A Lick of Frost

ABE STUMBLED BESIDE ME, ALMOST JERKED ME DOWN, BUT Galen swung me in his arms and sprinted for the door. He moved in a blur of speed that left the room in streamers of color. It was almost as if he didn't so much open the door and go through it but was moving so quickly that the door wasn't solid enough to stop us. I wasn't sure if the door opened or not, but we were on the other side of it. He turned me in his arms, so that he was carrying me like a child, or a bride on her wedding night. He moved down the hallway at a quick trot, away from the door and the sound of battle inside.



I could order Galen around more than most of the guard. I thought about ordering him to stop, but I wasn't certain what was happening. What if stopping was the wrong thing to do? What if the men I loved had given their lives to save me, and my stopping here would make that sacrifice worthless? It was one of those moments when I would have given almost anything not to be princess. There were too many decisions, too many moments like this, where, lose or win, I would still lose.



He put me down, but kept my hand, as if he knew I might go back. He'd pressed the button to call the elevator. I heard the machinery behind the doors whirring. I couldn't leave. I knew in that instant that when the doors opened, I wouldn't get on. I couldn't leave them. I couldn't leave them not knowing who was hurt, and how badly.



I stepped back, pulling on Galen's hand. He looked at me, his green eyes a little wide, his pulse still thudding against the side of his pale throat above the tie and collar the lawyers had made him wear. I shook my head.



"Merry, we have to go. My job is to keep you safe."



I just shook my head, and pulled on his hand. I tried to pull him back toward the doors that had closed behind us, or had not opened for us to go through. I still couldn't remember the door opening. The harder I thought about it, the less I seemed to remember of that one moment. It probably meant that Galen had, indeed, taken us through the door. Impossible, especially outside of faerie. Impossible, but it had happened, hadn't it?



The elevator doors opened. Galen stepped inside, but I kept his arm stretched out, because I did not step forward. "Merry, please," he said. "Please, you can't go back."



"I can't go forward either. If I am to be queen, then I have to stop running. To be ruler of a faerie court means I must be a warrior, too. I must be able to fight."



He tried to pull me inside. I put a hand on the wall to keep some leverage. "You are mortal," he said. "You could die."



"We could all die," I said. "The sidhe are no longer immortal. You know it and I know it."



He put a hand on the door that tried to close on him. "But we're harder to kill than a human. You injure like you're human, Merry. I can't allow you to go back inside that room."



I had a moment to understand that somehow this was a deciding moment. What kind of queen would I be? "You cannot allow? Galen, I must rule, or not rule. I cannot have it both ways." I pulled my hand free of his, and he didn't fight me.



He just looked at me, searched my face, as if he didn't know me. "You really are going back, and short of me throwing you over my shoulder, I can't stop you, can I?"



"No, you can't." I started walking back down the long hallway that we had just raced down.



Galen fell into step beside me. He unfastened the buttons of his jacket, and took out the gun he was wearing. He switched off the safety and chambered a round.



I reached behind my back to the nice little sideways holster, and took out my own gun. I'd replaced the Lady Smith that Doyle had taken off of me in faerie once before he was mine. It was the gun I was accustomed to, and a popular backup gun for a lot of police officers. Mostly male, strangely. The original push for the gun had turned off a lot of women. One of the colors the grip had come in had been pink. But in black or steeled blue it was still a good gun, and the one I was most used to. I didn't draw my gun as smoothly as Galen had, but it was a new holster, and a newish gun. It would take practice to be smooth. If Taranis was mad, I might get all the practice I needed.