Swallowing Darkness (2 page)

“You didn’t tell me, either of you,” I said, and there was accusation in my voice now. Better than tears, I supposed.

“What would you have done? When the Gods themselves choose, no one can change that. But it must be a willing sacrifice; the dream was clear on that. If Frost had known it was his heart you held most dear, he would have fought more, and I would have gone for him.”

I shook my head, and moved away from his hand. “Don’t you understand? If it had been you changed into another form, and lost to me, I would weep as much.”

Rhys squeezed my hand. “Doyle and Frost didn’t understand that they were the front-runners, together.”

I jerked free of his hand, and glared up at him, happy to be angry, because it felt better than any other emotion inside me in that moment. “You’re fools, all of you. Don’t you understand that I would mourn you all? That there is none of my inner circle that I would lose, or risk? Do you not all understand that?” I was shouting, and it felt much better than tears.

The door to the room opened again. A nurse appeared, followed by a white-coated doctor whom I’d seen earlier. Dr. Mason was a baby doctor, and one of the best in the state, maybe in the country. This had been explained to me in detail by a lawyer whom my aunt had sent. That she had sent a mortal and not one of our court had been interesting. None of us knew what to make of it, but I felt that she was treating me as she might treat herself if our situations were reversed. She had a tendency to kill the messenger. You can always get another human lawyer, but the immortal of faerie are scarce so she sent me someone whom she could replace. But the lawyer had been very clear that the queen was thrilled at the pregnancy, and would do all she could to make my pregnancy a safe one. That included paying for Dr. Mason.

The doctor frowned at the men. “I said not to upset her, gentlemen. I meant it.”

The nurse, a heavyset woman with brown hair tucked back in a ponytail, checked the monitors, and bustled around me while the doctor scolded the men.

The doctor wore a wide black headband that looked very stark against her yellow hair. It made it more clear, at least to me, that the color wasn’t her natural shade. She wasn’t much taller than me, but she didn’t seem short as she came around the bed to face the men. She stood so that she included Rhys and Doyle by the bed, and Sholto, who was still in the corner near the chair, in her frown.

“If you persist in upsetting my patient, you will have to leave the room.”

“We cannot leave her alone, Doctor,” Doyle said in his deep voice. “I remember the talk, but you seem to have forgotten mine. Did I or did I not tell you that she needed to rest, and under no circumstance be upset?”

They’d had this “talk” outside the room, because I hadn’t heard it. “Is there something wrong with the babies?” I asked, and now I had fear in my voice. I’d rather have been angry.

“No, Princess Meredith, the babies seem quite”—there was the smallest hesitation—“healthy.”

“You’re hiding something from me,” I said.

The doctor and nurse exchanged a look. It was not a good look. Dr. Mason came to the side of the bed opposite the men. “I’m simply concerned about you, as I would be for any patient carrying multiples.”

“I’m pregnant, not an invalid, Dr. Mason.” My pulse rate was up, and the machines showed that. I understood why I was hooked up to more machines than normal. If anything went wrong with this pregnancy there would be problems for the hospital. I was about as high profile as you got, and they were worried. Also, I’d been in shock when they brought me in, with low blood pressure, low everything, skin cold to the touch. They’d wanted to make sure my heart rate and such didn’t continue to drop. Now the monitors betrayed my moods.

“Talk to me, Doctor, because the hesitation is scaring me.”

She looked at Doyle, and he gave one small nod. I did not like that at all. “You told him first?” I said.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then perhaps one more ultrasound tonight.”

“I’ve never been pregnant before, but I know from friends I had in L.A. that ultrasounds aren’t that common early in pregnancy. You’ve done three already. Something is wrong with the babies, isn’t there?”

“I swear to you that the twins are fine. As far as I can see on the ultrasound and tell from your blood workup, you’re healthy and at the beginning of a normal pregnancy. Multiples can make a pregnancy more challenging for the mother and for the doctor.” She smiled at that last. “But everything about the twins looks wonderful. I swear.”

“Be careful swearing to me, Doctor. I am a princess of the faerie court, and swearing is too close to giving your word. You don’t want to know what might happen to you if you were forsworn to me.”

“Is that a threat?” she said, drawing herself up to her full height and gripping both ends of the stethoscope around her shoulders.

“No, Doctor, a caution. Magic works around me, sometimes even in the mortal world. I just want you and all the humans who are taking care of me to understand that words you might say casually may have very different consequences when you are near me.”

“So you mean if I said, ‘I wish,’ it might be taken seriously?”

