A Stroke Of Midnight

He hugged me. “Are you cold?”

“A little,” I said aloud. To myself I acknowledged that it wasn’t the kind of cold that a coat or a bath would help.

“Let’s get in the water then.” He smiled down at me as he said it, as if a little hot water would solve everything. If only life were that simple.

Something must have shown on my face, because he frowned at me. “Are you all right?”

I nodded and sighed. So much to do, so many alliances to forge and strengthen, so many enemies to find. I should have been hurrying, should have had my list of goals and been breaking my back to get through them. But in that moment I couldn’t think of anything that seemed more important than holding as much of Galen against me as I could manage. Naked in a bathtub doesn’t solve everything, but naked with someone you love doesn’t hurt anything either.

CHAPTER 28

THE BATH WAS STILL HOT WHEN I FINALLY SLID INTO IT, WHICH meant that Kitto had drawn it hotter than I liked. He had known that we would talk too long and had pla

I looked at him as Galen slid into the bath. Kitto was one of the oldest of my men, and the oldest among us don’t always liked being thanked, so I didn’t. “You drew the water too hot, so it would be just right by the time we got in the tub. You knew we’d talk too long.”

He ducked his head, not meeting my eyes. “There was much to talk of.”

I leaned against the edge of the marble tub, until I could touch his shoulder. “You always seem to know what I’m going to do before I do.”

He raised eyes that were unsullied by white, only a bright clear blue. I saw uncertainty there before he lowered them again. “What’s wrong, Kitto?” I asked, stroking my fingers up and down his bare shoulder. He’d stripped down to just a thong, as he often did when he did anything messy. To save his clothes, he said. I got the feeling that Kitto owned more clothes now, with me, than he’d ever owned in the goblin court.

He shook his head, sending the black curls of his newly grown hair brushing across his shoulders. A few inches longer and it would have been punishable by torture. Only the sidhe were allowed long hair. He was sidhe now, with his own hand of power. As with Nicca’s wings and Mistral’s reborn power, so Kitto’s sidhe magic had come after sex. With the new power should have come a new confidence, but it had not.

Galen leaned over the tub edge to touch Kitto’s other shoulder. “What’s up, Kitto, you can tell us.”

Kitto flashed him a rare smile. “You are both the kindest sidhe I’ve ever known.” He glanced behind at Nicca. “All of you.”

“You’re sidhe now, too, Kitto,” I said.

He shook his head. “I will never be truly sidhe, not to some.”

Nicca knelt behind him, his wings sweeping out along the floor. “Who has been saying such things to you?”

Kitto shook his head again, and Nicca’s arms came around from behind, hugging him. Kitto stiffened, as if afraid. I leaned up over the tub edge until I could lay a kiss upon his lips. When I drew back from the kiss, he raised frightened eyes to me.

“What did they say to you?” I asked. I was really worried now. I’d never seen him quite like this, and I didn’t like it.

He dropped his gaze again, and wouldn’t look at me as he said it. “They said that I would never be anything but a filthy goblin. That only a whore would share her bed with me.” He looked up then, and his face was so hurt, so confused. “I didn’t think any fey called another whore. It is not our way.”

“Oh, Kitto,” I said.

“I should not be here if it hurts your chances of being queen.” He started to bend down, as if he would make himself smaller, but Nicca’s arms wouldn’t let him do it. Nicca held him tightly but gently against his body.

“They are jealous,” Nicca said.

Kitto looked over his shoulder at the other man. “Jealous of what?”

“Of you,” Galen said.

Kitto blinked at him, and shook his head. “No, not of me.”

“You are the first non-sidhe to be brought into his power in centuries,” Galen said. “No matter how common it used to be, it isn’t now. They are jealous that Merry could do it, and you could become it. They’re afraid of you and what it might mean if more of the sidhe-sided goblins could be made sidhe.”

I looked at Galen.

“What?” he said. “It’s true.”

“Yes, but I…”

“Didn’t think I’d noticed,” he said.

I had the grace to look embarrassed. “Let’s say, I didn’t think you’d noticed so much, and so well.”

He smiled, a little sadly. “I’m learning just how stupid everyone thought I was.”

I touched his shoulder. “Not stupid, never that.”

“Foolish then, or oblivious.”

“Oblivious,” Nicca said. “Can’t truly argue that one.”

I had to smile. “You did seem oblivious to most of the politics.”

Galen nodded. “I was, maybe I still am, but we all have to keep our wits about us. We all have to see what there is to see, or we are going to die.” He gripped my arms, sloshing the water against our bodies. “When it was just my life and there was no chance that I would ever be in your bed, I didn’t care that much.” He hugged me against him. “There’s too much to lose now, and I don’t want to lose any of it.”

I wrapped my arms around him, held him as tight as I could. My hands traced the patches of dried blood, covering all of him that hadn’t gone in the water. I trailed my hands down and found that even in the water, the blood still clung. So much blood, so terribly much.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t pay attention before,” he said, his cheek against my hair. “I didn’t see a point to it, if I couldn’t have you. I don’t see everything, not the way Doyle does, or Frost, or even Rhys, but I do see some things, and I’m trying to see more.”

There was a lump in my throat so big I couldn’t swallow past it. My chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were suddenly hot, and I knew I was about to cry only a second before it started. I didn’t want to cry. He was safe. We were safe. But feeling the dried blood made me remember the moment I’d seen him lying on his back in a lake of his own blood. That heart-stopping moment when I’d thought he was gone. Thought I’d never hold him warm against me again. Thought his arms would never press our bodies together again. That I’d never see his smile or hear his voice or gaze into his living eyes.

Galen stroked my hair and raised my face up to his. “Merry, are you crying?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.

“Why?” he asked.

Nicca said it for me. “She thought she’d lost you today, Galen.”

Galen stared down into my face. “Is that why you’re crying?”

I nodded again, and buried my face against his chest. He leaned back into the water, cradling me against his body. He stroked my skin, petted my hair, and whispered, “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

“But what about next time?” I asked.

“The queen made it clear that I might be the key to bringing babies back to the sidhe. I don’t think they’ll want to hurt me now.”

“Cel’s people will,” Kitto said.

We looked at him.

“I hear things because no one notices me.”

I felt a twinge at that because I’d done it, too. He’d accused me once of talking over him like he was a dog or a chair. That was before he had become my lover, but even now it was easier not to notice him than the rest. He had survived in the goblin mound by being unobtrusive, as invisible as he could make himself. He still had the habit of it.

“I heard some sidhe saying that they did not believe that anyone of Andais’s line would be able to bring life back to the Unseelie.”