Chapter 29
I mounded the pillows behind me, so that I was propped to half-sitting. I'd had to make Kitto move before I could move the pillows. He clung to me with hands and arms, but his eyes were all for Sage. He watched the demi-fey as if he didn't trust him, or expected him to do something dangerous, or maybe he was just wondering what Sage would taste like. Whatever Kitto was thinking, it was not friendly.
Sage didn't seem to notice the goblin's less-than-friendly stare. He simply hovered, fluttering as I made myself comfortable.
I secured the sheet across my chest and held my hand out to him. I cupped my hand upward so Sage could reach my fingers, because that was where he would take the blood from. Niceven had taken blood from me there once, and if it was good enough for his queen, it was good enough for Sage. Besides, something about him unnerved me. It was ridiculous to be nervous of someone I could smash against the wall with one hand, but silly or not, I couldn't deny how I felt. I didn't question it, just covered most of my more vulnerable bits and gave him my hand.
Sage landed on my wrist. He knelt in my upturned palm and wrapped tiny hands around my middle finger. He stroked my finger, and the movement was both nice and disturbing.
I must have tensed up, because he said, "You have given me permission to use glamour, have you not?"
I nodded, not quite trusting my voice.
He smiled, and his mouth was like a tiny red petal, his eyes warm, sincere. I felt myself relax as if a hand had simply stroked all my nervousness away. I didn't fight it, because I had agreed and the pain in my shoulder was gone. Nothing hurt.
Kitto curled around my waist, sliding his leg along mine. My hand fell away from the sheet and stroked his curls. His hair was unbelievably soft. He snuggled his face in against my waist, and the brush of his face against my skin made me shiver. I think anyone could have touched me then and I would have reacted to them.
I looked at Sage. "You're very good." My voice was husky.
"We have to be," he said, as he ran his hands up and down my finger. It was no longer nice; it was erotic, as if there were nerves in that one finger that had never been there before. I knew it was glamour, the natural magic of faerie, but it still felt so good, so very good.
Surrendering to someone's glamour, if his glamour ran to the sensual, could be a wondrous experience. Sidhe did not do it with each other, because to practice glamour on another sidhe in an intimate situation was considered a grave insult. But the lesser fey practiced it often among themselves, and almost always when lying with a sidhe. Perhaps it was insecurity. Perhaps it was just a way of saying, look what we have to offer.
Sage had much to offer.
He wrapped his arms around my finger, and it was as if he touched larger things, so much more intimate things. He laid a kiss against my fingertip that was like the brush of finest silk. I felt his lips part, and they felt larger than they were. I had to open my eye and look at him to make sure that he was still small, kneeling in my hand. I had sunk back upon the pillows, my arm resting in my lap, but Sage was still kneeling in my cupped palm.
Kitto entwined his leg over mine, and I felt him growing firm against my leg. For a moment I wondered what the glamour was doing to and for the goblin, when suddenly Sage bit into my flesh. He bit me like he was biting into an apple, sharp, but the pain floated away, and when he began to suck at the wound, it was like he had a thin, red thread from my fingertip to my groin. Every movement of his mouth pulled on things low in my body.
He fed, drawing faster, harder, and it was as if he stroked lower things, faster, harder. I felt that growing warm weight in my body that said I was on the edge, the edge of pleasure. It was as if Sage had coaxed me to the edge of a cliff I hadn't seen, and I had to choose whether to fall over it into the embrace beyond.
I couldn't think. I couldn't decide anything. I had become only sensation, the growing tug of pleasure, the weight of warmth building, building in my body. Then that warmth flooded out of me, over me, through me. I called out, but it wasn't pain that burst from my lips. I cried out in pleasure and writhed on the sheets, caught between Sage's mouth still locked on my body, and the firmness of Kitto's body pressed against my leg. Kitto's body rode mine as I writhed on the bed, his hands sliding over my waist, upward to brush the tip of one breast. It was a tentative touch, but in my heightened state, it felt like so much more.
I cried out again, and when Kitto slid his body over the edge of my thigh, pressed himself against me, not entering but lying across me, both of us nude, both of us eager, I didn't protest.
Kurag had said that I had to give Kitto true sex, and for a goblin that meant only one thing: intercourse. But I also knew that goblins didn't have sex without drawing blood. Now, nothing hurt, nothing would hurt.
I looked up to find Sage hovering over us. He was glowing, a soft honeyed light as if a candle had lit within him. His eyes burned like black jewels and the veins of his wings gleamed with black fire; the yellow, blue, and orangey-red glowed like stained glass in a fall of brightest sunlight.
I had enough sense left to ball up a handful of Kitto's hair and jerk his face up to mine. "Blood only, Kitto. No flesh missing when we're done."
He whispered, "Yes, mistress."
