Mistral's Kiss

Sholto pressed my hand to his face. Segna tried to interfere but Agnes stopped her, and the other two guards moved between Sholto and the hags. I caught a glimpse of one of the guard's faces. Oblong eyes full of nothing but color, thin lipless mouth, and a face that was a strange mix of humanoid and nightflyer. They were like Sholto, but no one would have ever have mistaken them for sidhe. The eyes, though—the eyes were goblin eyes. The guard stared at me with his face that looked only half formed, the nostrils mere slits. I did not look away. I stared, memorized his face, for I had never seen another quite like it.

"You do not find me ugly." The guard's voice held that edge of twittering—almost bird-like, but deeper.

"No," I said.

"Do you know what I am?"

"The eyes are goblin blood, but the face is nightflyer. I'm not sure about the rest," I said.

"I am half-goblin and half-nightflyer."

"Ivar and Fyfe are my uncles on my father's side," Sholto said.

The second guard spoke for the first time. His voice was deeper, more "human." He gave me the full gaze of his face. His eyes were the same oblongs of color, a deep rich blue, but he had more nose, more lower jaw. If he'd been taller, he might have passed for a goblin. But the skin wasn't quite the right texture. "I am Fyfe, brother to Ivar." He gave the hags an unfriendly look. "Our king felt the need of some male guards, who were not conflicted about what to do with his body. We guard it, and that is all."

"This insult was not for lack of our ability to guard," Agnes said. "You, too, will be helpless when he chases his next bit of sidhe flesh. He won't want an audience, and he will go with her alone."

"Enough, Agnes. Enough, all of you." Sholto pressed my hand tighter against his face. "Why didn't I tell you, Princess? How could I admit that Seelie did this to me? That I was not warrior enough to save myself? That I fell into their trap, because they offered me what you had promised? Agnes is right in one thing: I am near blinded by my desire to be with another sidhe, so blinded that I let a Seelie woman bind me. So blinded I believed her lie that she was fascinated with my bits, but afraid of them, too." He shook his head. "I am King of the Sluagh, and even bound I should have had enough magic to save myself from this." He let go of me, stepped back.

"The Seelie have magic that we do not," Frost said.

"The sluagh have magic that the Seelie have never possessed," I said. I touched Sholto's arm. He flinched, but didn't pull away. I squeezed his arm, and wanted so badly to hold him, to try to chase this pain away. I rested my head against his bare arm. My throat closed up, and I was suddenly choking on tears. I began to weep, clutching at his arm. I couldn't stop.

He pulled me away from him enough to see my face. "You waste tears on me—why?"

I had to struggle to speak. "You are beautiful, Sholto, you are—don't let them make you think otherwise."

"Beautiful now that he's butchered," Segna said, looming over us, pushing her way past the uncles.

I shook my head. "You broke in on us in Los Angeles. You saw what I was doing with him. Why would I have been doing those things if he was less than beautiful to me?"

"All I remember from that night, white flesh, is that you killed my sister."

I had, but by accident. That night, in fear for my life, I had lashed out with magic I hadn't known I had. It had been the first night that my hand of flesh had manifested. It was a terrible power—the ability to turn living beings inside out, but they did not die. They lived on, impossibly on, with their mouths lost inside a ball of flesh, and still they screamed. I'd had to cut her to bits with a magical weapon to finally end her agony.

I don't know what shadows showed on my face, but Sholto reached for me. Reached for me, to hold me, to give comfort, and it was too much for Segna. She shoved the other two guards away as if they were straw before a storm wind. She struck at me, shrieking her rage.

Suddenly there was movement behind me, and in front of me. All the guards moved at once, but Sholto was closest. He used his own body to shield me, so Segna's razor claws sliced his own white skin. He took the brunt of the blow meant for me, and even what was left of that strike staggered me backward, numbing my arm from shoulder to elbow. It didn't hurt, because I couldn't feel it.

Sholto pushed me into Doyle's arms, and pivoted in the same movement. The movement was so fast that it surprised Segna, made her stumble nearer the edge of the lake. Sholto's good arm was a pale blur as he smashed into her. The blow sent her over the edge. She seemed to hang there in midair, her nearly naked body revealed by the wings of her cape. Then she fell.

CHAPTER 12

SHE LAY JUST ABOVE THE LOW WATER, IMPALED ON A SERIES OF spiked bones jutting out of her from throat to stomach. She hung there, caught, bleeding, like a fish caught on some terrible hook.

I think Sholto's guards expected her to simply draw herself off the spined ridge of the boned creature. Agnes, especially, seemed to be waiting, patient, unworried. "Come on, Segna, get up." Her voice was impatient.

Segna lay there and bled, her legs flailing, exposing her most intimate parts as she struggled. The hags wore a leather belt from which hung a sword and a pouch, but that, and their cloaks, were all. Her body was both larger than a human's and more wizened, as if she were a shrunken giant.

I saw the wide eyes, the fright on her face. She wasn't going to just get up. Sometimes, being mortal, I recognized real damage faster, because on a visceral level, I knew it was a possibility. Creatures who are immortal, or nearly so, don't understand the disasters that could befall them.

"Ivar, Fyfe, go to her."

"With due respect, King Sholto," Fyfe said, "I would stay here, and send Agnes down."

Sholto started to argue, but Ivar joined the argument. "We do not dare leave Agnes up here with you alone. The princess will have guards, but you will be unprotected."

"Agnes would not hurt me," Sholto said, but he was staring at Segna as if he were finally realizing just how bad it might be.

"We are your guards, and your uncles. We would be poor at both duties if we left you alone with Agnes now," Ivar said in his bird-like voice. People always expected the nightflyers to have hissing, ugly voices, but Ivar sounded like a songbird—or how a songbird might sound if it could speak as humans do. Most of the nightflyers sounded like that.

"Segna is a night-hag," Agnes said. "A mere bone will not bring her down."

"I tripped on such a bone coming into your garden," Abe said, and raised his cloth-wrapped arm at her. Blood had soaked through much of the cloth.

"The bones hold old magic," Doyle said. "Some of them are things that hunted the sidhe and the other sluagh before they were tamed by your early kings."

"Do not lecture me about my own people," Agnes said.

"I remember a time when Black Agnes was not a part of the sluagh," Rhys said, softly.

She glared at him. "And I remember a time when you had other names, white knight." She spat in his direction. "We have both fallen far from what we once were."

"Go with Ivar, Agnes. Go see to your sister," Sholto said.

She glared at him. "Do you not trust me?"

"I once trusted the three of you more than any other, but you bloodied me before the Seelie got hold of me. You cut me up first."

"Because you sought to betray us with some white-fleshed slut."

"I am king here, or I am not, Agnes. You either obey me, or you do not. You will go down with Ivar to help Segna, or I will see it as a direct challenge to my authority."