A Stroke Of Midnight

Royal touched my hand with his, barely covering my knuckle with his entire hand. He was one of the tallest of the fey in the room, but tall is relative when your world is full of people who look like children’s toys.

He gazed up at me with his black eyes, his face so pale he looked ghost-like. But his chest still rose and fell against my fingertips, his stomach still convulsed as he closed his eyes, face pinching tight, with a spasm of pain. I felt him struggle not to writhe as that pain lanced through him.

I said the only thing I had left to offer. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I would not make excuses. Regardless, he was dead unless a fresh healer arrived within minutes.

I said it again. “I am sorry, Royal, I am so sorry.”

He actually smiled at me, and that made my heart hurt. “I have had a sidhe princess say sorry to me.” His face showed that pain again, and his body fought against my fingers.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “Help is coming.”

He gave me a look, and it was eloquent. “There will be no help for me.” His voice fell to a whisper, so low that I had to lean in to catch his words. “Queen Niceven made me… surrogate. Let me taste your… lips and blood… just once. Before…” Another spasm took him, and this time he couldn’t quite make himself hold still. He writhed with the pain, and that caused him more pain, until he screamed. Blood flowed faster around my fingers and the sodden rags. He was going to die in my hands, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

I tasted the salt of my tears before I knew I was crying.

His eyes fluttered open, but they had that glazed look to them, as if he was already seeing things that the living do not see.

His lips moved, but I could not hear him. I leaned into him again, and heard him sigh, “Kiss… me.”

I did what he asked, though I had never kissed lips so delicate. It wasn’t until his lips brushed mine, like the caress of a tightly curled flower, that I felt his glamour. I had let my pity blind me to possibilities. Pity, and the fact that he was dying. You don’t think of the dying wasting energy on sex. It was the most chaste of kisses, but his magic made it more.

His mouth pressed to my lower lip, and in that moment his glamour poured over my skin like water from a warm bath. I could not breathe through it, could not think, could not do anything but feel.

It was like an hour of foreplay in one small kiss. His hand touched my bare breast, and he bit my lip. The touch was so much more than that tiny hand should have been able to deliver, as if he caressed the front of my body with a hand as large as any man’s. That small, sharp shock of pain was like the last thrust, the last lick, the last caress, for it spilled me over the edge and made me scream my pleasure into him. But it was as if his mouth were bigger. He were bigger. In that instant I would have sworn that I lay atop a full-sized lover, that the hands that touched me were another human or sidhe. That the body that I was pressed against was not only full-sized, but well-sized.

I forgot everything but the feel of his body under mine. His hands exploring me. His mouth feeding at mine. His body searching between my legs, trying to find my opening. I think I would have let his last glamour undo me, but a sharp pain stabbed into my side, and broke his magic. I came to myself lying atop him, as much as our differences in size would allow. The pain did not stop with his broken glamour. I tried to raise my body and the pain sharpened. I stared down the line of our bodies and found the tip of the wood in his middle had pierced my side.

Galen and Frost were there, trying to lift me up. I was about to tell them to stop when the wood came out. The wound was shallow, thank the Goddess, but I’d have to talk to them about looking before they moved me. None of them were used to dealing with someone who injured as easily as I did.

Galen called, “Hafwyn, Merry is hurt.”

“No,” I said, “it looks worse than it is. There are others who need her more than I.”

“You are the princess, and they are only demi-fey,” Ivi said.

I shook my head, as Galen cradled me in his arms, laying me on Ivi’s cloak. “Doyle can heal it when he gets back,” I said.

“At least let Hafwyn look at it,” Galen said.

I nodded. “If she has time.”

Of course, she came immediately. She knelt and cleaned the blood away with the cloth and bowl of water that Kitto had fetched for her. She explored the wound, which hurt, and removed some splinters, which hurt more.

Galen let me squeeze his hand while she took the splinters out with her fingers. Where were sterile tweezers when you needed them? Galen smiled down at me, and said, “I didn’t know you were this strong. What a grip.”

It made me smile, which was what he’d intended.

I caught a glimpse of Royal behind Hafwyn and Galen. The demi-fey lay utterly still, eyes closed. The hands that had caressed my body were limp on either side of him. I chased Hafwyn’s hands away. “See to Royal.”

She looked puzzled. I realized she didn’t remember his name. “Royal, the demi I was helping.”

Hafwyn went to Royal’s body as I’d ordered. She started to lay hands on him, and his spine bowed upward, as if drawn by some invisible string. His breath came into his body in a great gasping rush. It left his body in a shriek that reverberated through the room. His scream was echoed by the other wounded. It was as if they were all having a fit.

“What’s happening?” Frost asked.

Hafwyn shook her head. I don’t think she knew either. Not good.

The small knot of uninjured demi-fey started forward, as if to try to help. Then they all fell to their knees and began to scream and writhe on the ground.

“Is it poison?” Adair raised his voice to be heard over them.

Hafwyn said, “I do not know, Goddess help me, but I do not know.”

The wounds spurted blood upward like a dozen crimson fountains. The demi-fey without wounds still writhed, and called out in pain, but they had no wounds for the blood to be called from. For that was what it looked like. It looked like some version of my own hand of blood. Except I was not doing it, and no one else had the power to do it.

Then blood burst out of all of them like some hand was punching through their wounds. The wood pieces were pushed out in a last burst of blood and screams. It was as if the flesh itself was rejecting the wood.

The piece that had nearly bisected Royal was one of the last to come out, for it was one of the largest and most deeply embedded.

“Is this healing them?” Frost asked, making his voice heard above the demi-fey’s screams.

“I am not sure,” Hafwyn said. “I think so.”

Even knowing that, it was hard to watch. Then I discovered something else. Hafwyn had not found all the splinters in my own wound. Those tiny splinters that she had missed began to push their way out of my flesh.

Galen looked down at me. I think I squeezed his hand again. He looked a question at me, but I shook my head. If Hafwyn could do anything to help ease pain, it wasn’t me who needed it.

Frost had a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. Adair stood a little away from him, weapon out, as well. Ivi had moved to the other side of the room away from them, and he, too, stood with bared sword. He had a look so serious on him that it almost didn’t look like him. They were covering the room. They were going on the idea that this might be an attack. I didn’t think it was that kind of a problem, but they were the bodyguards and I was not. Besides, I was too busy gripping Galen’s hand and trying not to scream.

Two tiny splinters had worked their way out, blood spurting out of the wound in my side. It felt as if a fist were trying to punch its way out. I fought not to scream, to simply hold on to Galen’s hand, but I couldn’t hold my body still while the magic tried to shove its way through my body.