A Caress Of Twilight

Chapter 24

The drive all the way back to El Segundo was out of the way, to say the least, but when Kitto had woken up this morning he'd had circles under his eyes like purple bruises, and his pale skin had seemed tissue-paper thin, as if he'd worn thin over the night. I couldn't see him walking around on the open beach with nothing but a press of sky above him. Once I knew the location of the scene I gave Kitto a chance to decide, and he'd opted to crawl back into his covered dog bed.

I walked up the stairs from the parking area, sandwiched between Frost in front and Rhys in back. Frost spoke as we rounded the edge of the small pool. "If the little one does not begin to thrive, you are going to have to send him back to Kurag."

"I know," I said. We went up the last flight of steps and were almost instantly at my door. "I'm just worried about what Kurag will send next. He expected me to be offended when he offered Kitto in the first place. The fact that I took him and was okay with it really bothered him."

"By goblin standards Kitto is ugly," Rhys said.

It made me glance back at at him. He still hadn't regained his usual savoir faire. He looked downright glum. I didn't ask how Rhys, who understood almost nothing of goblin culture, knew what they considered pretty. With a sidhe warrior theirs for the evening, I was sure the goblins had given him only the most beautiful among them, by their standards. The goblins prized extra eyes and extra limbs, and Kitto didn't fit the bill. "I know, and he's not connected to the royal house in any way. Kurag expected me to refuse, and thus he'd have gotten out of our treaty."

We were at the door. A small potted geranium, pale pink, was sitting by the door. Galen had taken over most of the house chores, like searching for an apartment big enough for all of us and buying flowers for wandering fey to rest in. We'd have had a bigger apartment ages ago if price hadn't been a problem, but it was a very big problem to find a place big enough for all of us that we could afford. Most places had limits on how many people they'd allow to live there, and six adults was over that limit.

I was still refusing money from the courts, because no one gives money without expecting something in return. Frost thought I was just being stubborn, but Doyle agreed that there was always a price on any favor. I was pretty sure what Andais's favor would be — not to kill her son if I got the throne — and that was one favor I could not afford to grant. I knew that Cel would never accept me as queen, not as long as he was alive. That Andais didn't understand this was simply a mother's blindness. Cel was a wretched, twisted being, but his mother loved him, which was more than I could say for my own mother.

Frost pushed the door open, entering first; he'd checked and the wards had been intact. The sweet clean smell of lavender and sage incense met us at the door. The main altar sat in the far corner of the living room so that everyone could use it. You didn't need the altar. You could stand in the middle of a meadow, or a woods, or a crowded subway and deity was always with you — if you paid attention, and if you invited it into your heart. But the altar was a nice reminder. A place to start out every day with a little communion of the spirit.

People often thought that the sidhe had no religion — I mean they were once gods themselves, right? Well, sort of. They were worshipped as gods, but most sidhe acknowledge powers greater than they are. Most of us bend knee to Goddess and Consort, or some variation thereof. Goddess is the giver of all life, and Consort is all that is male. They are the template for everything that descends from them. She, especially she, is a greater power than anything on the planet, anything that is flesh, no matter how spiritual that flesh may once have been.

Except for the thin trail of incense from the altar, and a small carved bowl of water that had been added to the altar, the apartment looked empty. It didn't feel empty though. There was the small skin-tingling of magic nearby — not big magic but more the everyday kind. Doyle was probably on the mirror talking to someone. He'd opted to stay behind today and try to uncover more information about the Nameless from some of our friends at court. Doyle's magic was subtle enough that he might go completely undetected as he moved around amongst them. I could not have done it.

Rhys locked the door and pulled a taped note off it. "Galen's out apartment hunting. He hopes we like the flower." He pulled a second note from the door. "Nicca hopes to finish up the bodyguard job today."

"The actress is in no danger," Frost said, as he began to slip his jacket off. "I believe most sincerely that her agent put her up to it, to get more attention for a … how do they say, flagging career."

