Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Twenty-One

Sholto's office was full of rich, polished wood, stained as dark a brown as it was possible to do and not ruin the wood. The walls were even paneled wood. There was a wall hanging behind the main desk. It was faded, but the threads still showed a scene of the sky boiling with clouds that held tentacles and sights best left to horror movies. There were tiny figures on the ground of people running in terror. One figure, a woman with long yellow hair, gazed up at the clouds while everyone else ran or hid their eyes. As a child I had gazed at the hanging while my father and Sholto did business. I knew from asking that the hanging was almost as old as the Bayeux tapestry, and that the blond woman was Glenna the Mad. She had made a series of tapestries of what she'd seen when the wild hunt had come through her countryside. The tapestries gradually became more bizarre as her senses left her.

I'd stared into what had driven Glenna insane, and I hadn't flinched. Had it been shock? Had it been the blessing of the God and Goddesses? Or had all the losses finally caught up with me?

Doyle was standing behind me, his arms around my waist, holding me against the front of his body. The weight and reality of him were like a lifeline. I was fleeing faerie for good reasons, the right reasons, but I could admit in my head that one of the main reasons was this man. Maybe it was Gran's death, but I think I'd decided that for Doyle and the children inside me I'd trade a throne.

A man's voice on the other end of the phone made me jump. I'd been waiting on hold for a long time. I think they hadn't believed that I was who I said I was.

Doyle hugged me a little more tightly, while my pulse calmed a little.

"This is Major Walters. Is that really you, Princess?"

"It's me."

"They're telling me you need a police escort out of faerie." A tendril of the roses in my crown curled downward to touch the phone receiver.

"I do."

"You do know that the walls of your hospital room melted. Witnesses say you and King Sholto flew out of the room on flying horses, but somehow the Mobile Reserve Team that was watching the outside of your room didn't see any of this until you were far enough away, then the holes in the walls just appeared to them." He didn't sound happy.

"Major Walters, I am sorry that I upset your Mobile Reserve and anyone else, but I've had a hell of a night myself, okay?" There was the tiniest catch in my voice. I took a few deep, even breaths. I would not break down. Queens didn't do that.

Doyle kissed the top of my head, laying his cheek between the roses and the mistletoe of the crown.

The rose tendril wrapped tightly around the phone, and tugged.

"Are you hurt?"

"Not physically."

"What happened, Princess?" His voice was gentler now.

"It's time for me to get out of faerie, Major Walters. It's time for me to get out of your jurisdiction. I'm too close to my relatives in St. Louis." The tendril pulled harder, as if it were trying to pull the phone out of my hand. Faerie had crowned me the queen of this mound. It didn't want to lose me to the human world.

I whispered, "Stop it."

"What was that, Princess?"

"Nothing, sorry."

"What do you need from us?"

Doyle touched the tendril and began to uncurl it from the phone. He tried to take both of his hands away to do it, but I put one arm back around my waist, so he was forced to do it one-handed.

I explained that my uncle's people were outside my refuge and were threatening war on the sluagh unless they handed me over. "My uncle is absolute ruler of the Seelie Court. He's convinced them that the twins I carry are somehow his, and he's their king. He claims that the sluagh stole me away, and the Seelies want me back." I didn't try to fight the catch in my voice now. "They want to give me back to my uncle. Do you understand?"

Doyle finally had the tendril unwrapped. I felt it move back up with the rest of the living crown.

"I heard what he's accused of, and I am sorrier than I know how to say, Princess Meredith."

"Accused of, Walters? Nice that you don't admit that you believe me."

Doyle held me more tightly.

Major Walters started to protest.

I cut him off. "It's okay, Walters. Just escort me back to reality. Get us all on a plane and back to L.A."

The tendril slid back toward the phone.

"You should have a doctor look at you before you get on a plane."

I put a hand over the receiver and hissed, "Stop!" The vine stopped in mid-motion like a child caught with its hand going for cookies.

"Princess, we'll come and get you, but on the condition that you let a doctor look you over before we put you on the plane."

"We melted the walls of the room I was in. Do you really think the hospital wants me back?"

"They're a hospital, and they want you safe. We all want you safe."

"You don't want me dying on your watch is what you mean."

Doyle sighed, and kissed my cheek. I wasn't sure if he was warning me not to be too harsh with the humans, or if he was simply comforting me.

"Princess, that is not what I mean," he said and he sounded like he meant it.

"Fine, I'm sorry. Please, come get us."

"It will take a little while to get things round, but we'll get there."

"Why a while?" I asked.

"After what happened last time, Princess, we've been given permission, or orders, depending on how you want to look at it, to have the National Guard with us. Just in case the sky boils and monsters come out again. I know your man Abeloec healed the ones who went mad, but enough of them remember some of what happened that this is more than a straight police matter."

"Mobile Reserve can't handle it?" I asked.

"The National Guard has witches and wizards assigned to their units now. The police don't."

"Oh," I said. "I'd forgotten that. That horrible thing that happened in Persia." It had been on the news for days, in horrible living color.

"It's not called Persia anymore, Princess Meredith, and hasn't been for a very long time."

"But the creatures that attacked our soldiers were Persian bogey beasts. They had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with the original religion of the region."

"That may be, but the National Guard will bring magic workers, and after what's been happening, I think I agree that we need them."

