Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (27 page)

"They have all but faded into their names," Doyle said. "What you once knew them by is no more."

"Whisper," Frost said. "I thought he'd gone mad."

"I'd heard that rumor, too."

I remembered Mistral. He was everything the queen abhorred, loud, bragging, quick to anger, unforgiving. He was almost the epitome of a bully, but he was too powerful to be refused entrance to the dark court once he'd gotten himself kicked out of the golden. Queen Andais made sure we accepted all who were powerful, but she didn't have to like them, or use them much. She could make sure they were always seated far away from her and given duties that kept them from her sight.

Mistral had been so out of favor during my lifetime that I barely remembered his face, and could not truly recall ever having spoken with him. My father had thought him a fool.

"I don't remember anyone among the guard called Whisper," I said.

"He displeased the queen once, long ago," Doyle said, "and she had him punished. He was given to Ezekiel in the Hallway of Mortality for" —he frowned, looked at Frost—"for seven years, wasn't it?"

Frost nodded. "I believe so."

I swallowed before I could speak. "He was given over to be tortured for seven years." My voice was breathy with the horror of it. I'd been in the Hallway of Mortality. I knew exactly how good at his craft Ezekiel was, and I could not imagine seven years of such attention.

They were both nodding.

Even Maeve looked pale. The Seelie Court did not condone torture, at least not the overt kind that Ezekiel dished out. They had more subtle ways of doing it, magical ways, that were less messy, less personal. You could cause someone excruciating pain without getting your hands dirty. Queen Andais liked calling a spade a spade. Torture was supposed to be messy, or what good was it?

"I have heard tales of your Hallway of Hell."

"See, Taranis even lets his court adopt the words of a faith that tormented and tortured our followers," Frost said. "He has allowed his court to become an ape of the humans."

"If your century begins with seventeen, or earlier," I said.

Frost shrugged, as if a few hundred years made no difference.

"Call it what you will, but that your queen would mete out such punishment is proof that I do not want to be a part of your court."

"What did he do to earn seven years with Ezekiel?" I asked.

"I don't think anyone knows but Whisper and the queen," Frost said.

I looked at Doyle. "You've been her left-hand man for a millennium, or more. You'd never left her side until she sent you here to Los Angeles to fetch. You know, don't you?"

He let out a small breath. "If she wanted others to know, Merry, she would have told them. I will not endanger anyone by sharing that particular bit of truth."

I let it go. I didn't want Andais to have an excuse to send any of us to the Hallway of Mortality. I could live the rest of my days without knowing what Whisper had done to merit seven years, as long as I never had to endure another minute with Ezekiel's voice in my face.

Frost turned to Maeve. "You've refused to go to the Unseelie Court with us, even though you know that Taranis may try to kill you while we're gone."

"You will be turning me over to new bodyguards at the airport."

"The same human bodyguards who nearly got themselves killed trying to save you from the Nameless. The same bodyguards who, if we hadn't come along, would have died to a man, and you with them."

"We will take another plane to another country, far from the king and his powers."

"She will probably be safer than we will, Frost. For we will beard him in his den, the very heart of his power."

"But she would be safer still at the Unseelie Court, under the queen's protection," Frost said.

"We have had this discussion," Doyle said. "It is done."

Frost looked at her. "It isn't that you loathe the Unseelie Court, or even that you're afraid of them, of us. It's that you're afraid that once you enter the darkling throng and are surrounded by faerie once more, you will never leave."

"She could make me a prisoner, for my own protection, and you would not be able to break me free," Maeve said.

"You wouldn't be a prisoner, Conchenn, you'd simply embrace the dark, because the light won't have you. Many a Seelie lord and lady has found that the dark is not half so ugly as they thought, or half so terrible as they were taught." He took a step toward her, and she took a step back.

"They embraced the dark because they had no choice," she said in a voice that was almost choked. "It was the darkness or be exiled from faerie forever."

"Exactly," Frost said. "There are no prisoners among us. Whisper could have fled the Unseelie Court. The queen would not have pursued him, for she knows that for a sidhe to leave the Unseelie Court is to have no place to go. No home in faerie. We take the queen's laws, not because we have no choice, but because even seven years of torment is better than being cast out, as you were, by your king."

