A Lick of Frost

WE MOVED THROUGH ROOMS OF MARBLE AND GOLD. ROOMS with cold pink walls with veins of silver and pillars of gold. Rooms of white marble with veins of pink and lavender and pillars of silver. Rooms of gold and silver marble with pillars of ivory. We moved always in a circle of falling petals, pink petals pale as dawn's first blush, dark as day's last salmon blaze, and a color deep enough to be purple. They fell around us, and I realized that the petals were the only living thing we passed. There was nothing organic in this place of marble and metal. It was a palace, but it was not a home for beings who had begun life as nature spirits. We were meant to be a people of warmth, life, and love, and there was none of that here.



I don't know what the other nobles would have done if we hadn't moved in the circle of that flowered blessing. They matched the rooms, dressed in stiff clothing of gold and silver and subdued color. They stared, open-mouthed. Some began to follow us, like a parade that grows from sheer joy and wonder.



It was when I heard the first laugh that I realized that there was more to the nobles being won over than simply seeing the fall of petals. The touch of the flowers seemed to make them happy. They came to us with smiles, and voices of protest, of "Where is the king? What have you done?" When the voices died out, they simply followed us, smiling.



Hugh whispered, "I remembered loving Queen Roisin. I never realized that that love was partially glamour."



I almost told him that I wasn't doing this, but with that thought the scent of roses suddenly grew stronger. I'd learned that it usually meant either yes or don't. I guessed that I should not tell Hugh that I wasn't creating the flowers on purpose, and with that thought the scent of roses dimmed, I took it to mean that I'd done what she wished. I was content with that.



Doyle had had to drop back so that he was not right next to me. I understood that it was so no one would see and perhaps make a connection, but I had to fight both my feelings and the head injury not to look around for the big black dog. Hugh's huge shaggy hounds helped, both by partially blocking my view and by brushing me with their muzzles, touching my bare feet and hands. One was almost solid white, the other almost as solidly red with only small white markings. Every time they touched me, I felt a little better.



The petals rested on their great heads, then fell to the ground as they moved and snuffled at me. It was almost as if the dogs were more real to me than the nobles in their beautiful clothes. The dogs had been created from the magic that I had raised with Sholto. They had come from the same magic that had finally gotten me with child. The dogs had come from the same night and the same magic. A magic of making and remaking.



There were guards at the doors at the end of the room where we stopped. This room was formed of red and orange marble with veins of white and gold glittering through the stone. The pillars were silver with gold vines carved to look as if they bloomed with golden flowers.



As a child, I had thought the pillars one of the most lovely things in the world. Now I saw them for what they were, a stand-in for the real thing. The Unseelie Court even without the new magic had held the remnants of real roses. There had been a water garden in the inner courtyard with water lilies. Yes, it had also held a rock with chains fixed to it, so you could be tortured in a scenic setting, but there had been life in the court. It had been fading, but it hadn't faded completely when the Goddess began to move through me, through us.



In all the Seelie Court there was no life. Even the great tree in the main chamber was formed of metal. It was a thing of great artifice, amazing artistic achievement, but such things were for mortals. The immortal weren't supposed to be known only for their art. They were supposed to be known for the reality that the art was based upon. There was nothing real here.



The guards wore business suits. They looked more like secret service agents than Seelie nobles. Only their otherworldly beauty and eyes formed of rings of color showed them to be more than human.



Hugh held me a little closer. His hounds moved in front of me. I realized that they were tall enough to partially block me from the sight of the guards.



Lady Elasaid moved to the front of the group. She spoke in a ringing voice. "Let us pass."



"The king's orders are clear, m'lady. No one else is allowed into the press conference without his express permission."



"Do you not see the blessing of the Goddess before you?"



"We are immuned to illusion by the king's own magic."



"Do you see the fall of petals?" she asked.



"We see the illusion of it, m'lady."



I could not see what she did, but she said, "Touch them."



"The king can make illusion touchable, too, m'lady Elasaid."



I realized that they had seen lies so long that they no longer recognized truth. All was doubt for them.



The blond guard had stepped a little in front of us, helping the dogs hide us from view. He turned to Hugh and whispered, "Shall I call?"



Hugh gave a small nod.



I expected the guard to take out a hand mirror or use the shiny surface of his blade, but he didn't. He reached into the leather pouch at his side and took out a very modern cell phone.



I must have looked surprised because he said, "We have reception near this room. It's why we put the press in here."



It was perfectly logical. He moved back, and others moved, gracefully, to help hide him from the view of the guards before the doors.



He spoke quietly, "We are outside the doors with the injured princess. The guards will not let us pass."



One of the guards near the door said, "Go back to your rooms. None of you have any business here."



The blond guard said, "Yes, Yes. No." He folded the phone shut, placed it back in his leather bag, and took his post at our side. He whispered to Hugh, so quietly that even I couldn't hear it.



