"Well handled," Barinthus said, with a smile, "but the publicist is right about one thing. Time grows short." He motioned another guard forward.
He was tall, slender, and looked tanned to a lovely brown, but it wasn't a tan. Carrow always looked like a summer-browned hunter with his brown hair streaked with summer gold like any human who'd been outdoors day after day. His hair was cut short and simply. He looked very human until you reached his eyes. They were both brown and green, but not hazel, no. They were green like a forest stirred by the wind, so that one breeze turned the world to sparkling green and another deep and dark.
With most of the sidhe I'd had to ask what kind of deity they'd been, but like Barinthus, Carrow screamed what he had been. I looked up into the face of one of the great hunters.
Carrow's smile brought one of my own. He had been the guard whom my father entrusted to teach me the ways of bird and beast. When I'd entered college for my biology degree, Carrow had actually visited me and sat in on some of my classes. He'd wanted to know if they'd learned anything new since last he checked. In most classes, no, but he'd been fascinated by microbiology, parasitology, and Introduction to Genetics. He was also the only sidhe to ask me what I'd do with my degree if I hadn't been Princess Meredith.
No one else had cared, or rather they couldn't conceive of anything but court politics. When you can be a princess, why would you want to do anything else?
Carrow started to drop to one knee, but I caught his arm and drew him into a hug.
He gave his easy laugh and hugged me tight.
"I was surprised to hear you were a detective in a big city." He drew back enough to see my face. "I thought you'd run away to the wilderness and play with the animals, or at the very least a zoo."
"I'd need at least a master's degree for wildlife biology, and most zoos, too."
"But a detective?"
I shrugged. "I thought the queen would check anyplace I could use my degree. I didn't even tell anyone I had a biology degree at the detective agency."
"I hate to interrupt old home week," a new voice said, "but has the ring reacted to Carrow, or not?"
I turned and found a guard I was not pleased to see. "Amatheon," I said and I couldn't hide, even in that one word, how unhappy I was to see him.
"Don't worry, Princess, I'm just as unhappy to see you as you are to see me." He turned his head, and the winter sunlight drew copper and gold highlights from his red hair. The shoulder-length waves bounced as he strode toward me.
"Then why are you here?" I asked.
"The queen ordered it," he said, as if that explained everything.
"Why?" I asked, because it explained nothing.
He moved gracefully in the tailored leather coat. It fit his upper body like a glove but flared out around his hips and legs so it was like a leather robe. The black leather made his hair richer, brighter, like copper flame. When he was close enough for me to see his eyes, I had that moment of dizziness that his eyes always gave me. His pupils were petaled layers of red, blue, yellow, and green, like a multicolored flower.
"You're lovely to look at, Amatheon. To say anything else would be lying."
His handsome face smirked at me.
"But pretty is as pretty does, and you are Cel's friend, last I knew. I don't think he'd take kindly to you protecting me, let alone anything else."
Doyle had moved in front of me, just enough to keep Amatheon from closing the distance between us. Frost had moved up on the other side of me, as if there were any question of Amatheon getting past Doyle. Amatheon ignored them both, all his attention meant for me. "Prince Cel does not rule the Unseelie Court, not yet. Queen Andais has made that clear to me." The smirk was gone when he said that, and the arrogance slipped a bit. I wondered how Andais had chosen to make her point so terribly clear to him. I trusted Aunt Andais to choose a painful method, and for once I was glad at the thought of one of the guards suffering. Petty, but then Amatheon had been one of the sidhe who'd made my childhood unpleasant.
"Good of you to remember that," Doyle said.
Amatheon's eyes flicked to him, but came back to rest on me. "Trust me, Princess, I wouldn't be here if I had a choice."
"Then go," I said.
He shook his head, sending his hair sliding over the leather of his shoulders. The last time I'd seen him, the hair had been to his knees. Most sidhe took it as a point of pride to have hair that had never known a blade. In fact, fey who were not sidhe were forbidden from having hair to their ankles.
I gazed up at him. "You've cut your hair since last I saw you."
"As you've cut yours," he said, but his face was sullen.
"I sacrificed my hair to hide the fact that I was sidhe. Why did you cut yours?"
"You know why," he said, and he fought to keep his face behind its arrogant mask.
"No, I don't."
Anger broke through his mask, tore it away, and I watched something close to rage in his flower-petal eyes. He balled his hands into his shoulder-length hair. "I refused to come here today. I refused to be one of your men. The queen reminded me that refusing her anything is not wise." He forced himself to relax, and the effort was visible and near painful to behold.
"Why is it that important that you get a chance in my bed?" I asked.
He shook his head, and the movement of his newly shortened hair seemed to bother him. He ran his hands through the thick waves, shook his head again, and said, "I don't know. That is the truth of it. I asked, and she told me I didn't need to know. I just needed to do what I was told." The anger was mere sullenness now, showing the edge of fear that had been there all along.
