A Lick of Frost Read online

  “I have bedded these men. I know that their bodies hold no horrors.”

  “You are part human, Meredith. They have bewitched you.”

  The wind grew, and pushed at the surface of the mirror, with its bits of floating herbs, like wind on water. I watched the glass ripple. “What do you smell, Uncle?”

  “I smell nothing but the stench of Unseelie magic.” His voice was ugly with anger, and something else. I realized in that moment that Taranis was mad. I’d thought all his crimes had been arrogance, but looking into his face, my skin ran cold, even with the Goddess’s touch. Taranis, King of the Seelie Court, was mad. It was there in his eyes, as if a curtain of sanity had lifted and you couldn’t miss it. There was something broken in his mind. Consort help us.

  “You are not yourself, Your Majesty,” Doyle said softly in his deep voice.

  “You are the Dark, and I am the Light.” Taranis raised his right hand, palm outward. I felt my guards move forward, toward me. They piled on top of me, pressed me to the floor, protecting me with their bodies. I felt heat, even through the flesh that protected me. I heard a noise, then Nelson was screaming and the lawyers were yelling. I spoke from the bottom of the pile with Galen pressed tightly against me. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  More male voices from the far door. Security had arrived, but what good were guns when someone could turn light itself into a weapon? Could you shoot through the mirror and hit anything on the other side? You could shoot out the mirror, but the bullet should stop at the glass. Taranis could hurt us. Could we hurt him?

  Other voices seemed to be coming from in front of us, from the mirror. I tried to peer around Galen’s arm, and the spill of Abe’s long hair, but I was trapped in the dimness of their bodies, with the feel of more weight atop me, so that I was trapped and useless until the fight was over. I knew better than to order them off of me. If they thought it was safe, they’d move, and get me out of the room. Until that moment they were offering their lives to shield mine. Once I’d been relieved to know that. Now some of them were as precious to me as my own life. I had to know what was happening.

  “Galen, what is happening?”

  “I’ve got two layers of hair in front of me. I’m as blind as you are,” he said.

  Abe answered me. “Taranis’s guard is trying to calm him.”

  “Why did Nelson scream?” I asked. My voice was squeezed a little from the weight of everyone atop me.

  I heard Frost’s voice yelling, “Get her out!”

  I felt the movement before Galen grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Abe had my other arm, and they were running for the far door. Running so fast they simply carried me between them.

  Taranis screamed behind me, “Meredith, Meredith, no, they won’t steal you from me!”

  Light, golden-bright burning light, haloed behind us. The heat hit our backs first. I recognized Rhys’s voice, yelling. I heard running behind us, but I knew that they would be too late. Unlike the movies, you can’t outrun light. Not even the sidhe are that fast.

  CHAPTER 5

  ABE STUMBLED BESIDE ME, ALMOST JERKED ME DOWN, BUT Galen swung me in his arms and sprinted for the door. He moved in a blur of speed that left the room in streamers of color. It was almost as if he didn’t so much open the door and go through it but was moving so quickly that the door wasn’t solid enough to stop us. I wasn’t sure if the door opened or not, but we were on the other side of it. He turned me in his arms, so that he was carrying me like a child, or a bride on her wedding night. He moved down the hallway at a quick trot, away from the door and the sound of battle inside.

  I could order Galen around more than most of the guard. I thought about ordering him to stop, but I wasn’t certain what was happening. What if stopping was the wrong thing to do? What if the men I loved had given their lives to save me, and my stopping here would make that sacrifice worthless? It was one of those moments when I would have given almost anything not to be a princess. There were too many decisions, too many moments like this, where, lose or win, I would still lose.

  He put me down, but kept my hand, as if he knew I might go back. He’d pressed the button to call the elevator. I heard the machinery behind the doors whirring. I couldn’t leave. I knew in that instant that when the doors opened, I wouldn’t get on. I couldn’t leave them. I couldn’t leave them not knowing who was hurt, and how badly.

  I stepped back, pulling on Galen’s hand. He looked at me, his green eyes a little wide, his pulse still thudding against the side of his pale throat above the tie and collar the lawyers had made him wear. I shook my head.

