Swallowing Darkness Read online

Chapter 3-4

  Chapter Three

  I pushed at Doyle's hair, tried to clear my vision, as the screams and shouts were joined by a sound like wind rushing toward us, and the breaking of glass. I heard Gran scream as I pushed desperately at Doyle. I had to see what was happening.

  "Doyle, please, what's happening?" I pushed at him, but it was like pushing at a wall. There was no moving him, unless he allowed it. I spent my life being not as strong, not as much, as those around me, but in that moment, it was brought home to me that I could be their queen, but I would never be their equal.

  I finally got enough of his hair out of my face to see the ceiling. I turned my head and found Galen by the door shielding the doctor with his body. There were shards of glass and wooden debris around him. The two uniformed cops by the door were inside with their guns drawn. But it was the looks on their faces that gave me some clue to what might be happening on the other side of the room.

  Horror, a soft, amazed horror, was on both their faces. They raised their guns, and aimed, as if whatever they were aiming at was moving. . . a lot, and it was bigger than anything in the room that I was aware of, because they were aiming above even the tallest of the men.

  The sound of gunshots exploded in the small room. I was deafened with it for a moment, then stunned by what they were firing at. Huge tentacles reached for them. Smaller shapes flew at them, black and vaguely batlike, if bats could be as large as a small person, and have tentacles in the center of their bodies that reached and writhed.

  Something screamed outside the window, as the tentacles, some wide as a man's waist, kept coming in the face of the shots. The bullets were lead, and that hurts those of faerie, but I'd seen the tentacles before, and short of cutting them off, you couldn't stop them.

  They slammed the two officers against the wall hard enough to shake the room. I saw smaller tentacles with guns held in them. I was okay with the disarming, because how do you explain to human police that the tentacled nightmare is on our side? Humans still have a tendency to think that good is always pretty and that evil is always ugly. I've found that it's so often the other way around.

  The nightflyers swooped in like dark flying manta rays. They had feet for perching, but their main limbs were the tentacles in the center of their bodies. They used them now to take the guns from the larger tentacles. I watched the one nearest us cling to the wall and use a smaller tentacle to put the safety on the gun. The nightflyers had great dexterity with their tentacles, which the larger beast did not.

  I felt Doyle move as he lay on top of me. He turned his head, and said, "Rhys, have you removed the spell?"

  "Yes. "

  Doyle turned back to look at the police and the doctor, still crouched under Galen's protective charge. He moved slowly off of me. I could feel how tense his muscles were, ready to react if there was more danger. He finally stood beside the bed, his shoulders and the muscles in his arms still tense enough that I could see it.

  Rhys and Sholto held Gran between them. They were having to work at it though. Brownies could harvest a field single-handed in one night, or thrash a barn full of wheat. It wasn't all their ability for telekinesis; some of it was just plain brute strength.

  I knew she was giving them trouble because Sholto was using more than just his two strong hands. His father had been a nightflyer, like the manta-ray creatures that had disarmed the police. The same tentacles that graced the nightflyers had now exploded from beneath the t-shirt Sholto had worn to pass for human.

  His tentacles were the white of his flesh, decorated with veins of gold and jewel colors. They were pretty, actually, once you got past the fact that they were there at all.

  Gran hadn't had time to get past that fact, and she was cursing Sholto soundly. "Do nae touch me with those unclean things!" Her arms looked thin as matchsticks, but when she yanked, Rhys and Sholto both moved a little.

  Sholto braced two of his thicker tentacles against the floor, and when next Gran pulled only Rhys moved. Sholto had his foundation. He could hold her, thanks to his extra bits. The tentacles weren't there just to horrify, or for decoration. They were truly limbs, and like all limbs, they were useful.

  Rhys shouted to be heard above Gran's yells, the police, and everything else. "Hettie, someone put a spell on you!" He chanced removing one hand from her bony wrist. I caught a glimpse of something shiny and golden caught between finger and thumb before Gran jerked herself free of his other hand. Holding a brownie was a two-person job for most people, even the warriors of the sidhe. Especially if you didn't want to hurt the brownie.

