A Kiss of Shadows (32 page)

“Barinthus, Galen, I believe our prince gave you orders.”

Barinthus moved forward to stand towering over the smaller man. If Doyle was intimidated by the other's sheer physical presence, it didn't show. “Prince Cel said he would escort Meredith to the queen. I thought that unwise.”

Doyle nodded. “I will escort Meredith to the queen.” He looked past Barinthus to me. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I think he gave that small, small smile of his. “I believe that our royal prince has had quite enough of his cousin for one meeting. I did not know you could call the Earth.”

“I did not call it. It offered itself to me,” I said.

I heard him draw a long breath and let it out. “Ah, that is different. In some ways not as powerful as those who can wrest the Earth from her course. In some ways more unsettling, because the land welcomed you home. It acknowledges you. Interesting.”

He turned back to Barinthus. “I believe you are wanted elsewhere, both of you.” His voice was very quiet, but underneath the ordinary words was something dark and threatening. Doyle had always been able to control his men with his voice, inflicting the mildest words with the most ominous threats.

“Do I have your word that she will come to no harm?” Barinthus asked.

Galen moved up beside Barinthus. He touched the taller man's arm. Asking such a thing was almost the same as questioning orders. That could get you flayed alive.

“Barinthus,” Galen said.

“I give you my word that she will arrive in the queen's presence unharmed.”

“That is not what I asked,” Barinthus said.

Doyle stepped close enough to Barinthus that his cloak mingled with the taller man's coat. “Have a care, sea god, that you do not ask more than you should.”

“Which means that you fear for her safety at the queen's hand, as do I,” Barinthus said, voice neutral.

Doyle raised a hand that was outlined with green fire. I was walking toward them before I had time to think of anything good to say when I got there.

Barinthus kept his attention on Doyle and that burning hand, but Doyle watched me stride toward them. Galen stood near them, obviously unsure what to do. He started to reach for me, to stop me, I think.

“Stand aside, Galen. I don't plan to do anything foolish.”

He hesitated, then stepped back and left me to face the other two men. The fire on Doyle's hand painted them both with greenish-yellow light shadows. Doyle's eyes didn't so much reflect the fire as seem to burn in sympathy with it. This close I could feel not just his power like a march of insects down my skin, but the slow rise of Barinthus's power like the sea pulling toward the shore.

I shook my head. “Stop it, both of you.”

“What did you say?” Doyle asked.

I pushed Barinthus back, hard enough for him to stumble. Maybe I couldn't lift small cars and beat people to death with them, but I could put my fist through a car door, all the way through, and not break my hand. I pushed him again and again, until there was enough distance that I wasn't afraid they were about to come to blows.

“You have been ordered once by the royal heir, and once by the captain of your guard. Obey your orders and go. Doyle has given you his word that I will come to the queen in safety.”

Barinthus looked at me. His face was neutral, but his eyes were not. Doyle had always been one of the obstacles between the queen and an untimely death. For a moment I wondered if Barinthus was looking for an excuse to try the queen's Darkness. If so, I wasn't going to give it to him. To kill Doyle would be the beginning of a revolution. I stared into Barinthus's face and tried to understand what he was thinking. Had it been the land's welcome to me? Or was there some new tension between the two men, that I had not been told about? It didn't matter.

“No,” I said. I kept our gazes locked, and said again, “No.”

Barinthus looked past me to set those eyes on Doyle.

Doyle turned his free hand so that it came together with the burning one to form a single wick of both hands.

I stepped between him and Barinthus. “Stop the theatrics, Doyle. I'm coming.”

I could feel the two of them watching each other like a weight pressing in the air. There'd always been tension between them, but not like this.

I walked to Doyle until the colored fire cast sickly shadows on my face and clothes. I stood close enough that I could feel that the fire gave nothing, no heat, no life, nothing, but it was not illusion. I'd seen what Doyle's fire could do. As with Siobhan's hands, it could kill.

I had to do something to break the tension between them. I'd seen too many duels start over less. Too much blood, too much death over such stupid things.