I smiled. “Fairies don’t really grant wishes, Doctor, at least not the kind in this room.”

She looked a little embarrassed then. “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right,” I said, “but once upon a time giving your word and then breaking it could get you hunted by the wild hunt, or bad luck could befall you. I don’t know how much magic has followed me from faerie, and I just don’t want anyone else hurt by accident.”

“I heard about the loss of your…lover. My condolences, though in all honesty I don’t understand everything I was told about it.”

“Even we do not understand everything that has happened,” Doyle said. “Wild magic is called wild for a reason.”

She nodded as if she understood that, and I think she meant to leave. “Doctor,” I said, “You wanted another ultrasound?”

She turned with a smile. “Now, would I try to get out of this room without answering your questions?”

“Apparently you would, and that wouldn’t endear you to me. That you talked to Doyle before me has already put a mark against you in my mind.”

“You were resting peacefully, and your aunt wanted me to talk to Captain Doyle.”

“And she is paying the bills,” I said.

The doctor looked flustered and a little angry. “She is also a queen, and honestly, I’m not sure how to react to her requests yet.”

I smiled, but even to me the smile felt a little bitter. “If she makes anything sound like a request, Doctor, she’s being very nice to you. She is queen and absolute ruler of our court. Absolute rulers don’t make requests.”

The doctor gripped both ends of her stethoscope again. A nervous habit, I was betting. “Well, that’s as may be, but she wanted me to discuss things with your primary,” she hesitated, “man in your life.”

I looked up at Doyle, who was still by my bedside. “Queen Andais chose Doyle as my primary?”

“She asked who the father of the children were, and I, of course, couldn’t answer that question yet. I told her that an amniocentesis would up your risk of problems right now. But Captain Doyle seems very confident that he is one of the fathers.”

I nodded. “He is, and so is Rhys, and so is Lord Sholto.”

She blinked at me. “Princess Meredith, you only have twins, not triplets.”

I looked at her. “I know who the fathers of my children are, yes.”

“But you…”

Doyle said, “Doctor, that is not what she means. Trust me, Doctor, each of my twins will have several genetic fathers, not just me.”

“How can you be certain of something so impossible?”

“I had a vision from Goddess.”

She opened her mouth as if she’d argue, then closed it.

She went to the other side of the room, where they had left the ultrasound machine after the last time they’d used it on me. She put on gloves, and so did the nurse. They got the tube of gloopy stuff that I’d already learned was really, really cold.

Dr. Mason didn’t bother asking if I wanted any of the men to leave the room this time. It had taken her a little while to realize that I felt that all the men had a right to be in the room. The only one we were missing was Galen, and Doyle had sent him on an errand. I had been half asleep when I’d seen them talking, low, then Galen had left. I hadn’t thought to ask where, or why. I trusted Doyle.

They lifted the gown, spread the blueish goo, again very cold, on my stomach, then the doctor got the chunky wand, and began to move it across my abdomen. I watched the monitor and its blurry picture. I’d actually seen the image enough that I could make out the two spots, the two shapes that were so small, they didn’t even look real yet. The only thing that let me know what they were was the fast fluttering of their hearts in the image.

“See, they look perfectly fine.”

“Then why all the extra tests?” I asked.

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

“Because you are Princess Meredith NicEssus, and I’m covering my ass.” She smiled and I smiled back.

“That is honest for a doctor,” I said.

“I try,” she said.

The nurse began to clean my stomach off with a cloth, then she cleaned the equipment as the doctor and I stared at each other.

“I’ve already had reporters pestering me and my staff for details. It isn’t just the queen who’s going to be watching me closely.”

She gripped her stethoscope again.

“I am sorry that my status will make this harder for you and your staff.”

“Just be a model patient, and we’ll talk in the morning, Princess. Now, will you sleep, or at least rest?”

“I’ll try.”

She almost smiled, but her eyes had that guarded look like she wasn’t certain she believed me. “Well, I think that’s the best I can hope for, but,” and she turned to the men, “no upsetting her.” She actually shook a finger at them.

“She is a princess,” Sholto said from the corner, “and our future queen. If she demands unpleasant topics, what are we to do?”

She nodded, with that grip on her stethoscope again. “I’ve been talking to Queen Andais, so I do see your problem. Try to get her to rest, try to keep her quiet. She’s had a lot of shocks today, and I’d just like it better if she rested.”

“We will do our best,” Doyle said.

She smiled, but her eyes stayed worried. “I’ll hold you to that. Rest.” She pointed her finger at me as if it were some sort of magic to make me do it. Then she went for the door and the nurse trailed after her.