He looked at me, and he wasn't angry with me; he just seemed tired and beaten. "So here I am, and the queen wishes me to touch the ring. If it does not react to my skin, then after we deliver you safely to the court, I am free to leave this guard detail, but if it sings to my touch..." He looked down at the floor, and his hair spilled around his face. He looked up abruptly, combing his fingers through the hair to keep it back. "I must touch the ring. I must see what happens. I have no choice, and neither do you." He sounded so unhappy that it made me like him better than I ever had before. Not like him enough to take him to my bed, but I always had trouble hating people if they showed me something that wasn't hateable inside them. Andais had seen that as a weakness; my father had seen it as a strength. I still hadn't decided.
Without taking his gaze from Amatheon, Doyle asked, "Do you wish to allow it?"
Frost moved closer to me so that his coat enveloped me like a cloud.
"Allowing him to touch the ring means nothing, costs us nothing," I said. "When I speak to the queen about him, I would rather have done everything she wished, up to that point."
"She will not allow either of us to pass on this, Princess." His hand went to his hair, and he stopped himself with a visible effort. "She will have us bed, if the ring knows me."
I wanted badly to ask him again, why, but believed he knew no more of Andais's logic than did I. "What happens after will be a problem for another day." I stepped up to touch Doyle's arm. "Let him pass."
Doyle glanced at me, as if he wanted to argue, but he didn't. He simply stepped aside, allowing me to step forward, but Frost did not move back. He stayed so close that the line of his body touched mine.
"Frost," I said, "we need a little more space."
He glanced down at me, then at Amatheon, then he took a small step to the side, his face its best arrogant mask. Neither he nor Doyle liked Amatheon. Maybe it was something personal, or maybe, like me, they didn't like the idea of someone who was Cel's man being near me.
"Frost," I said again, "what if the ring picks up on you, and not Amatheon? Give us enough room so we know that the reaction is for him alone."
"I will give half an arm's length of room, but no more. He has been Cel's cat for far too long."
Amatheon gazed up at the slightly taller man. "The princess is under the queen's protection, magically given. If I raised a hand to her, then my life would be forfeit, and the queen would make me beg for death long before she gave it." His eyes looked haunted. "No, Frost, I would not go back under the queen's tender care, not even to keep this half-human mongrel off our throne."
"Oh, nice," I said.
Amatheon sighed. "You know how I feel, Princess Meredith. How I've always felt about you and your being in line to the throne. If I suddenly said you were wonderful and a perfect future queen, would you believe me?"
I just shook my head.
"The queen has... persuaded me that my beliefs are not so precious as my flesh and my blood." His face seemed to crumble for a moment, almost as if he would cry. He regained himself, but the eyes that turned to me were raw with emotion. What had Andais done to him?
"You should have just agreed, like I did." The other guard I could have done without seeing was Onilwyn. He was handsome, but there was a roughness to his face, an almost unfinished quality, so that although he was handsome by human standards, by sidhe standards he was coarse. He was broad of shoulder, and muscular; even just a glimpse of his clothed body framed by the long fur coat, and you had a sense of the power of him. He was so thick through the shoulders and chest that he seemed shorter than the others, but it was illusion. Onilwyn's thick wavy hair was tied back in a ponytail. The hair was a green so dark it held black highlights when the light touched it just so. His eyes were the color of green grass with a starburst of liquid gold dancing around the pupils. His skin was a pale green, but it wasn't a white-green like Galen's, where you were not sure whether it was white or green. No, Onilwyn's skin was a pale solid green in the same way Carrow's skin was brown.
"You would agree to anything that saved your hide," Amatheon said.
"Of course I would," Onilwyn said, as he glided toward us. I'd never understood how such a bulky man managed to glide, but he always did. "So would anyone with any sense."
Amatheon turned to look at the other man. "Why are you Cel's man? Do you believe he should be king? Do you care?"
Onilwyn shrugged thick shoulders. "I prefer Cel king because he likes me, and I like him. He's promised me many things once he's on the throne."
"He promises many things," Amatheon said, "but that is not why I have been his follower."
"Then why?" Doyle asked.
He answered without looking away from Onilwyn. "Cel is the last true sidhe prince we have. The last true heir to the bloodline that has ruled us for nearly three thousand years. The day that someone who is part human, and part brownie, and part Seelie takes our crown is the day we die as a people. We will be no better than the mongrels in Europe."
Onilwyn smiled, and it was so full of spite that it hurt to see it. "But here you are, lover of the pure Unseelie blood, here you are." He stood in front of the taller man, gazing at him with that cruel, satisfied smile. "Forced to bed one of the mongrel horde. Knowing that if you get her with child you, personally, will be responsible for placing her on the throne. Such delicious, thick, spreadable irony."
