Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (36 page)

He looked down at me, his clear eyelid flickering into sight, then vanishing again. "Do you not wish to be warm?"

"That is an evasion, old friend, not an answer."

He gave that deep chuckle that passed for a laugh. Held this close to his chest, the sound of it reverberated through my body, caressed me in places nothing should have touched me, save magic.

I shivered under that touch.

"My apologies, Princess, it has been long since I felt this much power. It will take me time to control all of it as finely as I once did."

"You're keeping me warm."

"Yes," he said, "can you not feel it?"

I was safe behind the shields I wore every day, every night. Shields that kept me from moving through a world of wonderment and magic. Some fey simply existed in the raw magic that surrounded everything, but I had found it confusing, frightening, as a child. My father had taught me how to shield out the noise of the everyday magic. But I should have been able to feel a spell done next to my skin. Even through the everyday shields.

I didn't lower my shields, because we were too close to faerie. I wasn't sure if it was being mortal, or merely not as powerful, but I found that without my shields to hide behind, the power of faerie was near overwhelming. Of course if it were either of those things, the humans who occasionally lived among us wouldn't have survived long. Madeline Phelps had no magic, no psychic gifts. How did she survive? How did she keep from being driven mad by the singing of the sithen?

I sent a tiny tendril of my own power through my shields. Many would have had to drop shields to do magic, but they were sidhe who did not have to weave their protection so close to their skin, as I did. With every loss there is some gain; with every gain, some loss.

I could feel his magic close above us, like an invisible pressure around us. We moved in a circle of his magic. I tested that magic, and it felt warm and vaguely liquid. I closed my eyes and tried to see his shield inside my head. I had an image of water rolling turquoise and lovely, warm as blood from a shore that was far from here, and always warm.

I could have done something similar by calling the heat of the sun, or the memory of warm bodies under blankets, but I would have had to fight to maintain the spell while I moved. Standing still, I was good at all kinds of shielding; moving, not so good.

"The water is very warm," I said.

He said, "Yes," without looking at me.

Galen came up to stride beside us. He was shivering in his wet clothes. Ice had formed in strands of his shorter hair, and there was a tiny cut on his cheek. His hair was just long enough to touch his face with the frozen strands. "If I hop on your back, will you keep me warm, too?"

"The sidhe are impervious to the cold," Barinthus said.

"Speak for yourself," Galen said, teeth nearly chattering.

Nicca waded through the snow on our other side. He was shivering, too. "I have never felt the cold as I do this day." His wings were held tightly together, rimmed with frost, like a stained-glass window in the snow.

"It is the wings," Sage called from behind us. Rhys had actually allowed the smaller man to ride on his back. Rhys seemed totally unaffected by the cold. But Sage huddled against Rhys, and I wondered why Rhys didn't help the demi-fey keep warm, as Barinthus helped me. "We are butterflies, and that is not a creature meant for winter snow."

"I am sidhe," Nicca said.

"As, apparently, am I," Sage called, "but I am still freezing my nuts off."

Galen laughed and nearly stumbled in the snow.

Doyle called back from the front of our little group. "If you will stop gossiping, we can all get inside more quickly, and all will be warm."

"Why aren't you shivering?" Galen asked.

Amatheon answered over to the far right, shivering with his own newly shortened hair icy and cutting his cheeks every time the wind blew it against his skin. "The Darkness is never cold."

Onilwyn called from the far left. He was shivering, too, but at least his long hair kept the ice in his hair from lashing his face. "And you cannot freeze the Killing Frost."

The mention of him made me glance back to see him bringing up the rear. It wasn't that he couldn't have walked faster, because he could have— the cold truly meant nothing to him — but Doyle had ordered him to be our rear guard. There had been one attempt on my life, they were taking no chances.

I realized we were missing one of our number. I had to raise up to find Kitto struggling behind us in the drifts. I think I would have asked someone to help him, but Frost fished him out of the snow and tossed him up on his shoulders. He did it without asking. He did it without a word of any kind.