I saw tears shine in her eyes as she rushed past us all and out the far door.

"Did you have to do that?" Doyle said.

Frost nodded. "Yes, I think I did. She's endangering herself by refusing to go to the Unseelie Court. It's foolish."

"Not half so foolish as entering the Seelie Court of our own free will," Doyle said.

The two men looked at each other, and something passed between them. Frost's shoulders slumped just a little before he straightened and said, "I do not like either plan."

"You've made that clear," Doyle said.

Frost looked at me. "I will go with Merry, but I will not like it." He smiled, but it was wistful, so full of old sorrow that it made my chest tight. "And I fear, my sweet, sweet, princess, neither will you."

I would have argued with him if I could, but since I agreed with him, it seemed silly. "We visit the Unseelie Court first, Frost, and the goblin court after that, and only then the Seelie Court."

He shook his head, and the smile became bitter. "I hope that the sights we see at the goblin court are the worst we will have, but I fear that no horror will compare to the bright beauty that awaits us at our last stop."

Sadly, no one argued with him.

It wasn't that Maeve Reed's personal jet wasn't comfortable, because it was. The only one of us who hated to fly was Doyle. He had chosen his seat early, buckled himself in, and kept a death grip on the arms of the nice swivelly seat. He closed his eyes tight, hugged the seat, and it was just acknowledged that if we were ever attacked inside an airplane, Doyle would not be that helpful, at least not at first. When I'd discovered his phobia over flying in planes, I'd actually been pleased. It had made him seem less perfect, less the Queen's Darkness and assassin. It seemed like a long time ago that I'd needed that. I looked at him across the narrow aisle. The tension in his body sang in the air around him, almost like a kind of power. Of course, fear can be fuel for magic.

"I would ask what you are thinking," Frost said from beside me, "but it seems obvious."

I turned my head against the padded seat back so I could meet his eyes. "What am I thinking?"

"You're thinking about Doyle." He wasn't angry, and he wasn't pouting. Maybe his voice wasn't happy, but he wasn't pouting. It was progress.

"I was thinking that once his fear of flying made him seem less the queen's perfect assassin."

His face started to close down, that cold mask building up. "That is not all."

I touched his arm. "Don't pout about this, Frost. I was just thinking that if we are ever attacked on an airplane, it's the one place Doyle won't be at his best. That's all."

I watched him struggle to swallow all that sullenness. It looked like it might choke him, but he was trying. He was trying so obviously that I didn't say what else I was thinking: that if I had been sitting there having some wild fantasy about Doyle, it was none of Frost's concern. I was supposed to enjoy all of them, but I kept it to myself. Frost was trying, and chastising him for being possessive, a very un-fey-like emotion, wouldn't have helped.

I squeezed his arm and let it go. Good for me.

Rhys knelt in front of me. He was wearing his white eye patch with the tiny seed pearls on it. It went with the white silk trench coat, white fedora, and pale cream-colored suit. The only color he wore was an icy pink tie. He looked like a cross between an ice cream man and the ghost of some 1940s detective. He'd even piled all that white curly hair up under the hat. He looked younger without the hair, all soft lines and kissable lips. He was hundreds of years older than I would ever be, but kneeling there, he looked like he'd never seen the wrong side of thirty.

He smiled up at me. "Doyle gave me something to give to you." He glanced behind at their leader, still sitting with his eyes tight shut. He turned back to me with a chuckle. "He knew he'd be indisposed." He pulled a white ring box out of his coat pocket.

The smile that I'd given him faded. "Do I have to?"

"Yes, you do." He suddenly looked a decade older, not a bit less handsome, but the boyishness was gone as if I'd imagined it.

Frost leaned in to add, "It is the queen's ring, Merry, given to you from her. It is one of the symbols that you are her heir. You must wear it."

"I don't mind the ring," I said, "but with the chalice on the plane, I'm a little worried that it might up the magic on the ring as it's done on other things."

