Swallowing Darkness_A Novel Read online

“I told you of the dream, Meredith.”

  “So what?”

  “We exchanged locks of hair, to give to you as a token. He had mine and would have given it to you to remember me if I had been chosen. I gave a few strands of the lock to the doctors for comparison.”

  “Where were you hiding it, Doyle? You had no pockets as a dog.”

  “I gave it to another guard for safekeeping. One who did not travel into the Golden Court with us.”

  Just saying it that way meant he’d planned on the possibility of none of them surviving. It didn’t make me feel any better to hear that. We had all survived, but the fear was still there deep inside me. The fear of loss.

  “Who did you trust to hold such a token?” I asked.

  “The men I trust most are in this room,” he said in that dark voice that seemed to match his color. It was the kind of voice that the night itself would use, if it were male.

  “Yes, and by your earlier words, you planned for failure as well as success. So you left the locks of hair with someone you didn’t take inside the Golden Court.”

  He came to stand at the foot of the bed, not so near Gran. Doyle was aware that he had been the Queen’s Darkness, her assassin, for centuries, and many folk of the court were still nervous around him. I appreciated that he gave Gran room, and I approved of him sending Galen to fetch her. I wasn’t certain there was another guard among my men whom she would have trusted. The rest had been too much like enemies for too long.

  I studied his dark face, though I knew that his face sometimes didn’t help me at all. In the beginning he had let his emotions show around me, but as I’d come to read his face better he’d schooled that face. I knew that, if he didn’t wish it, I would gain nothing from his face but the pleasure of looking at it.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “I left both locks of hair with Kitto.”

  I stared at him, and didn’t try to keep the surprise off my face. Kitto was the only man in my life who was shorter than Gran. He was four feet even, eleven inches shorter than she. But his skin was moonlight white like mine, and his body a perfect male replica of the sidhe guards, except for the line of glittering, iridescent scales down his back, the tiny fold-away fangs in his mouth, and the huge slit-pupiled eyes in their sea of blue. All that proved that his father had been, or was, a snake goblin. His curling black hair, his white skin, and the magic that sex with me had awakened were from his mother’s bloodline. But Kitto had not known either parent. His sidhe mother had left him to die at the edge of the goblin mound. He’d been saved, because newborns are too small to make a good meal, and sidhe flesh is valued for food among the goblins. Kitto had been given to a female goblin to raise until he was big enough to eat, like a piglet being saved for Yule dinner. But the goblin female had come to…love him. Love him enough to keep him alive and treat him as another goblin, not as food on the hoof, as it were.

  The other guards had not considered Kitto one of them. He was too weak, and though Doyle had insisted that he hit the gym along with the rest so there were muscles under that white skin, Kitto would never be a true warrior.

  Doyle answered the question that must have been plain on my face. “Everyone I trusted more went into the faerie mound with us. Of those we left behind, who would have understood what those two locks of hair would have meant to you, our princess? Who but one of the men who had been with you since the beginning of this adventure? Only Nicca was left behind, and though a better warrior than Kitto, he is not stronger of will. Besides, our Nicca is soon to be a father, and I would not involve him in our fight.”

  “It is his fight, too,” Rhys said.

  “No,” Doyle said.

  “If we lose, and Merry does not take the throne, our enemies will kill Nicca and his soon-to-be bride, Biddie.”

  “They would nae dare harm a sidhe woman who carried a child inside her,” Gran said.

  “I think some of them would,” Rhys said.

  “I agree with Rhys,” Galen said, “I think Cel would rather see all of faerie destroyed than lose his chance to follow his mother onto the throne.”

  Gran touched his arm. “Ya have grown cynical, boy.”

  He smiled at her but it left his green eyes cautious, almost hurt. “I’ve grown wise.”

  She turned to me. “I hate to think that any sidhe noble is so hateful, even that one.”

  “The last I heard from my aunt, my cousin, Cel, had plans to get me with child, and we’d rule together.”

