Seduced by Moonlight

CHAPTER 27

The only doors in the entire sithen that were black were the doors leading to my aunt's chambers. They were a shining improbable black stone that stood taller than the tallest guard, and wider than that semi the first hallway could hold.

The doors were their usual ominous selves, but the two men who stood at attention before the doors were not usual. One, there were rarely guards on this side of the doors. The queen enjoyed an audience, especially if that audience could not participate, no matter how much they wanted to. Sometimes you'd find guards outside if they were waiting to escort people away once the queen was finished speaking with them. But somehow I didn't think that was it. Call it a hunch, but I was betting the guards were there waiting for me. What was my first clue? They were nude except for enough leather belts and straps to hold swords and daggers, and boots that came to their knees.

«I'm sensing a theme,» Rhys said.

So was I. Because not only were they more nude even than Hawthorne and Ivi had been, but they were also vegetative deities. Adair still bore the name of what he had been once, for adair means «oak grove.» His skin was the color of sunlight through leaves, that color more common among the Seelie than the Unseelie, the color we call sun-kissed. His ankle-length brown hair had been butchered short, shorter than Amatheon's by nearly half a foot. Someone had shorn him, so that there was almost nothing left to remind the eye what beauty once framed that golden body.

Amatheon spoke as if I'd asked, «I was not the only one who was reluctant, Princess. She began her. example with Adair.»

Adair's eyes were three circles of gold and yellow, like staring into the sun. Those eyes held nothing as he watched us come toward the doors. He had been cast out of the Seelie Court for speaking too strongly against their king, and to avoid exile from faerie he had joined the Unseelie. But he had never truly taken to the dark court's way of life. He existed among us, and tried to be invisible.

I spoke low: «I know why you do not want my bed, but Adair and I have no quarrel.»

«He wants to be left alone, Princess. He wants to not be involved in this fight.»

«Unless you're Switzerland, there is no neutrality,» I said.

«So he learned.»

The other guard still stood in a cloak of his own pale yellow hair. That hair framed a body that was a pale whitish-grey, not moonlight skin like mine, but a soft, almost dusty color. His eyes gleamed out of a narrow, high-cheekboned face, eyes the color of dark green leaves, with an i

He smiled as we came nearer—those red, red lips, distracting from the jewels of his eyes, the curtain of his hair, and even the long naked lines of his body. As if he felt me looking, his body began to respond, as if my approach was enough to whet his anticipation and bring him partially erect.

Adair's body was as empty of reaction to my approach as his eyes. He was lucky I was not my aunt, for she sometimes took lack of response on an involuntary level as a personal insult. I did not. Adair had, at the very least, had his pride cut away with his hair. I had no idea what other pains my aunt had put him through to make him willing to stand at this door and await me. He was angry, on that I would have bet a great deal. Anger and embarrassment are not always the best aphrodisiac. My aunt has never truly understood that.

Brii's head went to one side like a bird. His smile slipped a little. «You have not done your duty by the princess.»

«There was an assassination attempt on the princess,» Doyle said.

The last of his smile was gone. «The blood.»

«What else did you think it was from?» I asked.

He shrugged and gave a rueful smile. «Someone else's blood smeared on the queen's face would mean she had a very, very good time. My apologies for assuming the same of you.» He gave a bow that swept his hair out and around one arm like a cloak then stood up smiling again, with that look in his eyes that was all male, and said plainly that no amount of unpleasantness could take all the pleasure from this duty, at least not for him.

Adair stood on the other side of the doors, wooden-faced and limp-bodied. He wouldn't even look at me.

«We must tell the queen of the attack.» Doyle moved up as if to touch the doors.

Adair moved first, but Brii followed, and their arms crossed in front of the door handles. «Our orders were very specific,» Adair said. His voice tried to be as empty as the rest of him, but failed. There was a razor-thin edge of rage in those simple words. So much so, that it danced a line of magic down the hall, across our skins like tiny bites. He was fighting very, very hard to control himself.

I rubbed my arm where the edge of his power had touched me, had hurt me, totally by accident, and cursed my aunt. She'd made it so that Adair would obey her orders and bed me, but she'd made certain that neither one of us would enjoy it.

«And what were those orders?» Doyle said, his dark voice, lower even than normal, sounding as if it would crawl down your spine and hunt for vital organs.

