Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

My pulse filled my throat so that I couldn't breathe. His lips brushed mine, laying a gentle kiss that trembled against my flesh. He raised back from that one tender movement, and we looked into each other's eyes from inches away, and there was a moment of knowing. We'd shared a bed for three months. He'd guarded my safety. I'd introduced him to the twenty-first century. I'd watched the solemn Frost relearn how to smile and laugh. We'd shared a hundred intimacies, dozens of jokes, a thousand new discoveries about the world in general, and none of it had been enough to push either one of us over the edge. Then suddenly a look in his eyes and a gentle kiss, and it was as if my feelings for him reached critical mass, as if it had only been waiting for one last touch, one last lingering glance, before I knew. I loved Frost, and from the startled look on his face as he stared down at me, I think he felt it, too.

Doyle's voice cut across the moment, making us both jump. "What you didn't hear, Meredith, is that Maeve Reed's land is warded. Warded as only a goddess, who has lived on the same piece of land for over forty years, could bespell."

I blinked up at Frost's face, trying to shift the gears in my head to listen to Doyle, and to care about what he was saying. I had heard him, but I wasn't sure I cared, not yet.

If Frost and I had been alone, we would have talked about it, but we weren't alone, and really being in love with each other didn't change much. I mean, it changed everything, and nothing. Loving anyone changes you, but royalty seldom marries for love. We marry to cement treaties, to stop or prevent wars, or to forge new alliances. In the case of the sidhe, we marry to breed. I'd been sleeping with Rhys, Nicca, and Frost for over three months and I wasn't pregnant. Unless one of them could get me with child, I wouldn't be permitted to marry any of them. It had been only three months, and it typically took a year or more for a sidhe to conceive. I hadn't been worried, until now. And I wasn't worried that I wasn't pregnant; I was worried that I wasn't pregnant and that it might mean I lost Frost. In the moment I finished the thought, I knew I couldn't afford to think that way.

I would have to give my body to the man whose seed made me pregnant. My heart could go wherever it wanted, but my body was spoken for. If Cel became King, he'd have the power of life and death over the court. He'd have to kill me, and anyone he saw as a threat to his power. Frost and Doyle would never survive. I wasn't sure about Rhys or Nicca. Cel didn't seem as afraid of their power; he might let them live. He might not.

I drew back from Frost, shaking my head.

"What's wrong, Meredith?" he asked. He grabbed my hand as I moved it away from his face. He held my hand in his, pressing it, almost painfully, as if he'd seen some of my thoughts on my face.

If I couldn't talk about love in front of the others, I certainly couldn't talk about the price of being a princess in front of them. I had to get pregnant. I had to be the next queen of the Unseelie Court, or we were all dead.

"Princess," Doyle said softly. I looked past Frost's shoulder to meet Doyle's dark eyes. And something in those eyes said that he, at least, had followed my thinking. Which meant he'd also realized how I felt about Frost. I didn't like that it was so apparent to others. Love, like pain, should be private until you want to share it.

"Yes, Doyle," I said, and my voice sounded hoarse, like I needed to clear my throat.

"Wards of such power prevent another fey from seeing all the magic. inside a place. Frost scouted it as best he could, but the strength of the wards means we do not know what mystical surprises might await us inside the walls of Ms. Reed's estate." He talked of normal things, but his voice still held that edge of softness. In anyone else I would have said it was pity.

"Are you saying we shouldn't go in?" I asked. I drew my hand back from Frost's grip.

"No, I agree that I find her desire to meet with you, with all of us, intriguing."

The van pulled to a stop outside a tall gate. Rhys turned in the seat as much as his seat belt would allow. "I vote we go home. If King Taranis finds out we've talked to her, he'll be pissed. What could we possible learn that would be worth the risk?"

"Her banishment was a great mystery when it happened," Doyle said.

"Yes," Frost said. He slid back in his seat, eyes distant, as if he was shutting himself away from me. I'd pulled away, and Frost didn't react well to that. "The rumor was that she would be the Seelie's next Queen, then suddenly she was exiled."

He moved his leg away from mine, putting physical distance between us. I watched his face grow cold and hard and arrogant, the old mask he'd worn in the court for all those years, and I couldn't bear it. I took his hand in mine. He frowned at me, clearly puzzled. I raised his knuckles to my lips and kissed them, one by one, until his breath caught in his throat. For the second time today I had tears in my eyes. I kept my eyes very wide and very still, and managed not to cry.

Frost was smiling again, visibly relieved. I was glad he was happy. You should always want the people you love to be happy. Rhys just looked at us, his face neutral. He'd had his turn last night, tonight was Frost's turn, and Rhys had no problem with that.

Doyle caught my gaze, and his face was not neutral, but worried. Kitto stared up from the floorboard, and there was nothing I could understand on his face. For all that he looked so sidhe, he was other, and there were times when I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Frost held my hand and was happy with that. Happy that I hadn't turned away. Of all of them, only Doyle seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling and thinking.

"What does it matter why she was exiled?" Rhys said.

"Perhaps it doesn't matter," Doyle said, "or perhaps it matters very much. We won't know until we ask."

I blinked at him. "Ask, ask outright, without an invitation to ask something so personal?"

He nodded. "You are sidhe, but you are also part human. You can ask where we cannot, Meredith."

"I have better manners than to ask such a personal question right out of the bag," I said.

"We know you have better manners than that, but Maeve Reed does not."

I stared at him. Frost's fingers rubbed along my knuckles, over and over. "Are you saying I should pretend to not know any better?"

"I am saying we should use all the weapons in our arsenal. Your mixed heritage could be a decided advantage today."

"It would be almost the same thing as lying, Doyle," I said.

"Almost," he agreed, then that small smile of his curled his lips. "The sidhe never lie, Meredith, but shading the truth is a long-honored pastime among us."

"I'm very well aware of that," I said. My voice held enough sarcasm to fill the van.

His smile flashed suddenly white in the darkness of his face. "As are we all, Princess, as are we all."

"I don't think it's worth the risk," Rhys said.

I shook my head. "We had this conversation once, Rhys, I do think it's worth the risk." I looked up at Frost. "How about you?"

He turned to Doyle. "What do you think? I would not risk Meredith's safety for anything, but we are badly in need of allies, and a sidhe that has been exiled from faerie for a century might be willing to risk much to come back."

"You're suggesting that Maeve wants to help Meredith to be queen," Doyle made it half question, half statement.

"If Meredith is queen, then she could offer Maeve a return to faerie. I do not think that Taranis would risk all-out war for one returned exile."

"You really think a royal of the Seelie Court would be willing to come to the Unseelie Court?" I asked.

Frost looked down at me. "Whatever prejudices Maeve Reed might once have had against the Unseelie, she has been without the touch of fey hands for a century." He raised my hand to his mouth, kissed my fingertips, blowing his breath along each of them before he touched me. It brought shivers up and down my skin. He spoke with his mouth just above my skin. "I know what it is to want the touch of another sidhe and be denied. I at least had the court and the rest of faerie to comfort me. I cannot imagine her loneliness all these years." The last was said in a whisper. His eyes had gone solid rain-cloud grey.