I nodded. "Her last two movies were pretty much flops, both financially and artistically."

"That I did not know. But the media is there to photograph us more than her."

"She's taking you to all the hot spots where you are bound to get seen." I wanted to slip off the high heels, but we were going right back out to work. So instead I walked to Kitto's covered hidey-hole and knelt down, smoothing my skirt behind automatically so the buckles on my shoes wouldn't snag my hose.

I could see his back curled toward the opening. "Kitto, you awake?"

He didn't move.

I touched his back, and the skin was cold. "Mother help us. Frost, Rhys, something's wrong."

Frost was at my side instantly; Rhys hung back. Frost touched the goblin's back. "He's like ice." He reached farther in so he could feel the pulse in the neck. He waited, waited for too long, before finally saying, "His blood does flow but slowly." He reached in and began pulling Kitto out from his nest. He came like one already dead, his limbs moving as if he was just dead weight.

"Kitto!" I didn't scream his name but it was close.

His eyes were closed, but it seemed I could see the vibrant blue of his pupils behind the closed lids, as if the skin was translucent. His eyes fluttered open and a slit of blue showed before his eyes rolled up into his head. He was murmuring something, and I bent close to hear. It was my name, "Merry, Merry," over and over.

He'd stripped down to his shorts, and I could see his veins through his skin, the muscles. A dark shape on his chest moved, and I realized that it was his heart beating. I could see it. It was if he were melting, or …

I looked up at Frost. "He's fading."

He nodded.

Rhys had gone to the bedroom door and brought Doyle out. They gathered round us, but the looks on their faces said more than words.

"No," I said, "it's not hopeless. There's got to be something that we can do."

They all exchanged looks, that flitting game of glance throwing, like the thoughts were too heavy to bear and you had to throw them to the next person and the next.

I grabbed Doyle's arm. "There has to be something."

"We do not know what would hold a goblin from fading."

"His mother was sidhe. Save him the way you'd save another sidhe."

Doyle looked a little disdainful, as if I'd insulted them all.

"Don't go all high and mighty on me, Doyle. Don't let him die because he's less mixed than either of us."

His expression softened. "Meredith, Merry, a sidhe fades only if he wishes it so. Once the process is begun, it cannot be stopped."

"No! There has to be something we can do."

He frowned down at us all. "Hold him, while I try to contact Kurag. If we cannot save him as sidhe, we will try to save him as goblin."

Kitto lay still in Frost's arms. "Merry needs to hold him," Doyle said, as he went for the bedroom.

Frost laid Kitto in my arms, across my lap. I slumped to the floor, put a hand under his legs, and pulled him into my lap. He fit; here was a man who I could hold in my lap. I'd spent much of my life around beings smaller than Kitto, but none who had looked so sidhe. Maybe that was why he seemed so doll-like at times.

I laid my cheek against his icy forehead. "Kitto, please, please, come back, come back from wherever you've gone. Please, Kitto, it's Merry."

He'd stopped murmuring my name. He'd stopped making any noise, and his weight, the way his body slumped against me … He felt dead. Not dying, but dead. There is a weight to a dead body that the living, no matter how sick, do not have. Logically, it has to be the same, but it never feels the same.

Doyle came back out, muttering under his breath. "Kurag is not near his mirror, or any still body of water. I cannot reach him, Merry. I am sorry."

"If Kitto were sidhe, what would you do to save him?"

"The sidhe do not fade from lack of faerie," Doyle said. "The sidhe fade only when they wish to."

I held his cold body in my arms and felt the beginnings of tears. But tears wouldn't help him, damn it. I needed to talk to Kurag, now. What was one thing all goblin warriors had on their bodies at all times? "Give me your blade, Frost."

"What?"

"My blade is trapped under Kitto's body. I need a blade, now."

"Do as she says," Doyle said.

Frost didn't like doing something he didn't understand, but he took out a knife from behind his back, one that was almost as long as my forearm, and handed it to me hilt first.

