A Stroke Of Midnight

“The i

“She’s never been in love,” I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it. “But she wants to be.”

Polaski gave me a fu

I shrugged, using my fingers to keep the cloak closed over the chalice.

Ivi bent close to her face. “Be careful what you wish for, little one, you may get it, and not know what to do when you unwrap the bow.” Again the words were laced with sorrow.

Jeanine Carmichael began to cry.

“Leave her alone,” Polaski said.

“I am leaving her with sorrow, Doctor, not lust, not happiness, not beauty. I am making as certain as I can, that when she wakes tomorrow she will remember sorrow, like a bad dream. I wish that she remembers nothing that will send her seeking us again.”

“You’re disturbing, did you know that?” Polaski asked.

Ivi gave that mocking smile. “You are not the first to say it, though I believe the last woman phrased it differently. She said I was disturbed.”

Polaski looked at him as if she couldn’t decide if he was joking or telling another bitter truth.

CHAPTER 16

WE WAITED FOR THE POLICE TO RETURN TO US AFTER ESCORTING their befuddled colleague away. The hallway should have been a short trip, but that long expanse of grey stone had grown longer, and now there was a curve that hid the door from view. The entrance to the sithen never changed.

“I believe the sithen wishes us to have some privacy,” Frost said.

The chalice under my cloak grew warm against my skin. I let my breath out in a sigh, and simply nodded. I did not like the chalice appearing like this. It amplified magic, and we’d had some very strange and powerful things happen between the guards and myself when the cup was present. It was almost as if the chalice didn’t want to leave me alone to solve the murders. The cup pulsed so hard that it made me gasp.

Hawthorne reached to steady me, but Frost caught his hand and gave a small shake of his head. Too dangerous in the open with the humans coming back so soon. Some things we did not want to explain to the police. Some things we couldn’t explain to anyone.

If everyone in the hallway had glimpsed the chalice, it would have been a quicker conversation, but we had guards with us who had been standing where they could not see, so we talked around it.

Ivi began, “I’m all for solving the murders. But I also think that we should be trying to make the princess queen instead of playing copper.”

A pulse of power shot from the chalice along my skin. It raised the hair on my body, and collapsed me to my knees. Frost and Hawthorne kept everyone else from touching me.

“What is wrong with the princess?” Dogmaela said.

“And why do you not want us touching her?” This from Aisling, who was still hiding behind his hood and muffler so that only the spirals of his eyes showed. He’d been one of the queen’s men, and never mine before or even now. His eyes were not the three rings of color common among the sidhe, but a spiral painted in lines of color, with his pupil at the heart of the design. As a child I’d once asked him how he could see out of them, and he had smiled and replied that he did not know.

Frost, Hawthorne, and I exchanged glances. All the other guards looked at me where I knelt and waited. Waited for me to make up my mind.

The sweet scent of apple blossoms filled the air, and that sense of peace that could come when you worshipped filled me. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea but I got to my feet and flung my cloak back, revealing the chalice in my hands.

“That isn’t…” Dogmaela began.

“It ca

“But it is.” Ivi looked at me with a seriousness that the laughter did not touch. He shook his head. “You’ve had it since you arrived back at the courts, haven’t you?”

I nodded.

“How?” Dogmaela asked. “How?”

“It came to me in a dream, and when I woke it was real.”

Several of them were shaking their heads.

Ivi gri

The chalice pulsed between my hands, and my body reacted to it. For an instant my skin glowed white, my hair was a crimson halo around me, and my eyes glowed green and gold, so that for a heartbeat I saw the color out of the edges of my vision. The power vanished as instantly as it had come, leaving my pulse thudding in my throat.

“Hmm, that was fun,” Ivi said.

“You just want to fuck her,” Dogmaela said, and she made it sound like a dirty thing. An unusual attitude among any fey.

“Yes,” Ivi said, “but that doesn’t make me wrong.”

“The police will return soon,” I said, my voice still a little breathy from the power rush.

“And once they return, the investigation will take all your attention,” Frost said. “Whatever we are to discuss, it must be now.”

I looked up at his face, so carefully arrogant. “Are you saying I should take time out of solving a double homicide to have sex?”

Hawthorne’s quiet voice came. “I am sorry that Beatrice and the reporter are dead, but Ivi is correct in one way. My life and the lives of my fellow guards will not change if these murders go unsolved. Prince Cel becoming king will change a great many things.” He removed his helmet, exposing his wavy hair, held back by braids, and the green, pink, and red of his eyes. He was lovely, but all the sidhe were lovely. I’d never really thought of how he compared to the other men. It was as if I’d never really seen him before, never noticed that he was fair of face, broad of shoulder, even by sidhe standards.

Frost made a motion that caught my eye. “Meredith, are you well?” His hand hovered just over my shoulder, as if he wanted to touch me but was afraid to.

I dragged my gaze from Hawthorne, and I was suddenly dizzy. “Is it the chalice?”

“Hawthorne,” Frost said, and the one word was enough.

“I did not try to bespell her, I merely thought about how much I desire to have what Mistral had in the hallway. Not just the taste I had.”

“I ca

“As much as I desire an end to my celibacy,” Aisling said, “the chalice sits before us. How can you talk of anything else?”

“Your needs must be paler things than mine,” Hawthorne said.

Amatheon finally spoke as if to himself. “The chalice returned to Meredith’s hand. How can this be?”

I looked up at him, watched the struggle in his flower-petal eyes. “You mean that the chalice would never return to the hand of some mongrel half-breed like me.”

He swallowed so hard it looked as if he were choking on years of prejudice. “Yes,” he said in a voice that was a harsh whisper. He fell to his knees as if some great force had knocked him down, or he had lost the strength in his legs.

He gazed up at me, and the many colors of his eyes glittered in the light, not with magic, but with tears. “Forgive me,” he said in that same harsh whisper, as if the words were being torn from his throat, “forgive me.” I didn’t think it was me he was begging forgiveness of.

The chalice moved toward him, my hands held it, but it was not my will that moved it.

He buried his face in his hands. “I ca

I stood in the middle of a huge, barren plain. Amatheon was still pressed to my waist, his head buried against my body. I wasn’t certain that he knew anything had changed.