A Caress of Twilight

Chapter 5



Rhys laid his silk trench coat across my desk and came to stand in front of us. Kitto curled into a tight ball in my lap, eyes staring up at Rhys the way small mammals watch cats. As though the cat won't see them, if they stay still enough.



The shoulder holster was stylishly white against Rhys's button-down shirt. The butt of the gun was like a black imperfection among all that cream and white. "Give your gun to Doyle, Rhys, please."



He glanced at Doyle, who had gone back to his chair against the windows. "I believe you are making the little one nervous, Rhys."



"Well, isn't that just a pity," he said, and his voice was cruel.



I glared up at him and felt the first stirrings of power. I didn't fight the anger or the magic. I let it fill my eyes, knew there was a glimmer in my eyes of colors and light nowhere in the room but in my eyes.



"Be careful, Rhys, or you can leave now, without your second chance." My voice was low and careful again. I was holding on to my magic the way you hold your breath, controlled or you start yelling.



I must have looked like I meant it, because he turned without another word and walked to Doyle. He handed the gun butt first to the dark man, then he stood there for a few seconds, shoulders squared, hands in fists at his sides. It was almost as if he felt more insecure without the gun. If he'd been facing true mortal danger, I could have understood it, but Kitto wasn't that kind of threat to Rhys. He didn't need the gun.



He turned toward us with a shaky breath, which I heard clearly from feet away. Some of the anger had been stripped away, and what was left was barely disguised fear. Doyle was right; Rhys feared Kitto, or rather, goblins. It was like a phobia for him. A phobia with a basis in reality; those are the kind that are almost impossible to cure.



He stopped just in front of us again, staring down at me, face diffident, but underneath was a vulnerability that made me want to say, no, you don't have to do this. But I would have been lying. He did have to do this. If something wasn't done, Rhys would lose his temper once too often and Kitto would get hurt, or worse. We couldn't risk the treaty. And Kitto was mine to take care of. I wasn't sure where my duties would lie if Rhys killed him in a fit of panic. I didn't want to have to order an execution of someone I'd known all my life.



I wanted to reassure Rhys, tell him it was all right, but I didn't want to appear weak, either. So I sat there with a very tense Kitto curled tight in my lap, and said nothing.



"I've always left the room when you deal with ... it, him," Rhys said, "What happens now?"



I'd had enough, and I suddenly didn't feel sorry for Rhys. I looked down at Kitto. "I offer you small flesh or weak blood." Small flesh was goblin slang for light foreplay. Weak blood meant barely breaking the skin, or even just raising welts. There was every possibility that Kitto would choose something I wouldn't need any distraction for. I'd slowly been teaching Kitto new definitions of petting and foreplay, definitions that were a lot less stressful to all concerned.



He looked down, not meeting anyone's eyes, and whispered, "Small flesh."



"Done," I said.



Rhys frowned. "What just happened?"



I looked up at him. "You always negotiate with goblins before sex, Rhys. If you don't, you end up hurt."



He frowned down at me. "I was a prisoner for a night. I had no ability to negotiate."



I sighed, and shook my head. Most sidhe, Seelie or Unseelie, knew very little about cultures outside their own. It was a type of prejudice that believed nothing but sidhe culture was worth knowing. "Actually, according to goblin law, you did. If they'd tortured you, then, no, you'd have simply had to endure what they did to you, though truthfully there is some room for negotiation even in torture. For sex, though, you always have room to negotiate. It's custom among them."



The frown deepened. That single eye was so confused, so pain-filled. I spilled the small goblin to his feet and stood in front of Rhys, putting Kitto almost between us. For once Rhys didn't seem to notice how close the goblin was to him.



"The goblins will rape, and there's no saving yourself from it, but you can dictate terms, things that can be done and cannot be done."



His hand rose slowly toward his scars, then stopped before he touched them, his hand just hanging in midair. "You mean..." And he left the rest of the sentence unfinished.



"That you could have forbidden them from permanently disfiguring you, yes." My voice was very, very soft, as I said it. I'd been half wanting to tell Rhys, and half dreading, since I found out a few months ago how he'd lost his eye.



He turned to me with such horror in his face. I touched his cheeks, rose on tiptoe, and leaned his face down toward me. I laid a gentle kiss on his lips, a bare touch from my mouth to his, then stretched until my body leaned full against his, stretching as tall as I could, my hands still on his face, bringing him closer to me. I laid the same gentle kiss on his scar.



