Swallowing Darkness_A Novel Read online

  There’s one television interview that got a lot of showing, and once it hit the Internet, well, it seems everyone downloaded it. It’s me, sitting between Doyle and Frost, them in their tailored suits, and me in the designer coat, still not showing yet. Frost’s hand is in mine. Doyle sits beside me, more at ease than our Frost, who hasn’t completely shaken his phobia of public speaking.

  The interviewer asked, “So, Captain Doyle, is it really true that you gave up a chance to be king of the Unseelie Court to save Lt. Frost’s life?”

  Doyle didn’t even glance around, but just nodded and said, “It is.”

  “You gave up a kingdom to save your friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s quite a friendship,” the interviewer said.

  “He has been my right hand for more than a thousand years.”

  “Some people are saying that perhaps he’s more than just a friend to you, Captain.”

  “A thousand years makes for a very close friendship.”

  You’d think that the interviewer might ask about the whole thousand years thing, but she didn’t. She chased something else. “Some people are saying that you gave up the throne because you love Frost.”

  This was the moment when Doyle didn’t catch the double entendre. He answered honestly. “Of course I love Frost. He’s my friend.”

  She turned to me then, and said, “Meredith, how do you feel knowing that Doyle loves Frost too?”

  I reached over and took Doyle’s hand so that I was holding both their hands at once. “It makes it easier for all of us to sleep together.”

  Which was a little too bold for that particular interviewer, but she recovered. “Frost, how do you feel knowing that your lovers gave up being king and queen to save you?”

  The camera went in for a close-up that showed the closed arrogance that he used to hide his nerves behind. But nothing the camera could do made him any less than amazing to look at. “I would have told them not to save me.”

  “You’d have rather died?”

  “I thought Meredith wanted to be queen, and I knew that Doyle would make the best of kings.”

  “It’s been a few weeks. How do you feel now? Are you glad they made the sacrifice?”

  He turned and looked at us both as the camera drew back so that it showed us looking at him. Our faces softened, and there were smiles, even from the men. “Yes, I am.”

  “And Meredith, princess, but never queen, how do you feel about that decision?”

  “Better every day,” I said.

  “So no regrets?”

  I raised their hands in mine and said, “If you had this waiting at home, would you regret?”

  She’d laughed, and just agreed with me. The interview got a lot of attention, mostly for the whole love-between-the-men thing. None of us are bothered by it. In the end, if the rumors don’t bother us, what do they matter?

  People seemed amazed that we gave up being queen and king for love. Milton said, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” I say, let heaven and hell fight their own battles, and rule themselves.

  I go to sleep pressed between the warmth of their bodies. I wake in the night to the sound of their breathing. I got to watch their faces at the doctor’s office, all of their faces, as we heard the heartbeats of our babies, so fast, like frightened birds. I saw their faces as we watched those shadows on the screen move and flex, and found out that one of them was very much a boy. They are debating names now, and I’m enjoying how happy they all are, we all are.

  The question that no interviewer has asked was this: If you had let Frost die, and taken the throne, how would you have felt? We had missed our Killing Frost, and found that no throne, no crown, no power, no gift of Goddess made up for the loss of him. We’d already felt the sorrow of that loss, and neither Doyle nor I had ever been king or queen. You cannot miss what you never had, but you can miss forever the man you loved and lost.

  I don’t want to miss anyone else, ever again.

  I am Princess Meredith NicEssus and I finally have my happy-ever-after ending in the City of Angels on the Shores of the Western Sea. Sometimes Fairyland is where you make it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LAURELL K. HAMILTON is the New York Times bestselling author of the Meredith Gentry novels: A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight, Mistral’s Kiss, and A Lick of Frost, as well as sixteen acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Visit her website at www.laurellkhamilton.org.

  ALSO BY LAURELL K. HAMILTON

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  A LICK OF FROST

  MISTRAL’S KISS

  A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT

  SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT

  A CARESS OF TWILIGHT

  A KISS OF SHADOWS

  Swallowing Darkness is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Laurell K. Hamilton

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hamilton, Laurell K.

  Swallowing darkness: a novel / Laurell K. Hamilton.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Gentry, Meredith (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3558.A443357S93 2005

  813'.54—dc22

  2008037441

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-345-50987-1

  v3.0