What was I supposed to say to that? The tendril curled around the phone and tugged again, and this time I hit it gently with my finger. It curled away as if I'd hurt its feelings. I appreciated being crowned by faerie itself. I appreciated the honor, but a crown wasn't going to protect me from my relatives. Once I'd thought it would, but I realized that that had been naive.

"I'll make the calls. How long can you hold out in the sluagh mound?"

"If we just stay inside, awhile. But I don't know how long the Seelie will wait to press the matter."

"Do they actually believe that your uncle is the father of your children?"

"My mother is out there with them, agreeing with it. I can't even blame them for believing her. She's my mother. Why would she lie?"

Sholto pushed away from the wall where he and Mistral had been waiting. I think they were giving me alone time with Doyle. But now, Sholto came and took my free hand in his, and laid a gentle kiss on it. I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve such comfort.

"Why would she lie?" Major Walters asked.

"Because her greatest goal in life was always to be part of the inner circle of the Seelie Court, and if she can make me Taranis's queen, then she's suddenly the mother of the queen of the Seelie Court. She'd love it."

"She'd trade your freedom for a little social climbing?"

"She'd trade my life for a little social climbing."

Doyle stood at my back, and held me. Sholto knelt at my feet and wrapped his arms around my legs, gazing up at me. The flowers on his crown were like a mist of lavender, pink, and white. He looked terribly Seelie kneeling there and staring up with those tri-gold eyes.

"No, Princess, she's your mom."

"She let my uncle beat me nearly to death when I was young. She watched him do it. My grandmother was the one who intervened and saved my life."

I touched Sholto's face, and knew in that instant that here was another man who would risk everything for me. He'd already proven that when he came to fetch me from the Seelie Court, but the look in his eyes now said more.

"There's a rumor that your grandmother was injured. My staff saw some of your men carrying her on horseback out of the hospital."

"She's not injured. She's dead." My voice was oddly flat when I said it.

Sholto's eyes showed pain, because he was the one who had struck the fatal blow. It was his hand that had killed Gran, even though he had had no choice.

"What?" Major Walters asked.

"I don't have time to explain, Major Walters. I need help. I need a human escort out of here."

"Why can't your Unseelie guard get you out?"

"I'm not certain what the Seelie would do if they saw Unseelie warriors right now. But they won't attack humans, especially human soldiers. It would break the peace, and they would risk being kicked out of America for waging war on your soil."

"They're trying to give you back to the man you've accused of raping you. That's not very rational. Do you really think that they'll let soldiers come in and take you without a fight?"

"If not, then kick their asses out of America."

"Are you setting us up to help you get rid of your enemies, Princess?"

"No, I'm doing the only thing I can think of that might, just might, avoid any more bloodshed or violence. I've seen enough for one night. I'm part human, and I'm going to embrace that part, Major Walters. They keep saying I'm too mortal to be sidhe, well, I'll go be mortal. Because it is too dangerous to be sidhe right now. Get me out of here, Major Walters. I am pregnant with twins, and I have some of the fathers of my children with me. Get us out of here before something fatal happens. Please, Major Walters, please help me."

The tendril curled back away from the phone. Doyle held me against his body. Sholto still had his ams wrapped around my legs, putting his arms between Doyle's body and mine, but it was all right in that instant, it wasn't competitive. Sholto laid his cheek against my legs, hiding his eyes.

"I am so sorry, Meredith, about your grandmother. Please forgive me."

"We punished the person who killed Gran. You know, we all know, that it wasn't your hand that did it."

He gazed up at me, his handsome face anguished. "But it was my hand that struck the blow."

"If you had not done it, and I could have," Doyle said, "it would have been my hand."

Mistral spoke from near the door. "What all has been happening while I was being tortured?"

"There is much to tell," Doyle said, "but let it wait for a later time."

Mistral came to stand near us, but there wasn't much of me left to touch. I offered him a hand, and after a moment's hesitation, he took it. "I will follow you into exile, Princess."

"I cannot leave my people," Sholto said, still on his knees.

"You will be in danger if you stay in faerie," I said. "They've already proven that the three of you are marked for assassination."

"You must come with us, Sholto, or never leave the safety of the sluagh mound again," Doyle said.

Sholto hugged my legs, rubbing his cheek along my thighs. "I cannot leave my people without both king and queen."

"A dead king is not worth anything to them," Mistral said.

"How long will this exile last?" Sholto asked.

"Until the babies are born, at least," I said.

"I can travel from Los Angeles to parts of the sluagh mound, for thanks to our magic there is a beach edge inside the mound. So I can visit my people without making myself a target to the sidhe."

"You say sidhe, not Seelie," I said. "Why?"

"Onilwyn is not Seelie, but he helped your cousin and her Seelie allies try to kill Mistral. We have enemies on all sides, Meredith. Isn't that why you are leaving faerie?"

I thought about what he'd said, then could only nod. "Yes, Sholto, that is exactly why we must leave faerie. There are more enemies than even the Goddess herself could have foreseen."

"Then we go into exile," Doyle said at my back, his voice rumbling through my body like a purr to ease my nerves.

"We go into exile," Mistral said.

"Exile," Sholto said.

We were agreed. Now we just had to find Rhys and Galen and tell them we were leaving.