A Kiss Of Shadows

I glanced back at Roane. He lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other arm lying across his stomach, one leg drawn up so that he was displayed, in all his glory. The fear had faded from his face, leaving only desire behind. He had no idea how bad things could get in the next few hours if I wasn't ever so careful.

I hid my face in my hands. I didn't want to be careful. I wanted everything that the magic could give me tonight and to hell with the consequences. Maybe if I hurt him enough, Roane wouldn't look back on it as something wonderful. Maybe he wouldn't crave it like some golden dream. Maybe he'd fear it like a nightmare. A small voice in my head said it would be kinder in the long run. Make him fear us, our touch, our magic, so that he would never want the touch of sidhe hands on his body again. A little pain now to save him from an eternity of suffering later on.

I knew it was lies, and still I couldn't look at him.

His fingertips brushed my back, and I jumped like he'd hit me. I kept my hands over my face. I wasn't ready to look again.

"Those aren't burn scars on your shoulders, are they?"

I lowered my hands, but kept my eyes closed. "No."

"What then?"

"It was another duel. He used magic to try and force me to shape-shift in the middle of the fight." I heard, felt, Roane moving along the bed, closer to me, but he didn't try and touch me again. I was grateful.

"But changing shape doesn't hurt. It feels wonderful."

"Maybe to a roane, but not to one of us. Changing shapes is painful, like all your bones breaking at once and re-forming. I can't change shape on my own at all, but I've seen it in others. You're helpless for the minutes it takes to change form."

"The other sidhe was trying to distract you."

"Yes." I opened my eyes and stared into the blackness of the windows. They acted like a dark mirror, showing Roane sitting just behind me, body half-lost to sight, glowing like the sun behind the moon of my body. The three rings of color in my eyes glowed bright enough that even from that distance you could see the individual colors: emerald, jade, liquid gold. Even Roane's eyes had lightened to a dark honey brown like glowing bronze. Sidhe magic suited him.

He reached for me, and I tensed. He traced his hand over the rippled skin of the scars. "How did you stop him from changing you into something else?"

"I killed him." I saw Roane's eyes widen in the windows, felt his body tense.

"You killed a sidhe royal?"

"Yes."

"But they are immortal."

"I am truly mortal, Roane. What is the one way for all the eternal fey to die?"

I watched the thoughts flicker across his face and finally saw the realization in his eyes. "To invoke mortal blood. The mortal shares our immortality, and we share the mortal's mortality."

"Exactly."

He sat close to me, going up on his knees, but he spoke to my reflection not directly to me. "But that is a very specific ritual. You can't invoke mortality by accident."

"The ritual for a duel binds the two participants together in mortal combat. Among the Unseelie sidhe they share blood before they fight."

His eyes went wider still, until they were like two huge pools of darkness. "When they drank your blood, they shared your mortality."

"Yes."

"Did they know that?"

I smiled then. I couldn't help it. "Not until Arzhul died with my dagger sticking out of him."

"You must have put up a hard battle for him to try and change your form. It's a major spell for the sidhe. If he didn't fear death, then you must have hurt him badly."

I shook my head. "He was showing off. It wasn't enough that he meant to kill me. He wanted to humiliate me first. For one sidhe to force a shape-shift on another is proof that they are the more powerful magician."

"So he was showing off," Roane said. It was the closest he would probably get to asking what happened next.

"I stabbed him, just hoping to distract him, but my father always told me never to waste a strike. Even if you know you face an immortal, strike as if they could die because deathblows hurt more, even if they won't kill."

"Did you kill the one who scarred you here?" His hand came from behind to trace my ribs.

"I shuddered at his touch, and not because it hurt. "No, Rozenwyn is still alive."

"Then why didn't she crush your heart?" His hands slid around my waist, holding me against his body, cradling me. I let myself rest in the curve of his arms, the solid warmth of his body.

"Because her duel was after Arzhul, and when I stabbed her, she panicked, I think. She called the duel won without making the kill."

He rubbed his cheek along mine, and we both watched the colors mingle as our skins touched. "It was the last duel then," he said.

"No," I said.

He kissed my cheek, very softly. "No."

"No, there was one more." I turned my face to him. His lips brushed not quite a kiss.

"What happened?" He spoke the words in a warm breath against my mouth.

