Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

The smile this time was wider, it made him less perfect, but more… human. More real. "You should smile more often, Lord Sholto. It becomes you."

"I hope to have reason to smile more often in the near future." He offered me his arm, even though he was yards away. I went to him because he'd sworn the Unseelie's most solemn oath. He could not break it without risking a curse.

I slipped my hand in the crook of his arm. He flexed under my hand. Sometimes a male is a male is a male, no matter what flavor they are. "Which hotel are you staying at?" I smiled at him. It never hurts to be pleasant. I could always be unpleasant later if I needed to be.

He told me. It was a very nice hotel.

"That's a little far to walk," I said.

"If you like, we can get a taxi."

I raised eyebrows at that, because once inside the metal of a car he wouldn't be able to do major magic. Too much refined metal interfered with it. I could do major spells inside solid lead if I had to. My human blood was good for a few things. "Won't you be uncomfortable?" I asked.

"It's not that far, and it's our mutual comfort I've come to see to."

Again, I felt there were shades of meaning in his words that I was missing. "A taxi would be lovely."

Agnes called after us. "What are we to do with Nerys?"

Sholto looked back at them and his face was cold again, that carved handsomeness that made him seem distant. "Make your way back to your rooms any way you can. If Nerys had not tried to attack the princess, she wouldn't have been wounded."

"We have served you for more centuries than that piece of white flesh will ever see, and this is the treatment you give us," Agnes said.

"You get the treatment that you earn, Agnes. Remember that." He turned, patting my hand on his arm, smiling at me, but his triple-golden eyes still held the edge of that coldness.

Gethin appeared at Sholto's side, floppy hat in his hands, a bow curving him toward the sidewalk. He had impossibly long ears, like those of a donkey. "What would you have of me, Master?"

"Help them get Nerys to the rooms."

"Happily." Gethin flashed another toothy grin as he stood, ears flapping down to frame his face almost like a dog's or maybe a lop-eared rabbit's. He turned and almost skipped back toward the hags.

"I feel like I'm missing something," I said.

His hand wrapped over my hand, warm, strong fingers sliding over mine. "I will explain all when we get to the hotel." There was a look in his eyes that I'd seen in other men's, but it couldn't mean the same thing. Sholto was one of the Queen's Guard, which meant he couldn't sleep with any sidhe except her. She didn't share her men, not with anyone. The punishment for breaking the taboo was death by torture. Even if Sholto was willing to risk that, I was not. My aunt might execute me, but she'd make it quick. If I broke her most strict taboo, she'd still kill me, but it would not be quick. I'd been tortured before. It was hard to avoid it if you lived at the Unseelie Court. But I'd never been tortured at the queen's own hand. I had seen her handiwork, though. She was creative, very, very creative.

I'd promised myself years ago that I would never give her an excuse to be creative on me. "I'm already under a death sentence, Sholto. I won't risk torture on top of it."

"If I could keep you alive and safe, what would you risk?"

"Alive and safe? How?"

He just smiled, held his hand up, and yelled, "Taxi!" Three of them appeared within minutes on the empty street. Sholto just meant to call a taxi. He had no idea how impressive it was in Los Angeles to be able to call three taxis within minutes to an empty street. He could also reanimate corpses that hadn't grown cold yet, and that was impressive. But I'd lived for three years in the city, and a taxi when you wanted it was more impressive than a walking corpse. After all, I'd seen walking corpses before. A convenient taxi was a completely new animal.

AN HOUR LATER SHOLTO AND I WERE SITTING IN TWO LOVELY BUT uncomfortable chairs around a small white table. The room was elegant, if a little too pink and gold for my tastes. There'd been wine and a tray of hors d'oeuvres waiting on the table. The wine was a very sweet dessert wine. It complemented the cheese on the tray but clashed with the caviar. Of course, I'd never tasted anything that could make caviar palatable. No matter how expensive it was, it still tasted like fish eggs.

Sholto seemed to like the caviar and the wine. "Champagne would have been more appropriate, but I've never liked it," he said.

"Are we celebrating something?" I asked.

"An alliance, I hope."

I took a minute sip of the too-sweet wine and looked at him. "What sort of alliance?"

"Between the two of us."

"That much I'd assumed. The big question, Sholto, is why would you want an alliance with me?"

"You're third in line to the throne." His face had become very closed, very careful, as if he didn't want me to know what he was thinking.

"And?" I said.

He blinked those triple-golden eyes at me. "Why wouldn't a sidhe want to join himself to the woman who is only two steps away from the throne?"

"Normally, that would be fine reasoning, but you and I both know that the only reason I'm still third in line for the throne is that my father got the queen's oath before he died. She'd have had me disqualified on the grounds of my mortality alone, except for that. I have no standing at the court, Sholto. I am the first princess of the line who has no magic."

He sat his wineglass carefully on the table. "You are one of the best of all of us at personal glamour," he said.

"True, but it's the greatest of my powers. For Goddess sake, I am still called NicEssus, daughter of Essus. A title that I should have lost after childhood when I came into my power. Except I didn't come into my power. I may never come into my power, Sholto. That alone could have gotten me removed from the line of succession."

"Except for the oath the queen made to your father," Sholto said.

"Yes."

"I am aware how much your aunt loathes you, Meredith. Much the same way she loathes me."

I sat the wineglass down, tired of pretending to enjoy it. "You have magic enough for a court title. You're not mortal."

He looked at me, and it was a long, hard, almost harsh look. "Don't be coy, Meredith, you know exactly why the queen can't stand the sight of me."

I met that hard glance, but it was… uncomfortable. I did know, all the court knew.

"Say it, Meredith, say it out loud."

"The queen disapproves of your mixed blood."

He nodded. "Yes." He seemed almost relieved. The harshness in his eyes had been uneasy to see, but at least it had been genuine. For all I knew everything else was false. I wanted to see what truly lay behind that handsome face.

"But that's not why, Sholto. There's more mixed blood among the sidhe royals now than pure."

"Fine," he said, "she disapproves of my father's bloodline."

"It's not the fact that your father is a nightflyer, Sholto."

He frowned. "If you have a point, make it."

"Except for the odd pointy ear, until you came along sidhe genetics won out no matter what we mated with."

"Genetics," he said. "I forget that you are our first modern college graduate."

I smiled. "Father was hoping I'd be a doctor."

"You can't heal with your touch, what kind of doctor is that?" He took a big drink of wine, as if he were still agitated.

"Someday I must take you on a tour of a modern hospital," I said.

"Whatever you wish to show me would be a pleasure." Whatever real emotion had almost peeked through, vanished in a wave of double entendre.

I ignored the double meaning and went back to digging. I'd seen real emotion, I wanted to see more of it. If I was going to risk my life I needed to see Sholto without the masks that the court taught us to wear. "Until you, all the sidhe looked like sidhe no matter what we mated with. I think the queen sees you as proof that the sidhe blood is growing weak, just as my mortality shows the blood is thinning."