A Kiss of Shadows (15 page)

“We have served you for more centuries than that piece of white flesh will ever see, and this is the treatment you give us,” Agnes said.

“You get the treatment that you earn, Agnes. Remember that.” He turned, patting my hand on his arm, smiling at me, but his triple-golden eyes still held the edge of that coldness.

Gethin appeared at Sholto's side, floppy hat in his hands, a bow curving him toward the sidewalk. He had impossibly long ears, like those of a donkey. “What would you have of me, Master?”

“Help them get Nerys to the rooms.”

“Happily.” Gethin flashed another toothy grin as he stood, ears flapping down to frame his face almost like a dog's or maybe a lop-eared rabbit's. He turned and almost skipped back toward the hags.

“I feel like I'm missing something,” I said.

His hand wrapped over my hand, warm, strong fingers sliding over mine. “I will explain all when we get to the hotel.” There was a look in his eyes that I'd seen in other men's, but it couldn't mean the same thing. Sholto was one of the Queen's Guard, which meant he couldn't sleep with any sidhe except her. She didn't share her men, not with anyone. The punishment for breaking the taboo was death by torture. Even if Sholto was willing to risk that, I was not. My aunt might execute me, but she'd make it quick. If I broke her most strict taboo, she'd still kill me, but it would not be quick. I'd been tortured before. It was hard to avoid it if you lived at the Unseelie Court. But I'd never been tortured at the queen's own hand. I had seen her handiwork, though. She was creative, very, very creative.

I'd promised myself years ago that I would never give her an excuse to be creative on me. “I'm already under a death sentence, Sholto. I won't risk torture on top of it.”

“If I could keep you alive and safe, what would you risk?”

“Alive and safe? How?”

He just smiled, held his hand up, and yelled, “Taxi!” Three of them appeared within minutes on the empty street. Sholto just meant to call a taxi. He had no idea how impressive it was in Los Angeles to be able to call three taxis within minutes to an empty street. He could also reanimate corpses that hadn't grown cold yet, and that was impressive. But I'd lived for three years in the city, and a taxi when you wanted it was more impressive than a walking corpse. After all, I'd seen walking corpses before. A convenient taxi was a completely new animal.

Chapter 11

 

AN HOUR LATER SHOLTO AND I WERE SITTING IN TWO LOVELY BUT UN
comfortable chairs around a small white table. The room was elegant, if a little too pink and gold for my tastes. There'd been wine and a tray of hors d'oeuvres waiting on the table. The wine was a very sweet dessert wine. It complemented the cheese on the tray but clashed with the caviar. Of course, I'd never tasted anything that could make caviar palatable. No matter how expensive it was, it still tasted like fish eggs.

Sholto seemed to like the caviar and the wine. “Champagne would have been more appropriate, but I've never liked it,” he said.

“Are we celebrating something?” I asked.

“An alliance, I hope.”

I took a minute sip of the too-sweet wine and looked at him. “What sort of alliance?”

“Between the two of us.”

“That much I'd assumed. The big question, Sholto, is why would you want an alliance with me?”

“You're third in line to the throne.” His face had become very closed, very careful, as if he didn't want me to know what he was thinking.

“And?” I said.

He blinked those triple-golden eyes at me. “Why wouldn't a sidhe want to join himself to the woman who is only two steps away from the throne?”

“Normally, that would be fine reasoning, but you and I both know that the only reason I'm still third in line for the throne is that my father got the queen's oath before he died. She'd have had me disqualified on the grounds of my mortality alone, except for that. I have no standing at the court, Sholto. I am the first princess of the line who has no magic.”

He sat his wineglass carefully on the table. “You are one of the best of all of us at personal glamour,” he said.

“True, but it's the greatest of my powers. For Goddess sake, I am still called NicEssus, daughter of Essus. A title that I should have lost after childhood when I came into my power. Except I didn't come into my power. I may never come into my power, Sholto. That alone could have gotten me removed from the line of succession.”

“Except for the oath the queen made to your father,” Sholto said.

“Yes.”

“I am aware how much your aunt loathes you, Meredith. Much the same way she loathes me.”

I sat the wineglass down, tired of pretending to enjoy it. “You have magic enough for a court title. You're not mortal.”

He looked at me, and it was a long, hard, almost harsh look. “Don't be coy, Meredith, you know exactly why the queen can't stand the sight of me.”

I met that hard glance, but it was . . . uncomfortable. I did know, all the court knew.

“Say it, Meredith, say it out loud.”

