A Stroke Of Midnight

“Then answer me straight, and no one here need know how you lost your place.”

“You wouldna’ tell,” Harry said.

“Give me truth, Harry Hob, or I will give you truth you don’t wish shared.”

Harry scowled at the floor. He looked somehow diminished and more delicate than he should have, held between the two tall guards. Maybe he was playing for sympathy, but if so, he was playing to the wrong audience.

Doyle knelt in front of him, staying on the balls of his feet. “One last time Harry; did you see Onilwyn kill Beatrice and/or the human reporter?”

The “and/or” had been a nice touch, because without it Harry would have room to wiggle: if he’d seen only one murder, but not both.

He answered, still staring at the floor, “No.”

“No, what?” Doyle asked.

Harry looked up at that, his dark eyes glittering with anger. “No, I didna’ see the tree lord slay my Beatrice or the human.”

“Then why did you hide from him?”

“I did not know he was hid there,” Maggie May said. “Mayhaps, Darkness, it was na’ the tree lord he first hid from.”

“Very good,” Doyle said, acknowledging it with a nod of his head. He stood and asked Maggie’s question: “Why did you hide yourself, Harry?”

“I saw him,” and he used a nod, since his arms were still held, to point at Onilwyn, who was also still being held.

We waited for him to say more, but he seemed to think he’d said enough. Doyle prompted him, “And why should the mere sight of Onilwyn make you hide?”

“Thought he was her sidhe lover, didno’ I.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Harry gave me a dirty look.

“I’m sorry, Hob, but Onilwyn doesn’t think even I am pure-blooded enough. I can’t imagine him having a completely non-sidhe lover.”

“Thank you, Princess,” Onilwyn said in that still thick voice.

I gave him the look he deserved and said, “It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Just the same,” he said, “I am grateful for the truth.”

“Who but her sidhe lover would come here alone?” Harry asked.

“Good question,” I said and looked at Doyle.

He gave a small nod and said, “Why did you abandon us, Onilwyn?”

“I had no interest in watching the princess perform with someone else. The queen cured me of voyeurism a very long time ago.”

None argued with that, but Doyle asked, “So you came ahead to begin questioning the witnesses on your own, without either of your captains’ or even your officers’ permission?”

“You all seemed… busy.” And even with the broken nose the sarcasm came through loud and clear.

“You didn’t hit him hard enough, Merry,” Galen said, and my gentle knight had a decidedly ungentle look on his face.

“Did you come ahead to seek answers, or to hide them?” Doyle asked.

“I was not the lover of anyone. And I would most certainly not risk the queen’s mercy for anything less than a sidhe.” The disdain in his voice was thick enough to walk on.

“Did any of the rest of you know that Beatrice had a sidhe lover?” Doyle asked.

Maggie May said, “No, I’ve told all mah’ people that you leave the big ones alone. Only grief comes of it.”

“So, if Beatrice had taken a sidhe,” I said, “she’d have hidden it from you?”

“Ah, most like.”

I looked to the dainty blue figure that was almost hidden behind Galen’s neck. “Mug?”

Galen had to say, “The princess is asking you a question, Mug.”

She’d been too busy playing in the curls at the back of his neck to pay attention to anything else. She wasn’t stupid, but I’d seen her like this before, as if the touch of a sidhe was intoxicating to her.

She peered around his neck, her wings flicking nervously. “What?” she asked.

“Did Beatrice have a lover that you know of?”

She pointed to Harry. “Him.”

“Did she have a sidhe lover?” I asked.

Mug’s eyes went wide. “A sidhe for a lover? Beatrice…” She shook her head. “If I had known, I would have asked her to let me touch him.”

“Beatrice would never have told Mug,” Peasblossom said.

I looked for her and found her perched on the pots that hung from hooks on the near wall. “Did she tell you?”

“She did.”

“Who was her sidhe lover?” Harry asked, voice eager.

None us said anything, because it was one of the things we all wanted to know.

“She wouldn’t tell me, said he made her promise not to tell anyone or he would break off the relationship.”

“Why would that end the relationship?” Doyle asked. “Unless…”

Frost said it. “Unless he was a royal guard.”

“Who would risk death by torture for less than sidhe flesh?” Amatheon said.

I gave him an unfriendly look.

“I do not deserve that look, Princess; it is only truth.”

I started to argue but hesitated. I had had lesser fey lovers in Los Angeles, and it had been wonderful, but… but I had craved other flesh. Once you have had the full attention of another sidhe, all else was truly lesser. I wanted to argue with Amatheon, but I could not, not and be truthful.

“I will not argue with you, Amatheon,” I said.

“Because you ca

I acknowledged the truth of it with a nod.

“But if not a guard,” Galen asked, “then why would he care if others knew of his relationship with Beatrice?”

I looked at him, searching his face for any hint that he knew how naïve that question was, but there was nothing in his face that said he understood anything.

Mug cuddled in against his neck and spoke for most of us. “That is so sweet.”

“What?” Galen asked.

“A fair few dabble among us lesser folk,” Maggie May said, “but few wish to acknowledge us publicly.”

Galen frowned. “Why not?”

Amatheon said, “Have you been living in the same court as the rest of us?”

Galen shrugged, almost unseating Mug. He helped her catch her balance by holding up his fingers so she could catch herself. “Love is too precious to be ashamed of.”

If I hadn’t already loved him, I would have in that moment.

“You are right, my friend,” Doyle said, “but that is not always how our free brethren feel about such things.”

“Arrogance, such arrogance, to be ashamed of that which the rest of us would give so much to have,” Adair said.

“Who would admit to bedding something with wings?” Onilwyn said.

“Good enough to fuck, but not to love?” Maggie May asked.

Some of the men would not meet her gaze. Doyle had no trouble meeting those hard golden eyes. “Was Harry Hob her lover?”

She nodded. “Aye.”

Mug and Peasblossom answered together, “Yes.”

Doyle turned back to Harry. “It’s not every hob who gets to share a mistress with a sidhe.”

“Mistress, nay, I loved the girl.”

“How did you feel about sharing the girl you loved with another?”

“Beatrice had broken up with Harry,” Peasblossom said.

“But we was back together,” Harry said.

Peasblossom acknowledged that was true.

“She had broken up with the sidhe,” he said.

“Dumped a sidhe for you?” Mug said, and laughed, a high twittering sound.

“Don’t you laugh at him, Mug,” Maggie May said. “Sometimes love is more than a magic or grand power.”

“Did you know that Beatrice had let Harry go?” I asked.

“Aye, and that she’d taken ’im back, too.”

“If she’d broken with him,” Doyle said, “why did Harry expect him down in the kitchens?”

“Beatrice said he wanted her to do awful things for him. She’d agreed at first, then changed her mind.”

“What kind of awful things?” Doyle asked.

“She wouldna’ tell me. Said it was so awful, no one would believe it of him.”

We were Unseelie not Seelie, which meant we were willing to admit most of what we wanted. What could be so terrible that it wouldn’t be believed? What perversion that Beatrice had turned from it in fear?

“Her sidhe lord had demanded one last meeting, to try and persuade Beatrice to reconsider. I begged her not to meet with him.”