“Where did you send Galen?” I asked.

“He is fetching someone who I thought would help us.”

“Who and where from? You didn’t send him back into faerie alone?”

“No.” Doyle cupped my face in his hands. “I would not risk our green knight. He is one of the fathers and will be a king.”

“How is that going to work?” Rhys asked.

“Yes,” Sholto said, “how can we all be king?”

“I think the answer is that Merry will be queen,” Doyle said.

“That is no answer,” Sholto said.

“It’s all the answer we have now,” Doyle said, and I stared into those black eyes and saw colored lights. Colors of things that were not in this room.

“You are trying to bespell me,” I said.

“You need to rest, for the sake of the babies you carry. Let me help you rest.”

“You want to bespell me and me to allow it,” I said softly.

“Yes.”

“No.”

He leaned in toward me with the colors in his eyes seeming to grow brighter like rainbow stars. “Do you trust me, Meredith?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me help you rest. I swear to you that you will wake refreshed, and that all the problems will still be waiting to be decided.”

“You won’t decide anything important without me? Promise?”

“I promise,” he said, and he kissed me. He kissed me, and suddenly all I could see was color and darkness. It was like standing in a summer’s night surrounded by fireflies, except these fireflies were red, green, yellow, and…I slept.

CHAPTER TWO

I WOKE TO SUNLIGHT, AND GALEN’S SMILING FACE. HIS CURLS
were very green in the light, haloed with it, so that even the pale white of his skin showed the green tint that usually only showed when he wore a green shirt. He was the only one of my men who had short hair. The only sop to custom was a braid of hair that now trailed over his shoulder and down past the bed. I’d mourned his hair at first, but now, it was just Galen. He had been just Galen to me since I was fourteen and had first asked my father to marry me to him. It had taken me years to understand why my father had said no. Galen, my sweet Galen, had no head for politics or subterfuge. In the high court of faerie you needed to be good at both.

But he had come into the Seelie Court to find me because he, like me, was good at subtle glamour. We could both change our appearances while someone was watching, and stand a chance of having them see only the change we wanted them to see. It had been the magic that had stayed with all of faeriekind, as other, seemingly more powerful, magics had faded.

I reached up with my hand, but the IV made me stop the motion. He leaned down and laid a soft kiss on my mouth. He was the first man who had kissed me there since I was brought into the hospital. It felt almost startling, but good. Had the others been afraid of truly kissing me? Afraid it would remind me of what my uncle had done?

“I like the smile better,” Galen said.

I smiled for him. He’d been making me smile in spite of myself for decades.

He touched the line of my cheek, as delicately as a butterfly’s wing. That one small touch made me shiver, but not with fear. His smile brightened, and it made me remember why I had once loved him above all others.

“Better, but I have someone here who I think will help the smile stay.” He moved so I could see the much smaller figure behind him. Gran was more than a foot shorter than Galen.

She had my mother’s long, wavy hair, still a deep chestnut brown even though she was several hundred years old. Her eyes were liquid and brown and traditionally lovely. The rest of her wasn’t so traditional. Her face was more brownie than human, which meant she had no nose. The holes were there, but nothing else, and very little lips, so that her face seemed skeletal. Her skin was wrinkled and brown and it wasn’t from age, just taking after her brownie heritage. The eyes might have been my great-grandmother’s eyes, but the hair had to be my great-grandfather’s. He had been a Scottish farmer, and farmers didn’t have portraits painted. I had only glimpses of Gran and my mother and aunt to see what I could see of the human side of my family.

Gran came to the edge of the bed and laid her hand over mine. “Dearie, my little dear, what ha’ they done to thee?” Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

I moved my free hand to put over hers, where it lay over the IV. “Don’t cry, Gran, please.”

“An’ why not?” she asked.

“Because if you do, so will I.”

She gave a loud sniff, and nodded briskly. “That’s a good reason, Merry. If you can be this brave, so can I.”

My eyes burned, and my throat was suddenly tight. It was irrational, but somehow I felt safer with this tiny woman beside me than I had with the guards. They were trained to give their life for me, and they were some of the finest warriors the court could boast, but I hadn’t felt safe, not really. Now, Gran was here, and there was still something of that childhood feeling that as long as she was with me nothing truly bad could happen. If only it were true.

“The king will suffer for this outrage, Merry, my oath on that.”

The tears began to fade, on a wash of pure terror. I gripped her hand tightly. “I’ve forbidden the men to either assassinate him or challenge him to a duel, Gran. You are to leave the Seelie Court alone, too.”