Kitto didn't say thank you, for both Frost and he were old, and among the oldest of us, thank you was an insult. You had to be younger than three hundred to be comfortable with modern niceties. Which meant that only Galen and I would have thanked someone for a thank you. Everyone else was too old.

I settled back into Barinthus's arms and magic. "Why am I suddenly
Princess
to you, Barinthus, and not Meredith? You've called me
Meredith
or
Merry-girl
since I was a child."

"You are no longer a child." He stared studiously ahead as if the way were treacherous and he had to be careful. I did not think it was the snow that he feared.

"You're trying to distance yourself from me?"

"No." Then a small smile curled his lips. "Well, perhaps, but not a-purpose."

"Then why?" I asked.

He glanced down at me again, and that flicker of eyelid came and went again. "Because you are princess, and heir to the throne. And I have too many enemies among the sidhe to be allowed in your bed."

"Once they learn you have come back into your godhead . . ."

"No, Meredith, if they discover that, then they will try to slay me before I have returned to my full powers."

I started to say,
They will not dare,
but I knew better. "How much danger have you been in, staying here and trying to drum up support for my claim to the throne?"

He would not look at me again. "Some," he said.

"Barinthus," I said, "truth between us."

"I do not lie, Princess.
Some
is an honest answer."

"Is it a complete answer?" I asked.

That made him smile again. "No."

"Would you give me a complete answer?"

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because it would make you worry when you leave again, and I remain behind."

"Everyone else the ring has recognized my aunt has sent to Los Angeles with me."

"You know what they call me behind my back."

"Kingmaker," I said.

"Queenmaker now." He shook his head, that long blue hair trailing like a cloak behind him in the sudden rise of wind. "They have feared me as a power behind the throne for millennia. Do you believe they would tolerate me as your consort, knowing that I might become king?" He shook his head again. "No, Meredith, no, the queen herself understands this. It is why she did not send me the last time you came home. I have too many enemies, and too much power, to be allowed so near the throne."

"And if you got me pregnant?"

He stared off into the distance. "We have had our moment, Meredith. The queen cannot allow us more."

"This isn't what you said in the car, when Usna suggested it."

"We had many ears in the car, and not all of them our friends," he said.

"Barinthus — " He hushed me with a small shake of his head.

I glanced up and found both Amatheon and Onilwyn closer than they had been. Close enough perhaps, to hear our words. I knew almost with a certainty that they were spies for Queen Andais. The question was, who else would they spy for? Did Queen Andais really believe that either man would tell secrets only to her? No, it wasn't their loyalty she counted upon. It was their fear. Andais counted on all the sidhe fearing her more than anyone else.

Yet someone had tried to kill me. Someone had risked the queen's anger. Either they did not fear her as they once had, or fear alone is not enough to rule a people. She was still the Queen of Air and Darkness, and that was plenty scary enough for me. But I'd never believed that fear alone was enough to rule the sidhe. Of course, neither had my father, and his lack of ruthlessness had gotten him killed. If I survived to come to the throne, I knew I could not be Andais; I didn't have the stomach for it. But I also knew I could not be my father, because the sidhe already saw me as weak. If I were as compassionate as my father, it would be my death. If you cannot rule by fear, or by love, what is left? To that, I had no answer. As the faerie mounds rose out of the winter twilight, I realized that I didn't truly believe there was an answer. Two words came into my mind as if someone had whispered them:
ruthless
and
fair.

Could you be ruthless and be fair, at the same time? Isn't to be ruthless, to be unfair? I'd always thought so, and my father had taught me so, but maybe there was a middle ground between the two. And if there was, could I find it? And if I did, did I have enough power, enough allies, to walk that middle road? To that last question, I truly had no answer, because I knew enough of court politics to understand that no one really knows how much power she has, how good her friends are, how stout her allies, until it's too late, and she's either won, or lost; lived or died.

