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Both the guard and the great dogs moved. Doyle moved a little behind Hugh so that he blended in with the other dogs, aside from his color. He was the only black one among them. To my eyes he stood out almost painfully, so black among all the Seelie color.
I must have looked even worse than I felt, because both the men were wide-eyed. They controlled it after that first glimpse, but I'd seen it. I even understood it. And it was as if that look let me feel again. I don't know if it was the magic, the fear for Doyle, or the fear that Taranis would find us. Or maybe the little screaming voice in my skull that had been growing louder. The voice that finally let me think the thought all the way through, to ask in my own head at least, "Did he rape me? Did he rape me after he beat me unconscious?" Was that what the great king of the Seelie considered seduction? Goddess, let him have been confused when he thought it possible that I carried his child.
It was like knowing that you were cut but only feeling pain after you saw the blood. I'd seen the «blood» on the faces of the police. I saw it in the way they moved toward me. The left side of my face ached and was swollen. I knew that it must have hurt before, but it was as if only now could I feel all of it.
The headache came back in a roar that closed my eyes and brought a fresh wave of nausea. A voice said, "Princess Meredith, can you speak?"
I looked up into Agent Gillett's eyes. There was that old compassion there, that look that had made me trust him when I was a young woman. I looked into those eyes and knew it was real. I'd felt used by him recently, realizing that he'd kept in touch with me in hopes of solving my father's murder not for me, but for some purpose of his own. I had told him to stay away from me, but looking up into his face now, I understood what I'd seen in him when I was seventeen. For this moment, he cared, deeply.
Maybe he was remembering the first time he saw me, collapsed in grief, clutching my dead father's sword as if it were the last solid thing in the universe.
"Doctor," I whispered. "I need a doctor." I whispered because the last time I'd felt this sick, talking had hurt my head. But I also whispered because I knew it would make me seem more pitiful and if sympathy would get me in front of the press, I would play that card for all it was worth.
Agent Gillett's eyes hardened, and I saw again that purpose that had made me believe he would find my father's killer.
Tonight, that was all right. I carried my father's grandchildren inside me. But I had to get to safety. Strength of arms and magic are so often what the sidhe rely on, but they have never been weak. They do not understand the arsenal of the powerless. I understood, because I had lived in the land of the helpless most of my life.
I stopped fighting to be brave. I stopped fighting to feel better. I let myself feel how hurt I was, and how frightened. I let myself think the thoughts I'd been shoving back. I let them fill my eyes with tears.
The guards at the doors tried to move in front of us, but Major Walters used his officer voice. It echoed in the marble room and into the open door beyond. "You will move aside, now."
The talkative guard said, "Shanley, we have no healers who can cure this. Let the humans treat her." He had hair the flame color of autumn leaves just before they fall to the ground, and eyes of circles of green. He seemed young, though he had to be over seventy, because that was Galen's age, and he was the next youngest sidhe to me.
Shanley looked down at me. His eyes were two perfect circles of blue.
I lay in Hugh's arms and gazed up at him through tear-soaked eyes, and a swelling bruise that covered me from temple to chin.
Shanley spoke quietly, "What story will you tell the press, Princess Meredith?"
"The truth," I whispered.
A look of pain went through those inhumanly lovely eyes. "I ca
I might have pitied him, but I knew that Taranis would not be distracted forever in his bath. Not even with servant girls to abuse. We were inches away from the press and relative safety. But how to travel those last few inches?
Major Walters pulled his radio from a coat pocket and hit a button. "We need backup out here."
"If they come through, we will fight them," Shanley said.
"She is with child," the healer said. "She carries twins."
He looked suspiciously at her. "You lie."
"I have few powers left me, that is true, but I have enough magic left to sense such things. She is with child. I felt their heartbeats under my hand like the fluttering of birds."
"You don't get heartbeats this quickly," the guard said.
"She entered this sithen pregnant with twins. She was forced into the king's bed to be raped, pregnant with someone else's children."
"Do not say such things, Qui
"I am a healer," she said. "I must speak out at last. If it costs me all I am, all I have, I swear to you that the princess is at least a month gone with twins."
"You will take oath on it?" he asked.
"I will swear any oath you wish me to take."
They stared at each other for a long moment. There was pounding on the door behind the guards and the sounds of struggle. The rest of the police and agents were trying to come in. The Seelie guards didn't want to injure the police in front of the press, with live cameras on them.
It sounded like the police didn't have the same compunction about the guards. The door shuddered under the weight of bodies hitting it.
The talkative guard went to stand by his captain. "Shanley, listen to her."
"The king took oath, too," he said. "And nothing came to brand him an oathbreaker."
"He believes what he says," the healer said. "You know that. He believes, so he does not lie, but that does not make it true. We have all seen that in these last few weeks."
Shanley looked from his fellow guard to the healer, then finally to me. "Were the Unseelie raping you when our king saved you?"
"No," I said.
His eyes glittered, but not with magic. "Did he take you against your will?"
"Yes," I whispered.
A tear trailed from each of his beautiful eyes. He gave a small bow. "Command me."
I hoped I knew what he wanted me to do. I spoke as loud as I dared with my head pounding. "I, Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, granddaughter of Uar the Cruel, command you to step aside and let us pass."
He bowed lower, and moved aside still in that bow.
Major Walters spoke on his radio again. "We're coming through. Repeat, we're bringing the princess through. Clear the doors."
The sounds of fighting grew louder. The blue-eyed guard spoke into the air. "Stand down, men. The princess is leaving."
The fighting slowed, then there was no sound. The blue-eyed guard nodded at the other guards, and they opened the great doors.
Doyle moved up closer to me as Hugh carried me forward. For a moment I thought it was a magical attack of light, then I realized that it was lights for moving cameras and flashes for still ones. I closed my eyes against the blinding glare, and Hugh carried me through the doors.