I took my hand out from under Kitto's legs, and said, "Hold the blade steady."

Frost dropped to one knee steadying the blade with both hands. I took a deep breath, placed my finger against the point, and jerked downward. It took a second for the blood to well.

"Merry, stop — "

"Hold the blade, Frost. That's all you have to do, so do it. I can't hold the blade and Kitto, too. Just do it."

He frowned but stayed kneeling, holding the blade as I drew my bleeding finger down that shining surface. The blood didn't coat it, just stained it, almost beading on the immaculate surface.

I dropped the shields that kept me from seeing spirits, kept me from shedding magic like old body skin. The magic flared for a second, glad to be free, then I willed it into the blade. I pictured Kurag, his face, his voice, his rough manner. "Kurag, I call you; Kurag Thousand-Slayer, I call you; Kurag, King of the Goblins, I call you. Thrice called, thrice named, come to me, Kurag, come answer your blade."

The surface gleamed through the light latticework of blood, but it was just metal.

"No sidhe has called a goblin by blade in centuries," Rhys said. "He won't answer."

"The naming of three is very powerful," Doyle said. "Kurag might be able to ignore it, but few others of his people could."

"But I have something he won't ignore." I leaned close to the blade and blew my breath warm upon it until it fogged with the heat of my body.

The blade glittered through the fog, the blood. The fog cleared and the blood soaked into the surface as if it had been drunk. I was left staring into a dim silvered surface. A blade, even the highest quality, is not like a mirror, no matter what the movies show. A blade gives an uncertain image, misty, as if you need to adjust some button or knob, but there is none. There is only a vague outline of a small portion of a person's face; their eyes are the most clear.

A blur of yellow lump-covered skin and two orange eyes appeared in the downside blade half; the upper was less clear but showed Kurag's third eye like a dim sun seen through cloud.

His voice was as clear as if he'd been standing in the room. It boomed out in a surprising rumble that made me jump. "Meredith, Princess of the Sidhe, was that your sweet breath that blew across my skin?"

"Greetings, Kurag, Goblin King. And Twin of Kurag, Goblin King's Flesh, greetings also." Kurag had a parasitic twin who consisted of one violet eye, a mouth, two thin arms, two thin legs, and small, though fully functional genitalia. The mouth could breathe but not speak, and to my knowledge I was the only one who ever acknowledged his existence as separate from the king's. I still remember the horror I felt when I realized there was an entire person trapped in the side of Kurag's body.

"It has been long since a sidhe has called the goblins by blood and blade. Most of the warriors who fought beside us after the great treaty have forgotten this old trick."

"My father taught me many tricks," I said. Kurag and I both knew that my father had often contacted him by blade and blood. My father had been Andais's unofficial ambassador to the goblins, because no one else wanted the job. My father had taken me to the goblin hill many times as a child.

His laughter did not so much roll out of the blade as roll through the room. "What would you have of me, Merry, daughter of Essus?"

He'd offered his help, and that was what I needed. I described the condition we'd found Kitto in. "He's fading."

Kurag cursed in the guttural language that was high goblin. I understood only about every other word. Something about black tits. "The mark ties you together, you and Kitto. Your strength should sustain him." His hand passed over his face like a yellow ghost in the blade. "This should not be happening."

I thought of something. "What if the mark healed over?"

"The mark would not heal, it would scar," he said.

"It did heal, Kurag, and it did not scar."

His orange eyes got very close to the blade, and very wide. "That should not happen."

"I didn't know that it was a problem to have it heal. Kitto didn't say anything."

"A lover's mark always scars, Merry. Always. At least among our kind." I couldn't read his expression in that narrow piece of reflection, but suddenly he let out a great snort, and said, "Has he been allowed to mark that white flesh only once?"

"Yes," I said.

"And the sex?" He sounded suspicious now.

"The treaty demanded only that I share flesh. Sharing true flesh is more valuable among the goblins than sex."

