Лорел Гамильтон - Seduced by Moonlight

I'd tried to turn and help Kitto, but Rhys's hands had tightened on my shoulders. One glance at his face, and I knew that Kitto wasn't the only one who needed help. I didn't know what to do, but I stayed where I was, with Rhys kneeling so that his body touched the back of mine. I stayed there so he could lean against me and not fall over.

I turned back to the goblin in the chair and waited for my eyes to make sense of it. At first it looked like a huge black, hairy spider. A spider the size of a large German shepherd. But the head had a neck, and there was something vaguely human about the mouth; it had lips and fangs. There were huge black legs on either side of the bloated body that were pure spider, but the two hands that stuck out of the front of it weren't. It seemed to have eyes everywhere, and every one of them was tricolored in rings of blue. It raised up as if trying to get more comfortable on the chair, and flashed a glimpse of pale breasts. Female. I couldn't bring myself to call it a woman.

I never thought I'd see anything among the fey that I truly thought was nightmarish. I was Unseelie sidhe; we were the stuff of nightmares. But Siun was a nightmare for nightmares. If she had been a little less of one thing, and a little more of the other, it would have made her less terrible, but she was what she was, and there was no saving it.

That strangely shapely mouth, caught in the midst of all that black hair and those eyes, spoke. «Rhysss, how very, very good to ssee you. I still have your eye in a jar on my shelf. Come visit us again. I'd love a matched pair.»

I felt a shiver run through Rhys, as if his entire body trembled in some unseen wind. His voice came out empty like a shell tossed on a beach, echoing with its loneliness. «If you didn't want us to agree to this treaty, you should have just said so, Kurag, and saved us all the time and energy.»

I patted his hand that still gripped my shoulder, but I'm not sure he felt anything in that moment.

«Frost,» Doyle said, «tend to Kitto.»

Frost sheathed his sword and holstered his gun, moving to kneel beside Kitto. In day-to-day arrangements Frost and Doyle argued, but in an emergency all the guards obeyed Doyle. Centuries of habit were hard to break.

Doyle spoke as he moved to stand beside us. «What is your intention with this, Kurag?»

Siun said, «I wanted to see the pretty sidhe.»

«Shut up, Siun.» Kurag said it without looking at her, as if he just expected her to do it. Surprisingly, she did.

«I felt Merry deserved to see what you were offering her up to.» Something close to his usual leer crossed his face. «Besides, Darkness, it won't be Merry in Siun's bed.»

«It won't be anybody,» Rhys said.

Doyle touched his arm. «You cannot intend that she will bed either Rhys or Kitto again.»

«You volunteering?» Kurag asked.

Doyle blinked at him, unreadable. «What are you saying, Kurag?»

«If I agree to an extra month for every goblin you make sidhe, then you must agree to bring over every sidhe-side who wants to try it.»

Doyle's black gaze flicked to Siun, then up to Kurag. «Why are you fighting this, Kurag? Why don't you want magic in the veins of the goblins again?»

«I'm not fighting it, Darkness, I'm agreeing to it, on certain conditions. I'm even giving Merry her month per goblin whom she brings over.»

Doyle made a small gesture toward Siun. «To insist that we bed all who come our way is an insult.»

«Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours?»

«Her mother wasn't raped,» Rhys said, and his voice was still empty, still horrible to hear.

Kurag ignored the comment, but Doyle said, «What do you mean, Rhys?»

«She bragged that her mother had raped one of us during the last war.» His hands dug into my shoulders until it almost hurt. «Don't blame this particular horror on the sidhe, Kurag. The goblins did this to themselves.»

It was plain on Kurag's face that he had known the truth. «You have lied to us, Kurag,» Doyle said.

«No, Darkness, I said, Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours? I made it a question, not a statement of fact.»

«That is splitting the truth a wee thin,» I said.

Kurag looked at me. He nodded. «Perhaps I have learned from the sidhe just how thin the truth may come.»

«What's that supposed to mean?» Rhys said.

Doyle held up his hand. «Enough of this. Either we are going to agree to Kurag's terms, or we walk away and have the goblins for another two months, and only two months.»

«I'll give you time to talk among yourselves,» Kurag said. He raised a hand as if he'd wipe the mirror.

«No,» Doyle said, «no, if we give you time you'll come up with some other reason to avoid this agreement. We do it now, today.»

I looked at Doyle and could read nothing from his face, or his body. He was the untouchable Darkness, the left hand of the queen. The figure I'd feared as a child. Though admittedly I'd never seen him this unclothed. The Queen's Darkness wore clothes from his neck to his ankles to his wrists, all year, all weather. Once to see Doyle's bare arms had been tantamount to him being undressed in public, but here he stood wearing only the tiny black thong, and somehow clothes or no clothes, he was still the same untouchable, unreadable, frightening Darkness.

«Which of you will bed Siun?» Kurag asked.

«I will,» Doyle said.

I was the one who said, «No.»

«None of us touches her,» Rhys said.

«We will make this agreement, Rhys,» Doyle said.

Rhys was shaking his head. «No, I swore that I'd kill Siun when next we met. I swore blood price on it.»

«You swore blood price?» Doyle asked.

Rhys only nodded.

Doyle sighed. «We agree to trying to bring over all the half-sidhes you have, Kurag, but this Siun must answer to Rhys when we come to your court.»

«What if she kills him?» Kurag asked.

«Then the blood price is satisfied. We will not seek vengeance for it.»

«Done,» Kurag said.

«And after I have killed Rhysss,» Siun said, «I will have his trull, my Kitto. I will ride him till he shines underneath me.» She glared at Rhys with her dozen eyes, all ringed with blue, sky blue, cornflower, and violet. The eyes were lovely, and belonged in a different body. «Thisss one wouldn't shine for me. If you'd have glowed underneath me, I wouldn't have taken your eye.»

«I told you then, and I tell you now. You can force yourself on me, but you can't make me enjoy it. You're a lousy lay.»

She swarmed off the chair and was suddenly filling the mirror, as if she'd grown larger, all those legs reaching for us, those hands, and that strange half-formed mouth. She battered at the glass with her limbs and shrieked, «I will kill you, Rhysss, and the princessssss will not save Kitto. I will have him, and I'll make him sssshine for me!»

Kitto screamed from the far side of the bed. We all turned and looked at him. His face was pale, his blue eyes huge in his face. He flung out his right hand as he screamed, «Noooo!»

Rhys flung us both off the bed a second before I felt the spell shiver through the air above us. It was as if the glass had melted, and Siun began to slide through that melting. Head, one arm, her other arm flailing, searching for something to hold on to. She slid farther, fighting the fall, and not able to stop it.

Kitto put both hands in front of him as if to ward her off, and he screamed again, wordless this time, pitched high with terror.

Rhys pressed me to the carpet, covering my body with his. There was more screaming, and not all of it was Kitto's. Doyle's voice said, «Let the princess up, Rhys.» He sounded puzzled.

Rhys went to his knees, looking around the room, then staring toward the glass, and it was Doyle's hand that helped me to my feet.