The group of nobles and their hounds bunched up around me. If it came to an actual fight with swords and magic, they had left themselves no room to maneuver, Then I realized what they had done. They were shielding me. Shielding me with their tall, slender bodies. Shielding me with their immortal beauty. Me, who they had once despised, and they were risking all they were, all they had ever been, to keep me safe.



They were not my friends. Most did not know me. Some had made it clear when I was a child that they did not like me. They found me too human, too mixed of blood to be sidhe. What had Taranis done to them to make them so desperate that they would defy him like this for me?



There was a stirring in the front of the glittering throng around me, almost the way a field of flowers moves in a strong wind.



I heard the guard near the door, his voice rough enough to recognize among all the sweeter voices. "You are not allowed farther into our sithen, sir, by order of the king."



"Unless you want to fight us, we are coming through this door."



I knew the voice. It was Major Walters, head of the special branch of the St. Louis Police Department that specialized in dealing with the fey. It had been an honorary title for years, until I came home. I didn't know how he'd gotten invited to a press conference, and I didn't care.



A second male voice came. "We have a federal warrant to bring the princess into protective custody." It was Special Agent Raymond Gillett, who had been the only federal agent who had kept in touch with me after the investigation of my father's death had gone cold. When I was younger I had thought he cared what happened to me. Lately I realized it was more about not leaving such a high-profile case unsolved. I was still angry with him, but in that moment, his familiar voice was a good sound.



"The princess is not here, officers," said a second guard. "Please go back to the press area."



"The princess is here," Lady Elasaid said, "and in need of human medical attention."



You could feel the increased tension in the group of nobles, like a spring that had been wound once too often. To the human officers, they would be beautiful and unreadable, but I felt their energy rise like the first spark of heat from a match. The guards at the door would feel it, too.



The great black dog moved up on one side of Hugh. It didn't make me feel better. Weaponless against the might of sidhe guards, all he could do was die for me. I didn't want him to die for me. I wanted him to live for me.



"We have doctors with us," Major Walters said. "Let them look at the princess, and we'll go from there."



"The king has ordered that she not be given back to the brutes who injured her. She cannot go near the Unseelie again."



"Did he forbid her going near humans?" Agent Gillett asked.



There was a moment of silence while the murmur of power began to build among the sidhe around me. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if they were whispering their magic.



"The king said nothing about humans looking at her," a new guard voice said.



"We were told to keep her away from the press."



"Why would the princess need to be kept away from the press? Agent Gillett asked. "She will tell them firsthand about being rescued from the evil Unseelie by "your brave king."



"I do not know..."



"Unless you think the princess will have a different story," Major Walters said.



"The king has given his oath that it is so," the talkative guard said.



"Then you have nothing to lose by letting our doctors look at her," Agent Gillett said.



The guard who had sounded agreeable said, "If the king is true to his word, then there is nothing to fear, Barri, Shanley. You do believe him, don't you?" There was the first real doubt plain in his voice, as if even among the king's most loyal the lies were becoming too heavy to bear.



"If she is truly here, then let her come forward," Shanley said. He sounded tired.



Hugh held me closer as the nobles parted like a glittering curtain, Only Hugh's hounds and the blond guard stayed in front of me. Doyle stayed to our side. I think that he, like me, was worried that the already suspicious guards would figure out who he was. They might let us go into the press room, but if they suspected that the Darkness was inside their sithen, they would go wild.



Finally, Hugh said, "Let them see."



Both the guard and the great dogs moved. Doyle moved a little behind Hugh so that he blended in with the other dogs, aside from his color. He was the only black one among them. To my eyes he stood out almost painfully, so black among all the Seelie color.



I must have looked even worse than I felt, because both the men were wide-eyed. They controlled it after that first glimpse, but I'd seen it. I even understood it. And it was as if that look let me feel again. I don't know if it was the magic, the fear for Doyle, or the fear that Taranis would find us. Or maybe the little screaming voice in my skull that had been growing louder. The voice that finally let me think the thought all the way through, to ask in my own head at least, "Did he rape me? Did he rape me after he beat me unconscious?" Was that what the great king of the Seelie considered seduction? Goddess, let him have been confused when he thought it possible that I carried his child.



It was like knowing that you were cut but only feeling pain after you saw the blood. I'd seen the "blood" on the faces of the police. I saw it in the way they moved toward me. The left side of my face ached and was swollen. I knew that it must have hurt before, but it was as if only now could I feel all of it.



The headache came back in a roar that closed my eyes and brought a fresh wave of nausea. A voice said, "Princess Meredith, can you speak?"