  A look of disgust showed on Gran’s face. “You’d die first.”

  “But now, I’m already pregnant, and it can’t be his. Rhys and Galen are right; he’ll kill me now if he can.”

  “He’ll kill you before the babes are born, if he can,” Sholto said.

  “What concern is my Merry to ya, King Sholto of the sluagh?” Gran didn’t even try to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

  He moved closer to the bed, standing at the foot of it. He had let the other three men do most of the touching. I appreciated that since we were still more acquaintances than friends. “I am one of the fathers of Merry’s children.”

  Gran looked at me. It was an unhappy, almost angry look. “I heard the rumor that the sluagh’s king would be a father, but I didnae credit it.”

  I nodded. “It’s true.”

  “He cannae be king of the sluagh and king of the Unseelie. He cannae sit two thrones.” She sounded hostile.

  Normally, I would have been more diplomatic, but the time for diplomacy was past, at least among my inner circle. I was pregnant with Gran’s great-grandchildren; I might be seeing a lot of her. I did not want her and Sholto bickering for nine months, or longer.

  “Why are you angry about Sholto being one of the fathers?”

  It was a very blunt question, rude by any standard among the sidhe. The rules were a little less subtle among the lesser fey.

  “One day of being the next queen and you would be rude to your ol’ granny?”

  “I’m hoping to see a lot of you while I’m pregnant, but I’m not going to mess with bad will between you and my lovers. Tell me why you don’t like Sholto.”

  The look in her lovely brown eyes was not friendly, not at all. “Did you nae wonder who struck the blow that killed your great-grandmother, my mother?”

  “She died in one of the last great wars between the courts.”

  “Aye, but who killed her?”

  I looked at Sholto. His face was its arrogant mask, but his eyes were thinking too hard. I didn’t know his face as well as Rhys’s or Galen’s, but I was almost certain that he was thinking furiously.

  “Did you kill my great-grandmother?”

  “I slew many in the wars. The brownies were on the side of the Seelie Court, and I was not. I, and my people, did kill brownies and other lesser fey of the Seelie Court in the wars, but whether one of them was your blood, I do not know.”

  “Worse then,” Gran said. “You killed her and it meant nothin’ to ya.”

  “I killed many. It becomes difficult after a time to separate the dead one from another.”

  “I saw her die at his hand, Merry. He slew her and moved on, as if she were nothing.” There was such pain in her voice, a raw hurt that I had never heard from my grandmother.

  “Which war was this?” Doyle asked, his deep voice falling into the sudden tension like a stone thrown down a well.

  “It was the third call to arms,” Gran said.

  “The one that started because Andais boasted that her hounds could out-hunt Taranis’s,” Doyle said.

  “So that’s why it’s called the War of Dogs,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I do nae know why it began. The king ne’r told us why we were to fight, only that to refuse was treason and death.”

  “Think about why the first one is called the Marriage War,” Rhys said.

  “That one I know,” I said. “Andais offered to marry Taranis and combine the two courts, after her king died in a duel.”
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  “I can’t remember anymore which of them took insult first,” Doyle said.

  “That war was more than three thousand years ago,” Rhys said. “The details tend to get fuzzy after that much time.”

  “So all the great fey wars have been over stupid reasons?” I asked. “Most of them,” Doyle said.

  “The sin of pride,” Gran said.

  No one argued with her. I wasn’t certain that pride was a sin—we weren’t Christian—but pride could be a terrible thing in a society where the rulers had absolute sway over their people. There was no way to say no, no way to say “isn’t this a stupid reason to get our people killed?” Not without being imprisoned, or worse. That went for both courts, by the by, though the Seelie Court was more circumspect over the centuries, so that its reputation among the media had always been better. Andais liked her tortures and executions more public.

  I looked from Gran to Sholto. His handsome face was uncertain. He tried for arrogance, but there was a flinching in his tri-yellow eyes. Was it fear? Perhaps. I think he believed in that moment that I might cast him away, because three thousand years ago he had slain my ancestor.

