Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

I was suddenly solid once more inside my own skin. There was a price for all magic, but not this. It had offered itself to me. I had not asked. Maybe that was why I felt strong and whole instead of exhausted.

Keelin came down the path toward me, her primary hands held out toward me. She must have felt renewed as I did, because she was smiling and that awful pinched fear was gone, washed away in the sweet wind.

I took her hands in mine. We kissed each other twice on both cheeks, then I drew her into the circle of my arms and she hugged me across the shoulders with her upper arms, around the waist with the smaller lower ones. We held each other so tightly that I could feel the press of her small breasts, all four of them. The thought came: Had Cel enjoyed being with someone with that many breasts? An image came on the heels of the thought. I squeezed my eyes tight as if I could rid myself of the image.

I ran my hand down her back through her thick, furlike hair and realized I was already crying.

Keelin's sweet almost birdlike voice was comforting me. "It's all right, Merry. It's all right."

I shook my head and pulled back so I could see her face. "It's not all right."

She touched my face, catching my tears on her fingers. She couldn't cry. Some trick of genetics had left her without tear ducts. "You always cried my tears for me, but don't cry now."

"How can I not?" I glanced back at Cel who was talking in low whispers to Doyle. Siobhan was looking at me, staring at me. I could feel her dead gaze through the helmet she wore, even if I couldn't see her eyes. She would not forget that I had used magic against her and won, or rather not lost. She would neither forget nor forgive it.

But that was a problem for another night. I turned back to Keelin. One disaster at a time, please. My hands went to the hardened leather collar around her neck.

She touched my wrists. "What are you doing, Merry?"

"Taking this off of you."

She pulled my hands down, gently. "No."

I shook my head. "How can you… How could you?"

"Don't cry again," Keelin said. "You know why I did it. I only have a few more weeks, just until Samhain. Three years to the day. If I'm not with child, then I am free of him. If I am with child, he'll have to treat me as a wife should be treated, or not touch me at all."

She was so calm about it, a terrible, solid calm, as if it were quite… ordinary. "I do not understand this," I said.

"I know. But you've always been of royal blood, Merry." She reached up a free hand to touch my lips before I could protest, her other hands still holding my hands. "I know you have been treated like a poor relation, Merry, but you are a part of them. Their blood flows in your veins, and they… " She hung her head, dropping her hand from my mouth, but gripped my hands all the tighter. "You are a member of the club, Merry. You're inside the great house, while we wait outside in the cold and the snow with our faces pressed to the glass."

I looked away from those tender brown eyes. "You're using my own metaphor against me."

She touched my face with her left upper hand, her dominant hand. "I heard you use it often enough as we were growing up."

"If I had asked, would you have come with me?"

She smiled, but even by moonlight it was bitter. "Unless you could be with me every hour of the day or night, you couldn't use your glamour to protect me." She shook her head. "I am far too hideous for human eyes."

"You are not—"

She stopped me this time with only a glance. "I am like you, Merry. I am neither durig nor brownie."

"What of Kurag? He cared for you."

She lowered her face. "It is true that among a certain type of goblin I am considered quite striking. Having extra limbs, especially extra breasts is a mark of great beauty among them."

I smiled. "I remember the year you took me to the Goblin's Ball. They considered me plain."

Keelin smiled but shook her head. "But they all tried to dance with you, ugly or not." She looked up, gathering my gaze into hers. "They all wanted to touch the skin of a blooded royal princess, because they knew that short of rape it was as close as they would ever get to that sweet body of yours."

I didn't know how to react to the bitterness in her voice.

"It's not your fault that you look as you do, and I look as I do. It's no one's fault. We are what we are. Through you I saw the court and all the gleaming throng. I couldn't go back to Kurag and his goblins after the life you'd shown me. I would have been content to stand behind your chair at banquets for the rest of my days, but to have it suddenly gone… " She dropped my hands and moved back from me. "I could not bear to lose everything when you left." She laughed; the laughter was still birdlike, but it was mocking now, and I heard Cel's echo in it. "Besides, Cel likes a four-breasted woman and says he's never slept with anyone that could wrap two sets of legs around his white body."

Keelin made a small dry sobbing sound, and I knew that she was crying. Simply because she had no tears didn't mean she could not weep.

She turned and walked back toward Cel. I let her go. She blamed me for showing her the moon when she could not have it. Maybe Keelin was right. Maybe I had used her ill, but I had not meant to. Of course, not meaning to did not make it hurt less.

I took some very slow deep breaths of the autumn air, trying not to cry again. The air was still as sweet as before, but some of the pleasure had gone out of it.

"I am sorry, Meredith," Barinthus said.

"Don't be sorry for me, Barinthus, I'm not the one at the end of Cel's leash."

Galen touched my shoulder, and started to hug me, but I held him away with one arm. "Don't, please. If you comfort me, I'll cry."

He gave a quick smile. "I'll try to remember that for future reference."

Doyle glided toward us. He'd pushed the cloak hood back, but it was almost impossible to tell where his black hair ended and the black cloak began. What I could see was that the front part of his hair had been gathered in a small bun in the center of his head, leaving his exotic pointed ears bare. The silver earrings gleamed in the moonlight. He'd changed some of them to larger hoops so that they brushed together as he moved, making a small chiming music. When he was standing in front of us, I could see that he had hoops graced by feathers so long they brushed his shoulders.

"Barinthus, Galen, I believe our prince gave you orders."

Barinthus moved forward to stand towering over the smaller man. If Doyle was intimidated by the other's sheer physical presence, it didn't show. "Prince Cel said he would escort Meredith to the queen. I thought that unwise."

Doyle nodded. "I will escort Meredith to the queen." He looked past Barinthus to me. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I think he gave that small, small smile of his. "I believe that our royal prince has had quite enough of his cousin for one meeting. I did not know you could call the Earth."

"I did not call it. It offered itself to me," I said.

I heard him draw a long breath and let it out. "Ah, that is different. In some ways not as powerful as those who can wrest the Earth from her course. In some ways more unsettling, because the land welcomed you home. It acknowledges you. Interesting."

He turned back to Barinthus. "I believe you are wanted elsewhere, both of you." His voice was very quiet, but underneath the ordinary words was something dark and threatening. Doyle had always been able to control his men with his voice, inflicting the mildest words with the most ominous threats.

"Do I have your word that she will come to no harm?" Barinthus asked.

Galen moved up beside Barinthus. He touched the taller man's arm. Asking such a thing was almost the same as questioning orders. That could get you flayed alive.