I touched each of Doyle's elbows and moved my hands slowly up his forearms. “Seeing Keelin has taken some of the heart from me, as Andais knew it would, so take me to her.” My hands slid slowly up his arms, and I realized that his black skin was bare; he was wearing short sleeves under that long cloak.

“The land welcomes you, little one, and you grow bold,” Doyle said.

“That wasn't bold, Doyle.” My hands were almost at his wrists, almost inside the sickly flames. There was no heat to warn me off, only my own memories of watching a man writhe and die covered in crawling green flame. “This—is bold.” I did two things simultaneously. I brought my hands sliding upward into where the flame was and blew a breath out like blowing out a candle.

The flames vanished as if I'd snuffed them out, which I had not. Doyle had killed them a fraction of a heartbeat before my skin touched them.

I was close enough that by moonlight I could see he was shaken, frightened at what I'd almost done. “You are mad.”

“You gave your word I would reach the queen unharmed. You always keep your word, Doyle.”

“You trusted me to not harm you.”

“I trusted your sense of honor, yes.”

He glanced back at Cel and Siobhan. Keelin had joined them again. Cel was staring at us. There was a look on his face that said he almost believed I'd done exactly what it looked like I'd done—blown out Doyle's flame.

I kept one hand on Doyle's wrist and blew my cousin a kiss with my free hand.

He actually jumped as if that windblown kiss had struck him. Keelin had cuddled close to him and was staring back at me with what I knew now were not entirely friendly eyes.

Siobhan stepped in front of them, and this time she drew her sword in a shining line of cold steel. I knew the handle was carved bone, and the armor was bronze; but for killing we used steel or iron. She had a bronze short sword at her side, but she'd drawn the steel blade that rested against her back. For defense she'd have drawn the bronze, but she had drawn steel. She drew to kill. Nice to know she was being honest.

Doyle grabbed me by both arms and turned me to face him. “I do not want to fight Siobhan tonight because you have frightened your cousin.”

His fingers dug into my skin and I knew I'd be bruised, but I laughed. And it had a bitter edge that reminded me of someone—someone with tearless brown eyes. “Don't forget I've frightened Siobhan, too. That's much more impressive than frightening Cel.”

He shook me once, hard. “And more dangerous.” He let me go so suddenly I stumbled, nearly falling. Only his hand on my elbow saved me from a fall.

He looked behind me. “Barinthus, Galen, go, now!” There was real anger in his voice, and he rarely let such raw emotion show through. I was unsettling everyone, and a small dark part of me was pleased.

Doyle kept his grip on my arm and began leading me up the path.

I didn't look back to see Barinthus and Galen going, or to give Siobhan another worry. It wasn't caution. I didn't want to see Keelin holding Cel in her arms again.

I stumbled, and Doyle had to catch me again. “You're going too fast for the shoes I'm wearing,” I said. Truthfully it was the ankle holster combined with the long hem. But I'd blame it on the shoes if I could. I was walking beside the person who'd take the gun away if he found it.

He slowed. “You should have worn something more sensible.”

“I've seen the queen force sidhe to strip and go naked to the banquet when she didn't like their clothes. So forgive me, but I want her to like the outfit.” I knew I couldn't break his grip on my elbow without an actual fight. Even then I might lose. I tried reason. “Give me your arm, Doyle; escort me like a princess, not a prisoner.”

He slowed further, looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. “Are you quite through with your own theatrics, Princess Meredith?”

“Quite through,” I said.

He stopped and offered me his arm. I slipped my arm under and over his to rest my hand lightly on his wrist. I could feel the small hairs on his arm under my fingers.

“A little cold for short sleeves, isn't it?” I asked.

He glanced at me, gaze traveling down my body. “Well, at least you chose well for yourself.”

I put my free hand on top of the hand I had resting on his arm, giving a sort of double hug, but nothing that wasn't allowed. “Do you like it?”

He looked down at my hand. He stopped walking and grabbed my right hand, and the moment his skin touched the ring it flared to life, washing us both with that electric dance. Whatever magic was in the ring, it recognized Doyle as it had recognized Barinthus and Galen.

