that blackness, because of the braid, I think; I remembered Doyle’s hair as straight. I was distracted for a moment watching Rhys kneeling so pale and perfect against all that darkness. It was Doyle clearing his throat who made me jump and turn back to the mirror.

  Niceven laughed, the sound of just slightly off-key bells, as if it were something lovely that had been just a bit malformed.

  “My apologies for my inattention, Queen Niceven.”

  “If I had such a bounty awaiting me, I would make this a short conversation.”

  “And what if you had the bounty of my blood awaiting you? What then?”

  Her face sobered. “You are persistent. It is most unfeylike.”

  “I am part brownie, and we are a more persistent people than the sidhe.”

  “You are part human, as well.”

  I smiled. “Humans are like the sidhe; some are more persistent than others.”

  She didn’t smile back at me. “For another drink of your blood, I will cure your green knight, but that is all. One drink, one cure, and we are done.”

  “For one drink of my blood, King Kurag of the goblins became my ally for six months.”

  Her delicate eyebrows raised. “That is goblin and sidhe business, and none of ours. We are the demi-fey. No one cares who we ally ourselves with. We fight no battles. We challenge no duels. We mind our business and everyone else minds theirs.”

  “So you refuse an alliance?”

  “I think caution is the better part of valor here, Princess, no matter how tasty you may be.”

  In negotiations, always try to be nice first, but if nice doesn’t work, there are other options. “Everyone leaves you alone, Queen Niceven. Because they consider you too small to worry about.”

  “Prince Cel thought us big enough to spoil your plans with the green knight.” Her voice held the first hint of anger.

  “Yes, and what did he offer you for that bit of work?”

  “The taste of sidhe flesh, knight’s flesh, and blood. We feasted that night, Princess.”

  “He paid you in someone else’s blood, when his body was full of blood only one step down from the queen herself. Have you ever tasted the queen?”

  Niceven looked nervous, almost frightened. “The queen shares only with her lovers, or her prisoners.”

  “How that must irk you, to see such a precious gift wasted.”

  Niceven pouted tiny ghost silver lips. “If only she would take some of my people to her bed, but we are …”

  “Too small,” I finished for her.

  “Yes,” she hissed, “yesss, always too small. Too small a power for an alliance. Too small a power to be used except as her sneak spies.” Tiny, pale hands balled into fists. The white mouse cowered away from her as if he knew what was coming. Even the trio of ladies behind her throne shuddered as if from the brush of an icy wind.

  “And now you do dirty work for her son,” I said. My voice was carefully neutral, almost pleasant.

  “At least he sought us to do his work.” The anger in that small, delicate figure was frightening. Her rage made her take up more space than mere physicality could explain. She was truly regal in her rage.

  “I offer you what the queen will not. I offer what the prince will not.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Royal blood, blood of the very throne of the Unseelie Court. Ally with me, Queen Niceven, and you will have such blood. Not only once, but many times more.”

  Her eyes became narrow little slits again, glittering with a fire colder than the diamonds on her crown. “What would either of us gain from such an alliance?”

  “You would gain the ear and the aid of my allies.”

  “The goblins have little to do with us.”

  “And what of the sidhe?”

  “What of them?”

  “As ally to one of the heirs, you would gain status. They would no longer be able to dismiss you, for fear that you might bear a grudge and whisper it back to me.”

  She kept those glowing eyes on me. “And what would you gain from this alliance?”

  “You would spy for me, as well as for the queen.”

  “And Cel?”

  “You would cease to spy for him.”

  “He won’t like that.”

  “He doesn’t have to like it. If you are my ally, then to injure you is to insult me. The queen has decreed that I am under her protection. To harm me now is a death sentence.”

  “So he insults me, then you step in. Then what?”

  “Threaten to bring your entire court out here to Los Angeles, out here to me.”

  She shivered. “I would not wish to take my people out into the city of men.” She spoke as if there were only one city of men, the city.

  “You could live in the botanical gardens, acres of open land. There’s room for you here, Niceven, I swear it.”

  “But I do not want to leave the court.”

  “Wherever the demi-fey travel, faerie follows.”

  “Most sidhe do not remember that.”

  “My father made sure I knew the history of all the fey. The demi-fey are the most closely allied with the rawness that is faerie, the very stuff that makes us different from the humans. You are not leprechaun, or pixie, to pine and die away from faerie. You are faerie. Is it not said that when the last demi-fey fades, there will be no more faerie upon the earth?”

  “A superstition,” she said.

  “Maybe, but if you leave the Unseelie Court and the Seelie Court retains its own demi-fey, the Unseelie will be weakened. Cel may not remember that bit of our lore, but the queen will. If Cel insults you enough for you to pack your belongings, the Queen will intercede.”

