[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight (29 page)

The two pale oval faces stared up at me. There was a little more squareness to his jaw, a somewhat daintier curve to hers. He was a little taller than she, a little more broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, but beyond the basic differences that made them male and female, they looked identical.

“You're twins,” I said, “Pennyroyal, Penny and Royal.” It was a custom among the demi-fey to divide a name up among twins.

He nodded. She just stared at me. They were even dressed alike in gauzy tunics of deep purple. They were both dressed in more clothing than the majority of the demi-fey. Her dress covered her from neck to knees. His tunic covered him from neck to knees, as well. I realized as I looked at the wingless ones that they were all dressed in a similar fashion. The winged fey men went for what amounted to kilts or loincloths of gauze. The women were in mini-dresses or less. Only Queen Niceven wore a gown that swept to her ankles. She was their queen, she got more clothes, but I'd never noticed the marked difference in clothing between those who had wings and those who did not.

“I have not agreed to this,” Niceven said, and came to hover at my shoulder.

“Please, Your Majesty, let me try. You do not know what it is like to be without wings, doomed to walk or ride forever.”

She crossed her arms over her thin chest. “I feel for your plight, Royal, and all of you who are so cursed, but you might get a great deal more than just wings from touching this one.” She motioned at me. “Look what has happened with the green knight.”

“Would having one of your people able to conjure such enchantments be a bad thing, Your Majesty?” he asked.

She came to hover near my face. “How can I trust you, Princess, when you have insulted me and my court so severely?”

Doyle said, “You spoke of an insult when you first arrived. You said the princess had done it. What has she done?”

Niceven turned in the air so she could see him, then moved backwards so she could see us both as she spoke. “You arrested one of my people without asking my permission. Beatrice was not sidhe, she was mine. Though trapped in her human-sized form, she was demi-fey. Beatrice was cursed but she was not Andais's or yours. The murderer is one of mine, the victim is one of mine, and you did not give me even the courtesy of a message. No other court would have been so ignored.” She moved close enough that the air from her wings brushed my hair against my face. “You would have at the very least contacted Kurag, Goblin King. He would not have had to learn of such a thing from rumor and gossip as I did. Sholto, King of the Sluagh, sat in the consort's throne for you last night. You would not have arrested his people without asking him first.” She flew to the ceiling, and stayed there fluttering like an angry butterfly back and forth above us.

I watched her, all white and glittering, all hurt pride and wounded arrogance, and fear. Fear that her court had become so little among us that she truly was queen in name only. She was right.

“I should have sent you a messenger when we arrested Peasblossom. I should have sent you a message when we discovered that one of the murdered was a demi-fey. You are right, I would have notified Kurag, Goblin King. I would have contacted Sholto. I would not have done to them what I have done to you.”

“You are a princess of the sidhe,” Frost said. “You explain yourself to no one.”

I shook my head and patted his arm. “Frost, I spend a great deal of time explaining myself to everyone.”

“Not to demi-fey,” he said, and his face was arrogant, cold, and heartbreakingly handsome.

“Frost, either the demi-fey are a court unto themselves, worthy of respect, or they are not. Queen Niceven is within her rights to be angry about this.”

His hand gripped the hilt of his sword, but he didn't say anything. To insult them beyond a certain point was to break them as a court, as a people. He wasn't willing to do that.

“Merry's right.” Galen stood slowly, being as careful where he put his feet as I had been. He still held the tiny brown winged fey asleep in his hand. “I may not like Queen Niceven and the demi-fey, but she is a queen and they are a court. We should have sent someone to tell her what was happening.” He gazed up at the tiny queen. “I don't know if you care what I think, but I'm sorry.”

She came slowly down from the ceiling. Her wings had slowed, fanning gently, so that the illusion of some graceful moth was back. “After what we did to you, it is you who offers us an apology.” She looked at him, as if she had never truly seen him before. “You fear us, hate us. Why would you show us courtesy?”