He jerked his hand back as if it had hurt, rubbing it. “Where did you get that ring?” His voice sounded strained.

“It was left in the car for me.”

He shook his head. “I knew it had gone missing, but I did not expect to find it on your hand.” He looked at me, and if it had been anyone else, I'd have said he was afraid. The look vanished as I was still trying to puzzle it out. His face became smooth and dark and unreadable. He gave a formal bow and offered me his arm as any gentleman would.

I took his arm, encircling it with both my hands, but as my right hand rested on top of my left, it didn't touch his skin. I thought about touching him accidently on purpose, but I didn't know exactly what the ring did. I didn't know what it was for, and until I did, it was probably not a good idea to keep invoking its magic.

We walked down the path arm in arm, at a sedate but steady pace. My heels made a sharp sound on the stones. Doyle paced beside me silent as a shadow; only the solidness of his arm, the sweep of his cloak against my body let me know he was there. I knew that if I let go of his arm, he could melt into the darkness that was his namesake—I would never see the blow that killed me unless he wished it. No, unless my aunt wished it.

I would have liked to fill the silence with talk, but Doyle had never been much for small talk, and tonight neither was I.

Chapter 25

 

THE STONE PATH MET THE MAIN AVENUE, WHICH WAS WIDE ENOUGH FOR
a cart and horse or a small car, if cars had been allowed, which they were not. Once upon a time, so I was told, there had hung torches, then lanterns, to light the avenue. Modern fire laws frowned on all-night torches, so now the poles that rested every eighteen feet or so held will-o'-the-wisps. One of the craftsfolk had fashioned wooden and glass cages for the lights. The lights were palest blue, ghostly white, a yellow so pale it was almost another shade of white, and a green leeched to a dim color, barely distinguishable from the faint glow of the yellow lights. It was like walking through pools of colored phantoms as we passed from one dim light to the next.

When Jefferson had invited the fey into this country, he'd also offered them land of their choice. They'd chosen the mounds at Cahokia. There are tales whispered on long winter nights about what lived in the mounds before we came. What we . . . evicted from the mounds. The things that lived inside the land were chased away or destroyed, but magic is a hardier thing. There was a feel to the place as you walked down the avenue with the great hulking mounds to either side. The largest mound in the city proper was at the end of the avenue. I went to Washington, D.C., during college, and when I came home it was almost unnerving how forcibly the mound city reminded me of being in Washington, standing on the plaza surrounded by those monuments to American glory. Now, walking down the center and only street, I had the sense of great time passing. This place had once been a great city as Washington was now, a center of culture and power, and now it lay quiet, cleansed of its original inhabitants. The humans had thought the mounds were empty when they offered them up to us, just bones and some pots buried here and there. But the magic had still been there, deep and slumbering. It had fought and then embraced the fey. The conquering or winning over of that alien magic had been one of the last times the two courts worked together against a common foe.

Of course, the very last time had been World War II. Hitler had at first embraced the fey of Europe. He'd wanted to add them to the genetic mix of his master race. Then he'd met a few of the less human members of the fey. Among ourselves there is a class structure as rigid and unbreakable as it is foolish; the Seelie Court especially looks down on those who do not look like blood. Hitler mistook this arrogance for lack of caring. But it was like a family with siblings. Among themselves they could fight and beat each other bloody, but let anyone turn on one of them and they became a united force against the common enemy.

Hitler used the wizards he'd gathered to trap and destroy the lesser fey. His fey allies didn't desert him. They turned on him without warning. Humans would have felt the need to distance themselves from him, to warn him of their change of heart, or maybe that was an American ideal. It certainly wasn't a fey ideal. The allies found Hitler and all the wizards hanging up by their feet in his underground bunker. They never found his mistress, Eva Braun. Every once in a while the tabloids say that Hitler's grandson has been found.

None of my direct relatives were involved in Hitler's death, so I don't know for sure, but I suspect strongly that something simply ate her.

