Лорел Гамильтон - Seduced by Moonlight

Doyle shrugged. He was wearing black jeans tucked into knee-high black boots, a black T-shirt, black leather jacket. Even his belt buckle was black. The only color showing was the silver earrings that graced the pointed curve of his ears. There was even a diamond stud in one earlobe. «Afraid or not, we must show a brave face.»

«Is it worth dying for? Is it worth getting Merry killed?» She pointed at me, rather dramatically, but she was an actress. Besides, the sidhe could be a dramatic lot, even without training.

«If he kills Merry, Queen Andais will kill him.»

«He released the Nameless to try to kill me so that I wouldn't reveal his secret. Do you really think he'd hesitate at full-out war between the courts?»

«I didn't say war, Maeve.»

«You said the queen would kill Taranis; that means war.»

Doyle shook his head. «For slaying the heir to her throne, I think Andais would do one of two things. Either challenge him to a personal duel, which Taranis will not want; or have him assassinated, discreetly.»

«You mean you would kill Taranis,» Maeve said.

«I am no longer the Queen's Darkness.» He came to stand next to me. «I have heard that she has a new captain of her guard now.»

«Who?» Frost asked.

«Mistral,» Doyle said.

«The Bringer of Storms. But he has been long out of favor.»

Doyle nodded. «Nonetheless, that is her new champion.»

«He is no assassin, and he is never discreet. He comes like his namesake with much wind and noise.» Frost was openly disdainful.

«But Whisper is quiet enough to make up for it,» Doyle said.

Frost looked startled. Maeve was frowning. «I don't know these names.»

«They have all but faded into their names,» Doyle said. «What you once knew them by is no more.»

«Whisper,» Frost said. «I thought he'd gone mad.»

«I'd heard that rumor, too.»

I remembered Mistral. He was everything the queen abhorred, loud, bragging, quick to anger, unforgiving. He was almost the epitome of a bully, but he was too powerful to be refused entrance to the dark court once he'd gotten himself kicked out of the golden. Queen Andais made sure we accepted all who were powerful, but she didn't have to like them, or use them much. She could make sure they were always seated far away from her and given duties that kept them from her sight.

Mistral had been so out of favor during my lifetime that I barely remembered his face, and could not truly recall ever having spoken with him. My father had thought him a fool.

«I don't remember anyone among the guard called Whisper,» I said.

«He displeased the queen once, long ago,» Doyle said, «and she had him punished. He was given to Ezekiel in the Hallway of Mortality for» — he frowned, looked at Frost—"for seven years, wasn't it?»

Frost nodded. «I believe so.»

I swallowed before I could speak. «He was given over to be tortured for seven years.» My voice was breathy with the horror of it. I'd been in the Hallway of Mortality. I knew exactly how good at his craft Ezekiel was, and I could not imagine seven years of such attention.

They were both nodding.

Even Maeve looked pale. The Seelie Court did not condone torture, at least not the overt kind that Ezekiel dished out. They had more subtle ways of doing it, magical ways, that were less messy, less personal. You could cause someone excruciating pain without getting your hands dirty. Queen Andais liked calling a spade a spade. Torture was supposed to be messy, or what good was it?

«I have heard tales of your Hallway of Hell.»

«See, Taranis even lets his court adopt the words of a faith that tormented and tortured our followers,» Frost said. «He has allowed his court to become an ape of the humans.»

«If your century begins with seventeen, or earlier,» I said.

Frost shrugged, as if a few hundred years made no difference.

«Call it what you will, but that your queen would mete out such punishment is proof that I do not want to be a part of your court.»

«What did he do to earn seven years with Ezekiel?» I asked.

«I don't think anyone knows but Whisper and the queen,» Frost said.

I looked at Doyle. «You've been her left-hand man for a millennium, or more. You'd never left her side until she sent you here to Los Angeles to fetch. You know, don't you?»

He let out a small breath. «If she wanted others to know, Merry, she would have told them. I will not endanger anyone by sharing that particular bit of truth.»

I let it go. I didn't want Andais to have an excuse to send any of us to the Hallway of Mortality. I could live the rest of my days without knowing what Whisper had done to merit seven years, as long as I never had to endure another minute with Ezekiel's voice in my face.

Frost turned to Maeve. «You've refused to go to the Unseelie Court with us, even though you know that Taranis may try to kill you while we're gone.»

«You will be turning me over to new bodyguards at the airport.»

«The same human bodyguards who nearly got themselves killed trying to save you from the Nameless. The same bodyguards who, if we hadn't come along, would have died to a man, and you with them.»

«We will take another plane to another country, far from the king and his powers.»

«She will probably be safer than we will, Frost. For we will beard him in his den, the very heart of his power.»

«But she would be safer still at the Unseelie Court, under the queen's protection,» Frost said.

«We have had this discussion,» Doyle said. «It is done.»

Frost looked at her. «It isn't that you loathe the Unseelie Court, or even that you're afraid of them, of us. It's that you're afraid that once you enter the darkling throng and are surrounded by faerie once more, you will never leave.»

«She could make me a prisoner, for my own protection, and you would not be able to break me free,» Maeve said.

«You wouldn't be a prisoner, Conchenn, you'd simply embrace the dark, because the light won't have you. Many a Seelie lord and lady has found that the dark is not half so ugly as they thought, or half so terrible as they were taught.» He took a step toward her, and she took a step back.

«They embraced the dark because they had no choice,» she said in a voice that was almost choked. «It was the darkness or be exiled from faerie forever.»

«Exactly,» Frost said. «There are no prisoners among us. Whisper could have fled the Unseelie Court. The queen would not have pursued him, for she knows that for a sidhe to leave the Unseelie Court is to have no place to go. No home in faerie. We take the queen's laws, not because we have no choice, but because even seven years of torment is better than being cast out, as you were, by your king.»

I saw tears shine in her eyes as she rushed past us all and out the far door.

«Did you have to do that?» Doyle said.

Frost nodded. «Yes, I think I did. She's endangering herself by refusing to go to the Unseelie Court. It's foolish.»

«Not half so foolish as entering the Seelie Court of our own free will,» Doyle said.

The two men looked at each other, and something passed between them. Frost's shoulders slumped just a little before he straightened and said, «I do not like either plan.»

«You've made that clear,» Doyle said.

Frost looked at me. «I will go with Merry, but I will not like it.» He smiled, but it was wistful, so full of old sorrow that it made my chest tight. «And I fear, my sweet, sweet, princess, neither will you.»

I would have argued with him if I could, but since I agreed with him, it seemed silly. «We visit the Unseelie Court first, Frost, and the goblin court after that, and only then the Seelie Court.»

He shook his head, and the smile became bitter. «I hope that the sights we see at the goblin court are the worst we will have, but I fear that no horror will compare to the bright beauty that awaits us at our last stop.»