Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

I didn’t have time to be afraid, or horrified, or anything. The world went away in a swirl of dimming vision, and finally darkness. There were no visions, no manifestations. There was nothing but blessed oblivion.

I WOKE, BLINKING UP INTO A CANOPY AS BLACK AS THE DARKNESS that had sucked me under. Black material was held in graceful folds on dyed black wood. I thought, almost idly, that it looked like the queen’s bed. Fear speared through me in a fine, breath-stealing rush. It was never good to wake up here.

I must have moved my hand more than I thought because I brushed someone’s arm. It made me jump and look to the center of the bed.

Galen lay, eyes still closed, face peaceful. He was still nude, as were we all. For Nicca lay on the other side of Galen. That the three of us were naked in her bed did not make me feel one bit better.

I looked out at her room, and it was completely black except for a fire in a large metal brassier in the center of the room. Why were the walls without light? Where was the light of the sithen?

Something moved in that blackness, and I tensed, expecting it to be the queen, but there was no flash of her white skin. I knew who it was before he stepped into the amber glow of the firelight. Doyle in a cloak as black as the rest of him passed in the outer glow of the fire’s light to glide toward the bed.

“Doyle.” I didn’t even try to keep the relief from my voice.

“How do you feel?” His deep voice rumbled and the very sound of it lessened the panic that still fluttered in my pulse.

“Fine. Why are we here?”

“Because the queen willed it,” he said.

I did not like that answer. It sped my pulse again. Someone laughed in the dark. I choked on the panic of my own heartbeat. I felt Galen tense beside me, and knew he was awake, but he did not move. He very carefully did not let anyone else know he had woken. I did not give him away, but I knew that feigning sleep would not help him.

The laugh came again, and I knew it wasn’t the queen. My pulse slowed enough that I could breathe around it. “Who else is here?”

There was movement in the farthest corner of the room. I caught a glimpse of pale hair, pale skin, a white cloak. The figure was so pale, the room so dark, that it was almost as if the figure materialized from that darkness like a ghost. Though I knew he was not.

The glint of firelight made me certain of who it was. “Ivi,” I said, and was not happy. He had scared me.

“Why unhappy to see me, Princess? I did offer up my cloak to guard your body.”

“Why sit in the corner? And what was funny?”

“To see the fear on your face at waking here. I sat in the dark, because I am too pale to hide closer to the fire.” The smile was gone by the time he came to stand at the foot of the bed. He leaned a shoulder against the big carved bedpost, huddling the cloak around him as if he was cold. His pale hair with its decoration of vines and leaves was trapped inside the cloak, so that it made a sort of hood around his face of his own hair.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

“Recruiting,” Ivi said.

Galen raised enough to look at them both. He was lying on his stomach. “Stop being so closemouthed and just tell us what has happened while we slept.” He sounded angry where I had sounded afraid.

I heard the door to the queen’s bathroom open, before I saw by the fire’s glow that it was Rhys in the doorway. He, too, was wearing a cloak around his body so that only his face and hair were bare to the dim light. “You’ve missed lots,” Rhys said. He looked tired.

He came to stand beside the bed a little ahead of Ivi at his corner.

“So much in fact,” Doyle said, “that I am not certain where to begin.”

“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” Galen asked.

“He didn’t mean it to make us feel better,” Nicca said. “He’s being the Darkness, all dour and frightening.”

I started to sit up, and something moved on my stomach. I jumped, and looked down, and found that I hadn’t dreamed it. There was a moth on me, exactly where the wound had been. I stayed propped on one elbow, and reached cautiously to touch its upper wings, all charcoal grey and black. It flicked its wings at me, as if irritated by the touch, flashing the bright red and black underwings, like blood and darkness turned to glitter. Its wings brushed against my stomach, and I swore I felt something more solid inside me. I reached toward it again, for the head with its feathery antennae. It didn’t react until I touched it, then it flicked its wings again, but it also struggled a little. I felt it move inside me because the lower half of the body was embedded in my flesh.

I drew my fingers back, and I had the color of its wings on my fingertips, as if I’d touched a real moth. “What in the name of Danu is that?”

“It will not last, Merry,” Doyle said. “It will become like a drawing on your skin.”

“You mean like a tattoo?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

“How long will it keep moving like that?” I asked.

“A few hours,” he said.

“You say that like you’ve seen this happen before.”

“He has.” Nicca propped himself up on one elbow, turning his body to face me. He had a white flower in the hollow between his shoulder and chest, startling against his deep brown skin. The flower had a yellow center and five petals raised above his skin, but the stem was lost in his flesh. Like the moth in me, the flower was alive, but embedded in his skin.

Galen rolled over onto his side and let me see his right arm. Just below the shoulder was a butterfly so large it took up all the width of his arm. Its yellow-and-black-striped wings folded back around his arm as the butterfly flexed, gentle and unhurried, as if it were feeding from some sweet-nectared flower.

“It doesn’t seem to be afraid that it’s trapped,” he said.

I stared down at the moth on my own body. “No, they should be panicking, trying to free themselves. Why aren’t they?”

“They are not real,” Doyle said.

“They are real,” Nicca said.

Doyle frowned, but gave a quick nod. “Perhaps ‘real’ is not the correct word. They are not free animals that would mourn their captivity.”

I touched the moth’s wings again, and it flicked them at me. Leave me alone, it was saying as clearly as it could. The sensation of having something alive wriggling inside me made my stomach roll uneasily. The more I touched the wings, the more irritated the moth became. I lay back against the pillows, closing my eyes and breathing around the sensation of it.

“Can you feel its legs inside you?” Galen’s voice didn’t sound any happier than my stomach felt.

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s not a good feeling,” he said.

I opened my eyes and looked into his face. He looked a little greener than usual.

“Stop trying to pet them and they won’t struggle,” Rhys said.

I stared at the black, red, grey, and even white that was smeared across my fingers. “What are these things?”

“They are the beginning of tattoos,” Doyle said, “marks of power.”

I stared up at him. “You mean the tattoos that the sidhe once had? They were more like birthmarks, weren’t they?”

“Some are born with the marks upon them, but many are not.”

“Most of us acquire the marks as we enter our power in adolescence, or even adulthood,” Rhys said.

“I remember my father telling me that our tattoos were why our people painted themselves for battle. The mark of their deity to protect them.”

“Once, long ago,” Doyle said, “the marks on their bodies did protect our followers. Protected them better than any armor, for it was a conduit to the power of the sidhe they invoked.”