  “He waded through our people as if they were so much meat, something to be cut down, so that he could get to the main fightin’,” Gran said, with rage in her voice that I’d never heard even for the abusive bastard who had been her husband at the Seelie Court.

  “Sholto is the father of one of your great-grandchildren. Sex with him awakened the wild magic. Sex with him is what has given back the dogs and faerie animals that are appearing in the courts and among the lesser fey.”

  She gave me a look—such bitterness in that one look. It frightened me a little. My gentle Gran, so full of hate. “Rumor said that, too, but I didnae believe it.”

  “I swear by the Darkness that Eats all Things that it is true.”

  She looked startled. “Ya did nae ha’ to make that oath to me, Merry-girl. I would believe ya.”

  “I want this clear between us, Gran. I love you, and I am sorry that Sholto slew your mother, my great-grandmother, in front of you, but he is not only the father of one of my children, he is also the consort who helped me bring back much of the magic that has returned. He is too valuable to me and to faerie to be accidentally poisoned.”

  “The sidhe cannae be poisoned,” she said.

  “Not with anything occurring in nature, no, but you’ve lived in the human world for decades. You know very well that there are man-made poisons now. The sidhe are not proof against artificial creations. My father taught me that.”

  “Prince Essus was a very wise man, and for a sidhe royal, he was a great, great man.” There was a ferociousness to her words. She meant them, for she had loved my father as a son, for he, more than my mother, had loved me, and had allowed Gran to help him raise me. But the rage in those words didn’t match what she was saying, as if there were other words in her mind than those on her tongue.

  “He was, but his greatness is not what is in your mind, grandmother. I see a rage in you that frightens me. The kind of rage that all the fey seem capable of, so that they will trade their lives and the lives of those who depend on them for vengeance and pride.”

  “Do nae compare me to the lords and ladies of the court, Merry. I have a right to my anger, and my thoughts on it.”

  “Until I can trust that you are more my ally and grandmother than a revenge-seeking daughter, I cannot have you around me.”

  She looked startled. “I will be with you and the babes as I helped raise you.”

  I shook my head. “Sholto is my lover and the father of one of the children. More than that, Gran, sex with him brought back the most magic to faerie. I will not risk him to your vengeance, unless you make our most sacred oath that you will not harm him in any way.”

  She searched my face as if thinking that I must be joking. “Merry-girl, you cannae mean this. You cannae think that this monster is more to you than me.”

  “Monster,” I said softly.

  “He has used sidhe magic to hide that he is more a monster than any a’ the rest.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the rest’?” I asked.

  She motioned to Doyle. “The Darkness kills withou’ mercy. His mother was a hell hound, his father a phouka who bedded the bitch when in dog form. You could ha’ puppies inside ya. They act as if the high lords are perfect, but they are jus’ as deformed as we are. They can just hide it behind their magic better than us lesser folk.”

  I looked at the woman who had helped raise me as if she were a stranger, because in a way she was. I’d known that she resented the courts—most of the lesser fey did—but I had not known that she had this prejudice inside her.

  “Do you have a special grudge against Doyle too?” I asked.

  “When ya came to me, Merry, you had Galen with ya, and Barinthus. Them I ha’ nothin’ agin’, but I didnae dream you would go to the Darkness. Ya feared him as a child.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Do ya not understand, girl, that if the queen had had your father killed, who she would ha’ sent to do the deed?”

  Ah. “Doyle did not kill my father.”

  “How do ya know, Merry? Did he tell ya he did nae?”

  “Doyle would not have acted without the queen’s express orders, and Andais is not a good enough actress. She did not order my father, Andais’s brother’s, death. I saw her anger over it. It was real.”

  “She didnae love Essus.”

  “Maybe she loves only her son, but her brother meant something to her, and she did not like that he died at someone’s hand. Maybe it was anger that she had not done the ordering of it. I do not know, but I do know that Andais did not order the deed done, and that Doyle would not have acted without that order.”