I released his hair abruptly, and he looked up at me, his eyes a solid drowning blue with his pupils like a thin black line within them. It was as if I could have fallen into the blue of his eyes, and I knew it was Sage's glamour still at work, and I didn't care. I gave myself over to it, let the illusion ride me.
Kitto slid inside me, and I was more than wet, more than ready. He seemed larger than I knew he was, filling me up, swelling inside me. He raised himself up on his arms, pressing our lower bodies together, frozen for a moment with his body sunk inside mine, with us joined. He gazed down at me spread underneath him, and a single tear welled up from one blue eye.
I knew what the goblins considered sex, and they didn't cry at the first joining. Through the glamour I saw Kitto -- through all the magic, I truly saw him -- and I raised a hand up, a hand that had already gone white and shining. I touched that one crystal tear and did what goblins do with precious body fluids; I touched it to my lips. I drank the salt of his tears, and he made a sound low in his throat and began to thrust himself inside me.
With every thrust he seemed to grow bigger, swelling wider, touching parts of me that had never been touched, that were not supposed to be touched. I watched him entering my body, and his skin had begun to glow, white and pearlescent. He thrust himself inside me, a glowing shaft as if he were made of light, and that was not glamour. I lay under him, my skin glowing like moonlight. Only for another sidhe would my body shine like this. Colors began to dance under his skin as if rainbows danced inside his body, coming to the surface of his skin like fireworks glimpsed through crystal water.
His eyes held nothing but blue flame behind glass. His short curls moved around his head as if an unseen wind played with them, and the wind was Kitto. He was sidhe. Goddess help us, he was sidhe.
He brought me in a wash of light and magic that blinded me for a moment. All I could see was white light and rainbow flashes across my vision. All I could feel was my body locked around his, as if the place of our joining was the only part of our bodies that was still solid. As if we had become light and air and magic and only the anchor point of our joined bodies held us, tied us, bound us. Then even that fell away as he came inside me, and we became nothing but light and magic and color and wave upon wave of pleasure. It was as if you could become laughter, become joy, become whatever most pleasured you.
I came to myself slowly. Kitto had collapsed on top of me. We were still joined, our bodies still glowing softly like two fires banked down for a long winter's night. A warmth that would keep the house, the family, everything safe through the long cold nights to come.
Flashes of color were still flitting through the room like stray rainbows from some crystal sun catcher. But there was no sun, no crystal, only us.
Well, not only us. The guards stood around the bed, hands held up, palms toward us. I concentrated and saw the nearly invisible barrier that they had thrown up around us. They had put up a sacred circle, a circle of power.
Doyle's deep voice came. "The next time you decide to invoke enough energy to raise an island from the sea, Meredith, a little warning would be good."
I blinked up at him, for he stood closest to me. "Did we hurt anything?"
"We caught it in time, I think, but the news will probably be full of unusual tides. We will have to see if the ground itself holds still for such a release."
Kitto hid his face between my breasts, and whispered, "I'm sorry."
"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.
Chapter 30
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.
We ended up with a lot of time on our hands. No, we did not just have sex all day. We pestered Sage. I had paid the price that Queen Niceven asked, but we had no cure. Why hadn't Sage given us the cure last night? Why did Kitto becoming sidhe change everything for Sage? Did he really mean to imply that he needed to have sex with me to effect the cure? Sage didn't want to answer any questions.
He had flown around the apartment trying to escape our questions, but it was a small apartment, even if you were the size of a Barbie doll. Late in the day he launched himself from the windowsill and got a little too near Galen, who batted at him like you'd swat a mosquito. I don't think he meant to strike him.
Sage fell heavily on the floor. He lay very still, a tiny butter-colored thing with his bright wings like a fragile shield. He raised slowly onto one arm before I could finish kneeling by him. "Are you all right?" I asked.
He looked at me with such hatred in those tiny doll eyes that I flinched. He stumbled a little in rising to his feet, but he fanned his wings and caught his balance. He refused the hand I offered him. He stood there, hands on hips, and stared up at us as we towered over him.
"If I die, green knight, the cure dies with me. Best remember that, when you're being careless."
"I didn't intend to hurt you," Galen said, but there was something in his eyes that was not kind, not gentle, not Galen. Perhaps, more than just his manhood had been damaged by the demi-fey.
"Too close to a lie, that," Sage said, rising into the air, his butterfly wings a blur. Butterfly wings just didn't work like that. It was more the way a dragonfly moved. When he'd gained height enough to meet Galen's gaze, the wing beats slowed and he hovered, the large wings fanning more slowly but still with enough force to stir the curls around Galen's face.
"I didn't intend to strike you that hard." Galen's voice was low and warm with anger. There was a hardness there that I'd never heard before. Part of me mourned that tone; part of me felt a flare of hope. Perhaps even Galen could learn those harsh lessons that would be needed if he ever became King. Or perhaps he was just learning how to hate. That lesson I would have spared him if I could.
