A Stroke Of Midnight

“What’s happening?” I asked Frost.

“He has regained some of his old powers.”

“And that would be?”

“To say someone was like Ivi’s hair was to say that they were compelling, whether you willed it or no. To be caught in ivy meant to be entrapped. To be ivy climbed meant that your lover was destroying you in some way,” Frost said.

“I don’t remember any of these sayings,” I said.

“You would have no reason to know them,” Hawthorne said. “It has been centuries since we spoke of Ivi in this ma

“No wonder you look so terribly satisfied,” I said.

“I have gained much simply by being in the hallway with you while you…”

“Enough,” Frost said, “we are not alone.”

Ivi dropped to his knees in front of me. “I would do anything to be in your bed for a night, for an hour.” His eyes weren’t mocking now. His face was as serious as he ever got.

“Get up,” I said.

“The queen likes us on our knees.”

“Well, I don’t.”

I looked at Frost. “Who can she touch without a problem, just in case?”

“Hawthorne will do as he is told, and his enchantment is more active magic,” Frost said.

I nodded. “Hawthorne, go help the doctor demonstrate.”

He went to her, having to walk around the pool of hair that had spread around Ivi’s kneeling body.

“You must choose two of the green men, let me be one of them,” Ivi said.

“Don’t make the princess ask you twice. Get up,” Mistral said.

Hawthorne gave his armored back to the doctor. “I guess the armor doesn’t make a difference for this.” She touched the smooth crimson armor tentatively, then with more assurance, as if she’d expected something to happen. “Beatrice was stabbed here.” She pointed to a place on his back where you’d be almost certain to get the heart. “The knife went in deep.” She left two fingers at the spot where the knife went in, then placed her other hand flat alongside it. “I have an almost perfect handprint right here, where someone braced to take out a deeply embedded blade. I have almost the same print pattern on the second victim. But I also have partial fingerprints where the knife was wiped clean of blood. They may or may not be Peasblossom’s.”

“If we are sure it is her print, then she would be our murderer,” I said.

“Yes, but if she is, then where’s the blade? Rhys traced it to your bottomless pit. The other kitchen help say that once Peasblossom found the bodies, she didn’t leave the area. She didn’t have time to go all the way to your pit to dispose of the knife.”

“Someone else did it for her,” Mistral said.

“We found one good, clear handprint on the wall near the reporter’s body. It doesn’t match any of the guards in the hallway, but the hand is of a similar size.”

“Sidhe,” Adair said.

“Probably,” she said.

“So either Peasblossom is a ruthless killer and had an accomplice, or the killer is imposing her print over his to hide his guilt.”

She nodded.

“Can’t we check her for spells?” Galen said.

Frost shook his head. “We have no one with us who is good enough at subtle magic. Humans tend to reek of magic once they’ve been in the underground for an hour or more. To differentiate between the things that might simply cling and those that are deliberate we would need Doyle, or Crystall, or Barinthus.”

“I could do it,” Aisling said.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, with that ghostly smile.

“Not around Dr. Polaski and her people, no.”

“You were able to gaze upon my naked body and not be bespelled. Perhaps I have lost some of my allure for mortals.”

“Or perhaps Meredith is a sidhe princess,” Mistral said, “and not mortal.”

“Using your powers has made your tongue bold, Aisling,” Hawthorne said.

Nobody seemed to like him much. Had everyone been as shaken as I had been by his little show?

Aisling looked at Hawthorne. “You gazed upon me without anything between my face and your eyes. That is a hero’s task, or was it harder to resist my beauty than you let on?” He sighed, and the teasing left his voice, replaced by sorrow. “After going so long with our needs unmet, there is no shame in being attracted to what you once would not have been. We all crave the touch of another sidhe. Sometimes I think I will go mad without the touch of another being.”

Hawthorne did a brave thing then, clasping Aisling’s shoulder in a brotherly way. I wondered if he would have risked it if the man had still been shirtless. “We have a chance to break our long fast.”

“With the princess,” Aisling said.

Hawthorne nodded.

Aisling stepped away from Hawthorne’s hand and moved to me. It took a great deal for me not to flinch away from him. He knelt beside Galen and me.

“There will be no princess for me,” Aisling said. “She will not risk it now.” He looked down at me. “Will you, Princess?”

I didn’t know what to say because he was right. I did not want him touching me. I said the only thing I could think of: “I will not rule it out, but I fear you now, Aisling, where I didn’t before.”

“I’m missing something,” Polaski said.

“Be happy you missed it,” I said.

She walked toward me. “No, you’re hiding too many things from me, Princess. I need to know what is happening here, or you get nothing from me and my people.”

As she came to stand over us, she brushed against Aisling and started to fall. Galen and I reacted, knowing that Aisling must not touch her with his bare skin. I stood between them, pushing Aisling backwards. Galen came to his knees and caught Dr. Polaski before she could hit the floor.

The doctor was safe with Galen, but I was in Aisling’s arms, and I wasn’t safe at all.

CHAPTER 23

HE CAUGHT HIS BALANCE, AND ME, WITH HIS ARMS AND HIS BODY. Perhaps he stumbled more than he needed to, so he would be able to hold me tighter, but it wasn’t him that made my hand slip underneath his tunic to glide along bare skin. Fear choked me, ran along my skin so that it was like small electric shocks, tingling out to my fingertips. I saw Melangell’s face, her empty, bloody eyes, and waited for his magic to take me. I stared up into those odd eyes, with their i

I traced my hand up the curve of his spine, so warm, so firm, so real. He leaned over me, as if to kiss me through the gauze of his veil. I leaned back, his hands tightened around my body, holding me against him. If I had not seen him with Melangell I would have simply let him kiss me, but some things once known can never be unknown.

I smelled roses. I was suddenly drowning in the sweet, almost cloying scent of roses.

Aisling hesitated. “Do you smell that?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

A voice whispered through my head. “With Amatheon I bid you hurry, and you turned from haste, and chose the longer road. You risked losing that which you cherished.”

I whispered, “Galen.”

Aisling’s arms loosened around me, but I grabbed for him, because I was suddenly dizzy.

“Now I tell you that this must wait, or you will lose again.”

“Doyle.”

“Darkness ca

“Who?” I asked.

“Who are you talking to?” Aisling asked.

“Hurry,” the voice in my head said, and with a last whiff of roses she was gone again.

“Where?” I asked.

It wasn’t words. It was more like the feeling that had come over me when I told Frost that Galen could not search alone for Doyle. But this wasn’t panic, it was just a knowing. I simply knew where I needed to go. No doubts, no logic, just knowledge.

“Who are you talking to?” Aisling said again, his voice shaky, almost afraid.

“I am not afraid to touch you,” I said, “but there is no time. We must get to the throne room, now.”