Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Twenty-Two

Doyle borrowed a nonmagical dagger from Sholto, who had several weapons stashed around the office. I wondered if his bedroom was similarly armed, and figured that it probably was. It showed a lack of arrogance and a caution that I found commendable in a sidhe warrior, and outrageously attractive in a king. Tonight, we were trying to survive and flee, and extra weapons that weren't major artifacts of power seemed like a very good idea.

Doyle used the dagger to contact Rhys. Most of faerie used mirrors, but some of the first reflection magic had been with one of the few reflected surfaces that all of us had carried. Even nonwarriors had carried a blade to cut food or do chores. A knife was useful for many things besides killing. You just needed a body fluid to paint across the blade. For whatever reason, mirrors didn't need that extra personal touch, which was probably why we'd gone to mirrors.

Doyle made a small cut on his finger and painted his blood across the side of the dagger. Then he leaned close and called for Rhys.

I sat in Sholto's big office chair, my feet curled up underneath me. The living crown had unraveled and gone to wherever it went. Sholto's hair was also bare once more. Apparently, the power had made its point.

I wasn't certain if it was the retreat of such major magic, or the events finally catching up with me, but I was cold. It was a cold that had little to do with the constant temperature of the faerie mound. Some types of cold have nothing to do with skin and blankets, but are a cold of heart and soul.

The sword Aben-dul lay on the clean surface of Sholto's big desk. The images that had appeared on its hilt were still there, frozen in whatever the hilt was made of. It felt like bone, but not quite. There was a woman's nude body frozen in a miniature attitude of pain and horror, her face melting into the leg of the man above her.

The hand of flesh was one of the most terrible magics that the sidhe possessed. I'd used it only twice, and each time haunted me. If I'd used it on humans it might have been less awful, for they would have died if you turned them inside out. The sidhe did not die. You had to find another way to bring them death while they screamed, and their internal organs glistened in the lights. Their heart beat in the open air, still attached by blood vessels and other bits and pieces.

The last person to wield the hand of flesh had been my father. But the sword on the desk had not reappeared to him. It had come to me. Why?

Mistral stepped between me and the desk, pushing the chair back with his hands on its arms. The chair rolled smoothly back, and I looked up at him where he bent over me.

"Princess Meredith, you look haunted."

I opened my mouth, closed it, then finally said, "I'm cold."

He smiled, but his eyes were serious as he turned to Sholto. "The princess is cold."

Sholto simply nodded, and opened the door to speak to the guards waiting outside. He was a king, and simply assumed that the guards would be there, and that one of them would be all too happy to fetch a servant, who would in turn fetch a blanket or a coat. It was the arrogance of the nobility. I'd never had enough servants who listened to me to acquire the habit. Though maybe my father had planned it that way. He'd been a man who thought far ahead. Maybe he'd understood that without that arrogance I would be more fair. Faerie was overdue for a little fairness.

Mistral knelt in front of me, and he was tall enough that he still blocked my view of the desk. The sword was not the only thing on the desk. His spear lay there too. It was no longer a shining, silver-white thing, but looked like some pale wood, though it was carved with runes and language so old that I could not read it all. I wondered if Mistral could, but I did not wonder enough to ask. There were other things that I needed to know more.

"Why did the sword not come to my father's hand? He held the hand of flesh."

Doyle answered from behind us. "He also held the hand of fire."

I did not look behind, but answered. "And I have the hand of blood. What does one thing have to do with another? Aben-dul is made for anyone who holds the hand of flesh. Why me, and not my father?"

"The artifacts of power had not begun to return when Prince Essus was alive," Doyle said.

Mistral asked, "Did you reach Rhys?"

"Yes." Doyle came to stand on my right side. He took my hand in his, the hand that had allowed me to touch a sword that without a matching magic would have turned me inside out, and I would have died, just like that.

He kissed the palm of my hand, and I tried to pull away from him, but he held me. "You carry a great power, Meredith. There is nothing wrong or evil in it."

I pulled harder on my hand, and he finally let me go rather than fight about it. "I know that a magic is not evil in and of itself, but because of what it does, Doyle. You've seen what it does. It is the most horrible magic I have ever seen."

"Did the prince never demonstrate the power for you?" Mistral asked.

"I saw the enemy who the queen keeps in a trunk in her bedroom. I know my father made him into the... ball of flesh that he is."

"Prince Essus did not agree with what the queen chose to do with... it," Doyle said.

"Not it," Sholto said. "Him. If it hadn't been a him do you really think the queen would have gotten him out of his trunk?"

We all looked at him. Mistral's look was not a happy one. "We're trying to make her feel better, not worse."

"The queen took pride in letting Meredith see just how terrible she could be."

I nodded. "He's right. I saw the... what was left of the prisoner. I saw him in her bed, and was told to put him back in his trunk."

"I did not know," Doyle said.

"Nor I," Mistral said.

"Did you really think the queen spared the princess anything?"

"Andais spared her the worst of our humiliations," Mistral said, "because Meredith had never seen her torture us as she did the night the princess saved us." He took one of my hands in his, and gave me the look that I had earned at last. It was a look of respect, gratitude, and hope. It had been Mistral's eyes that night, his glance at me, that had given me the courage to risk death to save them all from the queen. His eyes that night had said clearly that I was just another useless royal. I had done my best to prove him wrong.

I wondered if he knew that, and something moved me to tell him. "It was your eyes that night, Mistral, that made me risk death at the queen's hands."

He frowned. "You barely knew me then."

"True, but you looked at me while she bled some of you and made the others watch. Your eyes told me what you thought of me, that I was just another useless royal."

He studied my face. "You nearly died that night because I looked at you?"

"I had to prove you wrong, Mistral. I had to risk everything to save you all, because it was the right thing to do. It was the dutiful thing to do."

He held my hand in both of his, though his hands were so big, and mine so small, that he was holding more of his own skin than mine. He was still studying my face, as if judging the weight of my words.

"She does not lie," Doyle said from the other side of me.

"It's not that. It's that I have not had a woman care so much what I thought in longer than I can remember. That she reacted so, from just that glance... " He frowned at me, then asked, "Were we always destined to be together? Is that why one glance from me did so much?"

I hadn't thought about it that way. "I do not know. I only know that it is what happened. You make me have to be more than I planned on being, Storm Lord."

He smiled then. It was a smile that any man might have given a woman. A smile that said how pleased he was, and how much my words had meant to him. Everyone thinks that the magic of being with all the men is about the otherworldliness of them and me, but some of the most precious moments are the most ordinary. Moments that any man and woman could share, if they loved, and spoke the truth.

Did I love Mistral? In that moment, as he gazed up at me, I had only one answer: Not yet.