  Gran balled her fist up, and I think she would have hit Rhys in the face, but Sholto caught her arm with a tentacle, and stopped her in mid-punch.

  She yelled louder, screeching, and began to fight him in earnest. Small objects began to fly at him from around the room. It was when the shards of window glass began to move that Rhys slapped her.

  I think it startled us all, because Gran looked at him with wide eyes. He said her name, loud and clear, putting power into it so that it rang like some great bell, echoing in the room as no human speech ever did.

  He held the shining gold thread in front of her face. "Someone wove this into your hair, Hettie. It is a spell of emotions, meant to increase whatever you feel. More anger, more hatred, more rage, more prejudice against the black court. You are one of the most reasonable fey I know, Hettie. Why would you ever pick today to lose control?" He moved the golden thread so that her eyes and head followed it. He moved her gaze so that she would look at me in the bed. "Why would you endanger your granddaughter and your great-grandchildren whom she carries inside her? That is not you, Hettie. "

  She looked past the golden thread to me. Tears began to shine in her eyes. "Sorry I am, Merry. Sorrier that I know who did this evil thing. "

  There was a sound from near the doors. Galen said, "Sholto, the tentacles are crushing the policemen. "

  Sholto looked at the far wall with its burden of huge tentacles and police, as if he'd forgotten they were there. "If I let them go, they will try to be heroic, for they will never believe that we are not villains. We look too much like villains to be anything else to the humans. " There was a tone in his voice, something bitter.

  How did we explain what had just happened so that the police didn't think exactly that? How do you explain that the giant octopus tentacles are trying to rescue us, and that the little old lady was the danger?

  "You must call off your beast, Sholto," Doyle said.

  "They will either try to run out the door and call for reinforcements, or they will try to draw a second gun and kill my beast. They have already wounded him with lead bullets. "

  Him. He'd called the thing with tentacles bigger than my body a him. Funny, even with growing up with one of the nightflyers as my bodyguard, I still wouldn't have thought of the giant tentacled thing as a "him" or "her. " It was an "it," but apparently not. Apparently, it was a "him," which implied a her out there somewhere. I'd assumed that this was the same tentacled creature that Sholto had brought to Los Angeles to fetch me, but maybe that had been the girl? Maybe I was still in shock, but I just couldn't think of what I was looking at as a girl.

  "I am sorry that your beast was injured when all you were doing was trying to protect the princess. " Doyle walked toward the policemen, staying one side of the tentacles. He spoke to the cops as they dangled.

  "Officers, I am sorry that there was a misunderstanding. The tentacles that hold you came to rescue the princess, not to harm her. When the creature saw you with guns, it assumed that you were here to harm Princess Meredith, just as you would have assumed the same if strangers rushed in with pulled guns. "

  One of the cops looked at the other one. It was hard to tell what expression they shared, with their faces still mottled from being held too long by the tentacles, but it was almost a "do you believe this?" look.

  The other cop, a little older, managed to say,
"You're saying that this. . . thing is on your side?"

  "I am," Doyle said.

  I spoke from the bed. "Gentlemen, it's as if you came into my room and started shooting my dog, because he scared you. "

  The older cop said, his hands still tugging at the tentacle at his throat, "Lady, Princess, this ain't no dog. "

  "The hospital wouldn't let my real dogs in," I said.

  Dr. Mason spoke from the floor, where she was still crouched behind Galen. "If we let you have your dogs, will this never come inside the building again?"

  Doyle nodded at Galen, and it was enough. He helped the doctor to her feet, but her wide eyes remained on the huge tentacles still pinning the policemen, or maybe it was the nightflyers clinging to the ceiling just above them. So many interesting things to look at it, it was hard to tell exactly where her gaze was.

  "I will keep my people outside the princess' window," Sholto said, "until we are certain the danger is past. "

  "So, this, these, have been outside the window all this time?" the doctor asked in a voice that was a little shaky.

