A Stroke Of Midnight

“Who said this?”

“They saw me, after they had spoken. I think they would have tried to hurt me, but King Sholto came down the hallway. He had some of his sluagh with him.”

“Was this today?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“If he was here, I wonder why he didn’t come to the throne room.”

“I do not know, but he was wounded,” Kitto said.

“Wounded?” Galen said.

“How badly?” Nicca asked.

“He had an arm in a sling, and a bandage on the side of his face and head.”

“Who could harm a warrior of the Unseelie, and the King of Sluagh, that badly?” Nicca said as if he was simply thinking aloud.

“Goblins could,” Kitto said, “if they caught him unaware and unable to use his magic. There are warriors among my people who could best any you have, except for your sidhe magic.”

“Or another sluagh,” I said softly.

They all looked at me. “There are some among his people who think that by coming to my bed he will become full sidhe, and they will lose him as their king.”

“I heard it was mostly his harem of night hags,” Nicca said.

“Did everyone but me know that his hags were his harem?” I asked.

Nicca and Galen exchanged glances. “We envied him as the only guard who had an outlet for his desires,” Nicca said.

“They’re afraid that the touch of sidhe flesh will steal him away,” Galen said.

“No one but Merry would sleep with him,” Nicca said. “No other sidhe would risk bearing his child, for fear it would be a monster.”

I shook my head. “Once the Unseelie welcomed any child. It was the way of our court. When did we become an anthropomorphic club? When did two arms, two legs, and human beauty become the ideal?”

“Long before either of you were born,” Kitto said.

Nicca nodded. He was cuddling Kitto now more than just holding him. Kitto’s eyes still looked fragile, as if he believed whatever the sidhe had said to him. No name calling truly bites deep unless, in some dark part of us, we believe it. If we are confident enough then it’s just noise, but Kitto wasn’t confident, not in the least.

He spoke in a small, low voice. “I looked almost sidhe as a baby. My mother must have kept me for a few months, then the scales appeared around my spine, and when the teeth came in, so did the fangs. That was enough for her to leave me by the goblin mound, to either be taken in or killed. She left me there knowing that the goblins liked to eat a bit of sidhe flesh.” He huddled in on himself, wrapping Nicca’s arms closer around him. I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or accidental that the movement wrapped the other’s arm tighter. Most fey like to be touched, it comforts them, but the goblins are a different race than most. They like sex, but touch can as easily lead to violence as sex among them, and there is very little touching that is only comfort and not sex.

“But you’re wrong, Meredith. The sidhe, even the Unseelie, never took in every child. Goblin-sided babies that looked less than pure sidhe were left to die outside the goblin mounds.”

“The goblins took in their sidhe-sided children,” I said.

Kitto shook his head, and only Nicca’s arms kept him from curling into a little ball. Only Nicca’s strength kept the smaller man upright. “Not always,” Kitto whispered.

I reached out to touch his face. Galen, with his longer arms, could touch more of him. He found a hand to hold on to, and Kitto gripped the hand he offered. If I hadn’t been almost touching his face with mine, I might not have heard what he whispered next. “Sometimes they raise them until they’re big enough to eat. Not enough meat on a baby.” He looked up at me, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “When I got big enough, the woman who wet-nursed me wouldn’t let them have me. Because I was smaller than normal, it had taken me longer to get big enough, so long that I was talking, and she had grown fond of me. She fought for me. She bled for me. She saved me, but when she needed me, I was too small, too weak, to save her.” A look of rage crossed his face, and he closed his eyes as if he didn’t want me to see it. “One of the sidhe today said something, like he knew. He said I’d always been small, too small to be a real goblin, too small to be sidhe, too small to be anything but a burden and a danger to those around me.” Kitto looked up at me. “I didn’t think any sidhe visited the goblin mounds except for your father, and you. How did he know?”

I wanted to say that the sidhe in question had guessed. Had simply looked at Kitto’s small size and used it to be cruel. That he hadn’t known Kitto’s background, but only made an educated guess. But would it be more cruel to tell Kitto that his past was so obvious that a stranger could see it written on his body, or to let him believe that his history was known for certain by sidhe who dealt with the goblins more than they should?

Galen decided for me. “They didn’t know, Kitto, they just guessed. They were being mean. That’s all. They didn’t know that what they said would hit so close to the truth.”

“Guess?” Kitto said, looking at him. “Guess? They guessed? How? How could they know? How?” He gripped Galen’s hand with his smaller ones. “Is my shame written across my body? Is it that easy to see that I am weak? That I am a burden to those around me? I am a danger to you even.” He reached out to me then, gripping my hand so tight it almost hurt. “If I got you with child, they would never accept me as king, or you as queen. The two sidhe lords said they’d see you dead before they’d let a goblin-sided sidhe sit on the Unseelie throne.”

I wanted to ask who “they” were, but he might not know their names, and to ask it now seemed cruel. The two lords hadn’t been talking of conspiracies. They had simply been giving voice to their prejudices. They had said the cruelest truths they could find. But if they had truly pla

I wanted to caress him, to hold him until that look left his eyes. But there was no room tonight on my dance card, not unless I could figure out a way to combine people again. Galen would sleep in big puppy piles, but he didn’t like sharing sex. Nicca shared just fine, and I think he would have agreed to almost anything just so he could get to Biddy in the next room. I didn’t mind being the one he rushed through. I enjoyed Nicca, but he did not speak to my heart and body the way Galen did, or Doyle, or Frost.

It was Galen who reached for Kitto. Galen who pulled him closer to the tub. “I’m sorry, Kitto, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say…” He didn’t finish it, but he’d said enough to let me know that he knew he’d said too much. That he’d said aloud what I’d been thinking, and he understood that his comments had hurt Kitto. He understood it, and was willing to try to undo the hurt he’d inadvertently done.

Many humans watched the casual touching among us and mistook it for sex, but it isn’t always. Sometimes you just need to be touched. Sometimes you see such hurt, such loneliness in another fey’s eyes that you must do something, anything, to chase that look away. Sometimes sex isn’t even about sex among us. Sometimes it’s just the last resort for making someone smile.