A Lick Of Frost

"Hey," he said, and his eyes filled with tears almost immediately.

"Hey," I said back. I had a thought for what might have happened if they'd been recognized earlier inside the mound, but it was a small thought. In that moment I was too happy to see them to worry about it. Or maybe I was just that sick?

Dr. Hardy said, "Any more Romeos going to come out of the woodwork?"

"I don't know," I said, which was the absolute truth.

"One more was inside with us," Galen said.

I couldn't think who else had glamour good enough to risk going inside before cameras and the Seelie. Some people's glamour actually didn't hold on camera, and the Seelie Court was ruled by the master of illusion. He was a bastard, but he would have seen through their disguises. My chest hurt with the thought of what might have happened. I clutched Galen's hand tighter, and wished I could move my head to look at Rhys.

Instead I was trapped staring at the night sky. It was a good sky, black and full of stars. It was the end of January, almost February.

Shouldn't I be cold? The thought was enough to let me know that I wasn't nearly as aware of everything as I thought I was. Hadn't someone said I was going into shock? Or had I dreamed that?

We were at the ambulance. It was as if it had suddenly appeared to me. It wasn't magic, it was injury. I was losing little bits of time. That couldn't be good.

It was at the door of the ambulance that I found out who had had enough glamour to brave the press and the Seelie sidhe.

He had short blond hair, brown eyes, and a nondescript face, until he bent over me. He gave the illusion that the short hair grew into a long braid that I knew would sweep the ground. The brown eyes were three different colors of gold. The nondescript face was suddenly one of the most handsome in all the courts. Sholto, King of the Sluagh, kissed me ever so gently.

"The Darkness told me of his vision from the god. I am to be a father." He looked so pleased, all that arrogance softened.

"Yes." I said it softly. He was so pleased, so quietly happy. He had risked all to come and rescue me, even though I hadn't needed the rescue. But I barely knew Sholto. I had been with him once. It was not that he was not lovely, but I would have traded much for it to be Frost leaning over me, speaking of our child.

"I don't know who you are, exactly, but the princess needs a hospital," Dr. Hardy said.

"I am a fool. Forgive me." Sholto touched my hair with such tenderness. Tenderness that we had not earned as a couple. I knew he meant it, but somehow it seemed wrong.

Then they lifted me and slid me inside the ambulance. The doctor stayed with me, and a male nurse. The rest went to a second ambulance or the driver's area of this one.

Galen called, "We'll follow you to the hospital."

I raised a hand, because I could not rise to see them off. The black dog looked down at me. He had jumped inside. The look in those black eyes was so not dog.

Dr. Hardy said, "No, absolutely not. Out dog, now."

The air was cool as if mist touched me, then it was Doyle in human form kneeling beside me. The nurse said, "What the hell."

"I've seen your picture. You're Doyle," Dr. Hardy said.

"Yes," he said in his deep voice.

"If I tell you to leave?"

"I will not."

She sighed. "Give him a blanket, and tell them to get us out of here before more naked men show up."

Doyle draped the blanket around one shoulder and enough of him to make the humans comfortable. The other arm he kept out, so he could hold my hand.

"What would you have done if Hugh's plan had not worked?" I asked.

"We would have rescued you."

Not tried. Just, "we would have." Such arrogance. Such surety. It wasn't human. More than the magic, more than the otherworldly beauty, that was sidhe, and so not human. The arrogance wasn't pretense. Neither was the certainty. He was the Darkness. He had once been the god Nodons. He was Doyle.

He had moved so I could see him easily as the ambulance's wheels hit the road in a sound of gravel. I stared up into that dark, dark face. I looked into those black eyes. There were pinpoints of color in that darkness that were not reflections. He carried colors in the black depths of his eyes that were no colors in the ambulance.

Once he had used those colors to try to bespell me at my aunt's orders. A test to see how weak I might be, or how strong.

The colors were like multicolored fireflies, flitting and dancing in his eyes. "I can let you sleep until we reach the hospital," he said.

"No," I said. I closed my eyes against the pretty lights.

"You are in pain, Merry. Let me help you."

"I'm the doctor here," Hardy said, "and I say no magic on the injured until it's explained to me."

"I do not know if I can explain it," Doyle said.

"No," I said, eyes still closed. "I don't want to be unconscious, Doyle. The last time that happened I woke up in Taranis's bed."

His hand convulsed around mine, clutching at me as if he were the one in need of comfort. It made me open my eyes. The colored lights were fading as I looked into them.

"I failed you, my princess, my love. We all failed you. We did not dream that the king could travel through sunlight. We thought that a lost art."

"He surprised us all," I said. Then I thought of something I wanted to know. "My dogs. He hurt them."

"They will live. Mi

I stared at him. "The puppies weren't injured?"

He smiled. "They are fine."

For no reason I could think of, that one bit of news made me feel better. My hounds had defended me, and the king had tried to kill them. But he had failed. They would live, and they would have puppies. The first faerie hounds to be born in more than five centuries.

Taranis had tried to make me his queen, but I was already pregnant. I already had my kings. Taranis had failed in every way. If the rape kit came back positive, though positive seemed the wrong word, then I would see King Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, in jail for rape.

The press were going to eat him alive. Charged with the abduction, beating, and rape of his own niece. The Seelie Court had been the shining star of the human media. That was about to change.

It was the Unseelie Court's time to shine, even if it was with a darkling light. We would be the good guys this time.

The Seelie had offered me their throne, but I knew better. Hugh and others might want me, but the golden throng would never accept me as queen. I carried babies whose fathers were Unseelie lords. I'd been the child of an Unseelie prince, and they had treated me as worse than nothing.

There would be no golden throne for me. No, if throne there be, then it would be the throne of night. Maybe the throne needed a new name? Throne of night sounded so sinister. Taranis sat on the Golden Throne of the Seelie Court. It sounded so much more cheerful. Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I didn't believe it. Golden throne, throne of night. Which throne would you rather sit on?

I'd survive tonight. I even knew I was trying to think of anything, everything, to keep from dwelling on what Taranis had done, and the fact that Frost wasn't going to be waiting for me at the hospital. I was finally pregnant, and I couldn't be happy about it. For political reasons the rape kit coming back positive would be good. It meant we owned Taranis. But for my own reasons, I hoped he'd lied. I hoped he hadn't had his way with me while I was unconscious. Had his way with me, nice euphemism. I hoped he hadn't raped me while I was unconscious. I hoped he hadn't raped me while I bled into my skull from the blow he had dealt me.

I started to cry, hopelessly, helplessly. Doyle bent over me, whispering my name and that he loved me.

I buried my hand in the warmth of his hair, drew him close so I could breathe in the scent of his skin. I buried myself in the feel and smell of his body, and wept.

I had won the race to sit on the throne of the Unseelie Court, and it was bitter ashes on my tongue.