The faerie mounds looked like soft snow-covered hills, and if you did not know the way in, that's all they would be. Of course, the mounds, like almost everything else in faerie, were never quite what they seemed.

There were two things you needed to go inside the sithen. One, to know where the door was; two, to have enough magic to open that door. If the sithen was feeling playful, the door would move repeatedly. You could spend an hour chasing the door around a hill the size of a small mountain. Or perhaps it only played with me, because when Carrow laid his tanned hand against the white of the snow, there was a sound of music. I could never tell you what the tune was, or if it was singing or merely instruments. But it was beautiful music, and the closest thing we had to a doorbell. Though it was more to let you know that you'd found the door than to announce you to everyone inside. No music meant you hadn't touched the right spot. Carrow laid that small flare of magic against it, and the door was suddenly there. Or rather the opening was there, for there was never truly a door to the Unseelie sithen. There was just suddenly an opening big enough for us all to walk inside, four or more abreast. The opening always seemed to know exactly how big it needed to be. It could grow large enough for a semi to pass through, or small enough for a butterfly.

The twilight had deepened to near darkness, so that the pale white light from the opening seemed brighter than it was. Barinthus carried me into that light. We stood in a grey stone hallway, big enough for the semi to have kept on driving, at least to the first bend of the hallway. The size of the door didn't change the size of the first hallway. It was one of the few things that never changed about the sithen. Everything else could change on the sithen's, or the queen's, whim. It was like a fun house made of stone, so that entire floors could move up and down. Doors that led one place would suddenly lead somewhere else altogether. It could be irritating, or amazing; or both.

The opening vanished as Frost, the last of us, stepped through. It was just another grey stone wall. The door could be just as invisible from this side as the other. The white light came from everywhere and nowhere. It was steadier than firelight, but softer than electric light. I'd asked what the light was once, and been told it was the light of the sithen. When I'd protested that that told me nothing, the reply was, it told me what I needed to know. A circular argument at best, but in truth I think it's the only answer we have. I don't think anyone alive today remembers what the light truly is.

"Well, Barinthus, are you going to carry the princess all the way to the queen?"

The sound of swords clearing sheaths made a soft metallic hiss, like rain on a very hot surface. Guns are quieter when you draw them. But guns and swords pointed down the hall toward that voice, and some weapons pointed back toward the now invisible door, just in case. Barinthus and I were suddenly standing in the center of a well-armed circle.

The sidhe who'd spoken was smiling. The sidhe standing next to him was not. Ivi's smile was insolent, mocking. He made himself the butt of his own jokes more often than anyone else. He was tall, as tall as Frost or Doyle, but he was slender as a reed, and as graceful as a bed of reeds when the wind makes them dance. I'd have liked him better with shoulders a little wider, but the lack of them made him seem even taller, willowy. His hair fell straight and fine to his ankles. The hair was his most outstanding feature, medium to dark green, with a pattern of white veins running throughout. It was only when he got closer that you realized that his hair bore the mark of leaves as if the hair had been tattooed with ivy. As he moved down the hall, it was as if wind blew the leaves apart, and they reformed only as his companion grabbed his arm and held him back. I think Ivi would have kept on in the face of all those weapons; walked down that hallway with a smile on his face and laughter like darkness in his eyes. Once I'd thought him careless, but as I grew older I tasted the sorrow in him. I began to realize that it wasn't carelessness, but despair. Whatever had prompted him to become one of the Queen's Ravens, I don't think he enjoyed the bargain as much as he'd hoped.

The cautious hand on his arm belonged to Hawthorne. His black hair fell in thick waves past his knees. When he turned his head, the light gleamed rich green from those black waves. He wore a silver circlet that held that heavy mass back from his face. The rest of him, from broad shoulders to feet, was covered in a cloak the color of pine needles, a rich deep green, that was held closed over his shoulder by a silver brooch.

"What is wrong, Darkness?" he called to us. "We have done nothing."