  “Merry, we have to go. My job is to keep you safe.”

  I just shook my head, and pulled on his hand. I tried to pull him back toward the doors that had closed behind us, or had not opened for us to go through. I still couldn’t remember the door opening. The harder I thought about it, the less I seemed to remember of that one moment. It probably meant that Galen had, indeed, taken us through the door. Impossible, especially outside of faerie. Impossible, but it had happened, hadn’t it?

  The elevator doors opened. Galen stepped inside, but I kept his arm stretched out, because I did not step forward. “Merry, please,” he said. “Please, you can’t go back.”

  “I can’t go forward either. If I am to be queen, then I have to stop running. To be ruler of a faerie court means I must be a warrior, too. I must be able to fight.”

  He tried to pull me inside. I put a hand on the wall to keep some leverage. “You are mortal,” he said. “You could die.”

  “We could all die,” I said. “The sidhe are no longer immortal. You know it and I know it.”

  He put a hand on the door that tried to close on him. “But we’re harder to kill than a human. You injure like you’re human, Merry. I can’t allow you to go back inside that room.”

  I had a moment to understand that somehow this was a deciding moment. What kind of queen would I be? “You cannot allow? Galen, I must rule, or not rule. I cannot have it both ways.” I pulled my hand free of his, and he didn’t fight me.

  He just looked at me, searched my face, as if he didn’t know me. “You really are going back, and short of me throwing you over my shoulder, I can’t stop you, can I?”

  “No, you can’t.” I started walking back down the long hallway that we had just raced down.

  Galen fell into step beside me. He unfastened the buttons of his jacket, and took out the gun he was wearing. He switched off the safety and chambered a round.

  I reached behind my back to the nice little sideways holster, and took out my own gun. I’d replaced the Lady Smith that Doyle had taken off of me in faerie once before he was mine. It was the gun I was accustomed to, and a popular backup gun for a lot of police officers. Mostly male, strangely. The original push for the gun had turned off a lot of women. One of the colors the grip had come in had been pink. But in black or steeled blue it was still a good gun, and the one I was most used to. I didn’t draw my gun as smoothly as Galen had, but it was a new holster, and a newish gun. It would take practice to be smooth. If Taranis was mad, I might get all the practice I needed.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FAR SET OF ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED AND A SECURITY guard stepped out. Emergency medical techs rushed behind him with a wheeled gurney and medical bags. Two more EMTs with another gurney and more equipment followed them. A second security guard brought up the rear.

  The EMTs hesitated for a second as the security guard in the front pointed at the right door. The door we’d come out of, of course. My pulse was in my throat. Who was hurt, and how badly?

  One of the EMTs, a woman, saw our guns. Without thinking, I pulled glamour around my hand so that it looked as if I held a small clutch purse. The woman frowned, shook her head, and followed her partner.

  Galen whispered, “Nice purse.”

  I glanced at his hand, and saw a small bouquet of flowers. It looked real, even to me.

  The security guard recognized us, or at le
ast me. “Princess, I can’t let you go inside until we’ve secured the area. Police are on the way.”

  “Do your job,” I said. I hadn’t argued with him. I hadn’t lied, but as soon as they went through the door, I’d be right behind them. They’d called EMTs and police. What in Danu’s name had happened in there?

  The doors hushed closed behind the gurney. Galen and I just started walking toward the doors. No discussion was necessary. I’d made up my mind, and he would follow my lead. There were moments when that was exactly what I needed from my men.

  Galen opened the door, and used his body to shield me, just in case. If the fighting had still been ongoing, he’d have shoved me back. But I think we both believed that if the fighting was ongoing they’d have had the EMTs wait for the police, not just let them inside.

  Galen hesitated for a moment. I heard voices. Some panicked, some calm, all a little too loud. Abe’s voice, saying “Goddess, I wish I still drank.”

  A woman’s voice. “We’ll give you something for the pain.”

  I pushed at Galen’s back, to let him know that I wanted to see. He took a breath deep enough that it shuddered through his body. Then he moved inside the room, and let me see what lay beyond.