  “She will order us to stay.”

  “She cannot order another monarch to do anything. That is our law.”

  Niceven looked nervous. She feared Andais. Everyone did. “I do not wish to anger the queen.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Do you really believe that the queen would punish her own son if he drove us away, rather than take out her anger on us?” She had crossed her legs again, arms folded over her chest, forgetting to flirt, forgetting to be regal in her fear.

  “Where is Cel now?” I asked.

  Niceven giggled, a most unpleasant little giggle. “Being punished for six months. There are bets going round that his sanity will not survive six months
of isolation and torment.”

  I shrugged. “He should have thought of that before he was such a bad, bad boy.”

  “You are flippant, but if Cel comes out insane, it will be your name that he screams. Your face that he wants to smash.”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a human saying. It means that I’ll deal with the problem when and if it comes to pass.”

  She seemed to be thinking very hard, then said, “How would you offer this blood to me? I do not think either of us would relish a weekly trip between faerie and the Western Sea.”

  “I could put it upon a piece of bread, and the essence could be sent to you via magic.”

  She shook her head, ghostly curls bouncing around narrow shoulders. “The essence is never the same.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “If I send one of my people to you, they could act as my surrogate.”

  I thought about it for a moment, feeling Frost’s stillness, hearing the heavy, almost tearing sound of Rhys pulling the brush through Doyle’s hair. “Agreed. Tell me the cure for my knight and send your surrogate.”

  She laughed, off-key bells ringing. “No, Princess, you will gain the cure from the lips of my surrogate. If I give it to you now before I have been paid, you may think better of it.”

  “I have given you my word. I cannot go back upon it now.”

  “I have dealt with the great of faerie for too long to believe that everyone keeps their word.”

  “It is one of our most stringent laws,” I said. “To be forsworn is to be outcast.”

  “Unless you have friends in very high places who make sure such tales are never spread.”

  “What are you saying, Queen Niceven?”

  “I say only this, that the queen doth love her son much, and has broken more than one taboo to keep him safe.”

  We stared at each other, and I knew without asking that Cel had made promises and broken them. That alone should have made him outcast and certainly denied him the right to any throne. Andais had always spoiled Cel, but I never realized just how much.

  “When can we expect your surrogate?” I asked.

  She seemed to consider this, reaching an idle hand out toward where the mouse was crouched. It crept close to her, its long whiskers twitching, ears alert, as if it still wasn’t sure of its welcome. She stroked it gently. “A few days,” she said.

  “We are not always at home to welcome visitors. I would be loath to have your envoy receive less than our best hospitality.”

  “Leave a pot of flowers by your door and that will sustain him.”

  “Him?”

  “I believe a him would please you more, would it not?”

  I gave a small nod, because I wasn’t sure I cared. I was sharing blood, not sex, so I didn’t have a preference; or at least I didn’t think I did. “I am sure the Queen is wise in her choosing.”

  “Pretty words, Princess. It remains to be seen whether you have pretty actions to back up all those words.” Her eyes flicked back to the men and settled on Doyle and Rhys. “Pleasant dreams, Princess.”

  “And to you, Queen Niceven.”

  Something harsh crossed her face, made it look even thinner and sharper, as if her face were a mask. If she reached up and ripped her face off, I was not going to be able to hold my business face in place. But she didn’t. She merely spoke in a voice that was like the whisper of scales on stone. “My dreams are my own business, Princess, and I will keep them as I like them.”

  I gave her another half bow. “I meant no insult.”

  “None taken, Princess, merely envy rearing its ugly head.” With those words, the mirror went blank and smooth.

  I sat gazing into my own reflection. Movement caught my gaze, and I watched Rhys and Doyle still on their knees. Muscles worked in Rhys’s arms as he brushed Doyle’s hair. Frost didn’t so much move as just look at me in the mirror so hard that it turned me to look at him.

  Frost glared back. The other two seemed unaware of my attention. “Niceven is gone. You can stop pretending,” I said.

  “I haven’t finished brushing out all of this hair,” Rhys said. “This is why I stopped growing mine down to my ankles. It’s almost impossible to take care of it by yourself.” He separated out another section of hair, hefted it in one hand, and began to brush with the other.

  Doyle was silent as Rhys worked on his hair with the serious-faced concentration of a child. There was absolutely nothing else childish about him as he knelt nude, surrounded by a sea of black hair and multicolored pillows. His body was, as always, tightly muscled, pale, gleaming. He was lovely to look at, but he wasn’t excited. Nude didn’t mean sex to the sidhe, not always.

  Frost made a small movement that turned me to him. His eyes were the dark grey of the sky just before a storm. He was angry; it showed in every line of his face, the tension of his shoulders, the way he sat, so careful, immobile, and shimmering with energy at the same time.

