The bed was warm, I was warm, and I was suddenly so tired. Frost sat beside the bed, his hand in mine, and my eyes were fluttering shut. I managed to ask, “Did they give me something?”
“What do you mean, give you something?” Frost asked.
“To sleep. Did they give me something to make me sleep?”
Galen came to stand on the other side of me, stroking his hand across my forehead. “Yes.”
“I’m not hurt. I don’t need to sleep.”
“We agreed with the doctor,” Galen said, voice soft.
“Damn it,” I managed to say as my eyes fluttered closed again.
He leaned down to lay a soft kiss on my lips. “I love you, Merry.”
“I love you, too,” and that was the last thing I remembered, before sleep came and I could not fight it.
THE DREAM BEGAN
innocently enough, but like all innocence it could not last. I stood in the high, round room of a tower that I had never seen before. There were beautiful tapestries on the walls, rugs bright as stained glass on the floor, and through the room’s two windows the sunshine was golden and thick like honey for the eyes. It was beautiful, peaceful, so why was I afraid?
A man’s voice came from behind me, “I can keep you safe, Meredith, you and our children.”
My throat closed tight, and I couldn’t breathe for a second, because I knew that voice. I turned as one does in a horror movie, slowly, unwilling, because you know the monster is right there—behind you.
Taranis stood in a bright swath of sunlight, most of him lost in the light, so that he seemed to be forming from the light itself as he stepped farther into the room. He held his hand out to me, a smile curling his lips, and it was as if that smile were some happy jewel set between the red-gold of his mustache and beard. His hair flowed in matching curls and waves as if his hair couldn’t decide how curly it wanted to be. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him when his hair wasn’t perfectly styled. This careless play was somehow more pleasing, and more real. His eyes looked just a brilliant green rather than the green of many flower petals in every shade of green known under the sky, and those more human eyes smiled kindly at me.
I actually took a step toward him, but I stumbled on the edge of my floor-length skirt. I looked down and found myself in a dress that matched the tower room. I was dressed like some fairy-tale princess waiting to be rescued. My heart climbed into my throat, so that I was choking on it.
“Meredith.” And the moment he said my name, the fear receded. I gazed up at him and found this new, more human Taranis comforting. Part of me knew that was wrong, that he wasn’t comforting, but it was as if I couldn’t think the thought all the way through.
He crossed the room and touched my cheek, ever so gently, with the back of his hand. “Come to me, Meredith, come and be my queen and I will keep you safe from all that would harm you.”
His tone was sweet, but his words jarred me, because they did not ring true with my own memories. I moved my face back from that touch and said, “You’re part of what I need to be protected from.”
He looked puzzled, as if my words made no sense. “Meredith, I would never hurt you.”
I looked up into that handsome face and thought,
He would never hurt me, of course he would never hurt me
. I said, “No,” not because I believed it in that moment, but as a place to start. No, he was wrong somehow. No, I shouldn’t be here. No, just no.
“Oh, Meredith, I want to take care of you, you and our children.”
I shook my head. “No … not …” Not what, I thought? What was he not? What was not true? That was it, something he’d just said wasn’t true, but what was it? Why couldn’t I think?
He touched my face again, and I started to rub my face against his hand, but stopped in midmotion, because there was nothing familiar about his hand on my face. I had so many men who touched my face, who held me, who kept me safe, but this hand wasn’t one of them. This man wasn’t one of them. Who was he then, what was he to me? Why couldn’t I think?
I shook my head hard enough that he had to move his hand. I tried to back away from him but tripped over the hem of the dress, falling to the floor hard enough that it jarred me, and I tasted blood, from biting my tongue. A single pink rose petal drifted down into my lap, and a tiny drop of blood began to fall from my lip, and it was as if time stretched forever as that drop fell in slow motion down, down, to finally land on that pink petal.
It was as if time, sound, reality all resumed with a rush that should have had a sound to it like the Doppler shift of a car speeding past me in the dark, so near that its wind ruffles my hair, tugs at my clothing, and leaves me gasping at the nearness of it.