My father had gotten two silver stars in the war. He'd been a spy. I never remembered being particularly proud of the medals, mainly because my father never seemed to care about them. But when he died, he left them to me in their satin-lined box. I'd carried them around in a carved wooden box along with the rest of my childhood treasures: colored bird feathers, rocks that sparkled in the sun, the tiny plastic ballerinas that had graced my sixth-birthday cake, a dried bit of lavender, a toy cat with fake jewel eyes, and two silver stars given to my dead father. Now the medals were back in their satin box in a drawer in my dresser. The rest of my “treasures” were scattered to the winds.

“Your thoughts are far away, Meredith,” Doyle said.

I was still walking at his side, hands on his arm, but for a moment only my body had been there. It startled me to realize how far away I'd been.

“I'm sorry, Doyle, were you speaking to me?” I shook my head.

“What were you thinking about so very hard?” he asked. The lights played over his face, painting colored shadows against his black skin. It was almost as if his skin reflected the lights like carved and polished wood. I was touching his arm, so I could feel the warmth, the muscles underneath, the softness of his skin. His skin felt like anyone's skin, but light didn't reflect off skin, not like that.

“I was thinking about my father,” I said.

“What of him?” Doyle turned his head to look at me as we walked. The long feathers brushed his neck, mingling with the spill of black hair that was only partially trapped down the back of the cloak. I realized that except for the small knot that captured the front pieces of his hair, the rest of his hair was spilling out underneath the cloak, loose.

“I was thinking about his medals that he won in World War II.”

He kept walking but turned his face full to me, never missing a step. He looked bemused. “Why would you be thinking of that now?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. Thinking about faded glory, I guess. The mounds remind me of the plaza in Washington, D.C. All that energy and purpose. It must have been like that here once.”

Doyle looked up at the mounds. “And now it is quiet, almost deserted.”

I smiled. “I know better than that. There's hundreds, thousands under our feet.”

“But yet the comparison of the two cities saddens you. Why?”

I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. We were standing in a pool of yellow light, but there were pinpricks of every color of will-o'-the-wisp in his eyes, swirling like a tiny cloud of colored fireflies. Except the colors in his eyes were rich and pure, not ghostly, and there were reds and purples and colors that shone nowhere near us.

I closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy and nauseated. I answered with my eyes still shut. “Sad to think that Washington may someday be a tired ruin. Sad to know that the glory days passed this place by long before we arrived.” I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His eyes were just black mirrors once more. “Sad to think that the fey's glory days are passed and us being here in this place is proof of that.”

“Would you prefer that we be out among the humans, working with them, mating with them like the fey that stayed behind in Europe? They are no longer fey, just another minority.”

“Am I just a part of the minority, Doyle?”

A look passed over his face, some serious thought that I couldn't read. I'd never been around a man whose face reflected so many emotions, and yet been able to read so few of them. “You are Meredith, Princess of Flesh, and as sidhe as I am. That I will stake my oath on.”

“I take that as a great compliment coming from you, Doyle. I know how much store you set by your oath.”

His head cocked to one side, studying me. The movement pulled some of his hair farther out of his cloak to fold under but not fall free as he straightened his neck. “I have felt your power, Princess, I cannot deny it.”

“I've never seen your hair when it wasn't braided or tied in a club. I've never seen it loose,” I said.

“Do you like it?”

I hadn't expected him to ask my opinion. I'd never heard him ask anyone's opinion of anything. “I think so, but I'd need to see the hair without the cloak to be sure.”

“Easily done,” he said, and undid the cloak at his neck. He let the cloak slide off his shoulders, spilling it over one arm.

He was wearing what looked like a leather-and-metal harness from the waist up, though if it had been meant to be armor, it would have covered more. The colored lights played over the muscles in his body as if he were indeed carved of some black marble. His waist and hips were slender, long legs encased in leather. The pants clung to him and spilled into black boots that came up over his knees where the loose tops of the leather were held in place by straps with small silver buckles. The buckles were echoed in the straps that covered his upper body. The silver glittered against the blackness of him. His hair hung like a second black cloak boiling in the wind, tangling in long strands around his ankles and calves. The wind sent the feathers that edged his face across his mouth.

