Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Four

Doyle didn't flinch or otherwise react. "It is a very small wound."

"But how did it happen?" Galen asked.

"I believe the glass is coated with some sort of man-made material," Doyle said.

"So because it's man-made and not natural," I said, "it was able to cut you?"

"Normal glass would have still cut me."

"But it would have healed by now," I said, "without the man-made coating?"

"It is a small cut, so yes."

"But you were covering Merry's body when you were cut," Gran said, and her voice was flat, almost without accent. She could do that when she wished, though it didn't happen often.

"Yes," he said, and looked at her.

She swallowed hard. "I do nae have the magic resistance to be near my Merry right now, do I?"

"It is sidhe magic we will be fighting," he said.

She nodded, and a look of deep sorrow came over her face. "I cannae be with ya, Merry. I cannae resist what they will make me do. It's one of the reasons I left their court. A brownie is a servant there, and when we are invisible to them we are safe, but brownies were ne'r meant to dabble in court politics."

I reached out to her. "Gran, please."

Rhys stepped between us as she moved forward. "Not a good idea yet. We need to look at the spell first."

"I would say I would n'er hurt my girl, but if the Darkness... if Captain Doyle had not protected her, I would have cut her 'stead of his back."

"What could they have offered to Merry's cousin?" Galen asked.

"Mayhap the thing they offered me centuries ago," Gran said.

"What was that?" Galen asked.

"A chance to bed, and if with child, marry one of their Seelie nobles. No one will touch Cair for fear that her... deformity will breed true. I was only half human, and I worked in the court as a brownie, but I saw the Seelie and I wished to be a part of it. I was a fool, but it earned my girls a chance to be a part of that glittering mess. But Cair is always outside of it, because she looks too much like her ol' Gran."

"Gran," I said, "it's not... "

"No, child, I know what face I bear, and I know that it takes a special sidhe to love it. I ne'r found that sidhe, but I was not part sidhe. I did na' have the blood of the court running in my veins. I was a brownie who got uppity, but Cair, she is one of them. It must be a thing of great pain to watch the others with their perfect faces get what she longs for."

"I know what it is like to be denied a place at court," Sholto said, "because you are not perfect enough to be bedded. The Unseelie sidhe run scared of my bed, for fear they will breed monsters."

Gran nodded, and finally looked at him. "I am sorry that I said some of the things I said, Shadow Lord. I should know better'n most what it is to be hated for bein' less than sidhe."

He nodded. "The Queen called me Her Creature. Until Merry came to me, I thought I would be doomed to live out my life until I became simply Creature, as Doyle is Darkness." He smiled at me then, with that intimate look that he hadn't quite earned yet. It was so odd to be pregnant after only one night with a man. But then, hadn't that been what had happened with my parents? One night of sex, and my mother had been trapped in a marriage she did not want. Seven years of marriage before she was allowed to divorce him.

"Aye, the courts are cruel, though I had hoped the dark court would be a little less so."

"They accept more," Doyle said, "but even the Unseelie have their limits."

"They saw me as proof that the sidhe were failing as a people, because once they could bed anything and breed true," Sholto said.

"They saw my mortality as proof that they were dying," I said.

"And now the two they feared the most may be the saving of us all," Doyle said.

"Nicely ironic," Rhys said.

"I must go, Merry-girl," Gran said.

"Let us test the spell and remove any lingering effects on you," Doyle said.

She gave him a look that wasn't entirely friendly. "Rhys and Galen can touch you," he said. "I do not need to."

She took a long breath, her thin shoulders going up and down. Then she looked at him with a softer, more thoughtful look. "Aye, ya should look at me, for the thought of you touching me was not a good one. I think the spell lingers in me mind, and it is not good to linger on such thoughts. They grow and fester in the mind and heart."

He nodded, still holding my hand in his. "They do."

"Test the spell, Rhys," she said. "Then cure me of it. I must away, unless you can find a way for me to be proof against such sorceries."

"I'm sorry, Hettie."

She smiled at him, then turned a less-happy face to me. "Sorry I am that I will nae be able to help ya through this pregnancy, or help tend the bairns for ya."

"Me, too," I said, and meant it. The thought of her leaving hurt my heart.

Rhys held the shining thread out. "I'd like your opinion on it, Doyle."

