Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Forty-Seven

I waited for the pain of the shrapnel wounds, But it was nothing compared to the pain of my men. Two thousand years of war. A thousand years of being tortured by my aunt. Every sword cut, every spear thrust, every whip mark, every claw was there on their bodies in one red ruin.

Galen writhed on the ground beside me clutching the bloody front of his pants. I knew what wound had reappeared. Rhys's missing eye was a bloody hole again. Doyle lay on his side, fighting to try to get to his knees, but he was too hurt. They were all too hurt. There were cries in the distance, and it was not just my men. The Red Caps were back to being damaged. I understood in that moment what a terrible hand of power Cel possessed. I hadn't understood until that moment. I hadn't understood so very much until that moment.

Cel jerked me to my feet by my wrist. He pulled me in against his body, and turned me to gaze out at the field. Everyone was on the ground, everyone. Andais was just a dark heap on the frost-whitened grass. Her cloak of shadows had gone, which meant she was either unconscious or worse.

"Draw your sword," he hissed in my face. "Let me disarm you in front of them all, and drive it into that fertile womb of yours. Did you know that's why my mother turned against me? She made me take those human doctors' tests and found that I couldn't father children. That's when she called you home." He traced his free hand up the side of my neck, until he entwined his fingers in my hair. He stopped just short of where the crown still burned with its darkling flame on my head.

He let go of my wrist, and put his other hand on the other side of my face. He turned me to face him and cradled me oh so gently between his hands. "Draw your sword, Merry. Draw it, and let them see how weak you truly are." He whispered it against my face as he came in for a kiss.

I put my hands on his hands, bare skin to bare skin, as he kissed me. My arm that had been crippled by the original injury seemed a little less hurt. Was it the crown protecting me, or the fact that I was queen at last?

He laid a gentle kiss on my mouth, a good kiss, and not what I'd expected, but then he was full of surprises tonight.

He drew back from me, taking my hands in his. He smiled, and his eyes were completely mad. "I'm going to kill you now."

"I know," I said, and I used the hands of blood and flesh together. Where Holly and Ash and I had used them to heal, now I used them to destroy. I drove the hand of blood into him, not in search of wounds, but in search of blood. I used the hand of flesh to cut and tear his body from the inside out. As the hands of power had flowed over the battlefield in a wave of cleansing blood and smoothing flesh, now they filled this one man.

Cel's eyes went wide. "You can't," he whispered.

"I can," I said, and I flexed that power, flexed it like a giant's fist that I'd shoved deep into his body, then I opened that fist. One moment Cel was there, eyes wide, hands in mine, the next he wasn't. Blood smacked into me, and thicker things hit my face. There was a sharp pain in my cheek, and I was left standing alone, covered in blood and thicker things. I scraped what was left of my cousin off my face so I could see, and found that it was his teeth in my cheek, blown there by the force of the magic. I pulled them out, and promised myself a tetanus shot, and antibiotics if I could have them while pregnant. I promised myself a lot of things as I stood there, shaking.

Doyle was suddenly at my side. Rhys was there too, wiping the blood from his face. His eye was back to its usual scar. Galen was with me too. His only injuries were the fresh ones from the fight.

"But how... ?" I asked.

"He died, and his hand of old blood died with him," Doyle said. I held my bloodstained hand out to Doyle. He took it, and I drew him over the red ruin that was all that was left of our enemy. I drew him down into a kiss, and the moment our lips met, our skin ran with light. I was moonlight, and he was black fire, bright enough that it cast shadows across the field.

There were gasps and whispers, and I finally came away from the kiss to find that there was a crown woven into Doyle's hair. Thin thorn branches formed a latticework above his head, but each thorn was tipped with silver. It was Jonty who whispered, "The Crown of Thorn and Silver."

Doyle reached up and touched the crown. He came away with a bright spot of crimson on his fingertip. "It is sharp."

"My king," I said.

He smiled. "One of them."

Then a sound, a horrible wet throaty sound, drove the answering smile from my face. "Frost," I said, and turned back to the stag. It lay on its side, the spear sticking up like a young tree stripped of its branches. Blood had drenched its white coat.

Doyle and I went to him. I knelt and touched the fur where it was clean of blood. He was warm to the touch, but there was no movement. "No," I said. "No."

"He was a willing sacrifice," Doyle said.

I shook my head. "I do not want this."

"He gave himself so you could rule the Unseelie."

I shook my head again. "I don't want to rule them without him at my side." I laid my head on the stag's still-warm side, and whispered, "Frost, come back to me. Please, please, don't go. Don't go."

I smelled roses, thick and warm as summer's kiss. I rose and there was a shower of rose petals falling from the winter sky.

It was Galen who wrapped his hands around the spear, and took it out of the stag's side to show the horrible wound. Galen stood above us, bathed in the rose petals, the spear in his hands, his face anguished, his clothes covered in blood.

Rhys knelt by the stag's head, hands gripping the smooth white horns. Tears trailed from his one good eye. Mistral came to stand with us, gripping his own more slender spear. I saw Sholto at the far edge of the field, his sluagh like a black cloud of nightmare shapes flying and creeping with him. He stopped to stare at us grouped around the white stag. He bowed his head, as if he knew.

Ash and Holly stood with the Red Caps. They had all lowered their weapons and pointed them at the ground as a sign of respect.

A voice came out of the sweet fall of petals. "What would you give for your Killing Frost?"

"Anything."

"Would you give the crown upon your head?" the voice asked.

"Yes," I said.

Mistral said "Meredith." But the other men said nothing. Mistral hadn't been with us from the beginning, so he didn't understand.

"And you, Darkness, would you give up your crown?"

Doyle took my hand in his, and said, "To have my right hand at my side again, I would."

"So be it," the voice said. There was a wind, and the scent of rain, and the dark light of the crowns was gone.

But a hand reached up through the hole in the stag's side. I touched that hand, and it wrapped around mine. "Goddess, help us," I said.

"She is," Doyle said, and he went to the hole in the stag's side. He tore at it with his hands. Rhys joined him. Mistral crawled to us, but he was too wounded to help. Galen gave the spear Shrieker to Mistral, and used his one unwounded arm to help tear at the hole. It was as if the stag's body had become a shell, something dry and unreal. It flaked and tore under their hands, and a second hand appeared along with the first, then arms. And then we were pulling him from the wreck of his other form.

That fall of silver hair fell over my lap, and then finally he turned and looked at me. Those gray eyes, that face that was almost too handsome for words, but there was no arrogance in my Frost now. There was only pain, and so much emotion trapped in those eyes.

He fell into our arms, mine and Doyle's. We held him while he shook. He clung to us while we cried. The Darkness and the Killing Frost clung to each other, and to me, and wept.