A Stroke Of Midnight

CHAPTER 34

IT LOOKED LIKE A MINIATURE BATTLEFIELD. SMALL BODIES WERE scattered across the floor like a game of toy soldiers gone horribly wrong. Tiny bodies were collapsed against the walls as if some giant hand had swept them away. The four-foot-long Nile monitor lay on its back, and just the twisted look of the body let me know it had finished its death throes. A piece of wood the size of a small dagger had pierced its throat.

Frost carried me in, his feet crunching on bits of wood and metal from the door. I kept staring at the dead lizard, because I was afraid to look elsewhere. Afraid to look too closely at those smaller bodies, afraid I’d find them just as still, just as dead.

Hafwyn had made a triage line of tiny bodies. It had seemed like we had so many men to guard me, and too many in my bed, but now suddenly, we needed more hands. More bodies to help us save others. The queen had stripped me of too many. And Rhys had taken some with him, as well.

“Send word to the queen that we need more men, and more healers.”

Hafwyn looked up at me, even as she tried to hold a piece of cloth on a wound. “More healers? Do you mean to use sidhe healing on the demi-fey?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The queen does not waste such power on the lesser fey.”

She was right. In fact, there were some sidhe healers who would not willingly touch a lesser fey. As if they thought it was contagious. “Can you heal them?”

She looked surprised. “You truly mean for me to do this?”

“You are a healer, Hafwyn, can you sit here and watch them die, and not be pained by it?”

She lowered her head, and I watched her shoulders begin to shake. There was no sound, but when she turned her face back to me, there were tears upon her face. “Yes, it causes me pain to see such suffering and not be allowed to heal it.”

“Then heal what you can, and I will fetch more healers.”

“Who would you send to fetch them?” Frost asked. He was still holding me effortlessly, as if he could have held me so all night long. Maybe he could have.

I understood what he meant. Andais was probably deep into the torturing of the betrayers. And my aunt did not like being interrupted in the middle of her “playtime.” People who interrupted her had a tendency to be forced to join the show. Did I send the one I liked the least, or the one who had a better chance of making her see sense?

“Who do you recommend?”

“Doyle,” he said.

I turned in Frost’s arms and looked at him. “If she is deep in her blood lust then only Doyle has a chance of making her see sense. Ivi or Brii would end up as victim.”

“And you?”

“She has never listened to me as she listened to Doyle.” He said it without a trace of hurt ego. He simply stated it, fact. I believed him.

Doyle glided through the broken door, as if he’d heard us say his name. I told him what I wanted.

“I might be able to help heal some of them,” he said.

I had forgotten that he had limited healing ability himself. One of the first times he had ever touched me intimately had been for him to heal a wound on my thigh. He could not heal with his hands, but with his mouth, so it was not something he offered often. It was too intimate. And his ability to heal was not great, as the healers of faerie measured it.

“You can heal?” Hafwyn asked, pushing at her yellow hair with the back of her arm. Her hands were too bloody to be used for tucking a strand of hair back.

“A little, but not by hand.”

“Nodens,” she said simply.

“One of my names,” he said, “at the end.”

“How bad an jury can you heal?” she asked.

“Superficial wounds, deep but narrow.”

“Can you set bone?”

He shook his head.

She looked around at her patients. “I think Frost is right. I think the queen will hear you best, and if anyone can bring us more healers, it is you. You will be most welcome when I have more healers. We can conserve our strength, and let you finish a wound after we have begun it.”

“Gladly,” he said, “if you are certain?”

She nodded. “Go to the queen as the princess bids. Killing Frost is right; it is our best chance to save them.”

Doyle nodded, gave a small bow to me, and simply started for the door. I called him back, a hand in his. I drew him in for a kiss, while I was still held in Frost’s arms. Doyle’s lips were warm, and soft, and he drew back from the kiss before I was ready for him to.

“And Doyle goes alone?” Galen said. “You warned Rhys that he might be attacked.”

“He is the Queen’s Darkness,” Brii said. “No one would dare.”

Galen shook his head. “No one goes alone, anywhere, not until we’re back in L.A.”

“And do you rule here already, green knight?” Ivi asked.

“No, but we can’t afford to lose Doyle because we got careless.”

I knew by the look on Doyle’s face that he meant to argue. Then he smiled and shook his head. “He’s right. We ca

“I will go,” Hawthorne said, “if you will have me.”

“I will go, if you wish, but I think my place is here guarding the princess,” Adair said.

“I agree.” Doyle looked at Galen with a small smile. “Are you content with Hawthorne?”

“Take Brii, too,” he said.

The smile left him. “I do not think that is necessary.”

“It would take me too long to dress or I’d go with you,” Galen said.

“Why so serious about my safety, Galen?” Doyle asked.

I wondered if Galen would tell Doyle what he’d said in the bathroom. He did. “I thought I was dead, and one of my last thoughts was it’s okay, because you and Frost were still alive. I knew you’d keep Merry safe. I knew you’d get her out of here and back home to L.A. I thought, why kill me first? If I were going to do a first strike, it would be you I’d kill. I can’t be the only one who’s thinking that.”

We were all staring at him. “What?” he asked.

“We’re not used to you sounding this smart,” Ivi said, “that’s all.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“If you intend to save lives, go now,” Hafwyn said.

Doyle gave a small bow in my direction. Hawthorne and Brii fell in at his back, and they left us.

I looked at Hafwyn. “What can we do to keep them alive while we wait?” She told us. Ivi spread his cloak on the floor so that I could kneel in safety, while we did what little we could to hold their blood in their bodies, and their lives in our hands.

CHAPTER 35

I WAS LEFT STARING DOWN AT ROYAL’S BODY. HE WAS ALIVE, BUT only because a stomach wound takes longer to kill. The wood had gone so far into his stomach that a piece of it came out the other side, missing his spine by a hairsbreadth. I pressed the cloth on either side of that wound. Hafwyn cautioned me to be careful, and not move him. Not until they had someone with more healing than she had left in her hands.

Royal’s sister, Pe

“We came to you for wings, and you have given us death.” She threw herself onto her brother, yelling at me, “Evil, you are all evil. You have never brought us anything but humiliation and destruction.”

I couldn’t argue with her, not with Royal’s body pressed against my hands, his life bleeding away.

She tried to grab him up onto her lap, and that made him cry out in pain. Hafwyn interfered. “Pe

But Pe