He jerked back, making me stumble. Only Kitto's arm around my waist kept me from falling. "No," Rhys said, "no."



I held my hands out to him. "Come to me, Rhys."



He just kept backing away. Doyle had moved up behind him without either of us noticing. Rhys stopped backing away when he smacked into his captain's body. "If you fail her here, Rhys, then you must go back to faerie."



He glanced at Doyle, then at me. "I haven't failed, I just... I didn't know."



"Most sidhe don't know anything about goblin culture," I said. "It's one of the reasons that the goblins are such feared warriors, because no one understands them. We might have won the goblin wars centuries sooner if anyone had taken time to study them. And I don't mean torture them. You don't learn a person's culture by torture."



Doyle put a hand on either of Rhys's shoulders and began walking him back toward us. Rhys didn't look afraid anymore, more shell-shocked, as if a piece of his world had broken away and left him hanging with his feet on thin air.



Doyle walked him back to us, and I touched his face gently. Rhys blinked, startled, as if he'd forgotten I was there. "You're not ruined, Rhys. You're beautiful." I lowered his face toward me, but the six inches of difference hampered my intentions. I could kiss his mouth, but not his eye. I went back on tiptoe, which stretched my body along the length of Rhys's. Kitto's arm had still been around my waist, and now his arm was pressed between our bodies, trapped with the pressure of our flesh. Rhys didn't scream about it, so I let it go. I would finish what I'd started.



I kissed slowly up the edge of his face, until I touched the edge of the scar. He jerked, and I think only Doyle's hands on his shoulders kept him from running again. He closed his eye tight like a condemned man who didn't want to see the bullet coming. I kissed my way across the scars, until I felt the rough, slickened skin under my lips. I laid a gentle kiss over the empty socket, where the other beautiful eye should have been.



He was so tense under my hands, almost shaking. I kissed more firmly over the thickened skin, letting my lips open and close loosely over the spot. Rhys made a small sound. I licked, very gently, over the scar. Another small sound came from his throat, and it wasn't a pain sound.



I licked, slowly, carefully, over the slick skin. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. The fists at his side were shaking, but not with anger. I ran tongue and lips over the scar until his knees buckled, and it was Kitto who caught him around the waist. The small man held him as if he weighed nothing.



I kissed Rhys on the mouth, and he kissed me back like he was drowning and would find the breath of life in my mouth. We ended on our knees on the floor with Doyle standing above us, and Kitto still wound around Rhys's waist.



Rhys put his arms behind my back and pressed me against him, hard enough that even with Kitto's arm between us I knew Rhys was hard and firm. Some buckle or strap must have bruised into Kitto's skin, because he made a small sound.



That one tiny sound brought Rhys up for air, made him look around, and when he saw the little goblin's arms around his waist, he gave something very like a scream and scrambled away from both of us.



I was about to open my mouth and say that Rhys had done enough to satisfy me, but Kitto spoke first. "I declare myself satisfied."



I stared at him. "You've had nothing for yourself yet."



He shook his head, blinking those drowning blue eyes. "I am satisfied." He seemed about to add more, appeared to think better of it, and just shook his head again.



It was Rhys who said, "You haven't had your bit of flesh, yet."



"No," the goblin said, "but I am within my rights to forgo it."



"Why would you do that?" Rhys asked. He was still crouched on the floor, face wild, panicked.



"Merry needs all her guards to be safe. I would not have her lose one of them over me."



Rhys stared at him. "You would give up your bit of flesh and blood so that I can stay?"



Kitto blinked, then looked at the floor. "Yes."



Rhys frowned. "Are you feeling sorry for me?" and a tiny edge of anger crept into his voice.



Kitto looked up, clearly surprised. "Sorry for you, why? You are beautiful and share Merry's body as well as her bed. You have a chance to be king. The scars that you think ruin you are a mark of great beauty among the goblins, and a mark of great valor, showing you have survived great pain." He shook his head. "You are a sidhe warrior. No one bullies you but the queen herself. Look at me, warrior, look at me." He held out his small hands. "I have no claws, precious little fang. I am like a human among the goblins." For the first time there was a bitterness in Kitto's voice. A bitterness of years of abuse, of being in a culture where violence and physical prowess is prized, of being trapped in a body that was soft by their standards. He'd been born a victim among the goblins. He held those tiny hands out to Rhys, and there was anger in that small, delicate face. Anger, and a helplessness born of truth. Kitto knew very well what he was, and what he wasn't. Among the goblins he was anyone's meat. No wonder he wanted to stay at my side, even in the big bad city.