“The queen disapproves of your mixed blood.”

He nodded. “Yes.” He seemed almost relieved. The harshness in his eyes had been uneasy to see, but at least it had been genuine. For all I knew everything else was false. I wanted to see what truly lay behind that handsome face.

“But that's not why, Sholto. There's more mixed blood among the sidhe royals now than pure.”

“Fine,” he said, “she disapproves of my father's bloodline.”

“It's not the fact that your father is a nightflyer, Sholto.”

He frowned. “If you have a point, make it.”

“Except for the odd pointy ear, until you came along sidhe genetics won out no matter what we mated with.”

“Genetics,” he said. “I forget that you are our first modern college graduate.”

I smiled. “Father was hoping I'd be a doctor.”

“You can't heal with your touch, what kind of doctor is that?” He took a big drink of wine, as if he were still agitated.

“Someday I must take you on a tour of a modern hospital,” I said.

“Whatever you wish to show me would be a pleasure.” Whatever real emotion had almost peeked through, vanished in a wave of double entendre.

I ignored the double meaning and went back to digging. I'd seen real emotion, I wanted to see more of it. If I was going to risk my life I needed to see Sholto without the masks that the court taught us to wear. “Until you, all the sidhe looked like sidhe no matter what we mated with. I think the queen sees you as proof that the sidhe blood is growing weak, just as my mortality shows the blood is thinning.”

That handsome face grew tight with anger. “The Unseelie preach that all fey are beautiful, but some of us are only beautiful for a night. We are diversions, but nothing more.”

I watched the anger eat across his shoulders, down his arms. His muscles tightened as the anger flowed over him. “My mother,” and he spat that last word out, “thought she would have a night of pleasure and pay no price. I was that price.” He bit off the words, rage intensifyng the light in his eyes so that the rings of color in them blazed like yellow flame and molten running gold.

I'd broken through that so careful exterior and found a nerve. “I would say that you're the one that paid the price, not your mother,” I said. “Once she gave birth to you, she went back to the court, to her life.”

He looked at me, the rage still naked on his face.

I talked carefully to that anger, because I didn't want it to spill over on me, but I liked the anger. It was real, not some mood calculated to get him something. He hadn't planned this mood, it had just come over him. I liked that, I liked that a lot. One of the things I'd loved about Roane had been that his emotions were so close to the surface. He never pretended anything he did not feel. Of course, that was the same trait that had allowed him to go off to the sea with his new sealskin, and never bother to say good-bye. No one was perfect.

“And she left me with my father,” Sholto said. He looked down at the table, then slowly raised those extraordinary eyes to me. “Do you know how old I was before I saw another sidhe?”

I shook my head.

“I was five. Five years old before I saw anyone with skin and eyes like mine.” He stopped talking, eyes distant with remembering.

“Tell me,” I said, softly.

His voice came soft, as if he were talking to himself. “Agnes had taken me into the woods to play on a dark, moonless night.”

I wanted to ask if Agnes was the hag Black Agnes that I'd met tonight, but I let him talk. There'd be time for questions when his mood had changed, and he stopped telling his secrets. It had been surprisingly easy to get him to open up to me. Usually when it's this easy to peel away someone's protections they want to talk, need to talk.

“I saw something shining through the trees as if the moon had come down to Earth. I asked Agnes, what is that? She wouldn't tell me, just took my hand and led me closer to the light. At first, I thought they were human, except humans didn't glow like they had fire beneath their skins. Then the woman turned her face toward us, and her eyes . . .” His voice trailed off, and there was such a mixture of wonder and pain in him that I almost let it go, but I didn't. I wanted to know, if he wanted to tell me.

“Her eyes . . .” I prompted.

“Her eyes glowed, burned, blue, darker blue, then green. I was five, so it wasn't her nakedness, or his body on top of hers, but the wonderment of that white skin and those swirling eyes. Like my eyes, like my skin.” He stared past me as if I weren't there. “Agnes dragged me away before they saw us. I was full of questions. She told me to ask my father.”

He blinked and took a deep breath as if he were literally coming back from someplace else. “My father explained about the sidhe, and that I was one of them. My father raised me to believe I was sidhe. I could not be what he was.” Sholto gave a harsh laugh. “I cried the first time I realized I would never have wings.”

He looked at me, frowning. “I've never told anyone at court that story. Is this some kind of magic that you have over me?” He didn't actually believe it was a spell, or he'd be more upset, maybe even frightened.

