Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"Do you not see the blessing of the Goddess before you?"

"We are immuned to illusion by the king's own magic."

"Do you see the fall of petals?" she asked.

"We see the illusion of it, m'lady."

I could not see what she did, but she said, "Touch them."

"The king can make illusion touchable, too, m'lady Elasaid."

I realized that they had seen lies so long that they no longer recognized truth. All was doubt for them.

The blond guard had stepped a little in front of us, helping the dogs hide us from view. He turned to Hugh and whispered, "Shall I call?"

Hugh gave a small nod.

I expected the guard to take out a hand mirror or use the shiny surface of his blade, but he didn't. He reached into the leather pouch at his side and took out a very modern cell phone.

I must have looked surprised because he said, "We have reception near this room. It's why we put the press in here."

It was perfectly logical. He moved back, and others moved, gracefully, to help hide him from the view of the guards before the doors.

He spoke quietly, "We are outside the doors with the injured princess. The guards will not let us pass."

One of the guards near the door said, "Go back to your rooms. None of you have any business here."

The blond guard said, "Yes, Yes. No." He folded the phone shut, placed it back in his leather bag, and took his post at our side. He whispered to Hugh, so quietly that even I couldn't hear it.

The group of nobles and their hounds bunched up around me. If it came to an actual fight with swords and magic, they had left themselves no room to maneuver, Then I realized what they had done. They were shielding me. Shielding me with their tall, slender bodies. Shielding me with their immortal beauty. Me, who they had once despised, and they were risking all they were, all they had ever been, to keep me safe.

They were not my friends. Most did not know me. Some had made it clear when I was a child that they did not like me. They found me too human, too mixed of blood to be sidhe. What had Taranis done to them to make them so desperate that they would defy him like this for me?

There was a stirring in the front of the glittering throng around me, almost the way a field of flowers moves in a strong wind.

I heard the guard near the door, his voice rough enough to recognize among all the sweeter voices. "You are not allowed farther into our sithen, sir, by order of the king."

"Unless you want to fight us, we are coming through this door."

I knew the voice. It was Major Walters, head of the special branch of the St. Louis Police Department that specialized in dealing with the fey. It had been an honorary title for years, until I came home. I didn't know how he'd gotten invited to a press conference, and I didn't care.

A second male voice came. "We have a federal warrant to bring the princess into protective custody." It was Special Agent Raymond Gillett, who had been the only federal agent who had kept in touch with me after the investigation of my father's death had gone cold. When I was younger I had thought he cared what happened to me. Lately I realized it was more about not leaving such a high-profile case unsolved. I was still angry with him, but in that moment, his familiar voice was a good sound.

"The princess is not here, officers," said a second guard. "Please go back to the press area."

"The princess is here," Lady Elasaid said, "and in need of human medical attention."

You could feel the increased tension in the group of nobles, like a spring that had been wound once too often. To the human officers, they would be beautiful and unreadable, but I felt their energy rise like the first spark of heat from a match. The guards at the door would feel it, too.

The great black dog moved up on one side of Hugh. It didn't make me feel better. Weaponless against the might of sidhe guards, all he could do was die for me. I didn't want him to die for me. I wanted him to live for me.

"We have doctors with us," Major Walters said. "Let them look at the princess, and we'll go from there."

"The king has ordered that she not be given back to the brutes who injured her. She cannot go near the Unseelie again."

"Did he forbid her going near humans?" Agent Gillett asked.

There was a moment of silence while the murmur of power began to build among the sidhe around me. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if they were whispering their magic.

"The king said nothing about humans looking at her," a new guard voice said.

"We were told to keep her away from the press."

"Why would the princess need to be kept away from the press? Agent Gillett asked. "She will tell them firsthand about being rescued from the evil Unseelie by "your brave king."

"I do not know…"

"Unless you think the princess will have a different story," Major Walters said.

"The king has given his oath that it is so," the talkative guard said.

"Then you have nothing to lose by letting our doctors look at her," Agent Gillett said.

The guard who had sounded agreeable said, "If the king is true to his word, then there is nothing to fear, Barri, Shanley. You do believe him, don't you?" There was the first real doubt plain in his voice, as if even among the king's most loyal the lies were becoming too heavy to bear.

"If she is truly here, then let her come forward," Shanley said. He sounded tired.

Hugh held me closer as the nobles parted like a glittering curtain, Only Hugh's hounds and the blond guard stayed in front of me. Doyle stayed to our side. I think that he, like me, was worried that the already suspicious guards would figure out who he was. They might let us go into the press room, but if they suspected that the Darkness was inside their sithen, they would go wild.

Finally, Hugh said, "Let them see."

Both the guard and the great dogs moved. Doyle moved a little behind Hugh so that he blended in with the other dogs, aside from his color. He was the only black one among them. To my eyes he stood out almost painfully, so black among all the Seelie color.

I must have looked even worse than I felt, because both the men were wide-eyed. They controlled it after that first glimpse, but I'd seen it. I even understood it. And it was as if that look let me feel again. I don't know if it was the magic, the fear for Doyle, or the fear that Taranis would find us. Or maybe the little screaming voice in my skull that had been growing louder. The voice that finally let me think the thought all the way through, to ask in my own head at least, "Did he rape me? Did he rape me after he beat me unconscious?" Was that what the great king of the Seelie considered seduction? Goddess, let him have been confused when he thought it possible that I carried his child.

It was like knowing that you were cut but only feeling pain after you saw the blood. I'd seen the «blood» on the faces of the police. I saw it in the way they moved toward me. The left side of my face ached and was swollen. I knew that it must have hurt before, but it was as if only now could I feel all of it.

The headache came back in a roar that closed my eyes and brought a fresh wave of nausea. A voice said, "Princess Meredith, can you speak?"

I looked up into Agent Gillett's eyes. There was that old compassion there, that look that had made me trust him when I was a young woman. I looked into those eyes and knew it was real. I'd felt used by him recently, realizing that he'd kept in touch with me in hopes of solving my father's murder not for me, but for some purpose of his own. I had told him to stay away from me, but looking up into his face now, I understood what I'd seen in him when I was seventeen. For this moment, he cared, deeply.

Maybe he was remembering the first time he saw me, collapsed in grief, clutching my dead father's sword as if it were the last solid thing in the universe.