“I am not your bodyguard to be bossed around, child.” The look on her face was one I knew well, that stubborn set to her eyes, her thin shoulders. I didn’t want to see it on this topic.

“No, but if you get yourself killed trying to defend my honor, that won’t help me.” I rose, grabbing at her arm. “Please, Gran, I couldn’t bear to lose you and know it was my fault.”

“Ach, ’twouldn’t be your fault, Merry. It would be that bastard king.”

I shook my head, almost sitting up with all the tubes and wires tugging at me. “Please, Gran, promise me you won’t do anything foolish. You have to be around to help with the babies.”

Her face softened, and she patted my hand. “So it is to be twins like my own girls.”

“They say twins skip a generation. I guess it’s true,” I said. The door opened and the doctor and the nurse were there again.

“I told you gentlemen not to upset her,” Dr. Mason said in her sternest voice.

“Ah, and it were me,” Gran said. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but as her grandmother, I’m a wee bit upset at what has happened.”

The doctor must have already seen Gran, because she didn’t do that double take that most humans do. She just gave Gran a stern look and waved her finger at her. “I don’t care who is doing it. If you can’t stop sending her vitals up and down and sideways, then you are going to have to leave, all of you.”

“We’ve explained before,” Doyle said. “The princess must be under guard at all times.”

“There are policemen just outside the door, and more of your guard.”

“She can’t be alone, Doctor.” This from Rhys.

“Do you truly think the princess is still in danger? Here in the hospital?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rhys said.

“I do,” Doyle and Sholto said together.

“A powerful man with magic at his beck and call, who’d rape his own niece, might do anything,” Gran said.

The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Until we have a piece of DNA to compare to the king’s, we don’t have proof that it was his….” She hesitated.

“Sperm,” I said for her.

She nodded, and got a death grip on her stethoscope. “Very well. His sperm that we found. We have confirmed Mr. Rhys and the missing guard Frost as two of the donors, but we can’t confirm who the other two are yet.”

“Other two?” Gran asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said. Then I thought of something. “How did you get DNA to compare for Frost?”

“Captain Doyle gave me some hair.”

I looked past Gran at Doyle. “How did you just happen to have a lock of his hair with you?”

“I told you of the dream, Meredith.”

“So what?”

“We exchanged locks of hair, to give to you as a token. He had mine and would have given it to you to remember me if I had been chosen. I gave a few strands of the lock to the doctors for comparison.”

“Where were you hiding it, Doyle? You had no pockets as a dog.”

“I gave it to another guard for safekeeping. One who did not travel into the Golden Court with us.”

Just saying it that way meant he’d planned on the possibility of none of them surviving. It didn’t make me feel any better to hear that. We had all survived, but the fear was still there deep inside me. The fear of loss.

“Who did you trust to hold such a token?” I asked.

“The men I trust most are in this room,” he said in that dark voice that seemed to match his color. It was the kind of voice that the night itself would use, if it were male.

“Yes, and by your earlier words, you planned for failure as well as success. So you left the locks of hair with someone you didn’t take inside the Golden Court.”

He came to stand at the foot of the bed, not so near Gran. Doyle was aware that he had been the Queen’s Darkness, her assassin, for centuries, and many folk of the court were still nervous around him. I appreciated that he gave Gran room, and I approved of him sending Galen to fetch her. I wasn’t certain there was another guard among my men whom she would have trusted. The rest had been too much like enemies for too long.

I studied his dark face, though I knew that his face sometimes didn’t help me at all. In the beginning he had let his emotions show around me, but as I’d come to read his face better he’d schooled that face. I knew that, if he didn’t wish it, I would gain nothing from his face but the pleasure of looking at it.

“Who?” I asked.

“I left both locks of hair with Kitto.”

I stared at him, and didn’t try to keep the surprise off my face. Kitto was the only man in my life who was shorter than Gran. He was four feet even, eleven inches shorter than she. But his skin was moonlight white like mine, and his body a perfect male replica of the sidhe guards, except for the line of glittering, iridescent scales down his back, the tiny fold-away fangs in his mouth, and the huge slit-pupiled eyes in their sea of blue. All that proved that his father had been, or was, a snake goblin. His curling black hair, his white skin, and the magic that sex with me had awakened were from his mother’s bloodline. But Kitto had not known either parent. His sidhe mother had left him to die at the edge of the goblin mound. He’d been saved, because newborns are too small to make a good meal, and sidhe flesh is valued for food among the goblins. Kitto had been given to a female goblin to raise until he was big enough to eat, like a piglet being saved for Yule dinner. But the goblin female had come to…love him. Love him enough to keep him alive and treat him as another goblin, not as food on the hoof, as it were.