Doyle nodded, squeezed my hand, then walked around the bed to Rhys. Neither of them seemed to want to give Gran a clear way to touch me. Was it really that strong a spell, or were they just being cautious?

If it was caution, I couldn't blame them, but I wanted to say good-bye to Gran. I wanted to touch her, especially if it was the last time I'd see her until after the babies were born. Just thinking that all the way through — when the babies were born — shocked me a little. We'd been trying to get me pregnant for so many months that the pursuit of the pregnancy had been all I'd thought about. That, and staying alive. I hadn't thought about what it would mean. I hadn't thought about babies, and children, and having them. It seemed a strange oversight.

"Your face, Merry-girl, so serious," Gran said.

I looked at her, and remembered being very small, so small that I could curl up in her lap and she had seemed large. I remembered feeling utterly safe, as if nothing in the world could harm me. I had believed that. It must have been before I was six, before the Queen of Air and Darkness, Aunt Andais, had tried to drown me. That had been a moment that had brought the realities of being mortal among the immortal home to me as a child. It was nicely ironic that the future of the Unseelie Court was in my body, my mortal body, which Andais had thought wasn't worth keeping alive. If I could be killed by drowning, then I wasn't sidhe enough to live.

"I just realized that I'm going to be a mother."

"Aye, you are."

"I hadn't thought about anything beyond getting pregnant."

She smiled at me. "It will be a few months before ya have to worry about mothering."

"Is it ever too soon to worry?" I asked.

Sholto had come to stand on the far side of the bed from Gran. Doyle and Rhys were looking at the thread. Doyle was actually sniffing it rather than using his hands. I'd seen him do that to magic before, as if he would trace it back to its owner like a hound on a scent.

Sholto took my hand in his, and I didn't pull away, but I saw Gran's face harden. Not good. I looked at him, and what I saw in his face reassured me. I'd expected him to look arrogant or angry, and to have that directed at her. I'd expected that he took my hand to prove to Gran that she couldn't stop him from touching me. But his face was gentle, and he was gazing at me.

He gave me a smile as gentle as any I'd seen on his face. His triple yellow eyes with their individual lines of gold were soft, and he looked like a man in love. I was not in love with Sholto. I had only been alone with him twice, both times ending in violent interruptions, neither of them our doing. We didn't really know each other yet, but he looked at me as if I were the world, and it was a good, safe place.

It made me uncomfortable enough that I dropped my eyes so he would not see that my look did not match his. I could not give him love in my face, not yet. Love, for me, was made up of time and shared experience. Sholto and I had not had that yet. How strange to be with his child, and not to be in love with him.

Was this how my mother had felt? Married, bedded, but not in love, then to suddenly find herself pregnant with the child of a stranger? For the first time ever, I had some sympathy with my mother's emotional ambiguity toward me.

I had loved my father, Prince Essus, but perhaps he had been a better father than husband. I realized in that moment that I truly knew nothing of how my father and mother had interacted. Had their tastes in bed been so different that they had no middle ground? I knew their politics were opposite poles.

I held Sholto's hand, and had one of those adult moments when you realize that maybe, just maybe, your hatred of your parent is not completely justified. It was not a comfortable feeling to think of my mother as the wronged party instead of my father.

It made me look up at Sholto. His white-blond hair had begun to escape from the ponytail he'd worn to rescue me. He'd used glamour to make his hair look short, but the illusion might have been harmed if someone had become tangled in his nearly ankle-length hair. Strands of his hair trailed around a face as handsome as any in the courts. Only Frost had had a more masculine beauty. I pushed that thought away and tried to give Sholto his due. The tentacles had ripped his t-shirt apart. It clung like a lace of rags around his chest and stomach. Shreds of the cloth were still tucked into his jeans, with their belt, and the heavy collar was still intact, so it, along with the sleeves, kept it all in place, but the chest and stomach revealed were lovely, the skin pale and perfect. The tattoo that decorated him from just under the breastbone to his belt looked like someone had drawn one of those sea anemones, done in shades of gold, ivory, and crystal, with edges of blue and pink, soft colors, like the sun caressing the edge of a seashell. One thicker tentacle had been drawn so that it curled up over the right side of his chest, looking as if the tentacle had been frozen in mid-movement, so that the tip was close to the darker paleness of one nipple. I wasn't certain, but I was pretty sure that the tattoo had changed. It was almost as if the tat was literally formed by what the tentacles were doing when he froze them into art.

