A Stroke Of Midnight

“In what way is it different?” she asked.

“This one’s not scary.” He motioned his hand up toward Niceven.

Royal laughed, and it was like chimes in a happy wind. “And am I scary, green knight?”

I was close enough to see Galen’s pulse beating against the side of his throat. “Yes,” he said, and his voice sounded as dry as mine felt.

Royal’s laughter trailed away to something darker. “Such talk will turn a man’s head, green knight.” The look on his face showed just how pleased he was that Galen was afraid of him.

“Some glamour grows stronger with physical touch,” Adair said. He’d kept his helmet on.

“Are you asking if mine grows stronger, oak lord?” Royal asked.

“Speculating, not asking,” Adair said, as if to ask a question of a demi-fey was beneath him.

Well, Adair could be high-handed if he wished, but he wasn’t stripping down for the demi-fey. “Does your glamour grow stronger with physical touch?” I asked.

He gri

Galen whispered against my hair, “Can Nicca and you have this one? I’ll take the next one.”

I glanced back at him. “If you wish, yes.”

He sighed, and leaned his forehead against the top of my head. “Damn it, Merry.”

“What?” I asked.

“I can’t pass on the scary parts if you still have to do them. Are you sure you have to do this?”

“Don’t you want to know why Queen Niceven said that the Seelie Court might take you in if you offered them more power?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, damn it.” He looked up at Niceven. “And she knew we’d want to know.”

“A spy is only as good as his information, green knight.”

“My name is Galen, please use it.”

“Why?”

“Because the only people who ever call me green knight tend to try to hurt me.”

She looked at him a moment, then gave a small bob in the air. “Very well, Galen. You have been truthful with me, so I will be truthful with you, but you will not find it comforting.”

“Truth seldom is,” he said. The tone in his voice made me hug his free arm around me.

“We feed not just on blood and magic.”

“You feed on fear,” Doyle said, and there was something about the flat way he said it that told me there was a story behind those few words.

“Yes, Darkness,” Niceven said, “as do many things here at the Unseelie Court.” She turned back to Galen and me. “I think the green… Galen will be a feast fit for a queen.”

“Then let’s begin the bargaining,” I said.

“We have struck our bargain, Princess.”

I shook my head. “No, the bargain about what Royal can do, and can’t do, in my bed and on my body.”

“Are we really such a fearsome thing that you have to bargain as closely with us as you would with the goblins?”

“You chastised me for treating you as less than the goblins, Queen Niceven. If I do not negotiate with you as I would the goblins, isn’t that just another kind of insult?”

She folded her arms under her small breasts. “You are not like the other sidhe, Meredith, you are always difficult, tricksy.”

“You would try and bat your tiny eyes at me, and have me think Royal and the rest of you are harmless? That you are the children’s storybook characters you ape? Oh no, Queen Niceven, you can’t have it both ways, not with me. You’re either dangerous or you’re not.”

She gave me a perfect child’s pout. “Do I look dangerous to you, Princess?” Her voice was wheedling, and for just a moment I felt like saying, “No, of course not.”

Galen gripped my arm tight, squeezing. It helped me think.

“I’ve seen your true face, Queen Niceven,” he said. “Your glamour won’t work on me now, not even with it pushing at me like some sort of wall.”

“Yes,” Nicca said, “I’ve never felt any of the demi-fey this strongly before.”

“The demi-fey are the essence of faerie,” Doyle said. “As faerie grows in power, so will they, apparently.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about it.

Niceven turned to him. “Why, Darkness, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were afraid of us, too.”

“My memory is as long as yours, Niceven.” The cryptic statement seemed to please her.

“You’re afraid to bring us back into our full power, and here the princess has bargained to help us do just that. Irony is sweet when it is on the right foot.”

“Be careful how much irony you enjoy, Niceven, too much irony can be bad for you.”

“Darkness, is that a threat?” Her voice didn’t sound gentle at all now.

“A warning,” he said.

“Am I important enough for the Queen’s Darkness to threaten? My, we have moved up at court.”

“You’ll know when Doyle threatens you, little queen,” Frost said.

She bobbed in the air, and again because of Sage, I knew it was their version of a stumble. “I am not afraid of Darkness.”

Frost leaned into her, the way you’d intimidate someone by invading their personal space. Some of the effect was ruined by her wings and her size, but not all of it.

“I am not afraid of the Killing Frost either,” she said.

“You will be,” he said.

And that was how the negotiations began. They ended with a crowd of wingless demi-fey inside my room, and none of the sidhe happy about it. Niceven’s idea was that perhaps it had been Sage’s continuing to feed from sidhe blood that had done the damage. I couldn’t argue her logic. If I didn’t like Royal after tonight, I could choose one of the others, but all of them got to be in the room. We compromised, but she wouldn’t tell us what she knew of the Seelie Court until after we had fed Royal. Tomorrow, she promised, if she had fed off him and scoured out our magic from his flesh. Tomorrow, we might learn some of the secrets of the Seelie Court. Tonight, we had to pay for those secrets in blood, and flesh, and magic. And, as usual, someone would be tasting my blood, taking a bit of my flesh. Where was a stunt double when you needed one?

CHAPTER 27

RHYS PACED BY THE BATHTUB, THOUGH THERE WAS PRECIOUS little room for pacing. The bathroom was bigger than most standard modern bathrooms, but once you squeezed in Frost, Doyle, Galen, Nicca and his wings, Kitto, and me, no bathroom short of Queen Andais’s personal bathroom would have been big enough. Kitto was ru

“When I escorted Major Walters and the good doctor to their cars, the FBI was still there.”

“Persistent bastard,” I said.

Rhys shook his head, and stopped beside me. “No, Merry, not persistent. Carmichael, who thought our Killing Frost was so pretty, had just gotten to the cars, too.”

“What are you saying, Rhys?” Doyle was leaning to one side of the door.

“That according to the FBI and the people who escorted Carmichael out, only a few minutes had passed since I put Carmichael outside of the mound.”

“It’s been hours since then,” I said. I was sitting on the corner of the wide marble edge of the tub, trying to make myself small, so we weren’t too crowded.

“Not according to the humans outside,” Rhys said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that the sithen is playing with time,” Doyle said.

“Time always runs fu

“But only in pockets,” Rhys said, “and only by a few minutes, maybe an hour. Faerie has been on the same time schedule as the mortal world since before we came to America.” He leaned against the double sinks, fitting himself beside Galen.

Nicca had most of the far corner of the room for himself and the sweep of his wings. “What does it mean?”