Chapter 7
I CLEANED OFF THE REMNANTS OF THE MAKEUP THAT I HADN'T cried away. Got the lipstick that still looked like clown makeup off, and even gave Frost a makeup cleansing cloth so he could do his own face. We were clean and neat and presentable when we started back to the crime scene. I felt hollow inside, as if a piece of me were missing. But it didn't matter. Walters would be here soon with the CSU team. We needed to have finished the questioning of the witnesses before then in case they said something that we didn't want the human police to know. I wanted justice, but I also didn't want to make the bad publicity worse by sharing some dark secret with the human world.
Doyle stopped so abruptly that I ran into him. He pushed me farther back into Galen and Usna's suddenly waiting arms, as if he'd given some signal that I had not seen. With Doyle and Adair in front and Galen and Usna suddenly very close on either side of me, I could not see what had frightened everyone. Barinthus, Hawthorne, and Frost were bringing up the rear. They had turned to face back down the hall as if they were worried about someone sneaking up behind us. What was happening? What now? I couldn't even manage a drop of fear. I'm not sure it was bravery so much as exhaustion. I was simply too tired emotionally and physically to waste the adrenaline on fear. In that second, if we'd been attacked, I'm not sure I would have cared.
I tried to shake it off, this feeling of desolation. I called, "Doyle, what is it?"
Barinthus answered, "The Queen's Ravens are in the hall, blocking our way." I guess being seven feet tall does give you a better view.
I realized then that my guard feared almost every sidhe right now. They were right. One of the sidhe had committed murder, and I was in charge of catching the killer. Wonderful. I'd just given someone else a reason to want me dead. But what was one more?
Adair moved to the center of the hallway to hide me behind his armored back, as Doyle moved down the hallway. Barinthus answered my question before I'd even thought it. "Doyle is conferring with Mistral."
Mistral was the master of winds, the bringer of storms, and the new captain of the Queen's Ravens. He'd taken Doyle's place when it became clear that Doyle wasn't coming back to his old job.
"What's happening?" Galen asked, and his voice held enough anxiety for both of us.
Usna bent over me, sniffing my hair. "You smell good."
"Keep your mind on business," Galen said, looking up the hallway toward where Doyle had gone. He had a gun out, held down along his leg. If I'd been choosing between sword and gun, I'd have made the same choice. When I first came back to faerie, guns were outlawed inside the mounds, but after the last few attempts, my aunt had decided that my guards and hers needed all the help they could get. So our men could carry guns, if they knew how to use them. Doyle and Mistral had been the judge of who was competent to carry and who wasn't. Some guards treated guns the way others treated the idea of carrying around a poisonous snake. It might be useful, but what if it bit you.
Usna had a short sword in either hand, pointed both directions up and down the hallway. His grey eyes, which were the most ordinary thing about him physically, were keeping watch, but his face was pressed against the top of my head. He put first one cheek, than the other against my hair. He was looking down each end of the hallway as he did it, but he was also almost scent marking me. Cat-like and inappropriate for the situation, if he'd thought like a human. But it was Usna, and I knew that he was aware of everything in the hallway, even while trying to put the scent of his skin against my hair.
I found it oddly comforting. Galen did not. "Usna, stop it."
A soft sound somewhere between a purr and a growl sounded from the other man. "You worry too much, my little pixie."
"And you don't worry enough, my little kitten." But Galen grinned as he said it. We all felt a little better for Usna's teasing.
"Quiet, both of you," Frost said from behind us. They shut up, looking a little sheepish but happier. Usna stopped trying to rub his face against my hair. Which meant he'd done it almost more to tease Galen than to tease me.
Doyle was taking too long. If something had gone horribly wrong, Barinthus or Adair would have warned us. But it was taking too long. The unnatural calm was beginning to slip away from me on tiny cat paws of anxiety.
I had a license to carry a gun in California. I also had a diplomatic waiver that pretty much covered me anywhere, anytime, on the basis that my life was in danger often enough that being armed was a necessity. I had guns. But Andais wouldn't let me go into the press conference armed. I was a princess; princesses did not protect themselves, they had others to do that for them. I thought the idea archaic and shortsighted and downright ironic coming from a queen whose claim to fame had been as a goddess of battle. Standing there with Galen and Usna pressed against me, with the others like a wall of flesh around me, I vowed that the next time I left my room, I'd be armed.
