Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

Today when we stepped into the pale pink walls of my living room, I didn't think anything could comfort me. I was, as usual lately, wrong.

First, there was the rich smell of stew and fresh baked bread. The kind of stew that simmers all day and just gets better. And there is no such thing as bad homemade bread. Second, Galen walked around the only corner in the main room from my tiny kitchen to the even tinier dining area. Usually, I notice Galen's smile first. He has a great smile. Or maybe the pale green hair that curls just below his ears. Tonight I noticed his clothes. He was not wearing a shirt. He was wearing a white lacy apron that was sheer enough that I could see the darker skin of his nipples, the curl of darker green hair that decorated his upper chest, the thin line of hair that traced the edge of his belly button and vanished inside his jeans.

He turned his back to finish setting the table, and his skin was flawless, pearlescent white with the faintest tinge of green. The see-through straps of the apron did nothing to hide his strong back and broad shoulders, the perfect length of arm. The one thin braid of hair that still fell past his waist curved over his skin like a caress.

I hadn't realized that I had stopped dead just past the door until Rhys said, "If you move a little bit farther into the room, the rest of us can get past."

I felt my skin burn as I blushed. But I moved and let the others come past me.

Galen continued coming and going out of the kitchen, as if he hadn't noticed my reaction, and maybe he hadn't. It was sometimes hard to tell with Galen. He never seemed to understand how beautiful he was. Which, come to think of it, might have been part of his appeal. Humility was a very rare commodity in a sidhe nobleman.

"Stew's ready, but the bread needs to cool a bit before we cut it." He went back into the kitchen without really looking at any of us.

There had been a time when I would have given and gotten a hello kiss from him. But there was a little problem. Galen had been injured during one of the court punishments just before Samhain, Halloween. I could still see the scene in my mind's eye: Galen chained to the rock, his body almost lost to sight under the slowly fanning butterfly wings of the demi-fey. They looked like true butterflies on the edge of a puddle, sipping liquid, wings moving slowly to the rhythm of their feeding. But they weren't sipping water; they were drinking his blood. They had taken bites of his flesh with the blood, and for reasons that only Prince Cel knew, he'd ordered them to pay particular attention to Galen's groin.

Cel had made certain that I would not be able to take Galen to my bed until he healed. But he was sidhe, and sidhe healed while you watched, their bodies absorbing the wounds like flowers blooming in reverse. Every dainty bite had vanished into that flawless skin, except the wounds on his groin. He was, for all intents and purposes, unmanned.

We'd been to every healer we could find, both medical and metaphysical. The medical doctors had been baffled; the witches had only been able to say it was something magical. Twenty-first-century witches hesitate to use the word curse.

No one did curses; they were too bad for your karma. You do a curse and it comes back on you, always. You can never do truly evil magic, the kind that has no intent but to harm, without paying a price. No one is exempt from that rule, not even the immortal. It's one of the reasons that a true curse is so rare.

I watched Galen bustling about the kitchen in his peekaboo apron, careful not to look at me, and my heart hurt.

I went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing my body against the warmth of his back. He went very still under my touch, then slowly his hands came up to slide along my arms. He hugged my arms against his body. I cuddled my cheek against the smooth warmth of his back. It was the closest to a hug that I'd gotten from him in weeks. He'd found any interaction painful, in more than one way.

He began to pull away and I tightened my grip. He could have forced me away from him, but he didn't. He just stood there and dropped his hands from mine. "Merry, please." His voice was so soft.

"No," I said, holding him tight, tight against me. "Let me contact Queen Niceven."

He shook his head, sending his braid spilling against my face. The scent of his hair was sweet and clean. I remembered when his hair had draped to his knees like most of the high-court sidhe. I'd mourned when he cut it.

" I will not let you put yourself in that creature's debt," he said, and his voice held a solemnity that was so unlike him.

"Please, Galen, please."

"No, Merry, no." He tried to push me away again, but I wouldn't let go.

"And what if there is no cure without Niceven's help?"

He put his hands on my arms, not to caress this time but to pry them apart so he could move away. Galen was a sidhe warrior; he could punch holes through the sides of buildings. I could not hold him if he would not be held.

He moved into the mouth of the narrow kitchen, out of my reach. He would not look at me with his pale green eyes. He studied the painting on the dining room wall: a picture of butterflies in a grassy meadow. Did the butterflies remind him of the demi-fey, or did he even see the painting? Or was it simply better to look anywhere than at me?

I'd been begging Galen's permission to go to Queen Niceven and find out what she'd done to him. He'd forbidden it. He didn't want me to put myself in her debt just to help him. I'd tried pleading, crying, which I think on anyone else would have worked, but he had held firm. He would not be responsible for me owing Niceven and her demi-fey a debt.

I stood there staring at him — that beautiful body that I had loved since I was a child. Galen had been my first crush. If he was healed, we could cool the heat that had been between us since I hit puberty.

I realized suddenly that I'd been going about this all wrong. Kitto had told me that Doyle thought I was just going to fuck everyone and not use the power I'd gained. He wasn't just referring to the goblins. Was I the future queen of the Unseelie or not? If I was to be queen, what was I doing asking anyone's permission for anything? Who I put myself in debt to was none of Galen's business. Not really.

I turned away from Galen, back into the room. The rest of the men were watching us. If they'd been human, they would have pretended not to watch, been reading magazines, or pretending to, but they were fey. If you did something in front of the fey, they watched. If you wanted privacy, you wouldn't be doing it where they could see you; that was our culture.

Only Kitto was missing, and I knew where he was, in his oversize, fully covered cloth dog bed. It was like a small, snug tent. It sat in the far corner of the living room positioned so he could watch the television, which was one of the few technological wonders that Kitto seemed to appreciate.

"Doyle," I said.

"Yes, Princess." His voice was neutral.

"Contact Queen Niceven for me."

He simply bowed and went for the bedroom. It was the largest mirror in the apartment. He would try to contact the demi-fey first through the mirror as you would contact another sidhe. It might work, it might not. The demi-fey didn't stay inside the faerie mounds very much. They liked the open air. If they weren't near a reflective surface, the mirror spell wouldn't work. There were other spells to try, but he would start with the mirror. We might get lucky and catch the little queen flying by a still pool of water.

"No," Galen said. He took two quick strides, not to me, but to Doyle. He caught the other guard's arm. "No, I won't let her do this."

Doyle met Galen's eyes for a second, and Galen didn't flinch. I'd seen gods flinch from that look on Doyle's face. Either Galen was braver than I'd thought, or stupider. I was betting on the latter. Galen simply didn't understand politics, personal or otherwise. He would grab Doyle's arm, prevent him from leaving the room, even though that might mean a duel between the two of them. I'd seen Doyle fight, and I'd seen Galen fight. I knew who would win, but Galen wasn't thinking. He was reacting, and that, of course, was Galen's great weakness, and why my father had given me to another. Galen didn't have it in him to survive court intrigue; he just didn't.