  "Yes," Sholto said.

  "What would attack me with these as my guards?" I asked, and let the question include as many or as few of the fey in my room as the doctor wished to include.

  The older cop said, "No one told us that you'd have. . . " He seemed to search for a word, and not find one.

  His partner said, "Nonhumanoid. " The young officer frowned at the word, as if it sounded wrong even to him, but he didn't try to pick a different word. It wasn't a bad word, and it was strangely appropriate.

  "We are not required to inform the human police of all our precautions regarding the safety of Princess Meredith," Doyle said.

  "If we are on the door, we should have a list of things that are on your side," the older cop said. It was a good point. It proved that he was recovering from being attacked by giant, bodiless tentacles and flying nightmares. Tough cop, or maybe just cop. You don't last on the job if you aren't tough. The older officer looked like he was past the ten-year mark. He was tough. His partner was young, and he kept giving nervous glances to the nightflyers on the ceiling. But he seemed to take heart or courage from the blase attitude of his older partner. I'd seen it before when I'd worked on cases with the police at Gray's Detective Agency. The older steadied the younger, if it was a good pair-up.

  The younger cop asked, "Can we have our guns back?"

  The older cop gave him a look that said clearly that you don't ask for your weapon back. They were probably each carrying at least one hidden gun, or the older cop would be. Regulations can say what they want, but I don't know many police officers who don't double up. Your life too often depends on being armed.

  "If you promise not to shoot any of our people, yes," Doyle said.

  "Is the woman all right?" the older cop asked, motioning with his head at Gran, still held by Sholto, his extra bits, and his arms, but I was pretty certain that neither officer was looking at Sholto's human-looking arms. I'd have bet nearly anything that if asked to describe him later, they would have seen only the tentacles. Cops are trained to observe, but some things are just too eye-catching even for people with a badge.

  Rhys came to us, smiling. "She'll be fine. Just a bit of magic. " He did that "hail-fellow-well-met" smile, and I noticed that he was wasting glamour to hide his ruined eye. He wanted to look harmless in that moment. Scars make some people think you must have done something to earn them.

  "What does that mean?" the older cop asked. He wasn't going to let it go. He stood with his partner, surrounded by what he would think were nightmares. They'd taken their guns. And you would have to be a fool to not see the physical potential in Doyle and the rest of the men in the room, let alone the extra bits that Sholto was showing. The policeman was no fool, but he also saw Gran as a little old lady, and he wasn't leaving until he knew that she was all right. I was beginning to see how he'd survived in the job for more than a decade, and maybe why he'd never gotten out of uniform. If I were him, I'd have left the room and called for backup. But then, I was a woman, which makes you more cautious around violence.

  "Grandmother," I said, and it may have been one of the few times I'd used her full title. She was just Gran. But tonight I wanted the police to know that we were family.

  She looked at me, and there was pain in her eyes. "Oh, Merry, child, do nae call me by a title. "

  "The fact that you don't approve of my choice in men doesn't give you the right to use your magic to trash my hospital room, Gran. "

  "It was the spell. You know that. "

  "Do I?" I let my voice hold coldness, because I wasn't sure. "The spell was designed to simply magnify what you truly feel, Gran. You truly do hate Sholto, and Doyle, and they are the fathers of my children. That will not change. "

  "Are you saying the ol'. . . woman made the stuff float and hit everyone?" the older cop asked. He sounded doubtful.

  Gran pulled at Sholto's grip. "I am meself again, Lord of Shadows. Ya can let me go. "

  "Swear. Swear by the Darkness that Eats all Things that you will not try and hurt me, or anyone in this room. "

  "I'll swear ta no hurt anyone in this room, at this moment, but I will nae promise beyond that, because ya are the murderer of my mother. "

  "Murderer," the older cop said.

  "He killed her mother, my great-grandmother, about five hundred years ago, or am I off by a century or two?" I asked.