The two men looked at each other, and I could tell it was the first time they'd thought of it.

"Damn," Rhys said, "that could be a problem."

Frost looked very serious. "A problem, or a salvation. Once the ring was a great relic of power, not merely a chooser of the queen's fertile lovers."

"Funny," I said, "I keep hearing that the ring is a great relic, but no one, not even my father, would tell me what it did once upon a time." I looked from one to the other of them, and they exchanged one of those glances that said neither wanted to tell me.

"What?" I demanded.

They sighed in unison. Rhys sat back on his knees, the ring box still unopened in his hands. "Once, the ring made the Andais irresistible to any man whom the ring reacted to."

"That doesn't sound bad enough for the looks on your faces. What else?"

They exchanged another glance.

"Drop the other shoe, okay."

"Shoe?" Frost asked.

"She means, just tell her," Rhys explained. He was one of the few guards who hadn't spent the last fifty years hiding in the hollow hills. Rhys owned a house outside the faerie mounds. A house with electricity, a television, and everything. He was probably one of the only sidhe who knew who Humphrey Bogart had been, or who Madonna was.

"You know that moment in all the Cinderella movies where she's at the top of the stairs, and the prince looks up, stunned?" Rhys asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Then he walks toward her like he has no choice."

I nodded. "Yes."

"That irresistible," he said.

"You mean once the ring's reacted to you, you're like some besotted schoolboy."

He sighed. "Not exactly."

"It isn't just the men," Frost said.

I looked from one to the other. "What do you mean?"

Sage tromped up the aisle to us. He was wearing a pair of Kitto's dress slacks and a T-shirt that had had to be ripped up the back to accommodate his wings. His waist was tinier than Kitto's, so he had a belt cinched tight. He wore a pair of Kitto's jogging shoes laced as tight as they would go, because his foot was narrower than the goblin's. He had a blanket wrapped around his upper body, because the jacket ripped up the back wouldn't keep him warm. He needed one of the heavy woolen cloaks that the courts had designed centuries ago for the human-size, or bigger, winged fey. Nicca was also going to be a very cold boy once we landed. But we'd alerted the guards who would meet us at the airport, and they'd have cloaks. Until then, Sage huddled in his blanket as if he could already feel the cold. At his new size he had no clothes that fit him.

"What they are so delicately trying to tell you, Princess, is that once that ring was a matchmaker."

I frowned up at him from my seat.

He sighed. "Oh, to be young again," but he made it sound like a bad thing. "The ring can tell a fertile match, not just from touching bare skin, but from across a room, at first sight. Both the man and woman fell hopelessly in love and lived happily ever after."

"Queen Andais has never struck me as the happily-ever-after type."

"She had control of the ring, Merry, like any good weapon, or tool. She would throw a great ball and invite all the eligible sidhe, and a few of us lesser beings to serve at table or entertain. Then she'd stand near the door, and as each woman came through, she'd touch her with the ring, and almost always someone would step forward. They would fall upon each other like lustful rams, be huge with child within a few months, marry, and be a perfect match. Once upon a time, the ring didn't just pick out which sidhe were fertile. Oh, no, it was the happy-ever-after ring. That's what we used to call it. Where do you think the humans got all that crap from?"

I raised eyebrows at him. "I hadn't really thought about it. I know for a fact that most fairy tales are just that, stories."

"But the elements of them" —he drew a pale yellow hand out of his blanket far enough to shake a finger at me—"the essentials, they got from us, from true stories." He frowned. "Not all of us are Irish, Scottish, or anything that is part of what they call the British Isles. We hold survivors from nearly every part of Europe."

"I'm aware of that," I said.

"Then act like you know. Surely Prince Essus told you that some fairy tales were passed-on true stories."

"My father told me most were simply made up."

"Most," Sage conceded, "but not all." He waved his finger at me again. "If the chalice has brought back the complete power to that ring" —he pointed at the box — "then if you have your perfect match on this plane, you'll know it, and if you don't, you'll know that, too."

I looked at the little box, and suddenly it seemed more important than it had even a moment ago.