Doyle returned, and Adair gave him room to pass, then moved back to the center of the hallway like some golden wall. I realized that Adair was being just that, a wall of flesh and metal to keep death from me. He'd said I was his ameraudur, another echo of my father's ghost, for he had been the last ameraudur among the royals of either court. To be called ameraudur held more honor than king, because the men chose you, and followed you through love, the kind of love men have shared with one another on battlefields as far back as time can see. Oaths bound a guard to risk his life for his charge, queen or princess, but ameraudur meant he did it willingly. It meant that coming back from a battle alive with his leader dead was worse than death. A shame that he would never live down. Two of my father's guards took their own lives for shame of letting their prince die. To lay your life down for your ameraudur was the highest honor.
Seeing Adair standing there so straight, so proud, so ready to die, made me think about my new title. Made me afraid of it. I did not want anyone dying for me. I had not earned it. I was not my father and never would be. I could never ride into battle with them and hope to survive. How could I be their ameraudur if I could not do that?
Doyle's dark face was empty for me. Whatever he thought about Adair's new pet name for me, he was keeping it to himself. His face was so empty now that the only thing I was certain of was that I wasn't in immediate danger. Other than that, he could have worn the same expression for anything. I wanted to yell at him to show me what he was feeling, but he spoke before I could lose that much control.
"The queen sent them to fetch you back when you are finished with your 'murder business,' as she worded it. Vague enough that they cannot fetch you immediately." Doyle gave a small wry smile, and shook his head. "In truth, Mistral is now in charge of the crime scene."
"What?" Galen and I asked together.
"Did the queen rescind her offer to Meredith?" Barinthus asked. "Are Mistral and the queen now in charge of this murder?"
"No," Doyle said. "Rhys thought of a different spell to search for our murderer. He wished to chase this new magical clue down, but needed someone to keep the crime scene safe. When Mistral and the others came, he put them to guard the hallway."
"That was rashly done," Frost said.
"Knowing Rhys, he got Mistral's oath," Usna said, "and once you have Mistral's oath, you have his honor. He would not break it, not for all the joys of the Summerlands."
Doyle gave one sharp nod. "I trust Mistral's honor as I do my own." He looked at me, and something passed over his impassive face, but I couldn't decipher it. Months in my bed, weeks in my body, and I could not read the look in his eyes. "He has requested an audience with you, Princess. He says that he has a message from the queen."
"We do not have time for this," Frost said.
I agreed, but I also knew that ignoring messages or messengers from the queen was not wise. "We left her less than an hour ago, what could she want?"
"You," said a deep voice behind them.
Doyle looked a question at me, and I gave a nod. At a gesture from Doyle, Adair and he parted like a curtain to reveal Mistral.
His hair was the grey of a sky that promised rain, held back from his face in a ponytail. I had only a glimpse of his storm cloud grey eyes before he dropped to one knee and gave me only the back of his head. It was the first time that another sidhe, any sidhe, had voluntarily showed me such... respect. I stared down at the broad sweep of his shoulders in their tight leather armor, and wondered why he'd done it.
"Get up, Mistral."
He shook his head, sending his grey hair like a fall of water down his back, barely held in check by the leather thong that held it at the nape of his neck. "I owe you this at the very least, Princess Meredith."
I had no idea what he meant by that.
I looked at Doyle. He gave a small raise of an eyebrow, a slight turn of the head, his version of a shrug.
"Why do you owe me such a bow?" I asked.
He raised his head just enough so he could roll his eyes at me. "If I had dreamt that you would take one look from me so seriously, I would have been more careful of you, Princess. My oath on that."
I knew what he meant then, for it had been the look of contempt on Mistral's face the night before that had helped me be brave enough to confront Andais when she was in the grip of an evil spell. A spell that had made her slaughter her own men, and be a danger to anyone near her. It had been a very clever assassination ploy. Mistral had told me with his eyes alone that I was just another useless royal, and he hated us all. It wasn't the hatred, but the uselessness that had moved me to action. Because I agreed with him. In that moment I had decided that I would rather die than see them slaughtered.