  "You're off by about two hundred years," Rhys said. He was in front of the policemen, smiling, pleasant, but he didn't have a magic that could go with the smile. Someone else in the room did though. "Why don't you talk to the nice policemen, Galen?" Rhys said.

  Galen looked puzzled, but he moved the small distance to the policemen. If it bothered him to be standing directly under a crowd of nightflyers it didn't show. Which meant it didn't bother him, because Galen was almost incapable of lying that well.

  "I'm sorry that you had to see our mess," he said, and he sounded reasonable, friendly. One of his abilities was to truly be pleasant. Most people wouldn't think of that as a magical ability, but to be able to charm people wasn't a small thing. I'd begun to notice that it worked really well on humans. It also worked to a certain degree on the other sidhe and some of the lesser fey. Galen had always had a bit of this kind of charm, a kind of glamour, but since we'd all gotten our powers boosted, his "friendliness" had grown to the level of real magic.

  I watched the policemen's faces smooth out. The younger one smiled, all the way to his eyes. I couldn't even hear what Galen was saying, but I didn't need to. He'd understood what Rhys had wanted him to do. With Galen's pleasant magic easing the way, we got the policemen their guns, and they left, happy with the nightflyers still hanging like bats from the ceiling, and the tentacles still writhing in the window like some sort of really good 3-D. Though Sholto letting go of Gran had been the thing that had made the older cop succumb to Galen's charm. I think if the older cop had continued to see anyone in danger, he wouldn't have been so easily won over.

  Oh, and Sholto had put his tentacles away. Once he would have had to use glamour to hide them, but they would have still been there. He'd been able to hide them, even if you were touching his chest and stomach. They had felt smooth and perfect. Strong glamour, that. But when the wild magic escaped, or was called into being by Sholto and myself, he had gained a new ability. His tentacles could look like a very realistic tattoo, and it was a tattoo, but with a thought he could make it tentacles again. It was similar to the tattoos on Galen and myself that looked like a butterfly and a moth, respectively. I'd been grateful when they stopped being alive, but trapped in our skin. It had felt very wrong.

  Several of the men had tattoos, and some of them could become real. Real vines to twine down the body. None were as real as Sholto's mark, but then it was the only mark that had begun life as part of his own body.

  Galen's winning personality
didn't work if the person was too afraid, or was looking directly at something too frightening, so Sholto smoothed his extra bits back into the delicate tattoo. Galen's was a mild magic by our terms, but it was very, very useful in situations where the more spectacular powers were useless.

  At Rhys's suggestion Galen turned to the doctor next, and it worked even better with her, but then she was a woman and he was charming. She might get to another patient or two before she finally realized that she hadn't said everything she'd wanted to say, but by then, she might be too embarrassed to admit that a nice smile had made her forget so much. One of the real benefits of subtle magic was that most humans assumed that it wasn't magic, but just how handsome the man was, and what doctor wants to admit that they can be befuddled so easily by a pretty face?

  When we were alone again, just us, we all turned to Gran. I asked the question. "You said you knew who did the spell? Who?"

  Gran looked at the floor, as if she were embarrassed. "Your cousin, Cair, she comes to visit now and then. She is me granddaughter. " She said the last in a defensive tone.

  "I know that you have more than one grandchild, Gran. "

  "None so dear to me as you, Merry. "

  "I'm not jealous, Gran. Just tell us what happened. "

  "She was very affectionate, touched me several times, stroked me hair, said how lovely it was. She joked that she was glad she got something lovely out of the family genetics. "

  My cousin, Cair, was tall, slender, and very sidhe of body, but her face was like Gran's, very brownie, noseless, and with all her smooth pale sidhe skin, her face looked unfinished. There were human surgeons who could have given her a nose for real, but she was like most sidhe. She didn't have much faith in human science.

  "Did she know you were going to visit me?"

  "Yes. "

  "Why would she wish me harm?"

