A Stroke Of Midnight

I had to clear my throat sharply to say, “Yes, but I liked it.” My voice sounded rough, not like me at all. It hurt to swallow, and my throat felt rubbed raw.

“Why did the lights go out?” Kitto asked.

“Why does the air taste like broken stone?” Nicca asked.

The first light into that darkness was a wavering, sickly greenish yellow flame. Doyle came with the fire on one hand and a gun gleaming dark in the other. Frost was at his side like the reverse of body and shadow. He threw a glittering ball of light into the room, and was down on one knee sighting down the guns in his hands, searching the room for targets.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your attackers,” Frost said.

All of us on the floor exchanged glances, as best we could. “We were not attacked,” Nicca said.

“Then what did that?” Frost pointed with one gun, and the glittering silver and white light moved where he pointed. The light hovered over the far wall of the bathroom, and we saw why he had asked who attacked us. The far wall was no more. Broken stone and debris showed a black, gaping hole.

Other guards, including Biddy, were at their backs, all with weapons drawn. “Is the princess hurt?” someone asked.

“No,” I said, but my voice was still rough, so I wasn’t sure they heard me. I had to try twice before I could make myself clearly heard. “I am fine.”

Doyle sent Hawthorne and Adair to approach the far wall cautiously, their own balls of colored light acting like pet lanterns hovering just above their shoulders. One of them called back, “It’s a garden. A small garden with a dry pool in the ground.”

“What surrounds the garden?” Doyle asked from where he stood near us.

“Stone,” Adair answered. “It is a cave of stone.”

Doyle and Frost were staring down at us. Frost’s face was pale under the arrogant mask. I glanced past them and saw the heavy door to the outer room hanging twisted and broken in its frame.

“We thought you’d been attacked,” Doyle said, and his voice held that edge of relieved fear that Frost’s face could not quite hide.

“We’re safe,” I said.

“Why does your voice sound so rough?” Frost asked.

Galen raised his hand. “My fault.”

Doyle shook his head, and put up his gun. He still held the sickly flame in the other hand, as if his hand was the wick for the candle. It was the only light I’d ever seen him call in the dark.

“Well, at least this answers one question,” he said. “Sex inside faerie is different.”

“The ring has chosen no one for me yet.”

He gave a quick smile, a flash of white in his dark face. “That is good to know.”

“Yes,” Frost said, still pale, “that is good.” He was gazing at the destruction of the room. “But if the sex continues to grow more powerful, how are we to keep Merry safe, and make her queen?”

Doyle tapped a piece of stone with the toe of his boot. “There is a circle of debris around them as clean and neat as if it had been drawn. Merry and her lovers were safe enough. I think it is the furniture and walls we will have to worry over.”

“And anyone not in the circle with her,” Ivi said, and turned his face to the multicolored lights that bobbed in the room. His pale face glittered darkly on one side.

“Is that blood?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ivi said, and grimaced as he touched his forehead. “When the door exploded it sent shards of wood through the bedroom. Your new healer is tending the wounded.”

“The demi-fey?” I started to get up, but was still trapped beneath everyone’s bodies. Galen and Nicca began to roll off me, so I could sit up. Frost offered me a hand, and helped me to my feet. He pulled too hard, or my legs still weren’t working, because he had to catch me or I would have fallen. He caught me in against his body, and said, “What is that in your hair?”

“Oh, Kitto…”

“No, Merry,” Kitto said, “it isn’t my seed.”

Frost had a gun in his other hand, so it was Doyle who reached out and touched my hair. “Goddess save us.”

“What?” I asked, and I didn’t like how everyone was acting. Doyle helped me, drawing a strand of my hair closer to my face. There were leaves in my hair.

Doyle extinguished the flame on his hand with a shake, like you blow out a match by fa

“Mistletoe’s entwined in your hair.” Doyle glanced down at Kitto. “Is this your doing?”

“It was my seed in her hair, but I do not think I caused it.”

Brii came to stand beside us; his long yellow hair was decorated with bits of wood. “May I?” he asked me. His hand was raised toward my hair.

I nodded.

He touched the mistletoe tentatively, almost as if he were afraid it would hurt him, or it would vanish if he touched it too hard. “It was once considered the seed of the god.” He caressed the hard stems and the solid, thick green leaves, his fingertips gentle against the white berries.

“The seed of the god,” he whispered.

It was a good sign, a sign of great blessing, but… “How badly hurt are the demi-fey? If the splinters could do that to Ivi… how hurt are they?” I asked.

“We are not certain,” Frost said. “The blast of power threw us all to the floor or walls. They are small, and were thrown harder.”

I pushed away from his arms. I started for the far door. He picked me up, the drawn gun pressing cold against my bare legs. “There are splinters everywhere,” he said, as I tried to protest. I couldn’t argue his point.

“Then take me to them. Let me see what my pleasure has cost my people.”

“Your people?” Brii asked, his eyes shining pale and gold in the magical lights.

“Yes,” I said, “they are Unseelie fey, and that makes them mine, makes them ours.”

“That is not how the queen sees it,” Ivi said, and the blood on his face gleamed in the lights. He’d come to stand beside Brii. Their long pale hair seemed to intermingle like entwining vines.

I shook my head and the illusion, or the trick of the light, went away, and they were simply standing close together. I touched Frost’s arm. “Take me into the other room, let us help them.”

“Help them how?” Ivi asked.

“Hafwyn can heal them.”

“You would waste sidhe healing on a demi-fey?”

Frost answered for me. “That you would ask that of her says that you do not know the princess.”

Doyle added, “She will not see it as a waste.” He nodded, and as if that was an order Frost carried me toward the splintered door. Thin high-pitched screaming came from the other room. I prayed, “Mother help us, help them, heal them. Don’t let my power be their doom.”

I caught the faint scent of roses, and a voice like a warm wind. “Grace can never be doom.” With that cryptic bit of wisdom, she was gone, and we were in what was left of the bedroom.