"Are you so certain one glance from you was what moved me forward?" I meant it to be a joke, but I'd forgotten how long it had been for some of the Queen's Ravens since they'd had a woman joke with them.
He lowered his face quickly, his voice uncertain and uncomfortable. "I am sorry, Princess, I presumed too much."
My kidding had not only fallen flat but embarrassed him. I'd had no idea my words had such power over Mistral. I touched his bowed head, the queen's ring on my right hand. Mark of her rulership, her first gift to me, and an artifact of power.
My fingers brushed his face a breath before the metal of the ring did. He turned those storm-grey eyes up to me. His lips parted as if he meant to speak, but the metal touched his skin, and there was no time for words.
I knew that our bodies still stood and knelt in the hallway inside the Unseelie Court. I knew it, because I'd had this happen before when the magic of the chalice and the ring combined. But to Mistral and me, we were on the top of a hill that was crowned by a large dead tree. I had seen this hill, this tree in one form or another in dreams and visions. Mistral knelt before me with my hand cupping his cheek. He put his hand over mine, holding my touch against his face, as he gazed around at the plain that spread out as far as the eye could see. It was green and lovely, but strangely empty.
"What have you done, Princess?"
"Not me," I said.
He gazed up at me, and there was puzzlement in his eyes. "I don't understand."
"Look at the tree."
He turned, with his hand holding mine now, rather than pressing it to his face. The tree was a huge, blackened thing, its bark crumbling in the growing wind. The first time I'd seen the tree so dead it had had a large cleft in the center. This tree did not. It had taken me a while to understand that the tree wasn't real, or the hill. Neither were any place a map could get you. The tree represented the Goddess, and the power of faerie; the hill was The Hill. We stood at the center of the world, but the center of the world changed at the thought of the gods. In this moment, this was the center, and Mistral and I stood at that center. We stood hand in hand, while the wind blew across the sky.
The wind smelled of apple blossoms and roses - sweet and clean and good. I heard a voice on the flower-scented wind. Or perhaps it was merely a thought. Mistral did not seem to hear it, so perhaps the voice was only for me.
"Kiss him," the wind said, "kiss him. Let him taste the chalice." But the chalice is not here, I thought. The wind said, "You are the chalice." Oh, of course. It made perfect sense in that moment, though I knew that later it might not make any sense at all.
"Mistral," I said, and the wind grew stronger, sweeter, at the sound of his name.
He looked at me, and there was a hint of fear in his eyes. Had it really been that long since he was touched by the Goddess? Yes, the voice in my head said, it had.
"Kiss me, Mistral," I said.
His gaze searched my face. "Who are you?"
"I am Merry."
He shook his head, even as he let me draw him in against my body. I realized that my arm was not injured in this place of dream and vision. I slid my arms around the smooth strength of his back, over the leather of his armor. His hands slid around my waist, but he was still shaking his head.
"No, you are not the princess."
"I am, but I am more, that is true." My voice had taken on that echoing softness that I'd heard before, like listening to someone else's voice in your own ears.
"What are you?" he whispered.
"Drink of the chalice, Mistral." The flower-scented wind wrapped around us like invisible arms, binding us until our bodies were pressed as close together as we could manage with clothes on. He held me, but he was afraid, and fear is not a good aphrodisiac for most people. The queen has never understood that.
His face bent toward me, but his body was tense, and he tried not to bend closer. The wind pushed at him, forced his head downward. I understood in that moment that he was once the master of the winds, bringer of storms. Once he had controlled it all as a man controls a horse, but now Mistral was the horse, who was being ridden, and he didn't like it.
Mistral fought against the push of the sweet wind. He fought to move his body away from mine, but the wind was like chains, and the best he could do with all that strength was keep his mouth just above mine. Keep himself just out of reach.
"Why do you fight when this is what you want?" the voice said, using my lips.
"You cannot be the chalice. You cannot be the Goddess, she cast us out long ago."
"If I am not real, then you cannot kiss me."
"You cannot be real."
"You were always my doubting Thomas, Mistral. Kiss me, kiss me, and discover the truth. Whether your doubts are real, or whether I am real." The wind pressed so tightly that it was hard to breathe. "Kiss me!" The voice came from my mouth, and echoed through the wind, and the drowning scent of blossoms.
