Mistral's Kiss

ABELOEC, MISTRAL, AND I GOT TO OUR FEET IN THE SOFT SPRING rain. It took me a moment to realize that there was light now. Not the colored shine of magic but a dim, pale light, as if there were a moon somewhere up near the stone roof of the cavern. I couldn't see the ceiling anymore. It was lost in a soft mist of clouds where the stone had been.



"Sky," someone whispered, "there's sky above us."



I turned to look at the other men who had been held outside the glowing circle of Abeloec's magic. I turned to find out who had spoken, but the moment I saw the others, I didn't care. I didn't even care that it was raining, or that there was sky, or some phantom moon. All I could think was that we were missing people: a lot of people.



Frost and Rhys were white shadows in the dimness, and Doyle a darker presence by their side. "Doyle, where are the others?"



It was Rhys who answered. "The garden took them."



"What does that mean?" I asked. I took a step toward them, but Mistral held me back.



"Until we find out what is happening, we cannot risk you, Princess."



"He is right," Doyle said. He walked toward us, gliding graceful and nude, but there was something in the way he moved that said the fight wasn't over. He moved as if he expected the ground itself to open up and attack. Just watching him move like that scared me. Something was horribly wrong.



"Stay with Mistral and Abe. Frost with Merry. Rhys with me."



I thought someone would argue with him, but they didn't. They followed him as they had followed him for a thousand years. My pulse was thudding in my throat, and I didn't understand what was happening, but I was almost certain in that moment that the men would never obey me as they obeyed him. I understood, as he stalked over the softening ground - with Rhys like a small, pale shadow at his side - why my aunt Andais had never made love to Doyle. Never given him a chance to fill her belly with child. She did not share power, and Doyle was a man whom other men followed. He had the stuff of kings in him. I had known that, but I hadn't been certain until this second that the other men knew it, too. Maybe not in the front of their heads, but in the very bones of their bodies, they understood what he was, what he could be.



He and Rhys moved toward a fringe of tall trees, their branches stark and dead against the soft, rainy twilight. Doyle was looking up into the trees, as if he saw something in the empty branches.



"What is that?" Mistral asked.



"I don't see...," Abe began; then I heard his breath draw in sharp.



"What, what is it?" I asked.



"Aisling, I think," Frost whispered.



I glanced at Frost. I could remember some of the other men who had been touching the trees. Adair, for example, had climbed a tree. I remembered seeing him up in the branches in the middle of all the sex and magic. But I didn't remember seeing Aisling after the magic hit us.



"I saw Adair climbing a tree, but I don't remember Aisling," I said.



"He vanished once we entered the garden," Frost said.



"I thought he had been left behind in the room with Barinthus and the others," I said.



"No, he was not left behind," Mistral said.



"I can't see what Doyle is looking at."



"You may not wish to," Abe said. "I know I don't."



"Don't treat me like a child. What do you see? What's happened to Aisling?" I pulled away from Mistral. But he and Abe were still between me and the line of trees. "Move aside," I said.



They glanced at each other, but didn't move. They would not obey me as they obeyed Doyle.



"I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hand of flesh and blood. You are royal guards, but not royal. Don't let the sex go to your heads, gentlemen - move!"



"Do as she says," Frost said.



They glanced at each other, but then parted so I could see. Unlike Frost, Doyle would have known not to help me, because now they weren't obeying me. They were obeying Frost. But that was a problem for another night. This night, this night, I wanted to see what everyone else had already seen.



There was a pale shape hanging from the tallest branch of the tallest tree. I thought at first that Aisling was hanging by his hands, dangling from the branch on purpose; then I realized that his hands were by his sides. He was dangling from the branch, yes, but not by his hands. The rain started to fall harder. "The branch...," I whispered, "it's pierced his chest."



"Yes," Mistral said.



I swallowed hard enough that it hurt. There weren't many things that could bring death to the high court of faerie. There were tales of the immortal sidhe standing up after a beheading, still alive. But there were no stories about living on after your heart was gone.



Some of the other guards hadn't wanted Aisling to sleep in the bedroom with us, feeling he was too dangerous. To look upon his face had once been to fall instantly, hopelessly in love with him. Even goddesses and some gods had fallen to his power, once, or so the old stories said. So he had voluntarily kept most of his clothes on, including the gauzy veil that he wore wrapped around his face. Only his eyes were left bare.



He was a man so beautiful that all who saw him, loved him. I had ordered him to use that power on one of our enemies. She had tried to kill Galen, and almost succeeded. But I hadn't understood what I asked of him, or what I condemned her to see. She had given us information, but she had also clawed out her own eyes so she would no longer be under his power.



He had been afraid to even take off his shirt in front of me, for fear that I was too mortal to look upon his flesh, let alone his face. I hadn't been bespelled, but staring at the pale form, hanging lifeless, lost to twilight and rain, I remembered him. I remembered his skin, golden, golden as if someone had shaken gold dust across his pale, perfect body. He had sparkled in the light, not just with magic, but the way a jewel catches the light. He had glittered with the beauty of what he was. Now he hung in the rain, dead or dying. And I had no idea why.