Chapter 6



Ask most people, especially tourists, where the rich and famous live in Southern California and they'll say Beverly Hills. But Holmby Hills is full of money and fame, and land -- land with high fences that block the view of the peons driving by, straining for a look at the rich and famous. Holmby Hills is not the fashionable address it once was, not the place for the young rising stars to make their home, but one thing hasn't changed: you need money for those walls and gates, lots of money. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the newly famous don't move to Holmby Hills much; they can't afford it.



Maeve Reed could afford it. She was a major star, but lucky for us, not in the top 2 percent. If she'd been, say, Julia Roberts, we'd have had to evade her media hounds as well as mine. One set of rabid reporters was more than enough for one day.



There were ways around the media that didn't need magic -- for instance, a white van with rust spots that sat unused in the parking garage most of the time. The Grey Detective Agency used it for surveillance when the usual van would stand out too much. If it was a nice neighborhood, we used the nice van. If it was a bad neighborhood, we used this van. The media had started following the nice van every time it went out, on the theory that it could be hiding the princess and her entourage. That left us with the old van, even though it stood out like a sore thumb in Holmby Hills.



One of the back windows was covered with cardboard and tape. Rust decorated the white paint like wounds. Both the cardboard and the rust held places to hide cameras and other equipment. The hidey-holes could even be used as gunsights in an emergency.



Rhys drove. The rest of us hid in the back. He'd piled all that white hair under a billed cap. A high-quality fake beard and mustache hid all those boyish good looks. The cap and the facial hair even covered most of the scars. The guards had become almost as camera recognizable as I was, so it had to be a good disguise. And Rhys loved playing detective. He'd dressed up as if the day was any day and all the emotional turmoil had been a dream.



Kitto was literally hiding under my legs in the floorboard. Doyle sat on the far side of the seats away from me. Frost took up the center seat.



Sitting beside each other, the two men were almost exactly the same height. Standing, Frost was the taller by a couple of inches. His shoulders were a little wider and his body slightly bulkier. It wasn't a large difference, and not one you usually noticed when they had clothes on, but it was a difference all the same. Queen Andais treated them almost as if they were just two sides of the same coin. Her Darkness and her Killing Frost. Doyle had a name aside from the Queen's nickname; Frost did not. He was simply Frost or Killing Frost, and that was all.



Frost was dressed in charcoal grey dress slacks cut long enough that they covered the tops of his charcoal gray loafers. The shoes were polished to a mirror sheen. His shirt was white with a ribbed front and a banded collar that encircled the smooth firm line of his neck. A pale grey jacket hid his shoulder holster and shiny nickel-plated .44. The gun was so big that I could barely hold it one-handed, let alone shoot it.



His silver, Christmas-tinsel hair was pulled back in a firm ponytail that left his face strong, clean, and almost too handsome to look at. The tail of silver hair had spilled mostly over the backseat and half across his shoulder. A few strands trailed over my shoulder and arm as he gave his report to Doyle. I touched those shining strands, feeling the spiderweb softness of them. The hair looked metallic, like it should feel harsh, but it was wonderfully soft. I'd had all this silken grace spill over my naked body. There was a part of me that thought that a man's hair should be at least to his knees. High-court sidhe took great pride in their hair, among other things.



Frost's hip pressed against mine, hard to avoid in the close confines of the seat. But his thigh pressed the length of mine, and that he could have avoided.



I had raised a lock of his hair in front of my face, letting the strands fall down, while I watched the world through a lace of his hair, when Doyle said, "Are you listening to us, Princess Meredith?"



I startled and let Frost's hair fall away. "Yes, I was listening."



The look on his face said, clearly, he didn't believe me. "Then repeat it back to us, if you can."



I could have told him I was a princess and I didn't have to repeat anything, but that would have been childish, and besides, I really had been listening, to some of it.



"Frost saw some of Kane and Hart's people behind the walls. Which means that they are doing some sort of job for her, either bodyguarding or something that needs psychic talent." The Kane and Hart Agency was the only real competition that the Grey Detective Agency had in L.A. Kane was a psychic and a martial-arts expert. The Hart brothers were two of the most powerful human magicians that I'd ever met. The agency did more bodyguard work than we did, or had, until my guards showed up.



Doyle looked at me. "And?"



"And what? "I asked.



Frost laughed, a purely masculine sound that said more than words that he was pleased.