I knew that the slender hips, and everything else that was held inside his jeans, was lovely, and that he knew what to do with it.

He lifted my hand, and his face wasn't soft now. It was thoughtful. "You look like you are weighing and measuring me, Princess."

"And well she should be," Gran said.

Without looking at her, I said, "He spoke to me, not to you, Gran."

"So you would take his side over mine already?"

I did look at her then. I saw the anger in her eyes, and a covetousness that wasn't her, but might be my cousin. It was as if Cair had put her desire to possess into the spell, her jealousy given magical form. Subtle, and nasty. Not unlike my cousin, come to think of it. Magic was often like that, colored by the personality of the maker.

"He is my lover, the father of my child, my future husband, my future king. I will do what all women do. I will go to his bed, and his arms, and we will be a couple. It is the way of the world."

A look of deep hatred came over her face, and it was almost as if the expression were not hers. I clung more tightly to Sholto's hand, and had to fight the urge to wiggle a little farther away in the bed from this woman, because though it was Gran, there was something in her that wasn't.

Galen moved up beside us. "The expression on your face, Gran, it doesn't look much like you."

She looked at him, and her face softened. Then that other looked out of her true-brown eyes for a moment. She looked down, as if she knew she couldn't hide it.

"And how do ya feel, Galen, that you share her with so many?"

He smiled, and true happiness was shining in his face. "I've wanted to be Merry's husband since she was a teenager. Now I will be, and we'll have a child together." He shrugged, spread his hands. "It's so much more than I ever thought I'd have. How can I be anything but happy?"

"Do ya not wanne be king in yer own right?"

"No," he said.

She looked up then, and the other was in her eyes, sharp and pure, and uncomprehending. "All of you want to be king."

"As her only king, I would be a disaster," Galen said simply. "I am not a general to lead armies, or a strategist for politics. The others are better at all that than I am."

"You mean that," she said, and the voice didn't sound very much like Gran at all.

I didn't fight the urge to wiggle closer to Sholto and Galen then, and farther away from Gran and the stranger's eyes. Something was wrong with her, in her.

That strange voice said, "We could let her keep you, let her be queen of the Unseelie. You would be no threat to us."

"No threat to whom?" Doyle asked. There was no sight of the thread now. I didn't know if they'd destroyed it, or just hidden it. I'd been too caught up in Gran's strange state to notice. It wasn't good that I hadn't noticed, but the world had narrowed to the stranger in my grandmother's eyes.

"But you, Darkness, you are a threat." There was no accent now. There were simply well-spoken words, and because it was Gran's throat saying it, the words still sounded vaguely like her, but a person's voice is made up of more than just their larynx and mouth. There is a piece of yourself in your voice, and the words she spoke now belonged in someone else's mouth.

She glanced across the bed at Sholto. "Shadowspawn and his sluagh are a threat." Shadowspawn was a nickname that even the queen rarely said to his face. A lesser fey, even my grandmother, would not have risked such an insult to the King of the sluagh.

"What have they done to her?" I asked. My voice was soft, almost a whisper, as if I were afraid that if I spoke too loudly, it would tip the tension building in the room. Tip it over, and spill it into something bloody and awful and irrevocable.

Gran turned to Doyle, one hand spread wide. It was one of those moments that seem frozen in time. It is the illusion that you have all the time in the world, when in fact you have milliseconds or less to react, to survive, to watch your life be destroyed.

He reacted in a blur of movement that I couldn't follow. He was simply a dark blur, as the power burst from Gran's hand — a power that she had never possessed. White-hot light burst forth, and for a moment the room was illuminated in eye-searing brightness. I could see Doyle caught against that light, moving her arm, her body, away from the bed, away from me. I had an almost slow-motion view of the white light cutting across the front of his body.

There was a shuddering scream from near the window as the white light hit the giant tentacles still in the opening. The bed moved. It was Galen throwing himself on top of me, as a living shield. I had time to see Sholto leap over the bed, and go to join the fight, then all I could see was Galen's shirt. All I could feel was his body above mine, tensed for a blow.