A Stroke Of Midnight

Frost was there, kneeling. “Merry!”

Someone yelled for Hafwyn.

My other hand reached into the air, and Nicca grabbed it. I had a moment to cling to Galen and Nicca’s hands, a moment when the pain pulled back, and it was as if the world drew a breath. The three of us knelt in a well of silence. Galen asked, “What is this?” Him, I could hear. “Magic,” Nicca said. Frost stood above us, looking for an enemy to strike down. Biddy was at his side, looking down at Nicca, but her sword was in her hand, too. They would guard me, but the kind of guarding we needed had nothing to do with swords. We needed better magicians, not better swordsmen.

The silence that held us seemed to swell out like a bubble until it burst. Then came the pain. It was as if a thousand fists were trying to shove themselves out through my body. It was as if every muscle was fighting to tear itself free of my bones. I was being ripped apart. I screamed, and fell back onto the floor. Other screams echoed mine, and the hands that I gripped convulsed tightly around mine. Through pain-narrowed eyes I saw Galen and Nicca collapsing with me, their mouths wide with screams.

Other screams joined ours; the demi-fey rolled on the ground, their tiny bodies bursting into a rain of blood as I watched. Then my own pain made me writhe so that I could only look up.

Blood gushed from the wound in my stomach. Blood sprayed out of Galen’s arm. Nicca’s shoulder turned into a fountain of blood. Then everything stopped, and it was so sudden, I thought I’d gone deaf. But then I heard small sounds of pain, and someone yelling, “Mother help us.”

Galen had collapsed on top of me, our hands still clasped. I still held Nicca’s hand, but I couldn’t see him past Galen’s body.

Frost appeared above me. “Merry, can you hear me?”

It took me two tries to say yes, but the voice was someone else’s, distant and dry.

Hands lifted Galen off me, but I wouldn’t let them take his hand from mine. They didn’t argue, but simply laid him down beside me, so that the three of us were on our backs, staring up at the ceiling. It was a woman’s voice that said, “The little ones, look at the little ones.” There was something in her voice that made me turn my head, even though I was so tired.

Royal was closest to us. He had rolled over onto his side, curled around his stomach, curled around his pain. But there was something on his back. I had to blink hard to understand what I was seeing. Tiny crumpled wings were unfurling on his back. They were wet with blood, but they grew larger as I watched, expanding with every beat of Royal’s heart.

“They have wings,” Hafwyn said, “they all have wings.”

Ivi was kneeling at our feet. “Look at your stomach.”

I was almost afraid to look, afraid of what I would find. But it was just a moth, exactly where the wound had been. A beloved underwing moth just like the wings that were tearing their way out of Royal’s back. It was only when Ivi moved to touch it that I realized it wasn’t on me, but in me. The moth was embedded in my skin.

I didn’t have time to be afraid, or horrified, or anything. The world went away in a swirl of dimming vision, and finally darkness. There were no visions, no manifestations. There was nothing but blessed oblivion.

CHAPTER 36

I WOKE, BLINKING UP INTO A CANOPY AS BLACK AS THE DARKNESS that had sucked me under. Black material was held in graceful folds on dyed black wood. I thought, almost idly, that it looked like the queen’s bed. Fear speared through me in a fine, breath-stealing rush. It was never good to wake up here.

I must have moved my hand more than I thought because I brushed someone’s arm. It made me jump and look to the center of the bed.

Galen lay, eyes still closed, face peaceful. He was still nude, as were we all. For Nicca lay on the other side of Galen. That the three of us were naked in her bed did not make me feel one bit better.

I looked out at her room, and it was completely black except for a fire in a large metal brassier in the center of the room. Why were the walls without light? Where was the light of the sithen?

Something moved in that blackness, and I tensed, expecting it to be the queen, but there was no flash of her white skin. I knew who it was before he stepped into the amber glow of the firelight. Doyle in a cloak as black as the rest of him passed in the outer glow of the fire’s light to glide toward the bed.

“Doyle.” I didn’t even try to keep the relief from my voice.

“How do you feel?” His deep voice rumbled and the very sound of it lessened the panic that still fluttered in my pulse.

“Fine. Why are we here?”

“Because the queen willed it,” he said.

I did not like that answer. It sped my pulse again. Someone laughed in the dark. I choked on the panic of my own heartbeat. I felt Galen tense beside me, and knew he was awake, but he did not move. He very carefully did not let anyone else know he had woken. I did not give him away, but I knew that feigning sleep would not help him.

The laugh came again, and I knew it wasn’t the queen. My pulse slowed enough that I could breathe around it. “Who else is here?”

There was movement in the farthest corner of the room. I caught a glimpse of pale hair, pale skin, a white cloak. The figure was so pale, the room so dark, that it was almost as if the figure materialized from that darkness like a ghost. Though I knew he was not.

The glint of firelight made me certain of who it was. “Ivi,” I said, and was not happy. He had scared me.

“Why unhappy to see me, Princess? I did offer up my cloak to guard your body.”

“Why sit in the corner? And what was fu

“To see the fear on your face at waking here. I sat in the dark, because I am too pale to hide closer to the fire.” The smile was gone by the time he came to stand at the foot of the bed. He leaned a shoulder against the big carved bedpost, huddling the cloak around him as if he was cold. His pale hair with its decoration of vines and leaves was trapped inside the cloak, so that it made a sort of hood around his face of his own hair.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

“Recruiting,” Ivi said.

Galen raised enough to look at them both. He was lying on his stomach. “Stop being so closemouthed and just tell us what has happened while we slept.” He sounded angry where I had sounded afraid.

I heard the door to the queen’s bathroom open, before I saw by the fire’s glow that it was Rhys in the doorway. He, too, was wearing a cloak around his body so that only his face and hair were bare to the dim light. “You’ve missed lots,” Rhys said. He looked tired.

He came to stand beside the bed a little ahead of Ivi at his corner.

“So much in fact,” Doyle said, “that I am not certain where to begin.”

“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” Galen asked.

“He didn’t mean it to make us feel better,” Nicca said. “He’s being the Darkness, all dour and frightening.”

I started to sit up, and something moved on my stomach. I jumped, and looked down, and found that I hadn’t dreamed it. There was a moth on me, exactly where the wound had been. I stayed propped on one elbow, and reached cautiously to touch its upper wings, all charcoal grey and black. It flicked its wings at me, as if irritated by the touch, flashing the bright red and black underwings, like blood and darkness turned to glitter. Its wings brushed against my stomach, and I swore I felt something more solid inside me. I reached toward it again, for the head with its feathery ante

I drew my fingers back, and I had the color of its wings on my fingertips, as if I’d touched a real moth. “What in the name of Danu is that?”