I looked up into Agent Gillett's eyes. There was that old compassion there, that look that had made me trust him when I was a young woman. I looked into those eyes and knew it was real. I'd felt used by him recently, realizing that he'd kept in touch with me in hopes of solving my father's murder not for me, but for some purpose of his own. I had told him to stay away from me, but looking up into his face now, I understood what I'd seen in him when I was seventeen. For this moment, he cared, deeply.



Maybe he was remembering the first time he saw me, collapsed in grief, clutching my dead father's sword as if it were the last solid thing in the universe.



"Doctor," I whispered. "I need a doctor." I whispered because the last time I'd felt this sick, talking had hurt my head. But I also whispered because I knew it would make me seem more pitiful and if sympathy would get me in front of the press, I would play that card for all it was worth.



Agent Gillett's eyes hardened, and I saw again that purpose that had made me believe he would find my father's killer.



Tonight, that was all right. I carried my father's grandchildren inside me. But I had to get to safety. Strength of arms and magic are so often what the sidhe rely on, but they have never been weak. They do not understand the arsenal of the powerless. I understood, because I had lived in the land of the helpless most of my life.



I stopped fighting to be brave. I stopped fighting to feel better. I let myself feel how hurt I was, and how frightened. I let myself think the thoughts I'd been shoving back. I let them fill my eyes with tears.



The guards at the doors tried to move in front of us, but Major Walters used his officer voice. It echoed in the marble room and into the open door beyond. "You will move aside, now."



The talkative guard said, "Shanley, we have no healers who can cure this. Let the humans treat her." He had hair the flame color of autumn leaves just before they fall to the ground, and eyes of circles of green. He seemed young, though he had to be over seventy, because that was Galen's age, and he was the next youngest sidhe to me.



Shanley looked down at me. His eyes were two perfect circles of blue.



I lay in Hugh's arms and gazed up at him through tear-soaked eyes, and a swelling bruise that covered me from temple to chin.



Shanley spoke quietly, "What story will you tell the press, Princess Meredith?"



"The truth," I whispered.



A look of pain went through those inhumanly lovely eyes. "I cannot let you into that room." His words were his admission that he knew that my truth and Taranis's truth were not one and the same. He knew that his king had lied, and given oath on it. He knew, and yet he had made oath to serve Taranis as guard. He was caught between his vows and his king's treachery.



I might have pitied him, but I knew that Taranis would not be distracted forever in his bath. Not even with servant girls to abuse. We were inches away from the press and relative safety. But how to travel those last few inches?



Major Walters pulled his radio from a coat pocket and hit a button. "We need backup out here."



"If they come through, we will fight them," Shanley said.



"She is with child," the healer said. "She carries twins."



He looked suspiciously at her. "You lie."



"I have few powers left me, that is true, but I have enough magic left to sense such things. She is with child. I felt their heartbeats under my hand like the fluttering of birds."



"You don't get heartbeats this quickly," the guard said.



"She entered this sithen pregnant with twins. She was forced into the king's bed to be raped, pregnant with someone else's children."



"Do not say such things, Quinnie," he said.



"I am a healer," she said. "I must speak out at last. If it costs me all I am, all I have, I swear to you that the princess is at least a month gone with twins."



"You will take oath on it?" he asked.



"I will swear any oath you wish me to take."



They stared at each other for a long moment. There was pounding on the door behind the guards and the sounds of struggle. The rest of the police and agents were trying to come in. The Seelie guards didn't want to injure the police in front of the press, with live cameras on them.



It sounded like the police didn't have the same compunction about the guards. The door shuddered under the weight of bodies hitting it.



The talkative guard went to stand by his captain. "Shanley, listen to her."



"The king took oath, too," he said. "And nothing came to brand him an oathbreaker."



"He believes what he says," the healer said. "You know that. He believes, so he does not lie, but that does not make it true. We have all seen that in these last few weeks."



Shanley looked from his fellow guard to the healer, then finally to me. "Were the Unseelie raping you when our king saved you?"



"No," I said.



His eyes glittered, but not with magic. "Did he take you against your will?"



"Yes," I whispered.



A tear trailed from each of his beautiful eyes. He gave a small bow. "Command me."



I hoped I knew what he wanted me to do. I spoke as loud as I dared with my head pounding. "I, Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, granddaughter of Uar the Cruel, command you to step aside and let us pass."



He bowed lower, and moved aside still in that bow.



Major Walters spoke on his radio again. "We're coming through. Repeat, we're bringing the princess through. Clear the doors."



The sounds of fighting grew louder. The blue-eyed guard spoke into the air. "Stand down, men. The princess is leaving."



The fighting slowed, then there was no sound. The blue-eyed guard nodded at the other guards, and they opened the great doors.



Doyle moved up closer to me as Hugh carried me forward. For a moment I thought it was a magical attack of light, then I realized that it was lights for moving cameras and flashes for still ones. I closed my eyes against the blinding glare, and Hugh carried me through the doors.