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two of them stumbling toward the door in the dark.
They slid out into the hallway, a flash of brightness against the pitch black,
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before the door closed behind them.
A wavering yellow-green flame sprang to life in the dark. The flames cast
flickering shadows on a dark, dark face.
Doyle's skin wasn't brown -it was black. He looked as if he'd been carved from
ebony. His cheekbones were high and sculpted, the chin a little too sharp for
my taste. He was all angles and darkness. Those angles looked deceptively
delicate, like the bones of a bird, but I'd seen him be hit full in the face
with a war hammer once. He'd bled, but he hadn't broken.
The moment I saw him, fear rushed through me in a wave of coldness that left
my fingertips tingling. If he hadn't saved my life once already, I'd have been
sure he meant my death now. He was the queen's right hand. She would say,
"Where is my Darkness? Bring me my Darkness." And someone would die or bleed
or both. It was Doyle that should have been given the task of my death, not
Sholto. Had he saved me earlier, to kill me now?
"I mean you no harm, Princess Meredith."
The moment he said it out loud, I could breathe again. Doyle didn't play word
games. He said what he meant, meant what he said. The problem was that most of
the time he said things like, "I've come to kill you." But this time, he meant
me no harm. Why, or rather, why not?
I was standing trapped in a ladies room with wards that would not hold on the
door and window.
Eventually the sluagh would break through, and I didn't trust Sholto to save
me from them. If it had been almost anyone but Doyle I'd have fallen into his
arms with relief, or just let myself faint from blood loss and shock. But it
was Doyle, and he simply wasn't a person that you fell into the arms of, not
without checking for knives first.
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"What do you want, Doyle?" The words came out harsher than I meant them to,
angry, but I didn't take them back or apologize for the tone. I was fighting
not to shiver visibly, and failing. I was still bleeding from a half dozen
wounds on my arms, blood sliding inside my slacks like a warm worm working
against my skin. I needed help, and I couldn't hide that fact from him. It put
me in a very weak bargaining position. When dealing with the queen, that was a
bad place to be. And make no mistake about it, when dealing with Doyle you
were dealing with the queen, unless things had changed drastically in the
court in three short years.
"To obey my queen in all things." His voice was like his skin, dark. It made
me think of molasses and other thick, sweet things. A voice so deep it could
hit notes low enough to make my spine shiver.
"That's not an answer," I said.
His hair looked very short and clipped close to his head, black but not as
black as his skin. But I knew the hair wasn't short-it was long. His hair was
always in a tight thick braid down his back. I couldn't see it, but I knew the
braid reached to his ankles. The braid left the tips of his pointed ears bare
and visible.
The green flame glittered off the earrings in those fantastic ears. Two fine
diamond studs graced each dark earlobe, and two dark jewels almost the color
of his skin sat beside the diamonds like dark stars.
Small silver hoops climbed up the cartilage of both ears to the very top where
the ear curled into a soft, fleshy point.
The ears showed that he was not full high court, but a bastard mix like
myself. Only the ears betrayed him, and he could have hidden them behind his
hair but he almost never did.
I glanced down at the small silver necklace that was the only other jewelry he
wore. A small silver spider with its fat body in the shape of some dark jewel
sat on the black cloth of his chest.
"I should have remembered that your livery is a spider."
He gave a very small smile, which for Doyle was an outrageous amount of
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expression. "Normally, I
would give you time to adjust to my presence, our predicament, but your wards
will not hold forever. We must act if you are to be saved."
"Lord Sholto was sent here by the queen to kill me. Why send you to save me?
Even for her that makes no sense."
"The queen did not send Sholto."
I stared up at him. Did I dare believe him? We rarely lied outright to each
other. But someone was lying to me, because they couldn't both be telling the
truth. "Sholto said I was under the queen's order of execution."
"Think, Princess. If Queen Andais truly desired your execution she'd drag you
home so that the court could see what happens to sidhe who flee the court
against royal orders. She would make an example of you." He motioned at the
room, his hands spreading flame as he moved, like afterimages. "She would not
have you killed in hiding, where no one would see." The flame collected back
upon itself like water droplets sliding over a plate, but stayed dancing above
his fingertips.
I put a hand on the edge of the sink. If this conversation didn't end soon I
was going to be on my knees, because standing wasn't going to be an option.
How much blood had I lost? How much blood was I still
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losing?
"You mean that the queen would want to see me die," I said.
"Yes," he said.
Something thudded into the window with enough force that the room seemed to
shake. Doyle whirled toward the sound, drawing a long knife, or a small sword,
from behind his back. The greenish flames hung floating in the air above one
of his shoulders like an obedient pet.
The light played on the blade and the carved-bone hilt. The hilt was a trio of
crows, their breasts meeting, their wings entwined, their beaks open bearing
jewels for the pommel.
I sank to the floor, one hand on the sink. "That's Mortal Dread." It was one
of the queen's private weapons. I'd never heard of her loaning it to anyone
for any reason.
Doyle turned slowly from the empty window. The short sword caught the wavering
light. "Now do you believe that the queen sent me to save you?"
"Either that, or you killed her for the sword," I said.
He looked down at me, and the look on his face said he didn't see the humor in
that last remark. Good, because I wasn't being funny. Mortal Dread was one of
the treasures of the Unseelie Court. The sword had mortal blood tied to its
forging, which meant that a death wound from Mortal Dread was truly a death
wound for any fey, even a sidhe. I would have said that the only way to get
the sword was to pry it from my aunt's cold, dead hands.
Something large was hitting the window over and over again. I'd hoped they'd
try to break the wardings by magic, which would take some time, but they were
going to simply destroy what I'd warded. If the window was no longer there
then the ward would no longer work. Brute force over magic-sometimes it
worked, sometimes it didn't. Tonight it was going to work. There was a sharp
crumbling sound as the glass cracked around the wire that ran through it.
Without the wire in the glass, it would have already broken.
Doyle knelt by me, sword pointed tip down like you'd hold a loaded gun for
safety. "We are out of time, Princess."
I nodded. "I'm listening."
He reached his empty right hand toward me, and I flinched, falling back on my
butt on the floor. "I must touch you, Princess."
"Why?"
The glass cracked enough that wind oozed through the room. I could hear
something large rubbing against the wall, and the high twittering calls of the
nightflyers urging their beefy brethren on.
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