He frowned, and I watched him try to put into words what was simply him. It had been the right thing to do, and for once it had even been the politically smart thing to do, but that hadn't been why he'd done it.

“We owed you an apology,” he said at last. “Merry explained it. I wasn't sure that anyone else would agree with her, so I did.”

Niceven floated over to face me. “He apologized to us because it was the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked back at him, then at me. “Oh, Princess, you must keep this one close, for he is too dangerous to be left alone among the sidhe.”

“Too dangerous,” Galen said, “dangerous to whom?”

“To yourself, for one,” Niceven said, fluttering over to him. She put thin, pale hands on the hips of her white dress. “I see goodness in your face, goodness and gentleness. You are in the wrong court, green knight.”

“My father was a pixie, and my mother an Unseelie sidhe.” He shook his head, vigorously enough that Niceven moved a little back from him. “No, the glittering throng wouldn't touch me.”

Niceven gazed down at the flowers and her besotted people. “They might now.”

“No,” Hawthorne said, “Taranis doesn't forgive a sidhe who joins the darkling court. If you take your exile to the humans and wander lost for a few centuries, maybe he'll forgive you, but,” he lifted his helmet off, “once you've been accepted here, there is no going back.”

“Perhaps,” Niceven said, “or perhaps not.”

“Queen Niceven,” I said.

She turned to me, her face carefully passive, her thin hands folded in front of her.

“What do you mean ‘perhaps not'?”

She shrugged. “Oh, someone who can be a fly upon the wall hears things.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“Things that I might share with someone who was my ally, and honored their bargains.”

“If you will not take blood directly from me, then I will need a new magical proxy,” I said.

She turned in the air, and looked at Royal and his sister in their rat-drawn cart. “Royal,” she said.

He stood straighter, almost to attention, though without wings he could not be in Niceven's guard. “Yes, my queen.”

“Would you taste the blood of the princess and share the essence with me?”

“Gladly, my queen.”

Penny clung to him. “Don't, Royal, don't do it.”

He drew her away from him, and looked down into her face. “How long have we dreamed of wings?”

She let her arms fall limp to her sides. “Forever,” she said.

“I didn't give Sage wings,” I said.

“No,” Royal said, “you gave him wings.” He pointed at Nicca.

“But Nicca wasn't tasting my blood when it happened.”

Royal nodded, and stepped from the cart. He gazed up at me. “It was during sex.”

I looked at him. He was about ten inches tall, a little shorter than a Barbie doll, but not by much. I tried to think of a polite way to say it, and finally settled for, “I think the size difference is a little much.”

He flashed me a grin. “Sage has given a very full report to the court. I am willing to take blood while you have sex with others, in hopes that it will bring my wings.”

I shook my head. “Nicca may have been a special case.”

Royal gripped the hem of his tunic and lifted it off in one smooth movement, letting it drop to the floor. He was naked before me, miniature and perfect. He turned around, displaying a perfect tattoo of wings covering his back down to his upper thighs. The wings were almost black, with lines of charcoal running through them. The edges curled over his shoulders like the draping edge of a shawl. Bright scarlet and black graced his lower back and buttocks in soft curving stripes, like the ruffled edge of a petticoat.

He turned so that I could see that the black and scarlet was edged by a thin stripe of the dark, almost spots, cut with white, and a thin line of gold. That edging strip curved over the side of his hip, so that the sides of his hips were striped with color, too.

Nicca's wings belonged to some long-lost moth. Something that had flown the skies of Europe more than a thousand years before. But I knew what had painted itself upon Royal's skin.

“You're an underwing moth, an Ilia Underwing.”

He looked back over his shoulder at me, smiling. “That's one of the names humans use.” He seemed pleased that I'd known what his wings belonged to. His small face suddenly became very serious. “Do you know the other name for the Ilia?”