  One set of EMTs was clustered around Abe where he lay on his stomach nearest the door. They’d swept his long hair to one side, exposing scorch marks on his back. Taranis’s hand of power had burned through suit jacket and shirt to the skin underneath.

  One of the blue-suited security guards came toward us. “You need to wait outside until the police come, Princess Meredith.”

  Biggs, with his expensive suit singed on one sleeve, said, “Please, Princess, we can’t guarantee your safety.”

  I looked at the big mirror. I heard Taranis’s screams in the distance, but he wasn’t visible. He was screaming, “Let me go! I’m your king! Unhand me!”

  The Seelie noble who stood front and center in the mirror was Hugh Belenus. He was, in fact, Sir Hugh, but didn’t always insist on it like most of the Seelie Court. He was also one of the officers of Taranis’s personal guard. Unlike the Unseelie Court, all the guards at Taranis’s court were male. Even if you were a queen, you didn’t get female guards. I had never realized before that Hugh resembled the king in one way. His long straight hair was the color of flames. Not sunset, like Taranis’s, but the color of moving flame: red, yellow, and orange.

  Frost and Rhys were standing in front of the mirror, talking with Hugh. Where was Doyle? He should have been with them. I had to walk farther into the room to see past the milling lawyers and security guards until I found the second set of EMTs with a second injured figure on a gurney. Doyle lay on the gurney, motionless. There was something wrong with his clothing. It was torn up, as if great claws had raked it. The world narrowed down, as if the edges of the room were collapsing, down, down, until all I could see clearly was him. In that moment, I didn’t care about the mirror, or Hugh, or that Taranis had finally done something that he couldn’t hide from the rest of the sidhe. There was just that still dark form on the gurney and nothing else.

  Galen stayed with me, his free hand on my arm. I wasn’t sure if he was guiding me, or holding me back. I stood beside the gurney, staring down at the tall muscled form of my Darkness. Doyle, who had fought a thousand battles before I was born. Doyle, who had seemed indestructible like his namesake. You cannot kill the dark, it is always with us.

  His clothing wasn’t torn; it was burned like Abe’s. His black skin just didn’t show the marks from a distance the way Abe’s paler skin had, but there were shallow burns across his upper chest and one shoulder. And his face—one half of his face was bandaged from forehead to nearly chin. I knew that the fact that they’d tended his face first meant it was worse than his chest. There was a bag of clear liquid on top of his body. A flexible tube ran from it to his arm, where there was tape and a syringe.

  I looked at the two techs. “Will he…?”

  “Unless shock sets in, it’s not life-threatening,” one of them said. Then they were pushing him toward the doors. “But we’ve got to get him to the burn unit.”

  “Burn unit,” I repeated. I felt slow and stupid.

  “We’ve got to go,” the other tech said, and his voice was gentle, as if he knew I was in shock.

  Rhys was beside me. “Merry, we need you at the mirror. Galen can go with them.”

  I shook my head.

  Rhys grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me away from Doyle so I had to look into his face. “We need you to be our queen right now, not Doyle’s lover. Can you do that, or are we on our own here?”

  Anger was instant, anger that made my blood run hot. I started to say “how dare you,” but just then Taranis yelled, “How dare you touch your king!” I swallowed the words, but couldn’t keep the anger off my face.

  “Merry, I’m sorry. I’m more sorry than I can say, but we need you now.”

  My voice came tight, warm, but controlled, very controlled, “Call the house. Send one of the healers to the hospital, or maybe both the healers.” I nodded, the anger beginning to fade under the thought that I didn’t know how bad Doyle was hurt, or Abe. “Both,” I said.

  “I’ll call them, I promise, but Frost needs you at the mirror.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  Rhys kissed me on the forehead. I blinked up at him. He got his cell phone out of his pocket. I told Galen, “Go with them to the hospital.”

  “My duty is you.”

  “Your duty is to go where your princess tells you to go. Now do it. Please, Galen, there’s no time.”