"Gabriel's Hounds take me. Yes, we value flesh, but what's a little bite without a little poke? Sinking teeth and dick into flesh, Merry girl, that's the ticket."

"Kitto shares my bed, Kurag, and stays with me most of the time, touching me. He seems to need to touch me."

"If the touch of your skin was all he had. ." He dissolved into high goblin again, which goblins rarely did; it was considered rude to use a language that the other person didn't know. My father had taught me some goblin, but it had been too long, and Kurag's use was too rapid for my rusty skills.

When Kurag had ranted long enough, he paused for breath and spoke in a language we could all understand. "The high and mighty sidhe, goblins are good enough to fight all your wars, do most of the dying, but not good enough to fuck. Sometimes I hate you all. Even you, Merry, and you're one of my favorites."

"I love you, too, Kurag."

"Don't sweet-talk me, Merry. If you'd have fucked Kitto regularly, the mark would have scarred. He needs a constant supply of flesh to sustain him out in the Western Lands. Either true flesh or fucking, but his tie to you is too weak without it, and he is dying because of it."

I looked down at the still, cold figure in my arms, then realized he wasn't as cold. He was still chilled, very, but not icy. "He's warmer." I said it softly, I think because I couldn't quite believe it.

Doyle touched Kitto's face. "He is warmer."

"Is that you, Darkness?" Kurag asked.

"It is I, Goblin King."

"Is he truly fading? I don't think Merry has ever seen anyone fade."

"He is fading," Doyle said.

"Then why is he warmer? If he is fading, then he should grow colder and colder."

"Merry has been holding him in her arms for a time. I believe that is warming him."

"Maybe it's not too late then. Is he strong enough to fuck?"

"He is barely conscious," Doyle said.

Kurag said a sharp word that I knew meant something that no goblin ever wished on another: impotency. It was their worst insult one to the other. "Can he tear her flesh with his teeth?"

We all stared down at the still form. He was warmer, though he still hadn't moved at all. "I don't think so," I said.

"Blood then, can he take blood?" Kurag asked.

"Maybe," I said.

"If we wiped it upon his mouth, we might get some of it into him," Doyle said. "If it did not choke him."

"He's a goblin, Darkness. He can't choke to death on blood."

"Does it have to be Merry's blood?" This from Rhys.

"I know you of old … Rhys," and that silence held a name that no one used anymore. "You should come visit us again, sidhe. The womenfolk still talk of you. That's high praise from a goblin female."

Rhys had gone very pale and very quiet. He made no answer.

Kurag gave an unpleasant laugh. "Yes, it must be Merry's blood. Later, if some of the rest of you want to share blood and flesh with Kitto, feel free. The sidhe are always good eatin'." He glared at me with those orange eyes. "If the blood revives him, then give him flesh, Merry, real flesh this time." His eyes suddenly grew huge in the blade. He must have nearly pressed his nose to the blade. "You thought you'd get the goblins as allies for six months and not have to bed one of us. You shared flesh, so I can't say you lied about the alliance. But you pixied on the spirit of it. You know it and I know it."

I placed my still-bleeding finger against Kitto's lips, painting them crimson while I talked to his king. "If I take him to my bed, then he has a chance to be king, king of all the Unseelie. That is worth more than a six-month alliance."

Kitto's eyes flickered; his mouth made a small movement. I slid my finger over his lips, between his teeth, and his body jerked, once.

"Oh, no, you won't get me that easy, Merry girl, not that easy. You give him flesh like you should have done all along, and you get only three more months out of us. After that, your battles are your own."

Kitto began to suck on my finger like a baby, gently at first, then harder, harder, teeth beginning to graze my skin. "He's sucking my finger, Kurag."

"I'd take the finger out before you lose it. He's not in his right mind yet, and goblins can bite through iron."

Kitto fought me, his mouth trying to hold on to my finger. By the time I pulled it free, his eyes were trying to open.

"Kitto," I said.