  "Perhaps it is not you she wished to harm," Doyle said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "I would nae have harmed ye on purpose, but these two," and she jabbed her thumb back at Sholto, and forward to Doyle, "I would happily have killed these two. "

  "Do you still feel that way?" I asked, voice soft.

  She had to think about it, but finally she said, "No, not kill. You have the King of the sluagh as your man, and the Darkness; they are powerful allies, Merry. I would nae part you from such strength. "

  "The fact that they are the fathers of your great-grandchildren holds no weight for you?" I asked, studying her face.

  "It means everything that you are with child. " She smiled, and her face was illuminated with joy. It was the smile I'd grown up seeing, and treasured my whole life. She gave that smile to me, and said, "And twins, it is too good to be true, a'most. "

  Her face sobered.

  "What's wrong, Gran?" I asked.

  "You carry brownie blood in ya, child, and now one is the child of the sluagh, and Darkness can claim a mixed bag of genes too. " She looked past them all to the nightflyers still clinging inside the room.

  I knew what she meant. There were some potentially interesting genetics at work inside my body right this moment. I couldn't be anything but happy about it, but the concern in her face wasn't the comfort I needed.

  She shook herself, as if suddenly cold. "I am no longer privy to the Golden Court, but I know someone offered Cair something she wanted greatly for her to do this. She risked me life, putting me again' these two. " Again she used her thumb to point at both of them.

  I thought about it, and realized Gran was absolutely right. The chances of her injuring them was somewhat high, because they wouldn't have wanted to injure my grandmother. It might have made them hesitate, but eventually if she'd risked me, or truly injured them, they would have had no choice but to fight back.

  I thought about that, my Gran up against the King of the sluagh and Doyle. It made me cold just thinking about it. It must have shown on my face, because Doyle came to the other side of the bed from where Gran stood. Rhys was still keeping her a little back from the bed, or rather he stood in her way, and she made no move to come closer to the bed. I think she understood that the guards, all the guards, would be leery of her for a time. I couldn't blame them, because I agreed. Some spells leave lingering touches, even after being removed. Until we studied Cair's spell we couldn't be certain of everything it had been designed to do.

  "What would she be willing to risk her own grandmother for?" Galen asked, sounding shocked.

  "I think I know," Doyle said. "I was inside the Golden Court as a dog. Even the black hounds are still treated as mere dogs. People are incautious in front of dogs. "

  "You heard something about this spell?" Rhys asked.

  "No, but about Merry's family. " Doyle came to hold my hand, and I was glad for the touch. "There are still those in the court who use Cair's physical appearance as a reason not to accept Merry as their queen. " He bowed to Gran. "I do not feel this way, but the Golden Court sees your other granddaughter as a monster and Merry not much better because of how human she appears. They seem to view her height and curves almost as badly as they do Cair's face. "

  "They are a vain lot, the Seelie," Gran said. "I lived among them for many years, married to one of their princes, but they could ne'r forgive me for looking so brownie. I think if I looked more human, like me dad, they could have accepted me more, but brownie blood beating out the human, nay, that they could not see past. "

  "Your twin daughters are both lovely, and except for hair and eye color look very sidhe. They can pass," Doyle said.

  "But neither of the grandchildren can," Gran said.

  "True," Doyle said.

  "Does anyone else find it interesting that all the fathers except me are mixed blood?" Rhys asked. He was still holding the glowing thread carefully away from his body. What were we going to do with it?

  "Like calls to like," Gran said.

  "Some of the Seelie nobles said that if I could help a pureblood sidhe couple get with child more of both courts would follow me," I said. "Some of them are saying that only the mixed breeds can breed with my help, because my blood isn't pure enough. "

  Doyle rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. It was a nervous gesture, and it meant that he wondered the same thing. Was it what Gran said, like calls to like? Was I simply not sidhe enough to help the pure-bloods?

  "Doyle," Galen said, "are you bleeding?" He moved up to the other man, and touched his back. His fingers came away with dots of crimson on them.

  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 love
ly, 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.