The other guards had not considered Kitto one of them. He was too weak, and though Doyle had insisted that he hit the gym along with the rest so there were muscles under that white skin, Kitto would never be a true warrior.

Doyle answered the question that must have been plain on my face. “Everyone I trusted more went into the faerie mound with us. Of those we left behind, who would have understood what those two locks of hair would have meant to you, our princess? Who but one of the men who had been with you since the beginning of this adventure? Only Nicca was left behind, and though a better warrior than Kitto, he is not stronger of will. Besides, our Nicca is soon to be a father, and I would not involve him in our fight.”

“It is his fight, too,” Rhys said.

“No,” Doyle said.

“If we lose, and Merry does not take the throne, our enemies will kill Nicca and his soon-to-be bride, Biddie.”

“They would nae dare harm a sidhe woman who carried a child inside her,” Gran said.

“I think some of them would,” Rhys said.

“I agree with Rhys,” Galen said, “I think Cel would rather see all of faerie destroyed than lose his chance to follow his mother onto the throne.”

Gran touched his arm. “Ya have grown cynical, boy.”

He smiled at her but it left his green eyes cautious, almost hurt. “I’ve grown wise.”

She turned to me. “I hate to think that any sidhe noble is so hateful, even that one.”

“The last I heard from my aunt, my cousin, Cel, had plans to get me with child, and we’d rule together.”

A look of disgust showed on Gran’s face. “You’d die first.”

“But now, I’m already pregnant, and it can’t be his. Rhys and Galen are right; he’ll kill me now if he can.”

“He’ll kill you before the babes are born, if he can,” Sholto said.

“What concern is my Merry to ya, King Sholto of the sluagh?” Gran didn’t even try to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

He moved closer to the bed, standing at the foot of it. He had let the other three men do most of the touching. I appreciated that since we were still more acquaintances than friends. “I am one of the fathers of Merry’s children.”

Gran looked at me. It was an unhappy, almost angry look. “I heard the rumor that the sluagh’s king would be a father, but I didnae credit it.”

I nodded. “It’s true.”

“He cannae be king of the sluagh and king of the Unseelie. He cannae sit two thrones.” She sounded hostile.

Normally, I would have been more diplomatic, but the time for diplomacy was past, at least among my inner circle. I was pregnant with Gran’s great-grandchildren; I might be seeing a lot of her. I did not want her and Sholto bickering for nine months, or longer.

“Why are you angry about Sholto being one of the fathers?”

It was a very blunt question, rude by any standard among the sidhe. The rules were a little less subtle among the lesser fey.

“One day of being the next queen and you would be rude to your ol’ granny?”

“I’m hoping to see a lot of you while I’m pregnant, but I’m not going to mess with bad will between you and my lovers. Tell me why you don’t like Sholto.”

The look in her lovely brown eyes was not friendly, not at all. “Did you nae wonder who struck the blow that killed your great-grandmother, my mother?”

“She died in one of the last great wars between the courts.”

“Aye, but who killed her?”

I looked at Sholto. His face was its arrogant mask, but his eyes were thinking too hard. I didn’t know his face as well as Rhys’s or Galen’s, but I was almost certain that he was thinking furiously.

“Did you kill my great-grandmother?”

“I slew many in the wars. The brownies were on the side of the Seelie Court, and I was not. I, and my people, did kill brownies and other lesser fey of the Seelie Court in the wars, but whether one of them was your blood, I do not know.”

“Worse then,” Gran said. “You killed her and it meant nothin’ to ya.”

“I killed many. It becomes difficult after a time to separate the dead one from another.”

“I saw her die at his hand, Merry. He slew her and moved on, as if she were nothing.” There was such pain in her voice, a raw hurt that I had never heard from my grandmother.

“Which war was this?” Doyle asked, his deep voice falling into the sudden tension like a stone thrown down a well.

“It was the third call to arms,” Gran said.

“The one that started because Andais boasted that her hounds could out-hunt Taranis’s,” Doyle said.

“So that’s why it’s called the War of Dogs,” I said.

He nodded.

“I do nae know why it began. The king ne’r told us why we were to fight, only that to refuse was treason and death.”

“Think about why the first one is called the Marriage War,” Rhys said.

“That one I know,” I said. “Andais offered to marry Taranis and combine the two courts, after her king died in a duel.”