I watched the two men glare at each other, both hating. Sage was still the size of a Barbie doll, but his anger wasn't amusing anymore. That he could elicit such negativity from my smiling Galen was a little frightening.
"All right, boys, play nice now." They both turned and glared at me. So much for breaking the tension. "Fine, be that way, but what did you mean that if you die, the cure dies with you?"
Sage rotated in midair, arms half crossed on his tiny chest as if he couldn't quite cross them and fly at the same time. "I mean, Princess, that Queen Niceven left a present in my body. The healing for your man here is trapped in this tiny package." He spread his arms wide as he said it, almost bowing as he hung, fluttering.
"What does that mean, Sage?" Doyle said. "Exactly what it means, no prevaricating, just the truth, all of it."
He gave another turn in midair so he could look directly at Doyle. Sage could have simply glanced over his shoulder, but I think he wanted Doyle to know he was being looked at. "You want truth, Darkness, all of it?"
"Yes," Doyle said, his thick voice, lower, deeper, not angry, but a tone that had made many a sidhe pale.
Sage laughed, a joyous tinkling sound that nearly drew a smile from me. He was very good at glamour, better than I thought any demi-fey could be. "Oh, you'll be angrier than that when you hear what my dear queen has done."
"Just tell us, Sage," I said. "Quit drawing out the story."
He turned to me, hovered close enough for the breath of his wings to caress my face. "Say please." His tone made it an insult.
Galen tensed, and Rhys laid a hand on his shoulder. I think I wasn't the only one who didn't quite trust Galen around the demi-fey.
"Please," I said. I had a lot of faults, but false pride wasn't one of them. It cost me nothing to say please to the tiny man.
He smiled, obviously happy. "Since you asked nicely." He grabbed his tiny crotch through the filmy skirt he wore. "The cure is trapped here, where Queen Niceven laid it."
I felt my eyes widen.
"How does Meredith retrieve the cure?" Doyle asked. His voice held emptiness, no tone at all.
Sage smiled, and even on a face not much bigger than my thumb, I recognized a leer when I saw it. "The same way the queen gave it to me.
"Niceven is not allowed intercourse with anyone but her husband," Doyle said.
"Ah, but there are exceptions to every rule. You should know that, Darkness, better than most."
Doyle seemed to blush, though through the pure night of his skin, it was hard to be sure. "If Queen Andais knows she has broken her marriage vows, it will go badly for your queen."
"The demi-fey never held to such rules until Andais grew jealous of Niceven's children. Three children she has, three pure-blood demi-fey. Only one belonged to Pol, but Andais chose that match to be permanent. Andais envies Niceven her babes, and all the court knows it."
"I would be careful who I told that to," Rhys said. There was no teasing in his voice, just truth.
Sage brushed it away with his tiny hands. "You requested a cure for your green knight, and there is only one cure for it. She had to lay with me to lay the spell within me. Andais agreed that the green knight must be cured at all costs. She didn't seem too concerned what those costs might be."
I shook my head. "No, no intercourse, not with you."
Sage rose into the air. "Then your green knight stays unmanned."
I shook my head again. "We'll see about that." I felt the first stirrings of anger. I didn't let myself get angry often. In the courts it was an indulgence that only the most powerful could afford. I had never been that powerful. Maybe I still wasn't, but we'd see.
"Doyle, call Queen Niceven. We need to talk." The anger had leaked out into my voice.
Sage came hovering close enough that the wind from his wings fanned my face. "There is no other way, Princess. The cure has been given for this curse, and cannot be given twice."
I glared at him. "I am not every man's meat to feast upon, little man. I am Princess of Flesh, and heir to the Unseelie throne. I do not whore for Niceven."
"Only for Andais," Sage said.
I came very close to swatting him, but I wasn't sure how hard I would have hit, and I didn't want to hurt him that badly, not by accident. No, if I hurt Sage that badly, I wanted it to be on purpose.
"Doyle, contact Niceven, now."
He didn't argue, just went for the bedroom door. I followed him with the others trailing behind. Sage kept talking as we went. "What do you plan to do, Princess? What can you do? Is one night with me such a high price to pay for your green knight's manhood?"
I ignored him.
Niceven was already in the mirror when I entered the bedroom. She wore a black dress today, utterly sheer so that her pale body seemed to gleam through the dark cloth. Discreet touches of black sequins sparkled at neck and sleeve. Her white hair fell loose around her body. The hair fell almost to her tiny ankles, but it was thin, thin and strange looking, almost like it wasn't hair at all. All I could think of was a spider-web blowing in the breeze. Her pale wings framed her like a white curtain. Her three ladies-in-waiting stood behind her chair, but each was clad only in a tiny silken robe, as if they'd been roused from bed. Each robe still matched each set of wings, rose-red, daffodil-yellow, and iris-purple. The hair that flowed loose around their faces was sleep-tousled the way real hair should be.