Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (51 page)

Ash gave me a smile that managed to be fierce and lusty at the same time, a look you wore if slaughter was your idea of sex. "You played the first sidhe well, Princess." He leaned in close and almost whispered, "Helpless little noises. Will you make helpless little noises for us?"

I felt Doyle's body go very still, as if he didn't like the question, or what it meant. But truth was truth. "Helpless little ones, and probably great big screams."

He chuckled, and it was that masculine sound that all men make when they think of such things. It was almost reassuring that he made that laugh. Male was male, some of the time.

"Your screams will be the sweetest of music." He took my hand from his arm and laid a kiss upon the back of it. Then he motioned, and all the Red Caps, save Jonty, followed him away.

Jonty looked at me. "My king ordered me to guard your body, not hers. I got distracted by this one's blood, and let you get too close to that other one just now. If she'd killed you, I'd have never heard the end of it."

He was well spoken for a Red Cap, but I didn't say so out loud, because that would imply I was surprised that any Red Cap was well spoken.

"You must strike the death blow from your own two feet, Meredith," Andais said, "or Nerys goes to the goblins as she is."

Real fear flared in Nerys's eyes, and she mouthed,
Please.

Doyle pressed his mouth against my ear. "Can you stand?"

I laid my face against his and gave the only answer I had. "I don't know."

He set me on my feet, and steadied me that moment I needed. I looked at her chest. I was short enough that I could rest the tip of the blade over her heart. My legs began to tremble, but that was all right. I gripped the hilt with my good hand, took a deep steadying breath, and let my body fall upon the hilt of the sword, driving the point through her chest and into that still-beating heart. The blade rested against bone for a second, then slid home. I collapsed to my knees beside the body, my one good hand still wrapped around the hilt.

Nerys's eyes, almost a twin of the queen's, were open and unseeing. I'd done what I could for her.

Screams came from behind us.

I leaned my forehead against my good arm. I wasn't sure I could stand on my own. If the queen insisted on me walking to Miniver, then I could not do it.

Galen knelt beside me. "Take off the high heels, Merry."

I turned my head just enough to see his face, and managed a smile. "Smart you."

He slid the shoes off my feet while I stayed kneeling. I realized that I was swaying on my knees. Shoes or no shoes, that didn't bode well for walking. "What are they doing to her?"

"Playing," Doyle answered.

I raised my head enough to meet his eyes. "Playing?"

Doyle and Galen exchanged a look. That was enough. "Take me to her." Doyle lifted me as gently as he could, and the sword trailed from my hand. It felt so heavy. Apparently being dead once today, and nearly having my arm ripped out, was taking its toll. I was beginning to look forward to passing out, the way you look forward to sleep after a long, hard day.

The goblins had moved so that the court could see what they were doing. It was a show—and what good is a show without an audience? One of the smaller Red Caps was kneeling beside Miniver. His fingers were playing in the healing flesh of her chest. He traced and tickled her flesh, as if he were touching her genitalia. A touch here, a caress there, and it showed skill, but his fingers weren't between her legs. His fingers were inside the meat of her chest. He was caressing the top of her heart as if that would finally bring her to orgasm.

Doyle carried me around to her head. "Don't let them take you like this, Miniver."

"Get them away from me. Get them away from me!"

I looked at Ash, and he motioned the rest of them away. The one who was playing in her body left reluctantly, and squeezed her breast as he moved away.

Miniver lay there gasping on the floor, her eyes wild. She looked up at Jonty, still standing over her, and said, "Get him away."

"No," he said, "I am her guard, and I will guard her. I have no interest in your white flesh."

Doyle put me on my feet, but my legs did not hold this time. I collapsed to my knees beside her.

Miniver reached out toward me with her healed hand, beseeching. I had a heartbeat to realize that she lied with her eyes and her body. Doyle hit her hand away, and the bolt of energy sizzled outward to scar along the table on the other side of the room. Jonty trapped her arm under his big knee. He was shaking his head. "Do you want me to tear her arm off?"

I thought about it, then shook my head. "Bind her, and let them take her."

