Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

"Do not be sorry, Kitto. It is we who owe you an apology. We thought of you as goblin because you are half theirs. We never thought what it might mean for you to be half ours."

Kitto moved his head enough to look up at Doyle, then he hid his face again. "I don't understand." He spoke with his mouth against my skin, and even after all we'd done, the feel of him whispering against my chest made me shiver.

My voice was a little breathy, but I answered, "You are sidhe, Kitto, truly sidhe. You have come into your power."

He shook his head, his face still buried against my breasts. "I have no powers."

I put a hand on either side of his face and raised him gently to look upon me. "You are sidhe, one of the shining ones. There will be power now."

His eyes widened, and he looked frightened.

"We'll help you," Galen said from the far side of the bed. "We'll help you learn how to control your magic. It's not that hard; if I can do it, anyone can." He smiled, made it a joke.

Kitto didn't look convinced.

Some small movement made me turn my head farther, and I saw Sage perched upon a stray mound of pillows. He was still glowing softly like a golden, bejeweled doll. His face was tear-streaked, the line of tears like silver glitter upon his tiny face. His face was enraptured.

"Damn you, Princess, and damn this newest prince. I have glimpsed heaven and found it fair, and now I stand on the shores of earth, abandoned. I did not understand until this moment what it meant that you were sidhe and I was not." He laid his face in his hands and wept, curling on his side on a satin pillow, his wings held out behind him, stiff, almost forgotten.

Kitto touched my chest, and it hurt, a little. I realized that he'd bitten me between my breasts, a little to one side, so that some of the mark was in the mound of my left breast. It hadn't hurt until he touched it. It wasn't as deep as the mark on my shoulder, because it hadn't needed to be. The sex had made up for the lack of violence. It should have healed cleanly and quickly, but somehow I knew it would not. Somehow I knew I would bear his mark over my heart forever.

"I am sorry," he whispered, as if he'd read my mind.

I shook my head, touching the silken skin of his cheek. "I wear your mark with honor, Kitto. Never doubt that."

He gave a shy smile, then raised up on his arms much as he had through the beginning of the lovemaking. I noticed first the spots of blood on my own white skin. He had hurt me more than I'd thought; then I looked up at Kitto and saw that from collarbone to waist my nails had marked him. Bloody furrows across the perfection of his skin, across the small mounds of his nipples. I'd sliced into the meat of one of his nipples and it bled there more than the rest.

It was my turn to say, "I'm sorry."

He shook his head, and the smile wasn't shy now. "You have marked me, and there is no higher compliment among my kind. May the marks never fade."

I traced the edge of one of the nail marks, and he shivered above me. "You are among your kind now, Kitto. Right now."

Doyle seemed to know what I wanted, because he pulled his black T-shirt up enough to show Kitto the nail marks on his black skin.

"You are Unseelie sidhe," I said.

He moved off of me, his body grown softer with all the talking. He lay beside me, one arm over my waist. He gazed at the men around the bed. "My mother's people were Seelie. They left me for dead outside the goblin mound." His voice was matter-of-fact, as if it was just truth, something he'd always known.

Doyle lowered his shirt and turned to face the bed. "We are not Seelie." He did not lower the circle around the bed, but stepped inside it. He raised Kitto up with a hand on his shoulder. Kitto seemed frightened but didn't struggle.

Doyle laid a chaste kiss on the smaller man's forehead. "You have already tasted the blood of our court and been tasted in return. Now receive our kiss and be welcome among us."

One by one the other guards bent and laid lips upon Kitto's forehead. He was crying and shaking by the time they had finished. And when the last of my knights had kissed Kitto's forehead, Sage rose up into the air, his wings humming, a blur of color. It made an angry whirring sound.

"I hate you all." The venom in those words was thick enough to choke on. "Now let me out of this accursed circle."

Doyle made an opening in the circle big enough for the demi-fey. The tiny figure flew through it, and Doyle closed the circle behind him.

Sage hovered in front of the closed bedroom door. I thought one of us would have to get up to open it, but the door opened of its own accord, and Sage hurried through the opening. He turned in the darkness of the living room, still glowing faintly from all the magic.

"The queen has had her price, but you have not had your cure. The cure lies within my body where the queen didst place it. I meant to share you with the goblin to ensure his silence, not be displaced by him." He hissed like an angry cat. "Who knew goblin could be sidhe? Would that it were me in thy arms and not he. What could have been done in pleasant glamour will nidst be done in unpleasant bargain." He hissed again, and vanished into the darkness beyond. The door slammed shut behind him.

We all stared at the door. "Did he mean what I think he meant?" Galen asked.

"It would amuse Niceven to force a sidhe princess to pleasure one of her tiny men," Doyle said.

I raised eyebrows at that. "How?"

"Best not to ask," he said, and he looked down at Kitto, "for tonight we will worry over nothing. We have found new blood of our blood, kin of our kin. We will sorrow over nothing tonight."

As celebration of the faerie court went it was modest. We ordered out, Kitto's choice, bought some very fine wine, and partied until dawn.

It was a little after dawn when the earthquake hit, a 4.4 on the Richter scale, centered in El Segundo. There is no major fault underneath El Segundo. It's probably all that saved us from demolishing the entire city. It lasted for only about a minute, really not that much damage overall; no one was killed, though there were injuries. But it added an entirely new twist on the idea of safe sex.

On the first day of my being restricted to the apartment, hiding behind our wards, Taranis's main social secretary, Dame Rosmerta, had called. She'd been dressed in pink and gold cloth that complemented her gold-tinted skin and dark gold hair to perfection. She'd been the soul of polite and proper decorum, more than making up for Hedwick's rudeness. She also made it clear that the ball in question was the Yule ball. I had to decline. If I attended any Yule ball, it had to be the Unseelie ball. Rosmerta had made noises that she, of course, understood that.

We weren't missed in helping with the murders, because Peterson had forbidden anyone from the Grey Detective Agency from interfering with the case. Jeremy had been pissed enough that he told Teresa not to tell them what she'd seen, but Teresa is all about helping her fellow man. She went dutifully from the hospital to the police station and finally found a detective who would take her report.

Teresa had felt the people suffocate, felt them die, and she'd seen the ghosts — white shapes, she said, sucking the life from them. The police had informed her that everyone knew ghosts didn't do shit like this. Peterson had come in about then and thrown the report in the trash can in front of Teresa. Usually the police wait until someone's left the room before doing that.

Teresa had managed to drag her husband out before he got himself arrested for assaulting a police officer. Teresa's husband used to play for the Rams back when they were the football team in L.A. Ray's like a nicely maintained mountain, with a winning smile and a very firm handshake.