A Stroke Of Midnight

“Then let us go make that point to the authorities,” Doyle said, “both local and federal.” He actually offered me his arm, and I took it, feeling the solidness of muscle underneath the leather of his jacket. I realized, then, that my winter coat was still back at the airport, unless someone had thought to rescue it. I was going to need something to wear out into the December cold. I wondered whose coat I’d borrow.

We sent Onilwyn to find a healer. I still didn’t know whether to believe what he had said. Had he come ahead of us to curry my favor, or had he something else in mind? Something more sinister, or maybe I was just looking for an excuse not to have sex with him. Maybe, or maybe Onilwyn had earned my distrust.

CHAPTER 12

DOYLE AND FROST ESCORTED ME BACK TO MY ROOM FOR FRESH clothes. And warmer ones. I don’t know whose cloak iI borrowed, but it fit me, the hem barely brushing the floor of my room. The fur was cream and amber and a gold that was almost auburn. It was truly beautiful, but I felt about it the way I usually felt about fur coats; I thought the fur would have looked better on the animal it belonged to. I’d actually tried to argue that I wanted a leather coat, or something out of wool, but since it had been centuries since the sidhe had had domestic animals of their own, wool and leather were in short supply. Besides, Frost assured me that when it was killed, they had eaten it.

“What was it?” I asked. I’d never seen anything with fur quite this color.

“Troll,” he said.

I stopped petting the fur. I’d never seen a troll, but I knew they were a type of fey, and though not the brightest, they still had culture, were still people. “That’s not exactly an animal; that’s more like ca

“He never said it was an animal,” Doyle said, “you did. Shall we go? The police are waiting.”

“If I have a problem wearing animal fur, didn’t it occur to either of you that wearing something made out of what amounts to one of us would bother me even more?”

Frost sighed and settled back into a huge black chair, which unfortunately matched the new decor the queen had put in my room. It looked like a set for a gothic porn movie, or a funeral where the corpse was going to get a little too much attention.

“I killed the troll. The fur is a trophy. I don’t understand your problem with wearing it.” Frost looked ghost pale against the black leather chair, and strangely decadent in his fur coat. His ankle-length silver-fox coat had made it back from the airport. It made me think that the leather coats had gone missing because no one was certain who they belonged to, and the fur stayed because who else but one of my men would have a full-length fur coat that would fit over a set of shoulders that broad.

I turned to Doyle. “It would be like wearing a person’s skin for a coat.”

Doyle grabbed my arm. His grip was bruising, and his face held the anger that his hand pressed against my flesh. “You are a princess of the Unseelie Court. You will rule us someday. You ca

His black eyes held bits of brilliant color like psychedelic fireflies. There was an instant of vertigo, and then I was on solid ground in my snow boots, and I could look into his eyes and not be swayed. If he’d done it on purpose, it might not have been so easily cast aside, but it was his anger that brought his power, not his will. Anger is easier to avoid than force of will.

Frost had pushed to his feet. “Doyle, it is not such a large problem as all that.” He sounded uncertain, and I knew why. This was Doyle, their captain, the immobile, unfeeling Darkness. He did not have fits of temper, ever.

Doyle jerked me close to his body, and I felt the creeping line of energy as his power began to unfold. He snarled into my face, “Won’t wear the skins of our honored enemies. The police await us, our men stand in the cold, and you don’t like your coat! Such delicate sensibilities for someone who just fucked a stranger on the floor in front of us all.”

I stared at him openmouthed, too astonished to do or say anything.

“Doyle!” Frost came to stand near us, his hand moving toward me, as if he would take me away from the Darkness. But he let his hand fall back, because Frost, like me, wasn’t certain what Doyle would do if he tried to wrest me from him. He was behaving so unlike himself that I was afraid, and, I think, so was Frost.

Doyle threw his head back and screamed. It was a sound of such anguish, such utter loneliness. The sound ended on a howl that raised the hairs on my body. He released me abruptly, and half threw me against Frost. Frost caught me and turned me so that his broad shoulders were between me and his captain.

Doyle collapsed to the floor in a pool of black leather, his braid curling like a serpent around his legs.

It took me a moment to realize that he was sobbing. Frost and I looked at each other. Neither of us had a clue as to what was happening to our stoic Darkness.

I moved toward him, but Frost held me back, and shook his head. He was right. But it made my chest tight to hear such broken sounds coming from Doyle.

Frost knelt beside him and laid a white hand on Doyle’s dark shoulder. “My captain, Doyle, what ails you?”

Doyle covered his face with his hands and hunched over until his hands were nearly flat to the ground. He curled in upon himself, and his voice came thick with tears, and thicker with anger. “I ca

Frost nodded, and drew the other man into his arms. He held him tight and fierce, and the face he showed to me was raw with sorrow.

I had missed something. Something important. Something had happened not just to Doyle but to Frost as well. This was not his typical moodiness; this was mourning. But what did they mourn?

“What has happened?” I asked.

Doyle shook his head, pressed into Frost’s shoulder. “She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what it means.”

“What?” Fear was begi

Frost looked at me, and I realized that there were unshed tears glittering in his eyes. “The ring has chosen your king, Meredith.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Mistral,” Doyle said, raising his head, so I could see his face. “The ring has chosen Mistral. And I ca

I stared at him. “What are you babbling about? There is only one way for my king to be chosen, and I am not with child.”

“Are you certain of that?” Frost asked. His face was so calm, empty of the emotional turmoil I would have expected from him. It was almost as if with Doyle fallen to pieces, he had to hold himself together better than was his wont.

“Yes, I mean…” I thought about what he’d said. “It’s too early to be certain.”

Doyle shook his head hard enough that his heavy braid rustled against the leather. “The ring has never come to life for any of us. You have never had such sex with any of us. What else could it mean but that he is the ring’s choice?”

“I don’t know, but…” In the face of his pain, I didn’t know what to say. I looked from one to the other of them. Their belief was plain on their faces. I looked at them huddled together, light and darkness entwined, and my chest was tight. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The room felt hot and close. If I was pregnant from Mistral, I would lose them, both of them. I would be bound to Mistral, and I would be monogamous to him and him alone. The sex had been good, maybe great, but it was just sex, and… “I don’t love him.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a child’s plea. A child’s wish.