"You're enjoying this," Amatheon said in a strangled voice.
Onilwyn nodded. "If the ring is alive to our touch, we are free of our celibacy."
"But only with her," Amatheon said.
The other man shook his head. "What does it matter? She's a woman, and she's sidhe. This is a gift, not a curse."
"She is not sidhe."
"Grow up, Amatheon, grow up, before this naivete gets you killed." He looked at me for the first time. "May I touch the ring, Princess?"
"What happens if I say no?"
Onilwyn smiled, and it was only a little less pleasant than the smile he'd given Amatheon. "The queen knew you wouldn't like it, or rather like me. Let me see if I can remember the message."
"I remember it," Amatheon said in a dull voice. "She made me repeat it over and over while she - " He stopped abruptly, as if he'd almost said too much.
"Then by all means, give the princess the queen's message," Onilwyn said.
Amatheon closed his eyes as if he were reading something inside his head. "I have chosen these two with care. If the ring does not react to them then so be it, but if it does react, then I want no arguments from you. Fuck them." He opened his eyes, and he looked pale, as if the recitation had cost him something. "I do not wish to touch the ring, but I will not go against the queen's orders."
"Not again, you mean," Onilwyn said, and he looked at me. "May I touch the ring?"
I glanced at Doyle. He gave a small nod. "I think you must, Meredith."
Frost started forward.
"Frost," Doyle said, and that one word held a warning.
Frost looked at him, and he looked horrified. "Are we helpless to protect her from this?"
"Yes," Doyle said, "we are helpless to go against the queen's orders."
I touched Frost's arm. "It's okay."
He shook his head. "No, it is not."
"I don't blame you, Frost," Onilwyn said. "I wouldn't want to share, either." He looked around the room at the other men. "Of course, you are sharing, aren't you?" He pouted out his lower lip, but his eyes stayed malicious. "Such a small piece to share among all of you, and now here we come to take even more of it away."
"Oh, for Goddess's sake, Onilwyn, stop being such an ass." The last guard in the room had been so quiet in his corner that I hadn't seen him, but that was Usna's way. He could be unseen in a crowd, and only when he spoke would your mind register that he had been there all along. Your eyes would see him, but your mind just kept forgetting to tell you about it. It was a type of glamour, and it was a type that worked on other sidhe, or at least it always worked on me.
Neither Doyle, Frost, nor Rhys seemed surprised, but Galen said, "I wish you wouldn't do that. It's always so damn unnerving."
"Sorry, little green man, I'll try and make more noise when I sneak up on you." But it was said with a smile.
Galen grinned at him. "All cats should wear bells."
Usna pushed himself away from the wall and the chair he had been perched on. Usna rarely sat in a chair. He reclined, he curled, he slumped, but he rarely sat. Usna moved across the floor like wind, like shadow, like something more air than flesh. In a race of men who were known for their grace, Usna put them all to shame. To watch him truly dance upon the floor at a gathering of the sidhe was to watch him the way you watched flowers in a wind, or the sway of branches in spring. The flowers could not be anything but artlessly beautiful. The tree in full blossom did not know it was beautiful, but it was, and so was Usna. Oh, there were others more handsome, Frost to name just one. Both Rhys and Galen had lovelier mouths. In fact Usna's mouth was a little wide for my tastes, the lips a trifle thinner than I preferred. His nose was perhaps too small for his face. His eyes were large and lustrous, but they were a nondescript shade of grey, neither as dark as Abloec's, nor as pale as Frost's. They were just... grey. Usna was slender to the point that he seemed almost effeminate. His hair had stubbornly never grown beyond his hips, no matter how hard he'd tried; only its color set it apart. Patches of copper red, patent-leather black, snow white, as if his hair were a patchwork quilt. Though of course, it wasn't a patchwork, more a calico. Usna's mother had been made pregnant by another sidhe's husband. The scorned wife had said that her outside should match her inside, and changed her into a cat. The magical cat gave birth to a child, Usna. When he grew to manhood, which was years younger than nowadays, he returned his mother to her true form, avenged them both on the sidhe who had cursed her, and lived happily ever after. Or would have, if killing the sidhe who'd cursed his mother hadn't gotten him kicked out of the Seelie Court. Apparently the enchantress in question had been the king's current mistress. Oops.
Usna never seemed to mind. His mother was still a member of the shining court, and though he was not, they still met and talked, and had picnics in the forest. His mother drew the line at meeting him inside the hollow hill that made up the border of the Unseelie Court, and no Unseelie noble was welcome in the Seelie Court. But they had the forest and the fields, and seemed content.
He glided to the edge of the growing circle around me and said, "May I touch the ring?"
I said the only thing that came to mind: "Yes."