A Lick of Frost

Once to be war leader among them you had to be able to make the blood on your cap stay fresh. The alternative was to kill a foe often enough to keep your hat red. This little cultural habit had made them some of the most bloodthirsty warriors in all of faerie.

I'd only met one Red Cap who could make his hat stay fresh and bright red: Jonty. He stood among them, in the front near the center. He was about ten feet tall with gray skin and eyes the color of fresh blood. All the Red Caps had red eyes, but there are shades of red, and Jonty's were as bright as his cap.

When I'd met him his skin had reminded me of the gray of dust, but his skin didn't look dry or harsh now. He looked… like he'd had a good deep moisturizer used on all the skin I could see. Since goblins didn't go to spas, I didn't understand the change in his skin tone.

There were other changes as well. His hat bled in thick runlets of blood so that his entire upper body was soaked in it. The blood had trickled down his clothes, and dripped off the ends of his thick fingers as he stood there, making a delicate pattern of blood on the marble floor.

"Jonty, it is good to see you again." I meant it. He had saved us. He had forced the twins to join our fight. The Red Caps had followed him, not Ash and Holly.

"And you, Princess Meredith," he said in that voice that was so low it was like gravel rumbling.

"Should we have greeted the Killing Frost and Rhys?" Ash asked. "I am not completely clear on the rules of sidhe etiquette."

"You may greet them or not. I greet Jonty because he stood beside me in battle. I greet Jonty and his Red Caps because they helped me and mine. I greet the Red Caps as true allies."

"The goblins are your allies," Ash said.

"The goblins are my allies because Kurag ca

"Are you going to go back on your bargain to bed us, Princess?" Ash asked.

"No, but seeing Jonty and his men reminds me, that is all." Actually, I was angry. Ash and Holly had been like all goblins, and most sidhe. It wasn't their fight, and they didn't want to die defending sidhe warriors who wouldn't have given a damn for them. I shouldn't blame them, but I did anyway.

Jonty had picked me up in his huge arms and run through the winter night toward the fight. Where he went the other Red Caps had gone. Because the Red Caps went, the other goblins had to go. To avoid the fight would have branded them as weaker and more cowardly than the Red Caps. I'd known it was a point of pride, but Kitto had explained that it was more than that. It would have opened the other goblins to being challenged in single combat by the Red Caps who fought beside me. No goblin would have willingly invited such a challenge.

I knew what I owed Jonty and his men, but not why they had done it. Why had they risked everything for me? If I could have figured out a way to ask that wouldn't have insulted them, Ash and Holly, or even their king, I would have asked. But goblin culture was a maze that I did not have a map for yet. It had no room for asking why of a warrior. Why were you brave? Because I was a goblin. Why did you help me? Because no goblin turns from a good fight. Neither was completely true. But it was popularly true, and to say otherwise would bring into question Ash and Holly's lack of enthusiasm.

Frost touched my shoulder, just a light touch. If Doyle had been there, he'd have touched me sooner. Frost didn't like why the goblins were here tonight. He didn't like me being with them, but he knew we needed them as allies.

Rhys spoke softly, "Merry."

I looked up at him, startled. "Did I miss something?"

"Yes." He motioned with his gaze at the twins.

I turned to them. "I am so sorry, but so much has happened today that I find worry overriding my duty."

"So the Darkness is still too injured to be by your side," Ash said.

"He will not be here tonight. I told you that earlier."

"Will Rhys and the Killing Frost be your guards tonight?" Holly asked.

"No."

Rhys couldn't do it. Frost I'd ordered not to. He could not hide his feelings well enough. I feared he would insult Holly with a look or a sound tonight. The middle of sex could be very like the middle of blood lust in battle for a goblin. I didn't want to have Frost start a fight by accident.

"Amatheon and Adair will guard me." At the mention of their names, they stepped forward from the line of guards behind me. Amatheon was copper-haired, and Adair was crowned with a dark gold that had once been closer to just brown, before we'd had sex inside faerie, and he had come back into some of his power. Amatheon had been a deity of agriculture. Adair was the oak grove, but also once a solar deity. I wasn't sure if he'd been solar, then downgraded to oak, or if he'd been both simultaneously. It was considered the height of rudeness to ask a fallen deity what their old powers once were. It was like rubbing their noses in their lost status.

"Is it true that fucking them is what turned Andais's garden of pain into the meadow it is now?" Holly asked.

"Yes," I said.

Rhys said, "I wish Doyle were here, I really do. I hate goblins, everyone knows that, so I don't trust my judgment with you."

"Rhys," I said, "what…"

"Is no one going to ask why they have brought every Red Cap the goblins have at their command?"

"I, too," Frost said, "do not wish Merry to do this. It colors my judgment as well."

"Well, I don't give a damn who she fucks as long as she eventually fucks me, so I'll say it. Why in the name of the consort do you have this many Red Caps with you?" Onilwyn stepped away from the rest of my guards.

Onilwyn was the most graceless sidhe I'd ever seen. There was something blocky about his muscular build. He was tall enough and he moved well, but he just wasn't made as smoothly as the rest. I was never sure why, and again, could not ask. It wasn't his roughness that made me not want to sleep with him. He was as handsome with his long green hair and lovely eyes as most of the sidhe. But if pretty is as pretty does, Onilwyn was ugly to me.

I'd managed not to sleep with him yet because I truly didn't like him. He had been one of Cel's friends who had tormented me when I was a child. I truly didn't wish to be tied to him by a child and marriage, so I'd refused him my bed. I'd given him permission to masturbate, which was more than the queen had allowed. He could entertain himself all he wanted. I just didn't want him entertaining me.

If I didn't get pregnant soon, he'd promised to complain to the queen. I had until the end of this month, because that was when I could bleed away my chances for a baby this cycle. The queen would force me into his bed. First, on the chance that I could get pregnant. Second, because she knew I didn't want to do it.

But sometimes it's the unpleasant person who will say what needs saying. I had not worried about how many Red Caps were in the room until Onilwyn spoke. That was wrong. I should have worried. There were enough of them that if they started a battle we might lose. Why hadn't it worried me?

My left hand pulsed so hard it brought a sound from me. My hand of blood liked the Red Caps. My power liked the Red Caps. Not good, or was it?

Ash and Holly exchanged a glance.

"The truth," I said. "Why did you bring every Red Cap the goblins can boast?"

"They insisted," Ash said.

"The Red Caps do not insist," Onilwyn said. "They obey."

Ash looked at the other man. "I would riot expect a sidhe to know so much of us." He looked at me and gave a nod. "Except for the princess, who seems to make a study of all her people's culture."

I nodded back. "I appreciate that you have noticed my efforts."

"I have noticed. It is one of the reasons I am here."