His mouth touched mine, and the moment it did, he stopped fighting. He gave himself to the kiss with his lips, his mouth, his arms, his body. The wind was only wind again, but Mistral did not notice. He picked me up in his strong arms, his hands pressing me against his body. One hand gripped my ass, an almost crushing grip that brought a small sound from my mouth. That sound seemed to urge him on. The kiss had been thorough before, but it had had a certain gentleness to it; now he kissed me as if he would climb into my body through the opening of my lips. He kissed and ate with teeth at my mouth, biting and holding my lower lip until I cried out for him.
The smell of flowers was gone, and the wind smelled like ozone. Every hair on my body raised in goose bumps. Mistral drove us to the ground with him on top. I wasn't certain if it was to protect me, or to press the swollen front of him against my body. But we were on the ground a second before a jagged white blast of lightning fell from the clear sky and struck the dead tree.
Bolt after bolt fell from the sky hammering the tree, and with each strike the dead bark fell, revealing fresh pale bark underneath.
Mistral covered my body with his, shielding me as the lightning furrowed the earth on either side of the tree, even as it shook the dead away. Until at last the tree stood naked and new and alive. The broken, snaggled branches began to grow longer, fuller, and buds formed on the end of those branches. Blossoms spilled out, white and pink, and the scent of apples was thick and sweet. Her voice came to us at the end of the vision. "Go now, my doubting Thomas, and shake the dead away from the quick."
We came back to the hallway with Mistral still kneeling before me, my hand on his face, my hurt arm in a sling.
There were more of Mistral's men on the other side of us, but Doyle and Barinthus were keeping them back. I doubted much time had passed, but I heard Barinthus say, "The princess brought me back into some of my power with only a touch. Would you take that chance away from your captain, simply because you do not understand what is happening?"
Mistral smiled up at me, a fierce baring of teeth. His eyes boiled black with storm clouds so that he looked blind. He was suddenly on his feet, my hand still gripped in his. He jerked me against his body so hard it jarred my arm and drove a small moan of pain from me.
A sound came from his throat and deep in his chest, a sound that started as almost a purring, but ended in the low bass growl of distant thunder.
He ran his fingers through my hair, pulling a fistful sudden and tight in his hand. It was a small sharp pain but it was just this side of being too tight, too much.
He stared down at me, his face filled with a raw, naked lust, something separate and primeval like darkness and light. That divine spark that thrust into the first dark and brought life. That power was in Mistral's hands, in the press of his body hard and eager even through the prison of his leather.
He felt so big, so thick, against the front of my body. The press of him, the strength of his hands made me shudder against him. He tightened his grip on my hair, forcing me to fight my body's reaction, or cause myself real pain. My body wanted to buck and fight against his grip, but he'd given me a choice. Control myself or hurt myself. He knew the game, did Mistral.
The feeling of being trapped, of being helpless against his strength, his lust, and what my body needed was almost overwhelming. My eyes shuttered closed at the effort of not struggling in his harsh grasp.
He whispered against my face, and I could not focus enough to see him. "Do you want to ride the storm?" His breath was hot against my skin.
His voice promised no gentleness, no compromise. I knew the kind of sex he was offering, and the thought of it tightened things low in my body, drew another small sound from my throat. "Yes," I whispered, "yes."
The roll of thunder echoed down the hallway, shuddering between the stone walls. The sound seemed to vibrate out of his body and into mine as if my body were a tuning fork struck against the rim of some great metal cup. His voice growled against my skin, with the taste of thunder in it. "Good," he said and forced me to my knees.
Chapter 8
MISTRAL HELD ME ON MY KNEES, MY HEAD IMMOBILE IN HIS GRIP, as his other hand undid the front of his pants. Just watching him do it made my body react so strongly that I might have fallen to all fours if he hadn't held me up. Most of my lovers wouldn't let me go down on them because that wouldn't get me pregnant. Oral sex wouldn't make one of them king to my queen, and they would not waste seed on any other part of my body. I'd offered it as a part of foreplay, but most had refused even that for fear that I would bring them, and a chance would be wasted. I was left begging for the touch of them in my mouth.
Mistral was not worried about being king or making me pregnant. In this moment, he simply wanted me with no plan, no agenda, only his own long-denied need. That he would think first of pleasure and second of politics made me love him, just a little.