My pulse sped just a bit, which was silly. He was the size of a child's toy. The heat in his eyes shouldn't have had that strong an effect, but my mouth was dry and my voice just a little whispery. “The beloved underwing.”

“Yes,” he said. He started toward me, and if it hadn't been silly, I would have backed up. A man that is shorter than my forearm couldn't possibly have been intimidating, but he was.

Galen said softly at my shoulder, “He does know he's not getting sex, right?”

“So it's not just me who wants to back up a step.”

“No,” Galen said.

“You are very good,” Doyle said.

I looked at Doyle, but all his attention was on the little man. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Glamour,” Doyle said.

“Are all the demi-fey as good at glamour as Sage and this one?” Rhys asked.

“Not all of them, but a great many, yes,” Doyle said.

Rhys shivered. “I am not sharing the bed with this one. Sage taught me my lesson, I don't need another one.”

“You're not on the menu for tonight, Rhys.”

“For once, I'm glad,” he said.

“Then who do I get to share you with?” Royal asked. As I looked down at him, the feeling of sex and intimidation became more intense.

“It's stronger when I look at you.”

Royal nodded. “Because looking is all you're doing. Now, who am I sharing you with tonight?”

Galen answered, “Me, but, truthfully, I'm not sure I can do it. I may have apologized for us, but I still don't want them touching me.”

“You touch one of us right now,” Niceven said.

Galen glanced down at the still sleeping fey in his hand. “But that's different,” he said.

“In what way is it different?” she asked.

“This one's not scary.” He motioned his hand up toward Niceven.

Royal laughed, and it was like chimes in a happy wind. “And am I scary, green knight?”

I was close enough to see Galen's pulse beating against the side of his throat. “Yes,” he said, and his voice sounded as dry as mine felt.

Royal's laughter trailed away to something darker. “Such talk will turn a man's head, green knight.” The look on his face showed just how pleased he was that Galen was afraid of him.

“Some glamour grows stronger with physical touch,” Adair said. He'd kept his helmet on.

“Are you asking if mine grows stronger, oak lord?” Royal asked.

“Speculating, not asking,” Adair said, as if to ask a question of a demi-fey was beneath him.

Well, Adair could be high-handed if he wished, but he wasn't stripping down for the demi-fey. “Does your glamour grow stronger with physical touch?” I asked.

He grinned up at me. “It does.”

Galen whispered against my hair, “Can Nicca and you have this one? I'll take the next one.”

I glanced back at him. “If you wish, yes.”

He sighed, and leaned his forehead against the top of my head. “Damn it, Merry.”

“What?” I asked.

“I can't pass on the scary parts if you still have to do them. Are you sure you have to do this?”

“Don't you want to know why Queen Niceven said that the Seelie Court might take you in if you offered them more power?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, damn it.” He looked up at Niceven. “And she knew we'd want to know.”

“A spy is only as good as his information, green knight.”

“My name is Galen, please use it.”

“Why?”

“Because the only people who ever call me green knight tend to try to hurt me.”

She looked at him a moment, then gave a small bob in the air. “Very well, Galen. You have been truthful with me, so I will be truthful with you, but you will not find it comforting.”

“Truth seldom is,” he said. The tone in his voice made me hug his free arm around me.

“We feed not just on blood and magic.”

“You feed on fear,” Doyle said, and there was something about the flat way he said it that told me there was a story behind those few words.

“Yes, Darkness,” Niceven said, “as do many things here at the Unseelie Court.” She turned back to Galen and me. “I think the green . . . Galen will be a feast fit for a queen.”

“Then let's begin the bargaining,” I said.

“We have struck our bargain, Princess.”

I shook my head. “No, the bargain about what Royal can do, and can't do, in my bed and on my body.”

“Are we really such a fearsome thing that you have to bargain as closely with us as you would with the goblins?”

“You chastised me for treating you as less than the goblins, Queen Niceven. If I do not negotiate with you as I would the goblins, isn't that just another kind of insult?”