I looked up at him, and said, “I know who you are.”
He knelt beside me, smiling. “Of course you know me, I am your beloved.”
“You are Taranis, King of Light and Illusion; you beat me and you raped me, and everything else is a lie.”
His smile faded around the edges; that pleasant face flickered, like a TV set that wasn’t quite on one station, so you got the ghost of other images, and then he was back to pleasant, smiling, handsome, but harmless. I could change my physical appearance using glamour, but I couldn’t add an emotion to it and make someone feel things they didn’t actually feel. Was that all that his illusions were, just personal glamour with the addition of being able to project thoughts and feelings?
“Meredith, Meredith, see how much I love you.”
I looked into his face and saw … love. He loved me, of course he loved me. He had always loved me … and the moment I thought that, I knew it was wrong. I remembered him beating me as a child. I remembered how terrified I had been of him. I remembered reaching out to my mother and she had turned away. It had been my grandmother, her mother, who had saved me from the king’s anger.
I shook my head. “It’s a spell, it’s just a spell, it’s not real.”
“I want you, Meredith, I need you, that is true. I swear it by any oath you ask of me.” He reached out to touch my face again.
I flinched away from his hand, but that put me almost prone on the floor, and I knew that was a bad idea, so I tried to stand, but I got tangled in the long skirts and fell back to my knees.
His hands closed on my upper arms, and he pulled me against his chest. He was so much bigger than I was, as tall as any of my lovers, and broader through the chest and shoulders than anyone but Mistral. He would be stronger than me even if he’d been human, but he wasn’t human, he was sidhe, and once had been a god. He held me against his body as we knelt on the floor of the tower and I was happy for how full my skirts were, because I could only feel his chest and stomach against my back; the skirts protected me from feeling anything lower on his body.
I was so scared I couldn’t breathe, as if the fear were squeezing my chest too tight for me to draw a complete breath of air.
He whispered my name, “Meredith, Meredith, Meredith,” and with each repetition of my name my fear began to fade, until by the time he’d said it a dozen times I melted in against his body, letting his arms wrap around me, so that his big hand held my lower arms and then wrapped my arms and his across my body, so that I was held so close, so safe.
“I need you, Meredith,” he whispered; his breath was warm against my hair and face as he bent over me and planted a kiss on my neck. His lips were so warm.
“But give me a willing kiss, Meredith, and then you will be mine.”
It seemed so reasonable. I began to turn my head back toward him, and then what he’d actually said came to me. “Willing,” I said.
He laid another warm kiss along my neck. “Yes, Meredith, willing. I want you always to be willing, so there are no more misunderstandings between us.”
“Misunderstandings,” I said.
“Yes, Meredith,” he said, and kissed higher on my neck, just under the line of my jaw. His lips were so warm, almost hot against my skin, as if he were fevered. I didn’t remember his skin being hot like this last time, and just thinking about that last time made me remember coming to with him on top of me. I remembered the fear, and the pain of the concussion from where he’d hit me. He hit me. He raped me. He did not love me, had never, ever loved me. I wasn’t sure King Taranis could love anyone but himself.
I tensed in his arms, because the fear was back, screaming through every nerve in my being. I wanted him to stop touching me. I spoke around the pulse in my throat and it made my voice have to squeeze out around the fear, “Stop, please, stop touching me.”
“Meredith, you don’t want me to stop.”
My name from his lips began to calm the fear again, but him telling me that I didn’t want him to stop pissed me off. I knew my own mind, and I did not want him to touch me, ever again.
I remembered coming to with him on top of me. I remembered him naked, and on top of me, and I hated him. I hated him with a fine, burning hatred. “You have hurt me too much and too often, Taranis. Your spell will not work, because I keep remembering how much I hate you and what you have done to me.”
His weight was just suddenly more, pinning me harder to the rugs, hard enough that I could feel the hardness of the stones underneath. My fear washed over me so that my skin ran cold with it.
“Will you forgive nothing, Meredith, and remember only the bad?”
“What good memories do I have of you, Uncle Taranis?”
“Meredith, Meredith, hear me, feel me, and know that I love you.”