“My, look what you're not wearing,” I said, trying for flippant and failing.

The wind rushed past us, flinging my hair back from my face. It rustled the tall dried grass in the near field, and beyond that I could hear the cornstalks whispering to each other. The wind blew down the avenue, channeled between the mounds so that it swirled around us like eager hands. It was an echo of that welcoming Earth magic that had greeted me when I first stepped on sidhe land tonight.

“Do you like my hair unbound, Princess?”

“What?” I said.

“You said you needed to see it without the cloak. Do you like it?”

I nodded, wordlessly. Oh, yes, I liked it.

Doyle stared at me, and all I could see were his eyes. The rest of his face was lost to the wind and the feathers and the dark. I shook my head and looked away.

“That's twice you've tried to bespell me with your eyes, Doyle. What's going on?”

“The queen wanted me to test you with my eyes. She has always said they were my best feature.”

I let my gaze linger over the strong curves of his body. The wind gusted, and he was suddenly caught in a cloud of his own hair, black and soft, with the near-bare flesh almost lost, black on black.

My gaze rose up to meet his eyes once more. “If my aunt thinks that your eyes are your best feature, then . . .” I shook my head and let out a breath. “Let's just say she and I must have different criteria.”

He laughed. Doyle laughed. I'd heard him laugh in L.A., but not like this. This was a rumbling belly laugh, like a peal of thunder. It was a good laugh, hearty and deep. It echoed off the mounds and filled the windy night with a joyous sound. So why was my heart thudding in my throat until I couldn't breathe? My fingertips tingled with the shock of it. Doyle did not laugh, not like that, not ever.

The wind died. The laughter stopped, but the glow of it stayed in his face, making him smile wide enough to show perfect white teeth.

Doyle slipped the cloak back over his shoulders. If he had been cold in the October night without it, he never showed a sign of it. He left the cloak flipped back over one shoulder and offered me his bare arm. He was flirting with me.

I frowned at him. “I thought we had our little talk, and we were going to pretend last night never happened.”

“I have not mentioned it,” he said, voice very bland.

“You're flirting,” I said.

“If it were Galen standing here, you would not hesitate.” The humor was fading to a dim glow that filled his eyes. He was still amused with me, and I didn't know why.

“Galen and I have been teasing each other ever since I hit puberty. I've never seen you tease anyone, Doyle, until last night.”

“There are wonders yet to behold tonight, Meredith. Wonders much more surprising than me with my hair loose and no shirt on a cold October evening.” Now there was that note to his voice that so many of the old ones had, a condescending tone that said I was a child and no matter how old I got to be, I would still be a child compared to them, a foolish child.

Doyle had been condescending to me before. It was almost comforting. “What could be more wondrous than the queen's Darkness flirting with another woman?”

He shook his head, still offering me his hand. “I think the queen will have news that will make anything I could say seem tame.”

“What news, Doyle?” I asked.

“That is the queen's pleasure to tell, not mine.”

“Then stop hinting,” I said. “It isn't like you.”

He shook his head, and a smile crept across his face. “No, I suppose it isn't. After the queen gives you her news, I will explain the change in my behavior.” His face sobered, slowly, almost its usual ebony mask. “Is that fair enough?”

I looked at him, studying his face until every vestige of humor faded away. I nodded. “I suppose so.”

He offered me his arm.

“Put the body away and I'll take the arm,” I said.

“Why does it bother you so much to see me like this?”

“You were adamant that last night never happened, never to be spoken of again, now suddenly you're back to flirting. What's changed?”

“If I said the ring upon your finger, would you understand?”

“No,” I said.

He smiled, gently this time, almost his usual slight twitch of lips. He flipped the cloak back over his shoulder so that his hand was all that showed out of that thick cloth. “Better?”

I nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

“Now, take my arm, Princess, and allow me the pleasure of escorting you before our queen.” His voice was flat, unemotional, empty of meaning. I'd almost have preferred to hear the thick emotion of the moment before. Now his words just sat there. They could have meant many things or nothing at all. The words without emotion to color them were almost useless.