"Bleddyn had been one of the Seelie Court once, before he did something so awful that no one will speak of it, and he was cast out. But he was so powerful that the Unseelie Court took him in. His true name was lost, and he became Bleddyn. It means wolf or outlaw, or did once very long ago. It meant he was an outlaw even among the dark court."

Roane kissed the side of my neck where my pulse beat just under the skin. My pulse sped at that light touch. He raised his face enough to ask, "How was he an outlaw?" Then he began to kiss his way down my neck.

"He was subject to horrible rages for no reason. If he hadn't been surrounded by immortals, he'd have killed people, friends as well as enemies."

Roane's kisses had worked down to my shoulder, then my arm. He stopped just long enough to say, "just rages?" Then lowered his head and kissed until he found the bend in my arm. He lifted my arm so that he could lock his mouth around the fragile skin at the bend. He sucked sudden and sharp on the skin, teeth sinking into my arm enough to hurt, enough to make me gasp. Roane didn't care for pain, but he was an attentive lover, and he knew what I liked, as I knew what he liked. But I suddenly couldn't concentrate on what I was saying.

He raised his face from my arm, leaving a round, nearly perfect imprint of his small sharp teeth. He hadn't broken the skin. I'd never been able to persuade him to go that far, but the mark against my flesh pleased me, made me bend toward him.

He stopped me, asking, "Was it just rages, or were there other things that marked Bleddyn as dangerous?"

It took me a second to remember. I had to sit back from him. "If you want to hear the story, behave yourself."

He lay on his side, one arm flung underneath his head for a pillow. He stretched his body so that I had to notice the way the muscles moved under that gleaming skin. "I thought I was behaving myself."

I shook my head. "You'll make me forget myself, Roane. You don't want that."

"I want you tonight, Merry. I want all of you, no glamour, no hiding, no holding back." He sat up suddenly, peering so close to my face that I started to move back, but he grabbed my arm. "I want to be what you need tonight, Merry."

I shook my head. "You don't understand what you're asking."

"No, I don't, but if you're ever going to have everything, tonight is the night." He grabbed my other arm, pulling us both to our knees, his fingers digging in enough that I knew I'd be bruised tomorrow. That one forceful movement made my heart beat faster. "I've lived for centuries, Merry. If either of us is a child, it's you, not me." His words were fierce, and I'd never seen him like this, so forceful, so demanding.

I could have said, "You're hurting me, Roane," but I was enjoying that part, so instead I said, "You don't sound like yourself."

"I knew you held your glamour in place even when we lay together, but I never dreamed how much you were hiding." He shook me twice, hard enough that I almost told him it did hurt. "Don't hide, Merry." He kissed me then, bruising his lips against mine, forcing his mouth against mine, until if I hadn't opened my mouth he might have cut either his lips or mine on our teeth. He forced me back on the bed, and I wasn't having a good time. I liked pain, not rape.

I stopped him with a hand on his chest, pushing him away from me. He was still above me, eyes strangely fierce, but he was listening. "What are you trying to do, Roane?"

"What happened in your last duel?"

The change of subject was too fast for me. "What?"

"Your last duel, what happened?" His voice, his face was all seriousness while his naked body pressed against mine.

"I killed him."

"How?"

Somehow I knew he wasn't asking about the mechanics of the kill. "He underestimated me."

"I have never underestimated you, Merry. Don't do less for me. Don't treat me as less just because I'm not sidhe. I am a thing of faerie with not a drop of mortal blood in my veins. Do not fear for me." His voice was normal again, but there was still an undercurrent of fierceness.

I stared up into his face and saw the pride there, not a masculine pride, but the pride of the fey. I was treating him as less than fey, and he deserved better, but… "What if I hurt you without meaning to?"

"I'll heal," he said.

It made me smile because in that moment I loved him, not the kind of love that the bards sing of, but it was love all the same. "All right, but let's pick a position that puts you dominant, not me."

A thought filled his eyes. "You don't trust yourself."

"No," I said.

"Then trust me. I won't break."

"Promise? "I said.

He smiled, and kissed my forehead, gently like you'd kiss a child. "Promise."

I took him at his word.

I ended with my hands gripping the cool metal rods of the headboard. Roane's body pi