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I laid my cheek against his icy forehead. "Kitto, please, please, come back, come back from wherever you've gone. Please, Kitto, it's Merry."
He'd stopped murmuring my name. He'd stopped making any noise, and his weight, the way his body slumped against me ... He felt dead. Not dying, but dead. There is a weight to a dead body that the living, no matter how sick, do not have. Logically, it has to be the same, but it never feels the same.
Doyle came back out, muttering under his breath. "Kurag is not near his mirror, or any still body of water. I ca
"If Kitto were sidhe, what would you do to save him?"
"The sidhe do not fade from lack of faerie," Doyle said. "The sidhe fade only when they wish to."
I held his cold body in my arms and felt the begi
"What?"
"My blade is trapped under Kitto's body. I need a blade, now."
"Do as she says," Doyle said.
Frost didn't like doing something he didn't understand, but he took out a knife from behind his back, one that was almost as long as my forearm, and handed it to me hilt first.
I took my hand out from under Kitto's legs, and said, "Hold the blade steady."
Frost dropped to one knee steadying the blade with both hands. I took a deep breath, placed my finger against the point, and jerked downward. It took a second for the blood to well.
"Merry, stop -- "
"Hold the blade, Frost. That's all you have to do, so do it. I can't hold the blade and Kitto, too. Just do it."
He frowned but stayed kneeling, holding the blade as I drew my bleeding finger down that shining surface. The blood didn't coat it, just stained it, almost beading on the immaculate surface.
I dropped the shields that kept me from seeing spirits, kept me from shedding magic like old body skin. The magic flared for a second, glad to be free, then I willed it into the blade. I pictured Kurag, his face, his voice, his rough ma
The surface gleamed through the light latticework of blood, but it was just metal.
"No sidhe has called a goblin by blade in centuries," Rhys said. "He won't answer."
"The naming of three is very powerful," Doyle said. "Kurag might be able to ignore it, but few others of his people could."
"But I have something he won't ignore." I leaned close to the blade and blew my breath warm upon it until it fogged with the heat of my body.
The blade glittered through the fog, the blood. The fog cleared and the blood soaked into the surface as if it had been drunk. I was left staring into a dim silvered surface. A blade, even the highest quality, is not like a mirror, no matter what the movies show. A blade gives an uncertain image, misty, as if you need to adjust some button or knob, but there is none. There is only a vague outline of a small portion of a person's face; their eyes are the most clear.
A blur of yellow lump-covered skin and two orange eyes appeared in the downside blade half; the upper was less clear but showed Kurag's third eye like a dim sun seen through cloud.
His voice was as clear as if he'd been standing in the room. It boomed out in a surprising rumble that made me jump. "Meredith, Princess of the Sidhe, was that your sweet breath that blew across my skin?"
"Greetings, Kurag, Goblin King. And Twin of Kurag, Goblin King's Flesh, greetings also." Kurag had a parasitic twin who consisted of one violet eye, a mouth, two thin arms, two thin legs, and small, though fully functional genitalia. The mouth could breathe but not speak, and to my knowledge I was the only one who ever acknowledged his existence as separate from the king's. I still remember the horror I felt when I realized there was an entire person trapped in the side of Kurag's body.
"It has been long since a sidhe has called the goblins by blood and blade. Most of the warriors who fought beside us after the great treaty have forgotten this old trick."
"My father taught me many tricks," I said. Kurag and I both knew that my father had often contacted him by blade and blood. My father had been Andais's unofficial ambassador to the goblins, because no one else wanted the job. My father had taken me to the goblin hill many times as a child.
His laughter did not so much roll out of the blade as roll through the room. "What would you have of me, Merry, daughter of Essus?"
He'd offered his help, and that was what I needed. I described the condition we'd found Kitto in. "He's fading."
Kurag cursed in the guttural language that was high goblin. I understood only about every other word. Something about black tits. "The mark ties you together, you and Kitto. Your strength should sustain him." His hand passed over his face like a yellow ghost in the blade. "This should not be happening."
I thought of something. "What if the mark healed over?"
"The mark would not heal, it would scar," he said.
"It did heal, Kurag, and it did not scar."
His orange eyes got very close to the blade, and very wide. "That should not happen."
"I didn't know that it was a problem to have it heal. Kitto didn't say anything."
"A lover's mark always scars, Merry. Always. At least among our kind." I couldn't read his expression in that narrow piece of reflection, but suddenly he let out a great snort, and said, "Has he been allowed to mark that white flesh only once?"
"Yes," I said.
"And the sex?" He sounded suspicious now.
"The treaty demanded only that I share flesh. Sharing true flesh is more valuable among the goblins than sex."
"Gabriel's Hounds take me. Yes, we value flesh, but what's a little bite without a little poke? Sinking teeth and dick into flesh, Merry girl, that's the ticket."
"Kitto shares my bed, Kurag, and stays with me most of the time, touching me. He seems to need to touch me."
"If the touch of your skin was all he had..." He dissolved into high goblin again, which goblins rarely did; it was considered rude to use a language that the other person didn't know. My father had taught me some goblin, but it had been too long, and Kurag's use was too rapid for my rusty skills.
When Kurag had ranted long enough, he paused for breath and spoke in a language we could all understand. "The high and mighty sidhe, goblins are good enough to fight all your wars, do most of the dying, but not good enough to fuck. Sometimes I hate you all. Even you, Merry, and you're one of my favorites."
"I love you, too, Kurag."
"Don't sweet-talk me, Merry. If you'd have fucked Kitto regularly, the mark would have scarred. He needs a constant supply of flesh to sustain him out in the Western Lands. Either true flesh or fucking, but his tie to you is too weak without it, and he is dying because of it."
I looked down at the still, cold figure in my arms, then realized he wasn't as cold. He was still chilled, very, but not icy. "He's warmer." I said it softly, I think because I couldn't quite believe it.
Doyle touched Kitto's face. "He is warmer."
"Is that you, Darkness?" Kurag asked.
"It is I, Goblin King."
"Is he truly fading? I don't think Merry has ever seen anyone fade."
"He is fading," Doyle said.
"Then why is he warmer? If he is fading, then he should grow colder and colder."
"Merry has been holding him in her arms for a time. I believe that is warming him."
"Maybe it's not too late then. Is he strong enough to fuck?"
"He is barely conscious," Doyle said.
Kurag said a sharp word that I knew meant something that no goblin ever wished on another: impotency. It was their worst insult one to the other. "Can he tear her flesh with his teeth?"