He didn't react to his name, or anything else, but he was warmer, and he was moving.

"He's moving, and he's warmer," I said.

"Good, very good. I've done my good deed, Merry. The rest is up to you."

I looked directly into the blade again, instead of down at Kitto. "You're just going to sit back and watch who wins, aren't you?"

"What matters to us who sits on the Unseelie throne? It matters to us only who sits on the goblin throne."

Doyle's deep voice cut in. "And what if Cel's followers were planning war with the Seelie?" Doyle knelt down, one hand squeezing gently but firmly on my shoulder. I think he was warning me not to interrupt.

"What are you babbling about, Darkness?"

"I am privy to much among the sidhe that the goblins do not know."

"You are not at court now."

"I am not without ears."

"Spies, you mean."

"I did not use such a word."

"Fine, fine, play the word games that you are all so fond of, but speak plainly to me."

"There are those at the Unseelie Court who believe Andais is desperate to have Meredith named her heir. They believe having a mortal on the throne is the end of them. They are talking about going to war on the Seelie before they all become powerless mortals. Our strength comes from our kings and queens, as you know."

"What you tell me is enough to make me throw in my lot with Cel's people."

"If the goblins were Merry's allies, then no one at the Unseelie Court would risk fighting against her. They dare to challenge the Seelie only because they assume they will have the goblins' support."

"What is it to us if the sidhe kill each other off?"

"You are bound by word, blood, earth, fire, water, and air to support the rightful heir to the Unseelie throne in all matters of strife. If Merry sits on the throne and Unseelie rebels fight against her while you sit back and do nothing, then your oath will come back upon you."

"You can't frighten me, sidhe."

"The Nameless walks the land again, and you think it is I whom you should be frightened of? There are terrible things far beyond me that will rise from the depths, descend from the sky, and take rightful payment from those who are forsworn by such oaths as you have taken."

It was difficult to tell in the blurred image, but Kurag looked worried. "I hear your words, Darkness, but Merry has fallen silent. Are you her new puppet master?"

"I tend your goblin, Kurag, and I have a better use for my tongue than telling you what you already know."

"I remember my oaths, girl."

"No, Kurag, that is not what I mean. The sidhe may not bear tales to the goblin mound, but you and I both know you have other means." I did not say out loud that the lesser fey at court, some servants, some not, talked to the goblins, sometimes for a price, sometimes for the feeling of power it gave them. My father had given his word never to tell of Kurag's system of spies. I had given no such oath. I was free to reveal the goblins' secret, but did not.

"Speak freely, Princess, and do not toy with this old goblin."

"I have spoken as freely as I intend to, Kurag, Goblin King."

He blew out a loud breath. "Merry girl, you are too much your father's daughter. Essus was my favorite of all the sidhe. His loss was great to all the courts of the Unseelie, for he was true friend to many."

"That means a great deal coming from you, Kurag." I didn't thank him, because you never thank an older fey. Some of the younger ones are cool with it now, but it's an old prohibition among us, almost a taboo.

"Do you honor all the oaths your father gave?"

"No, some I did not agree with, and some I know nothing of."

"I thought he told you everything," Kurag said.

"I am not a baby anymore, Kurag. I know that even my father kept his secrets. I was young when he died. Some things I wasn't ready to know."

"You are wise as well as luscious; how sad. Sometimes I'd have liked you better if you'd been just a little more stupid. I like my women less bright than I am."

"Kurag, you old charmer."

He laughed then, a true laugh, and it was contagious. I laughed with him, and as the eyes began to fade out of the blade, he spoke. "I will think on what your Darkness has said, and what you have said, and even what your father said. But you must give true sustenance to my goblin or in three months I will be free of you."

"You'll never be free of me, Kurag, not until you've fucked me. Or that's what you told me when I was sixteen."

He laughed; but at the end, he said, "I used to think things would have been safer if you'd agreed to be my queen, but I'm beginning to think you're just too dangerous to be allowed that close to any throne."