I knew what had pleased him without having to ask. He was pleased that I'd been so distracted by just having him near me. I found Frost the most distracting of the guards that I was sleeping with.



He turned to me with his storm grey eyes, laughter still shining in them. The laughter softened the perfection of his face, made him seem more human.



I touched my fingertips to his cheek, the lightest of touches. The laughter melted slowly from his face, leaving his eyes serious and full of a tender weight of words unspoken, things not yet done.



I stared up into his eyes. They were just grey, not tricolored like mine or Rhys's, but, of course, they weren't just grey. They were the color of clouds on a rainy day, and like clouds the colors changed and swirled not with the wind but with his moods. They were a soft grey like the breast of a dove as he lowered his head to kiss me.



My pulse filled my throat so that I couldn't breathe. His lips brushed mine, laying a gentle kiss that trembled against my flesh. He raised back from that one tender movement, and we looked into each other's eyes from inches away, and there was a moment of knowing. We'd shared a bed for three months. He'd guarded my safety. I'd introduced him to the twenty-first century. I'd watched the solemn Frost relearn how to smile and laugh. We'd shared a hundred intimacies, dozens of jokes, a thousand new discoveries about the world in general, and none of it had been enough to push either one of us over the edge. Then suddenly a look in his eyes and a gentle kiss, and it was as if my feelings for him reached critical mass, as if it had only been waiting for one last touch, one last lingering glance, before I knew. I loved Frost, and from the startled look on his face as he stared down at me, I think he felt it, too.



Doyle's voice cut across the moment, making us both jump. "What you didn't hear, Meredith, is that Maeve Reed's land is warded. Warded as only a goddess, who has lived on the same piece of land for over forty years, could bespell."



I blinked up at Frost's face, trying to shift the gears in my head to listen to Doyle, and to care about what he was saying. I had heard him, but I wasn't sure I cared, not yet.



If Frost and I had been alone, we would have talked about it, but we weren't alone, and really being in love with each other didn't change much. I mean, it changed everything, and nothing. Loving anyone changes you, but royalty seldom marries for love. We marry to cement treaties, to stop or prevent wars, or to forge new alliances. In the case of the sidhe, we marry to breed. I'd been sleeping with Rhys, Nicca, and Frost for over three months and I wasn't pregnant. Unless one of them could get me with child, I wouldn't be permitted to marry any of them. It had been only three months, and it typically took a year or more for a sidhe to conceive. I hadn't been worried, until now. And I wasn't worried that I wasn't pregnant; I was worried that I wasn't pregnant and that it might mean I lost Frost. In the moment I finished the thought, I knew I couldn't afford to think that way.



I would have to give my body to the man whose seed made me pregnant. My heart could go wherever it wanted, but my body was spoken for. If Cel became King, he'd have the power of life and death over the court. He'd have to kill me, and anyone he saw as a threat to his power. Frost and Doyle would never survive. I wasn't sure about Rhys or Nicca. Cel didn't seem as afraid of their power; he might let them live. He might not.



I drew back from Frost, shaking my head.



"What's wrong, Meredith?" he asked. He grabbed my hand as I moved it away from his face. He held my hand in his, pressing it, almost painfully, as if he'd seen some of my thoughts on my face.



If I couldn't talk about love in front of the others, I certainly couldn't talk about the price of being a princess in front of them. I had to get pregnant. I had to be the next queen of the Unseelie Court, or we were all dead.



"Princess," Doyle said softly. I looked past Frost's shoulder to meet Doyle's dark eyes. And something in those eyes said that he, at least, had followed my thinking. Which meant he'd also realized how I felt about Frost. I didn't like that it was so apparent to others. Love, like pain, should be private until you want to share it.



"Yes, Doyle," I said, and my voice sounded hoarse, like I needed to clear my throat.



"Wards of such power prevent another fey from seeing all the magic inside a place. Frost scouted it as best he could, but the strength of the wards means we do not know what mystical surprises might await us inside the walls of Ms. Reed's estate." He talked of normal things, but his voice still held that edge of softness. In anyone else I would have said it was pity.



"Are you saying we shouldn't go in?" I asked. I drew my hand back from Frost's grip.



"No, I agree that I find her desire to meet with you, with all of us, intriguing."



The van pulled to a stop outside a tall gate. Rhys turned in the seat as much as his seat belt would allow. "I vote we go home. If King Taranis finds out we've talked to her, he'll be pissed. What could we possible learn that would be worth the risk?"