My skin began to glow softly. That faint dance of magic underneath my skin traveled up his hand and into his body. A faint white radiance started underneath his skin, like light reflected around a corner. Not the full-out shine of my skin, but something fainter, less sure of itself. I wondered if his glow had always been so hesitant. His body spilled out of his pants. He forced my mouth down on the long, thick shaft and I sucked long and hard on him. It threw his head back, bowed his body, and light burst from his skin. Cool white fire, blazing inside him, so that for a moment my eyes were dazzled.
If I had not held him in my mouth, felt his hand like a comforting pain in my hair, I would have believed that he had become light and power and magic, and had no true substance at all. But he shoved that wide and very solid piece of himself so far down my throat that breathing became an issue. I liked my men large, but I liked breathing more. I began to fight against his hold, my body starting to struggle to breathe.
I pushed at his body, and his hand relaxed, drawing my mouth down his thickness until I could draw breath, around the tip of him. I expected him to draw the rest of the way out of my mouth, but he didn't. He kept the tip of himself just inside me. When I'd drawn enough air, I ran my tongue delicately underneath the rim of his foreskin where it stretched tight across the hardness of him. It made him shudder from the hand in my hair, to the flesh in my mouth, to his hips under the press of my hands.
His body emerged from the radiance in edges, an outline of solid lines melting out of the brightness. His hair had burst its leather ribbon, and fell around him like a fall of white light. It was as if the rest of his body thrummed with light and power, except the part I held in my mouth. Maybe I couldn't have held him inside me if it all glowed like something carved of power.
He shoved himself deeper into my mouth, but I was afraid that he would shove too far as he had before. I distracted him with just an edge of teeth. It made him hesitate, and let me pull myself to the end of him again. I edged my tongue gently but firmly farther underneath the skin than I had before, so that I could lick inside that taut skin and the top of the shaft at the same time. It made him shudder and writhe above me. He looked down at me and his eyes were wide and wild with the sensation of it.
Wind began to play down the hallway, and his white, shining hair flared in that wind, a nimbus to frame his body. The wind grew until it streamed down the hallway in both directions, and I realized it was Mistral.
My hands slid to his pants, and I pulled carefully on the leather fastenings, until I could touch the soft skin of his testicles. They were loose enough that I could tease the skin between them, and roll them in my hands like delicate balls of tender flesh.
I forgot my earlier fear, and drove myself down the shaft of him, struggling to hold the width of him in my mouth. He'd gotten harder, which was more difficult to swallow, but it was worth the effort. Worth it to rest my mouth against those tender bits of skin and flesh, until I could lay the circle of my lips against the solid vibrating warmth of his body. Touching even that much of myself to the shining center of him left my lips tingling, and as I drew myself back down the length of him, it was as if that shivering power followed me. As if the touch of my lips had somehow allowed it to flow down this last length of his body.
I gave a final flick of my tongue, and when I drew him out of my mouth, he did not fight me. He gazed down at me with those wild eyes, and light flashed through them. It took me a second to realize I was seeing lightning. Lightning flashed through Mistral's eyes. Then came the first distant breath of ozone, like a storm that hadn't quite reached us yet, but the scent of it rode the wind and promised great and terrible things.
He made a sound low in his throat, and thunder growled down the hallway in answer.
My skin shone as if the moon had climbed inside me and was trying to melt out through my skin. We painted shadows along the walls. He dragged me to my feet by hair that had bled to red light, and I knew that my eyes were a blaze of green and gold like Christmas lights caught behind snow.
He turned me sharply in against the wall so that only my hands against the stones kept me from hitting face-first.
He kept his hand in my hair, but the other hand slid under my skirt until his fingers found the edge of my panties. He balled his hand into the satin, and I had a breath to brace before he ripped them from my body. The violence of it staggered me, and only his hand in my hair kept me against the wall. I realized that I was using my hurt arm, and it didn't hurt anymore. My hands pressed into the cool stone of the wall, as Mistral pulled my hips against his body.
He moved between my legs but not inside me. The feel of him hard and solid sliding between my thighs made me cry out, but he was more than a foot taller than I. There was no way to have intercourse with me facing the wall, not unless someone brought a box for me to stand on.