  “But he would ha’ done it, if ordered. You do believe that,” Gran said.

  “Of course,” I said, and my voice was as calm as hers was growing strident.

  “He would ha’ killed your father at the queen’s orders. He would ha’ killed you.”

  “He was the Queen’s Darkness. I know that, Gran.”

  “How can ya sleep with him, then? Knowing the blood that must be on his hands.”

  I tried to think how to say it so she would understand. Her reaction had caught me completely off guard. I didn’t like that, and not just for the normal reasons that a granddaughter might not like her grandmother hating her husband-to-be. I didn’t like that she had been able to hide this level of hatred from me all these years. It made me wonder what else I’d missed, what else she’d hidden.

  “I could say simply that I love him, Gran, but the look on your face says that won’t do. He is my Darkness now. He would kill at my orders now. He is one of the greatest warriors to ever walk the courts, and he is mine now. He is my strong right hand, my killing blow, my general. In all the courts I could not have taken a king who would have made me stronger than Doyle.”

  Emotions chased across her face so quickly that I couldn’t follow them all. Finally, she said, “So ya took ’im to your bed because it was good politics?”

  “I took him to my bed because the Queen of Air and Darkness ordered him to my bed. I never dreamed that I could part her Darkness from her side.”

  “How do ya know that he is nae still her creature?”

  “Gran,” Galen said, “are you feeling all right?”

  “Ne’r better. I just want Merry to see the truth.”

  “And what is the truth?” Galen asked, and his voice held a tone. I studied his face, but his eyes were all for Gran. It made me study her, too. Her eyes were a little wide, her lips parted, her pulse rate up. Was it just anger, or was it something else?

  “They cannae be trusted, ana of them.”

  “Who, Gran?” Galen asked. “Who cannot be trusted?”

  “The queen’s men, girl.” She addressed me now. “Ya grew up knowin’ the truth of that. She must see the truth.” The last was whispered, and she had lost her accent. She
was upset: the accent wouldn’t lessen, not on its own.

  “Did you see anyone from either court when you went to her home?” Doyle asked.

  Galen actually thought about it before saying, “No, I didn’t see anyone.” He put too much emphasis on “see.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked softly.

  “There be nothin’ wrong with me, girl,” Gran said, but her eyes were a little too wild, as if the spell, for it was a spell, was growing stronger.

  “Gran, you and I were buddies once,” Rhys said, moving up so that Doyle could move back out of her sight.

  She frowned at him, as if she were having trouble recognizing him. “Aye, you ne’r did me or mine harm. You kept to yourself in the old days, and you were on the side of gold and dreams. You were allied to us once, white knight.” She grabbed his arm. “How can you be with them now?”

  The accent was gone; the voice was almost not hers at all. “What’s happening to her?” I asked. I reached out, and she reached for me, but Galen and Rhys stepped in the way, nearly knocking each other over in their haste.

  “What is it?” I asked, and this time my voice rose. I could hear the monitors getting excited again. If I didn’t calm down, we’d have doctors and nurses in here. We didn’t need humans in the middle of what looked to be a magical attack. I tried to calm down, while my grandmother tried to push past Rhys and Galen. She was trying to persuade them, as well as me, that we were on the side of evil.

  Doyle’s voice cut through mine, “There’s something in her hair, a thread, or another hair. It glows.”

  “I see it,” Rhys said.

  “I don’t,” Galen said.

  I couldn’t see around the two of them. I had only glimpses of Gran’s long brown arms trying to reach past them, almost frantically.

  The door opened, and Dr. Mason and two nurses came in. “What the hell is going on in here?” she asked. And this time she sounded truly pissed.

  I guess I couldn’t blame her, but I also couldn’t think of a way to explain. Was being pregnant making me slow to think, or was I still in shock?

  “Everyone out. I mean it this time!” Dr. Mason had to shout to be heard over Gran’s progressively more piercing words.