  He hesitated for a breath, then he gave a nod that was almost a bow, and trotted after the rapidly moving gurney. I hadn’t gotten to kiss Doyle good-bye. No, it wasn’t good-bye. He was one of the sidhe. The greatest magicians and warriors that faerie had ever known. He would not die from burns, not even magical ones. I believed my own words in the front of my head, but the back of the mind is a cluttered, dark place that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with fear.

  I made myself start walking toward Frost’s tall figure. One step at a time. I realized I had the gun still naked in my hand. The glamour hid it, but my concentration was bad. Did I want the Seelie to see the gun? Did I care? No. Should I care? Probably.

  I moved my jacket aside to put the gun back in its holster. I had to stop walking to do it, but I put it away. One of the main reasons I did it was because if Taranis managed to break free of his men and come back to the mirror, I didn’t trust myself not to use the gun. That, I knew, would be bad. No matter how momentarily satisfying it might be, I was a princess, trying to be a queen, and that meant I couldn’t indulge in fits of temper. They were too costly, as today’s little disaster had proven. Damn Taranis, damn him, for not stepping down years ago.

  I took a deep breath that shook around the edges. My stomach rolled with all the emotions I couldn’t afford right now. I walked toward Frost and the mirror and Sir Hugh. I prayed to the Goddess that I wouldn’t fall apart in front of the Seelie. Andais had temper tantrums that were infamous. Now Taranis had shown himself to be even more unstable. I walked to the mirror and prayed that I would be the ruler we needed right now. I prayed that I wouldn’t fall apart or throw up. Nerves, just nerves. Please, Goddess, let Doyle be all right.

  Once I said the prayer I truly meant, I felt calmer. Yes, I wanted to be a good queen. Yes, I wanted to show the Seelie that I wasn’t as crazy as my aunt and uncle, but truly, none of it mattered to me as much as the man they’d just carted away on a gurney.

  It wasn’t the way a queen thought. It was the way a woman thought, and to be queen means you have to be queen first and everything else second. My father had taught me that. Taught me that before an assassin had killed him. I pushed the thought away, and went to stand by my Killing Frost.

  I would be the queen that my father had raised me to be. I would not embarrass Doyle by being less than he’d told me I could be.

  I stood stra
ight, drawing myself up to every inch of height that I had. The three-inch heels helped, although standing beside Frost’s tall figure, I couldn’t help but seem delicate.

  But I stood there and did my duty and it tasted like ashes in my mouth.

  CHAPTER 7

  SIR HUGH BELENUS GAVE A LOW BOW THAT SHOWED THAT HIS fire-colored hair had started the day in a complicated braid, but singed ribbons trailed from its remnants. When he stood up, I could see that the front of his tunic, all the way through two layers of under-shirts, had been blasted apart to expose the pale golden skin underneath. The clothing was ruined, scorched, but his body seemed untouched.

  “Sir Hugh stood in front of Taranis at the end,” Frost said. “He took the brunt of the blow meant for Abeloec.”

  “What am I to say to that?” I asked, and my voice sounded completely normal. The very normality of it was almost shocking. A little voice in my own head thought, how can I sound so calm? Training? Shock?

  “If Sir Hugh were not one of the elder sidhe, you could thank him for risking himself to save our warriors,” Frost said.

  I looked up at the tall man beside me. I stared all the way up to those gray eyes and found that they reflected a bare tree in a winter landscape, like a tiny snow globe caught in his eyes. Only his own magic or anxiety would fill his eyes with that image. Always before it had dizzied me to stare into Frost’s eyes when they filled with that other place. Today, it seemed cool, calming. Today, he had the icy strength of winter in his eyes. A coldness that protected you, kept your emotions from eating you alive. I understood in that moment part of what had let Frost survive the queen’s petty torments. He had embraced the coldness inside.

  I touched his arm, and the world was a little steadier. There was something moving in the landscape of his eyes; something white, and horned. I had a glimpse of a white stag before Frost bent to kiss me. It was a chaste kiss, but that one gentle touch let me know that he understood what the calmness cost me. That kiss let me know that he understood what Doyle meant to me, and what he meant to me, and what he did not.