Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"Only if she lies." I think that was Sir Hugh. But there was so much noise, so many voices. The press had begun to yell at us. They shouted their questions, their theories. We all ignored them.

Dr. Hardy began to speak quietly to me, to explain what was happening to me. She began to introduce me to her team. She would explain, and only then would they touch me. It began to help me lose that edge of hysteria.

Only when a voice sounded on the microphone that I still had not seen did I make them stop. The voice said, "We have told you what happened to the princess. The Unseelie guard who were supposed to protect her beat and raped her. Our king saved his niece from them and brought her to sanctuary here."

It was too much. No matter how I felt, I could not let them ship me to a hospital and leave that lie in the ears of the media.

"I need a microphone, please. I need to tell the truth," I said.

Dr. Hardy didn't like it, but Hugh and others backed me up, and they rolled me to the front of the room. They insisted that I keep the choking closeness of the neck brace on. I was already hooked up to an I.V. Apparently my blood pressure was low and my body was a little shocky.

The doctor stepped up to the microphone.

"I am Dr. Vanessa Hardy. The princess needs to get to a hospital, but she insists on talking to you. She is injured, and we need to get her to a hospital. This will be quick. I hope that is clear?"

Several of them said, "It is clear."

The press secretary was all pink and gold and sidhe beauty. She didn't want to give up the mic. She'd heard enough from the doorway to worry her.

It was Agent Gillett who took it from her, and held it for me. You could feel the eagerness of the press like a sort of magic of their own.

A voice called, "Who hit you?"

"Taranis," I said.

There was a collective sigh of eagerness and an explosion of flashes. I closed my eyes against it.

"Did the Unseelie rape you?"

"No."

"Were you raped, Princess?"

"Taranis knocked me unconscious and kidnapped me, and I woke nude in his bed. He says we had sex. I will be taking a rape kit at the hospital. If it comes back positive for an unknown, then yes, my uncle raped me."

The police were holding the press secretary and some of the sidhe back by force. Some of the nobles and the dogs were helping them mind the crowd. I heard growls around me. The loudest was next to me. The great black head touched my hand. I raised fingers to stroke Doyle's fur. That one small touch was more comfort than anything else had been.

Dr. Hardy yelled above the chaos, "The princess has a concussion. I need to get her to X-ray or a cat scan to see how serious it is. So we're leaving now."

I said "No."

"Princess, you said you'd go quietly if you told the truth."

"No, it's not that. I can't have an X-ray. I'm pregnant." Agent Gillett was still holding the microphone close enough that the room had heard that. If we thought there had been chaos before, we'd been wrong.

The press were yelling, "Who's the father? Did your uncle make you pregnant?"

Dr. Hardy leaned close and whispered/shouted above the cacophony, "How far along are you?"

"Four to five weeks," I said.

"We will treat you and your baby like gold," she said.

I would have nodded, but the neck brace kept me from doing so. I finally said "Yes."

She looked up at someone I couldn't see and said, "We need to get her to a hospital now."

We began to push our way toward the door. There were two main reasons we were having problems moving. One was the press.

They all wanted one last image, one last question answered. The second was the Seelie guards and nobles who opposed Hugh. They wanted me to stay with them. They wanted me to recant.

Inhumanly beautiful faces kept hovering over me, saying things like, "How can you lie about our king? How can you accuse your own uncle of such a crime? Liar. Lying bitch," was the last one before the police got very serious above keeping the golden throng away from my face.

They tried to chase away the black dog, but I said, "No, he's mine."

No one questioned it. Dr. Hardy only said, "He doesn't go in the ambulance."

I didn't argue. Just Doyle beside me, in any form, was an improvement. Every brush of his fur against my hand was better.

There were so many people around the stretcher, so much light that the only way I knew we were finally outside was the brush of night air against my face. It had been night when Taranis took me. Was it the same night, or the next night? How long had he had me?

I tried to ask what day it was, but no one heard me. The press had followed us outside the sithen. They trailed us with shouted questions and mobile lights.

The wheels of the gurney didn't like the grass. The bumps made my head ache more. I fought not to make small sounds of pain, and was able to do it until the medics closed around us so that I could no longer touch Doyle's fur. The moment I lost contact with him the pain was worse.

I spoke his name before I could stop myself. "Doyle," I said softly, a plea.

The huge black head shoved its way under the doctor's arm. It made her stumble. She tried to shove him away, saying, "Shoo."

"I need him, please."

She frowned at me, but she dropped back a step so the dog could be closer to me. Close enough that my hand could caress his fur on most of the bumpy ride. I'd never realized how uneven the grass around the mounds was until smoothness was what I needed. It had always seemed like such level ground until this moment.

One of the cameras peered over the shoulders of the medics. The light blinded me. The pain spiked hard and sharp, and nausea came with it.

"I'm going to be sick."

They had to stop the gurney, and help me lean over the side of it. Between the tubes and board and neck brace, I couldn't have moved myself. I'd never rolled onto my side with this many hands helping me.

Dr. Hardy yelled while I threw up, "She has a concussion! Bright lights aren't good for her."

Being sick made the inside of my head explode, or that's what it felt like. My vision swam in ruins. A hand touched my forehead, A hand that was cool and solid and felt… like I should know it.

My vision cleared to find a man with a blond beard and mustache peering into my face. It was his hand on my forehead. A baseball cap was pulled low on his face. There was something about the blue eyes that looked vaguely familiar. Then while I still looked at this stranger's face, the eyes changed. One eye held three rings of blue: cornflower blue around the pupil, sky blue, then a circle of winter sky.

I whispered, "Rhys."

He smiled through the fake beard. He'd used glamour to hide his eyes and other things, but the beard was simply a good fake. He had always been the best of the men at undercover work when we were with the detective agency.

I was crying and not wanting to, because I was afraid it would hurt.

A voice came from behind him. "Remember our deal."

Rhys answered without turning around. "You'll get your exclusive televised interview as soon as she's well enough. I gave my word."

I must have looked confused because he said, "They let us come in as part of their crew for a promised interview, or two."

I reached for him with my free hand. He took it, and kissed my palm. The camera that had made me sick was back to recording, just at a slightly better distance.

"Is he one of your guys?" Dr. Hardy asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Great, but we need to keep moving."

"Sorry," Rhys said, and he put a hand on my shoulder as they moved me back to my back. My other hand searched again for the touch of fur and found it for a moment, then a hand found mine. I couldn't turn to see, and he seemed to understand, because Galen's face hovered over mine. He had a hat on, too, and he'd used glamour to make his green hair look brown and his skin look human. He let the glamour go while I watched, and it was smoother even than Rhys's. One moment a nice-looking human guy, the next Galen. Magic.