Brii answered, trying to make his voice upbeat, conciliatory. I didn't blame him; I wouldn't have wanted to be standing between Doyle and Adair when the flags went up, either. «If the ring knows both Hawthorne and Ivi, then they are to service the princess as soon as possible. If the ring does not know both of them, then one of us is to take the place of the one the ring did not recognize.» He smiled, at Doyle, as if trying to ease some of the tension. It didn't work.

«Open the door, Brii. We have much to tell the queen, and much of it is not only dangerous but also not something to be discussed in the hallway, where more ears may hear us than the queen would like.»

Brii actually moved back, but Adair did not. Somehow I'd known he wouldn't. «The queen has been at great pains to be certain that I follow all her orders. I will do as she has. bid me, and follow those orders to the absolute letter. I will not give her cause to abuse me again this day.» The anger had quieted and didn't bite down the hall now, but Doyle moved like a horse when a fly settles on it. Perhaps all that stinging anger had gone only on his skin.

«I am captain here, Adair, not you.»

«It is good to have you back, Captain » — Adair made that last word an insult—"but whatever your rank, it is not greater than the queen's. She is our master, not you. She made this very clear to me, Darkness, very clear.»

They were almost touching, so terribly close, almost too close to fight. «You refuse my direct order?»

«I refuse to disobey the queen's direct order, yes.»

«I ask you one last time, Adair, will you step aside?»

«No, Darkness, I will not.»

Magic breathed through the hallway. That first hot breath that it draws sometimes, like the tensing of a muscle before a blow. It wasn't that I didn't think Doyle would win. He was the Queen's Darkness. It was that it seemed a waste to fight among ourselves when we had enemies to fight. I didn't know who those enemies were, not yet, but they'd tried to kill me earlier today. We needed to save our energy for them, not spend it in senseless bickering.

«Stand down, Doyle,» I said, soft but clear.

The magic grew in the hallway, as if the very air were drawing a breath.

«I said, stand down, Darkness,» and this time my voice was not soft.

The power that was growing all around us hesitated, flickered. Doyle did not turn from the man he faced, he merely growled, «He stands in our way, and we must needs see the queen.»

«We will see the queen,» I said, and began to work my way up through the men. I looked at both Abloec and Usna. «Do you both stand by what you said, that you will tell the queen what needs telling?»

«I forgot how wretched it is to be sober, so let this wretchedness end. I will tell the queen of what I saw; you have what word is left me.» He even began a bow, but it seemed to hurt his head, so he stopped in midmotion.

«Usna,» I said.

He gave me that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile and said, «Of course, Princess, I am always a man of my word.»

«I will allow no one past me until we have obeyed everything the queen instructed,» Adair said.

«Do you really think that you can withstand the might of this many of your fellow Ravens?» Barinthus asked, though he did not move up closer to the door. I think he was afraid of what might happen if he used his power to fight. I know I was.

I stepped past Frost's back and got a glimpse of Adair's determined face before Frost moved in front of me. «You are too close, Meredith,» he said.

I shook my head. «Not close enough, Frost.»

He frowned down at me. «I did not save you from a human assassin to have you hurt by your own guards.»

«I will not be hurt, not in that way, at least.»

Puzzlement filled his grey eyes, and he frowned harder. «I do not understand.»

There was no time to explain it. Power was building on the very air again. A glance showed that Adair's skin was begi

«It wasn't a human who tried to assassinate me today, Frost.» I made sure my voice carried. «It was sidhe magic that bespelled that human. Sidhe magic that put a spell on Doyle that made him slow to defend me. Only a sidhe could have put such a spell on the Darkness himself.»

Brii spoke up as I'd hoped he would, «Who could bespell Darkness, except for the queen herself.»

«There are those who can, but none that stood with us today,» Doyle growled, his eyes still on the softly glowing Adair. «But someone powerful enough to send a spell from a distance and for none of us to notice it until too late.»

«I don't believe you,» Adair said.

«May the sluagh eat my bones if I lie,» Doyle said, his voice still a threatening growl. It was like listening to a dog speak, too low for a human throat.

Adair's glow faded around the edges so that the center of his face glowed like a candle in the middle of him. «Even if I believe you, even if I agree that the princess should see the queen immediately, if I allow you to pass without a fight, I will be at the queen's mercy.» He raised a hand as if to touch his hair, then stopped, as if he could not stand to touch the near-bare scalp. «I have been at her mercy, and I do not care for it.»