Swallowing Darkness

"Take his hand, and you'll know."

"It's a trap," she said.

"I wear the queen's ring, Dilys. I saw you burning with the heat of the summer sun, and thought, 'Where is her balance?' Where is her coolness to keep her from burning everything to death?"

"No!" She shouted it at him.

Crystall simply held his hand out to her, as if he could hold that shining hand out forever.

Then her golden hand began to move, as if of its own accord. Her fingertips brushed his, and the golden heat became half silver, and I saw the waver of heat meet the sparkle of water in front of them, like the sun on the surface of a summer lake.

Then they were in each other's arms. They kissed as if they had always kissed, though I knew they had not. He had never been her lover, her god to goddess, but he was what was left. He was the coolness she needed, and I had called what I could find.

Her glow banked to a hard, yellow light as if she were carved of it. Crystall glowed as if he were formed of rainbow light.

"Oh, my god," Hayes whispered.

"Yes," I said.

"What did you do?" Dawson said.

"They will be a couple, and there will be children. Two children."

"How do you know that?" Bre

I smiled at him, and knew that my eyes had begun to glow, green and gold.

He swallowed hard, as if the sight disturbed him. "Oh, yeah, magic."

"Make love, not war," another solider said.

"Exactly," I said.

Then there was a shriek from the far edge of the field. Cel stood there, screaming wordlessly at me in his gray and black armor, surrounded by followers in every color of armor and some that looked like bark and leaves or animal pelts, but they would stand up to anything but steel and iron. Those dreamlike warriors carried a figure between them, and from the moment I recognized him, my heart failed me. His hair fell loose around him, blacker than the moon-fed night. Their white sidhe hands seemed an insult against all his dark perfection.

Cel screamed across the field at me. "He still lives, barely! Is this mongrel worth your life, cousin? Will you walk to me across this field to save him?"

I could not take my gaze from him, dark and so terribly still. Was he even still alive? Only death would make him so still. The thought that I had lost them both, my Darkness and my Killing Frost, was too much. Too much pain, too much loss, just too much.

I whispered his name. "Doyle." I willed him to look up, to move, to let me know that if I walked to him, there would be something to save. My hand went to my stomach, still flat, still so unmoved by the pregnancy, and I knew that I could not trade myself for my Darkness. He would never forgive me if I made such a bargain. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the night swam, but I couldn't faint. I couldn't be weak; there was no time for weakness. I pushed the feelings away that would unman me, and clung to the ones that would help me: hatred, fear, rage, and a coldness that I didn't know I had inside me.

"It's war, then," I whispered.

"What?" Dawson asked.

"We will give Cel what he wants," I said.

"You can't give yourself to him," Hayes said.

"No, I ca

"If we don't give him you, what do we give him?" Mercer asked.

"War," I said simply, and began to walk across the field. My soldiers came with me. Either Cel would die this moment or I would. Seeing Doyle thrown onto the ground like so much motionless garbage, I was content with that.