"No," Andais said, "for that last, I think we should see some of her punishment." The queen came in a hiss of black silk. She looked down at Miniver. "You are a fool. Do you not understand that the very fact that you are alive and healing means that Meredith is no longer mortal? I watched her die today, and breathe again. You have lost everything you are, for nothing."

"Lies," she said.

Andais leaned down, touched the other woman's face, a strangely tender caress. "You craved blood and violence. I saw it. We all saw it. You tried to destroy me with it. Now we will see you destroyed with it." She turned to me. "Do you see now, Meredith? You offered her mercy and she tried to kill you. You cannot be weak among the sidhe, not if you wish to rule." She touched my face, much as she'd touched Miniver's. "Heed this lesson, Meredith, and wipe mercy from your heart, or the sidhe will surely cut it out." Her smile was half wistful, half something I could not read, and probably did not want to. "You look tired, Meredith."

She eased the sword from my hand. "Take your princess to my room, use my bed as if it were your own. I will send Fflur with you." She motioned and a sidhe as golden-haired as Miniver came forward, but Fflur's skin was also a pale yellow, and her eyes a solid black. She had been Andais's personal healer for more years than I remembered.

She gave a lovely curtsey and said, "I would be honored to tend the princess."

"Yes, yes," the queen said and waved it away, as if it were a given and Fflur had had no real choice.

Chains had been brought, and Miniver screamed as they shackled her. It was cold iron, and her hands of power would not work while she wore it. Goblins handle base metal better than the sidhe, probably because it interferes with magic more than the strength of arm.

"Take her, Darkness. Go." She turned and began to walk back toward her throne.

It was only when Sholto realized we were leaving for the night that he came to the doors. "The duty of the sluagh is to protect the queen, but when our bargain is done, we will also protect you." It was almost an apology for not having helped more tonight. Sholto is young for a king, under four hundred, and it keeps him more humble than most.

"I will not be striking any bargains with anyone tonight," I said.

"That is as well, I would not leave the queen's side this night." He glanced back at her. "The sluagh stand with Andais, and there are still those sitting here who need to be reminded of that."

He was right, and I was suddenly more tired than I could manage. I wanted no more politics tonight. No more games. My arm throbbed, sending sharp, shooting pains through my body like small knives. The muscles in it seemed to have a life of their own, dancing and twitching involuntarily. I fought not to cry out with the pain, for that was weakness, too, among the sidhe.

Fflur touched the arm lightly, and made a small
tsk
ing sound. "You've torn the muscles, and the ligaments that bind your bones. Dislocated, as well. The damage to the soft tissues will be harder to heal than bone." She shook her head, and made that faint
tsk
ing sound again.

"Can she be healed tonight?" Ash asked.

Fflur looked at the goblin as if she wouldn't answer, then did. "No, not tonight. She is part human, and that makes her healing slower."

Ash grinned at me. "Then we will leave you for tonight, Princess. I think we should stay and hear what else happens tonight."

"As you please," I said, and truly did not care what they did. I was fast approaching the point where the pain was all I could concentrate on. Soon nothing else would matter, and my world would narrow down to the pain. I liked a little pain in the right context, but I couldn't turn this to pleasure. This was just going to hurt.

We left the great hall to the sounds of voices, as the Unseelie began to murmur among themselves. It would be interesting to see how long it took this night's work to reach the ears of the King of Light and Illusion in the Seelie Court. I was due in two days to be at a banquet in my honor at his court. Two days to heal. Two days to finish my alliance with the sluagh and the goblins. Two days didn't seem enough time for all that.

Fflur was enamored of the healing spring. She made me drink a cup of the cool, clear water, and the pain lessened. She stripped me down and bathed the arm in the water. It didn't heal immediately, but the muscles stopped jumping and fighting, and the pain went from a sharp stabbing to a dull ache. I could live with an ache, could sleep with an ache.

The queen's room had been cleaned while we were gone. How the white ladies had gotten rid of all that blood, I didn't know, and perhaps I didn't want to know.

