Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“A little, but not by hand.”

“Nodens,” she said simply.

“One of my names,” he said, “at the end.”

“How bad an jury can you heal?” she asked.

“Superficial wounds, deep but narrow.”

“Can you set bone?”

He shook his head.

She looked around at her patients. “I think Frost is right. I think the queen will hear you best, and if anyone can bring us more healers, it is you. You will be most welcome when I have more healers. We can conserve our strength, and let you finish a wound after we have begun it.”

“Gladly,” he said, “if you are certain?”

She nodded. “Go to the queen as the princess bids. Killing Frost is right; it is our best chance to save them.”

Doyle nodded, gave a small bow to me, and simply started for the door. I called him back, a hand in his. I drew him in for a kiss, while I was still held in Frost’s arms. Doyle’s lips were warm, and soft, and he drew back from the kiss before I was ready for him to.

“And Doyle goes alone?” Galen said. “You warned Rhys that he might be attacked.”

“He is the Queen’s Darkness,” Brii said. “No one would dare.”

Galen shook his head. “No one goes alone, anywhere, not until we’re back in L.A.”

“And do you rule here already, green knight?” Ivi asked.

“No, but we can’t afford to lose Doyle because we got careless.”

I knew by the look on Doyle’s face that he meant to argue. Then he smiled and shook his head. “He’s right. We cannot afford to be arrogant or careless.” He looked at Frost, and I knew that was who he most wanted to take, but I also knew that he would not strip me of both of them at the same time.

“I will go,” Hawthorne said, “if you will have me.”

“I will go, if you wish, but I think my place is here guarding the princess,” Adair said.

“I agree.” Doyle looked at Galen with a small smile. “Are you content with Hawthorne?”

“Take Brii, too,” he said.

The smile left him. “I do not think that is necessary.”

“It would take me too long to dress or I’d go with you,” Galen said.

“Why so serious about my safety, Galen?” Doyle asked.

I wondered if Galen would tell Doyle what he’d said in the bathroom. He did. “I thought I was dead, and one of my last thoughts was it’s okay, because you and Frost were still alive. I knew you’d keep Merry safe. I knew you’d get her out of here and back home to L.A. I thought, why kill me first? If I were going to do a first strike, it would be you I’d kill. I can’t be the only one who’s thinking that.”

We were all staring at him. “What?” he asked.

“We’re not used to you sounding this smart,” Ivi said, “that’s all.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“If you intend to save lives, go now,” Hafwyn said.

Doyle gave a small bow in my direction. Hawthorne and Brii fell in at his back, and they left us.

I looked at Hafwyn. “What can we do to keep them alive while we wait?” She told us. Ivi spread his cloak on the floor so that I could kneel in safety, while we did what little we could to hold their blood in their bodies, and their lives in our hands.

I WAS LEFT STARING DOWN AT ROYAL’S BODY. HE WAS ALIVE, BUT only because a stomach wound takes longer to kill. The wood had gone so far into his stomach that a piece of it came out the other side, missing his spine by a hairsbreadth. I pressed the cloth on either side of that wound. Hafwyn cautioned me to be careful, and not move him. Not until they had someone with more healing than she had left in her hands.

Royal’s sister, Penny, was at his side, her dress covered in blood. Her hands were too small to compress the wound, but her words were plenty big enough to rub the guilt like sandpaper across my heart.

“We came to you for wings, and you have given us death.” She threw herself onto her brother, yelling at me, “Evil, you are all evil. You have never brought us anything but humiliation and destruction.”

I couldn’t argue with her, not with Royal’s body pressed against my hands, his life bleeding away.

She tried to grab him up onto her lap, and that made him cry out in pain. Hafwyn interfered. “Penny, Penny, if you move him you injure him further.”

But Penny had let her grief and fear swallow her. There was no reasoning with her. It was one of the other uninjured demi-fey who came and dragged her away. She cried and struggled, and the crème-colored rat that had pulled their chariot followed her like a frightened dog. It had kept its distance from Royal, as if it didn’t know quite what to do. But to her, it came, as if to help the other fey take her away.

Royal touched my hand with his, barely covering my knuckle with his entire hand. He was one of the tallest of the fey in the room, but tall is relative when your world is full of people who look like children’s toys.

He gazed up at me with his black eyes, his face so pale he looked ghost-like. But his chest still rose and fell against my fingertips, his stomach still convulsed as he closed his eyes, face pinching tight, with a spasm of pain. I felt him struggle not to writhe as that pain lanced through him.

I said the only thing I had left to offer. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I would not make excuses. Regardless, he was dead unless a fresh healer arrived within minutes.

I said it again. “I am sorry, Royal, I am so sorry.”

He actually smiled at me, and that made my heart hurt. “I have had a sidhe princess say sorry to me.” His face showed that pain again, and his body fought against my fingers.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “Help is coming.”

He gave me a look, and it was eloquent. “There will be no help for me.” His voice fell to a whisper, so low that I had to lean in to catch his words. “Queen Niceven made me… surrogate. Let me taste your… lips and blood… just once. Before…” Another spasm took him, and this time he couldn’t quite make himself hold still. He writhed with the pain, and that caused him more pain, until he screamed. Blood flowed faster around my fingers and the sodden rags. He was going to die in my hands, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

I tasted the salt of my tears before I knew I was crying.

His eyes fluttered open, but they had that glazed look to them, as if he was already seeing things that the living do not see.

His lips moved, but I could not hear him. I leaned into him again, and heard him sigh, “Kiss… me.”

I did what he asked, though I had never kissed lips so delicate. It wasn’t until his lips brushed mine, like the caress of a tightly curled flower, that I felt his glamour. I had let my pity blind me to possibilities. Pity, and the fact that he was dying. You don’t think of the dying wasting energy on sex. It was the most chaste of kisses, but his magic made it more.

His mouth pressed to my lower lip, and in that moment his glamour poured over my skin like water from a warm bath. I could not breathe through it, could not think, could not do anything but feel.

It was like an hour of foreplay in one small kiss. His hand touched my bare breast, and he bit my lip. The touch was so much more than that tiny hand should have been able to deliver, as if he caressed the front of my body with a hand as large as any man’s. That small, sharp shock of pain was like the last thrust, the last lick, the last caress, for it spilled me over the edge and made me scream my pleasure into him. But it was as if his mouth were bigger. He were bigger. In that instant I would have sworn that I lay atop a full-sized lover, that the hands that touched me were another human or sidhe. That the body that I was pressed against was not only full-sized, but well-sized.