“Who else at the court but me would understand what the story meant?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes, though your body is not marred as mine, you, too, do not belong. They won't let you belong.” That last was said for both of us, I think.

His hands lay on the table so tightly clasped that they were mottled. I touched his hands, and he jerked away as if I'd hurt him. He'd slid his hands out of reach, but stopped in midmotion. I watched the effort it took for him to put his hands back within my reach. He acted like someone who expected to be hurt.

I covered his large hands with one of mine, or covered as much as I could. He smiled, and it was the first real smile I'd seen, because this one was uncertain, not sure of its welcome. I don't know what he saw on my face, but whatever it was it reassured him, because he opened his hands, and took my hand in his, raising it slowly to his lips. He didn't so much kiss my hand, as press his mouth to it. It was a surprisingly tender gesture. Loneliness can be a bond stronger than most. Who else at either court understood our hearts better than each other? Not love, or friendship, but a bond nonetheless.

His gaze rose to meet mine, as he raised his face from my hand. The look in his eyes was one I rarely saw among the sidhe, open, raw. There was a need in his eyes so large it was like staring into an endless void, a deep yawning pit of some missing thing. It made his eyes wild like some creature's, or a feral child's. Something untamed, but badly wounded. Did my eyes ever look like that? I hoped not.

He let go of my hand slowly, reluctantly. “I have never been with another sidhe, Meredith. Do you understand what that means?”

I understood, probably better than he did, because the only thing worse than never was to have had it, and be denied it. But I kept my voice neutral because I was beginning to fear where we were heading, and no matter how much sympathy I had with him, it wasn't worth being tortured to death. “You wonder what it would be like.”

He shook his head. “No, I crave the sight of pale flesh stretched underneath me. I want my shine matched by another. I want that, Meredith, and you can give it to me.”

He was heading where I'd feared. “I told you, Sholto, I won't risk death by torture for any pleasure. No one, nothing, is worth that.” I meant it.

“The queen joys in making her guards watch her with her lovers. Some refuse to watch, but most of us stay on the off chance that she may beckon us to join. ‘You are my bodyguards—don't you want to guard my body?' ” He did a fair imitation of her voice. “Even when it is meant for cruelty, the love of two sidhe is still a wondrous thing. I would give my soul for it.”

I gave him my best blank face. “I don't have any use for your soul, Sholto. What else can you offer me that would be worth risking death by torture?”

“If you are my sidhe lover, Meredith, then the queen will know what you mean to me. I will make sure she understands that if anything happens to you that she will lose the sluagh's loyalty. She can't afford that right now.”

“Why not make this deal with other more powerful sidhe women?”

“The women of Prince Cel's Guard have him to have sex with, and unlike the queen, Cel keeps them busy.”

“When I left, some of the women were beginning to refuse Cel's bed.”

Sholto smiled happily. “The movement has become quite popular.”

I raised eyebrows. “Are you saying that Cel's little harem is turning him down?”

“More and more of them.” Sholto still looked pleased.

“Then why not make this invitation to one of them? They're all more powerful than I am.”

“Perhaps it's what you said earlier, Meredith. None of them would understand me as you do.”

“I think you underestimate them. But what could Cel possibly be doing to them that's making them leave him in droves? The queen herself is a sexual sadist, but her guardsmen would crawl over broken glass to bed her. What is Cel offering that is worse than that?” I didn't expect an answer, but I couldn't even begin to think of anything that bad.

The smile faded from Sholto's face. “The queen did that once,” he said.

“What?” I asked, frowning.

“Made one of us strip and crawl over broken glass. If he made it without showing pain, then she'd fuck him.”

I blinked. I'd heard worse, hell, I'd seen worse. But part of me wanted to know who it was, so I asked, “Who was it?”

He shook his head. “We of the Guard have sworn to keep the humiliations among ourselves. Our pride, if not our bodies, survives the better for it.” His eyes looked lost again.

Again, I wondered what Cel could be doing that was worse than the queen's games. “Why not make this offer to a more powerful sidhe woman who isn't a member of the Prince's Guard?” I asked.

He gave a faint smile. “There are women at court who are not members of the Prince's Guard, Meredith. They would not touch me before I joined the Guard. They fear bringing more perverse creatures into the world.” He laughed, and it had a wild sound to it, almost like crying. It hurt to hear it. “That's what the queen calls me, her ‘perverse creature'—sometimes, simply ‘creature.' In a few centuries I will be like Frost and her Darkness. I will be her Creature.” He gave that painful laugh again. “I will risk much to keep that from happening.”