Galen helped me out of the rest of my clothes. His eyes were shiny with unshed tears. He leaned in and touched his lips to my forehead. "I thought I'd lost you today." I reached for him, but he moved away. "No, Merry, I'll do first watch. If you hold me, I'll cry, and that's so unmanly." He tried to make a joke of it, but it didn't quite work. I thought there was more going on than simply worry about what had happened, but I was in no shape to chase him down and make him tell the truth.

Doyle curled his nude body around me in the center of the queen's huge bed. It was larger than a king-size bed. I'd coined the term
orgy-size,
but never to the queen's face. I was sleepy from a draft that Fflur had given me. She said it would help me sleep and speed the healing. I settled into the first drowsiness of the potion and the velvet warmth of Doyle's body.

Frost kissed my forehead, and it made me blink my eyes open. I hadn't remembered shutting them. "I will help Galen keep watch. There is someone else who needs to sleep next to you right now." There was a look on his face, he wasn't pouting, or being childish. He looked, silly as it seemed for a being centuries old, grown up.

I woke the next moment when someone crawled in beside me, moving carefully around my wounded arm. It was not a body I knew. I couldn't say how I was so certain, but I knew the men who shared my bed—the feel of them, the scent of their skin —and this was no one I knew that well. I opened my eyes and found Adair's golden-skinned face hovering over mine. "The queen says I am yours if you want me." There was a trembling look in his eyes, fear, uncertainty. Goddess alone knew what mood the queen would be in after our little show. I wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of that mood.

"Stay with us," I whispered, "of course, stay."

He turned away from me and cuddled his body in against mine. A shudder ran through him, and it took me a moment to realize he was crying. The bed moved as Rhys crawled in on the other side of Adair, and Kitto crawled across the foot of the bed, and Nicca and Sage with their wings carefully back. We all touched Adair, letting him know with our hands and our bodies that he was safe. We fell asleep like that in a huge piles of warm bodies and comforting hands.

Two things woke me: Adair whimpered in his sleep, and Doyle went very still on the other side of me. I blinked awake, and his arm around my waist tightened enough to tell me not to move. I stayed frozen in the curve of his body, with Adair making his small helpless noises.

The queen stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at all of us. I could not read her thoughts, only that they were not light ones.

I stroked Adair's naked back until the noises ceased, and he fell back to sleep. I felt rather than saw that Rhys was awake on the other side of him. I think Nicca, Kitto, and Sage were actually still asleep; their breathing was even and deep.

Frost and Galen stood by the bed, behind her, as if they wanted to grab her, but were afraid to. How do you guard someone from the queen? The answer is, you don't, not really.

She looked down at us and spoke softly, as if she didn't want to wake those who slept. "I do not know who to envy more. You with all your men, or your men curled next to you. I have tasted your power and found it sweet, Meredith, very sweet." She turned her head, though I had heard nothing. "Eamon awaits, and the guards I have chosen for the night." She looked back down at me. "You have inspired me to choose more of them for my bed this night."

Adair's body tensed against mine, and I knew that though his eyes were closed, he was awake. He feigned sleep the way a child will:
Pretend hard enough and the bad thing will go away.

She gave a throaty chuckle, and he actually jumped, as if the sound had struck him, though I knew it had not. She left the room laughing, but none of us found it particularly funny.

I wondered where Barinthus was, and Usna, and Abloec, and even Onilwyn and Amatheon. They were supposed to be mine now, and that meant I was supposed to protect them. I sent Rhys to ask about them. He came back a little while later trailing them behind him, all of them. Including Hawthorne, Ivi, and Brii. "I asked the queen's permission to bring all your men, and she gave the ones you hadn't fucked yet a choice. They all chose to come in here for the night." He looked both amused and tired.

Barinthus looked down at the bed and shook his head. "Not even this bed will hold us all." He was right, but they managed to get more of them on it than you'd think. When we'd settled down for the night, with more bodies than I'd ever shared a bed with, it was Amatheon's voice coming from somewhere at the foot of the bed that seemed to speak for most of the new guards. "Thank you for sending Rhys to find us."