Even with his weight pressing me into the floor, and my fear almost choking me again, that unnatural calmness started to take me over again. It was magic, it wasn’t real!
“Is this how you seduced them all, Taranis, through trickery and lies? Are you not the great lover, but just a great liar?”
He squeezed his hands around my wrists until I thought he meant to crush them, and then he slid his knee between my thighs, and the fear robbed me of everything. I couldn’t think past the fear as he began to try to worm his way between my legs.
“Stop!”
He leaned his face close, his voice ugly with his rage. “Shadowspawn is already dead. His sluagh will not hunt or protect you now, Meredith. Your Darkness and your false storm lord will be dead soon, and I do not fear the rest of your would-be suitors.”
I knew he meant Doyle, but it took me a second to realize that the third death was Mistral. I was suddenly less afraid, because my anger helped chase it back. “You had Sholto killed. You ordered it.”
“He led his wild hunt into the heart of my sithen. I could not allow that to happen again, Meredith.”
“Stop saying my name!” I yelled it, holding my anger to me, because even now when he said my name, I could feel the compulsion in it, to just give in, to believe him. But he had me pinned to the floor, his weight on me, and that helped me not to believe he loved me.
“If you but kiss me once, Meredith, you will enjoy the rest, I promise you that.”
I kept my face turned away from him. “A kiss, or a willing kiss, uncle?”
“Do not call me that,” he said.
“You are my uncle. You are my grandfather’s brother. Nothing you do will change that.”
“I have never acted as an uncle to you, Meredith.”
“No, you tried to beat me to death when I was a child, and you almost beat me to death less than a year ago, and you raped me after you had beaten me unconscious. A good uncle would do none of these things, I suppose.”
He used his body weight to keep my body pinned to the floor, and wrapped his big hand around both my wrists where they were still pinned under me. He was freeing up one of his hands; nothing good would come of it. I struggled to free the wrist that he was trying to hold with one hand, and felt his fingers begin to slide. His free hand grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head back.
I spoke through gritted teeth as I fought to keep my face down. “A stolen kiss will not win you my affections, not even by your magic. You said it yourself, it must be willing.”
“I could have made this pleasant for you, Meredith. I meant it to be, but you are always so difficult!”
“Yes, I am difficult, uncle; you will not win me.”
He pulled my hair tight enough that it hurt and growled his anger in my ear. “I will have you, Meredith. You can enjoy it, or you can fight me and I will take my pleasure and not worry about yours.”
“Are you saying that I can either enjoy my rape, or not enjoy it?”
His grip in my hair loosened slightly, and some tension went from him, as if by hearing it spoken so bluntly, even he heard that it made no sense.
His voice was calmer when he said, “I can leave this dream now, Meredith. I can free us both of this dream, and call back the assassins that are going to kill Doyle and Mistral, if you will but kiss me here and now.”
“I trust Doyle to kill anyone you send against him, and you must fear Mistral very much to target him, so you know what he is capable of; they are not easy to kill.”
“Sholto shouldn’t have been easy to kill either, Meredith, but he was; think upon that as the minutes tick away. Think upon that and decide whether you would rather your Darkness and your Storm be alive but parted from you, or dead and parted from you forever?”
Fear poured over me again, and the fresh memories of holding Sholto’s body on the beach. I didn’t think I could bear seeing Doyle dead. I admitted to myself that I would not grieve Mistral as much, but I remembered the moment on the battlefield when I’d thought my cousin Cel had killed Doyle. If I left them, then Doyle would still have Frost; they would not be alone, but I would be. I would be worse than alone.
“One kiss, Meredith, one willing kiss, for the lives of two of your lovers, is that so much to ask?”
“No, not if it were just one kiss, but if I give you a kiss, uncle dearest, then what happens next?”
“I kiss you back, of course.”
“I am not stupid, uncle; if I kiss you willingly, what does the spell do?”
“You will no longer be afraid; you will be safe and happy in my arms.”
“But for it to work you must win a kiss from me.” I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “You need to ‘Kiss the Girl,’” I said.