"Her banishment was a great mystery when it happened," Doyle said.



"Yes," Frost said. He slid back in his seat, eyes distant, as if he was shutting himself away from me. I'd pulled away, and Frost didn't react well to that. "The rumor was that she would be the Seelie's next Queen, then suddenly she was exiled."



He moved his leg away from mine, putting physical distance between us. I watched his face grow cold and hard and arrogant, the old mask he'd worn in the court for all those years, and I couldn't bear it. I took his hand in mine. He frowned at me, clearly puzzled. I raised his knuckles to my lips and kissed them, one by one, until his breath caught in his throat. For the second time today I had tears in my eyes. I kept my eyes very wide and very still, and managed not to cry.



Frost was smiling again, visibly relieved. I was glad he was happy. You should always want the people you love to be happy. Rhys just looked at us, his face neutral. He'd had his turn last night, tonight was Frost's turn, and Rhys had no problem with that.



Doyle caught my gaze, and his face was not neutral, but worried. Kitto stared up from the floorboard, and there was nothing I could understand on his face. For all that he looked so sidhe, he was other, and there were times when I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Frost held my hand and was happy with that. Happy that I hadn't turned away. Of all of them, only Doyle seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling and thinking.



"What does it matter why she was exiled?" Rhys said.



"Perhaps it doesn't matter," Doyle said, "or perhaps it matters very much. We won't know until we ask."



I blinked at him. "Ask, ask outright, without an invitation to ask something so personal?"



He nodded. "You are sidhe, but you are also part human. You can ask where we cannot, Meredith."



"I have better manners than to ask such a personal question right out of the bag," I said.



"We know you have better manners than that, but Maeve Reed does not."



I stared at him. Frost's fingers rubbed along my knuckles, over and over. "Are you saying I should pretend to not know any better?"



"I am saying we should use all the weapons in our arsenal. Your mixed heritage could be a decided advantage today."



"It would be almost the same thing as lying, Doyle," I said.



"Almost," he agreed, then that small smile of his curled his lips. "The sidhe never lie, Meredith, but shading the truth is a long-honored pastime among us."



"I'm very well aware of that," I said. My voice held enough sarcasm to fill the van.



His smile flashed suddenly white in the darkness of his face. "As are we all, Princess, as are we all."



"I don't think it's worth the risk," Rhys said.



I shook my head. "We had this conversation once, Rhys, I do think it's worth the risk." I looked up at Frost. "How about you?"



He turned to Doyle. "What do you think? I would not risk Meredith's safety for anything, but we are badly in need of allies, and a sidhe that has been exiled from faerie for a century might be willing to risk much to come back."



"You're suggesting that Maeve wants to help Meredith to be queen," Doyle made it half question, half statement.



"If Meredith is queen, then she could offer Maeve a return to faerie. I do not think that Taranis would risk all-out war for one returned exile."



"You really think a royal of the Seelie Court would be willing to come to the Unseelie Court?" I asked.



Frost looked down at me. "Whatever prejudices Maeve Reed might once have had against the Unseelie, she has been without the touch of fey hands for a century." He raised my hand to his mouth, kissed my fingertips, blowing his breath along each of them before he touched me. It brought shivers up and down my skin. He spoke with his mouth just above my skin. "I know what it is to want the touch of another sidhe and be denied. I at least had the court and the rest of faerie to comfort me. I cannot imagine her loneliness all these years." The last was said in a whisper. His eyes had gone solid rain-cloud grey.



It took effort, but I drew my attention away from Frost to look at Doyle. "Do you think he's right? Do you think she's looking for a way back into faerie?"



He shrugged, making the leather of his jacket creak with the movement. "Who can say, but I know that after a century of isolation, I certainly would be."



I nodded. "All right then, we're agreed. We go in."



"We are not agreed," Rhys said. "I'm going in under protest."



"Fine, protest all you want, but you're outvoted."



"If something really awful happens to us in there, I get to say I told you so."



I nodded. "If we're alive long enough for you to say it, knock yourself out."



"Sweet Goddess, if we die that quickly, I'll just have to come back and haunt you."



"If there's anything in there that can kill you, Rhys, I'll have died long before you."



He frowned at me; even through the beard I could see it. "That isn't comforting, Merry, that isn't comforting at all." But he turned around to face the big gates and leaned out his open window to press the intercom and announce our presence. Though I was betting that she knew we were there. She'd had forty years to bespell this land. Conchenn, goddess of beauty and charisma, knew we were here.