  “I’m sorry if it upset you, but I knew what I was doing with Niceven.”

  “You have made it abundantly clear that you rule here and I merely obey.” His voice was harsh with anger.

  I sighed. It was early, but it had been a long day. I was too tired for Frost’s hurt feelings. Especially since he was in the wrong.

  “Frost, I cannot afford to appear weak to anyone right now. Even Doyle holds his opinion in public, no matter how unfavorable it is in private.”

  “I have approved of everything you’ve done today,” Doyle said.

  “I am so happy to hear that,” I said.

  He gave me a very level gaze, ruined only a little by the tugging of his hair from the brush. It’s hard to look menacing when you’re being fussed with. He stared at me, until most people would have looked away or flinched. I met his gaze with my own empty one. I was tired of games. Just because I could play them, and play them fairly well, didn’t mean I enjoyed them.

  “I’ve had enough power plays for one day, Doyle. I don’t need any more, especially not from my own guards.”

  He blinked those dark, dark eyes at me. “Hold off, Rhys. Meredith and I need to talk.”

  Rhys stopped obediently, sitting back among the pillows, the brush still in his hand.

  “In private,” Doyle said.

  Frost jumped as if he’d been struck. It was his reaction more than Doyle’s words that made me suspect we were talking about more than just a few secrets.

  “It is my night with Meredith,” Frost said. His anger seemed to have vanished on the wings of possibilities he hadn’t foreseen.

  “If it was Rhys, then he would have to wait his turn again, but I have not had a turn, so I am within my rights to ask for this evening.”

  Frost stood, almost stumbling in his haste and the lack of space at the foot of the bed. “First you hold me back from helping her today, now you take my night in her bed. I would accuse you of jealousy, if I did not know you better.”

  “You can accuse me of anything you wish, Frost, but you know I am not jealous.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not, but you are something, and that something has to do with our Merry.”

  Doyle sighed, a deep, almost wounded sound. “Perhaps I thought that by making the princess wait for my attentions I would intrigue her. Today I saw that there is more than one way to lose a woman’s favor.”

  “Speak plainly, Darkness.”

  Doyle stayed kneeling, half-naked, his hands limp and empty resting against his thighs, surrounded by a sea of his own hair. He should have looked helpless, or feminine, or something, but he didn’t. He looked like something carved out of the elemental darkness, as if he’d risen as one of the first things to ever draw breath, before the light came. The silver ring in his nipple caught the light as he breathed. His hair had covered all the earrings, so that this one silver spark was the only color on him. It was hard to look away from that shining silver light.

  “I am not blind
, Frost,” Doyle said. “I saw the way she looked at you in the van, and you saw it, too.”

  “You are jealous.”

  He shook his head. “No, but you have had three months and there is no child. She is a princess and will be a queen. She cannot afford to give her heart away where there is no marriage.”

  “So you’ll step in and win her heart instead?” Frost’s voice held more heat than I’d ever heard in it, outside of the bed.

  “No, but I will see that she has choices. If I had paid closer attention, I would have stepped in sooner.”

  “Oh, you in her arms will make her forget all about me, is that it?”

  “I am not so arrogant as that, Frost. I told you, today I realized there was more than one way to lose a woman’s heart, and waiting too long is one of them. If there is to be any chance that Meredith will not turn to you, or Galen, then something must change now. Not later, but now.”

  “What does Galen have to do with any of this?” Frost asked.

  “If you have to ask that, then it is not I who am blind,” Doyle said.

  Confusion chased over Frost’s face. Finally he frowned and shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Doyle said.

  As interesting as the conversation was, I’d had enough of it. “You are all talking as if I’m not here, or as if I have no choice in the matter.”

  Doyle turned his so serious face to me. “Do you object to me sharing your bed tonight?” He asked it in the same neutral voice that he would have used to order at a restaurant or talk to a client, as if my answer meant nothing to him.

  But I knew he sometimes used that neutral voice when he felt anything but neutral. It was a way of shielding himself from the emotion; act as if it doesn’t matter, and maybe it won’t.

  I looked at him, the sweep of shoulders, the swell of his chest and that sparkling glint of silver, the flat plains of his stomach, the line where his jeans cut across his body. I had never seen Doyle nude, ever. He did not participate in the casual nudity of the court; neither had Frost.

  I looked at Frost. His silver hair was still back in the loose ponytail, so his face was clean and unadorned, if anything that beautiful could ever be called unadorned. He had his jacket and shoulder holster, complete with gun, hung over one arm. He was wearing his arrogant mask again, the one he hid behind so often at court. That he felt he had to wear his mask here and now in front of me hurt my heart.