Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (42 page)

The floor was wet, and I knew it was blood. But I didn't remember being this close to all the blood. It was almost as if Kitto read my mind, because he leaned in close and said, "I dragged you into the sidhe blood. The hand of blood can feed on blood." He had to lean in close because there was so much shouting. Men's voices raised. I could only catch fragments from the noise, "Mortal Dread is here . . . She will kill us all . . . madness . . ."

Kitto leaned in close. "Merry, can you hear me?"

I managed the barest of whispers, "Yes." I didn't understand what the fight was about, but I thought I understood what Kitto had meant about the blood. He'd dragged me into the blood to try to heal me. Maybe it had helped, but something was very wrong inside me. It hurt to breathe; it was obscene when I tried to move. The God had given me back my life, but I wasn't healed. Even as I thought it, though, I felt the kiss upon my lips. It tingled as if He'd only that second drawn away. I smelled fresh apples, and when I licked my lips, I could still taste honey.

Galen pulled himself into view, using his hands and arms to drag himself forward so he could look down into my face. He smiled, though his eyes held a shadow of the pain he was feeling. I remembered him writhing beside me, because he'd taken the first rush of Andais's spell. I think she'd broken most of my ribs, and probably done the same to him. I tried to raise a hand to touch him, and found I did have breath enough to scream. My scream cut through the fighting better than any sword. When the echoes of my scream died, a silence as thick and heavy as any I'd ever heard filled the room. Kitto tried to push Galen away, but I fought the pain and reached out enough for Galen to put his hand in mine, and that one touch flowed through me like a soothing balm. Helped me settle back against the floor. Helped me relearn how to breathe, carefully around the pain.

My lips tingled, and it was as if I'd just bitten into an apple. The crisp, mellow sweetness was melting on my tongue. Apples dipped in honey; the taste of it filled my mouth. There was an echo in my head of that voice:
Share it with them.

"Kiss me," I said.

A look of such pain came into Galen's face. He thought this was a goodbye kiss. I was hoping it wasn't.

He made small sounds as he wormed his way closer to me. I knew that the broken bones were stabbing into him every time he moved, but he never hesitated. He crawled those last few inches to put his face above mine. He laid his lips against mine, so gently, but as my breath eased out into his mouth it wasn't apples and honey I tasted. Galen tasted like the scent of aromatic herbs. I could taste dew, and feel the soft edge of a basil leaf. He tasted of basil, rich and thick and warm. Basil still growing in the earth, leaves flung wide to the sun, and dew upon the leaves.

He drew back just enough to whisper, "You taste like apples."

I smiled up at him. "You taste like fresh herbs."

He laughed, and I saw his face tighten, as if it hurt, then he said, "That didn't hurt." He'd tightened in anticipation of the hurt. He took a deep breath, making his chest rise and fall. "It doesn't hurt." His smile was everything I needed it to be when he said, "I'm healed." He managed to make it both a statement, and nearly a question.

Frost dropped to his knees beside us, one of his hands tucked in tight against his stomach. I thought at first it was his arm that was injured, then I saw something red and bulging pushing around the edge of his hand. Andais had gutted him.

I managed to whisper his name, "Frost."

Galen moved away so that he could be closer to me. Frost touched my mouth with his fingertips. "Save your strength."

I could taste apples again, as if I'd just bitten into one, and dipped it into something thick and sweet and golden. I didn't need a voice this time to know what to do.

Frost moved his fingers back from my mouth, reluctantly, as if he didn't want to stop touching me. I whispered, "Kiss me."

A silver tear spilled from one eye, but he bent over me. The movement was slow and painful, and brought a sound low in his throat. He finally laid himself beside me, one hand still holding in what the queen's knife had spilled, but the other hand touched my hair. The look on his face was so raw, if I'd ever doubted he loved me, the doubt was gone; in that one look, I knew.

He kissed me, delicate as a snowflake, melting on my tongue. It was as if winter had a taste. Not just the crispness of the air with snow on the ground, but as if my tongue licked along some smooth, cold icicle, and snow filled my mouth, and melted down my throat like the sweetest of snow cones. He melted down my throat, and when his mouth moved back from mine, our breaths fogged in the air between us. I realized I could breathe and the sharpest of the pain was gone.

Frost sat up and drew his hand away from his stomach. That frightening red bulge was gone. He smoothed his hand down his stomach and gave me wide surprised eyes.

Doyle was there, kneeling by him. He spread the cloth wide, touching that smooth white flesh. Only when he turned to look full at me did I see the ruin Andais had made of one side of his face. The cheek down to his beautiful lips flapped loose. It was a wound that even a sidhe would need stitches for. Without some guidance, the cheek would heal as it wished, not as you might wish it.

I reached out for him, to share the power of the God, but he moved away, and motioned to someone behind him. I tried to raise up from the ground, to touch him, and the pain lanced through me, forced me onto my back, drove the breath from my body again. I was better, but unlike Frost and Galen, I was not healed.

Two of the guards brought Rhys forward. He sagged between them, and the sight of his face made me cry out. Not in horror, but in pain. Andais hadn't cut out the eye, as the goblins had so long ago, but she had burst it. I could see nothing of that beautiful blue, lost in the blood and the fluid that had rushed down his face. The skin around the eye socket was ringed on both sides with deep, jagged wounds that showed the bone of both skull and cheek. It looked as if she'd tried to cut away the skin from around his eye. Rhys's scar was just a part of him, and I loved every inch of him, but this . . . This was a ruin of him. He was well and truly blind. The queen had made sure he would not heal this, not with his own body's abilities. Not with any magic we had left to us.

I looked up into his face, and felt rage such as I had seldom known. Rage at the waste of it. So useless, so pointless. I didn't ask why, because there was no answer. The why was simply because, which was no answer at all.

I understood now why Doyle had drawn away and motioned for Rhys to come forward. I'd never before been able to heal with my kiss. If the ability did not last, Rhys needed it more. Doyle would scar, but he would still be Doyle. Rhys's injury was the sort to unmake a man, or remake him into someone else.

Andais's untouched guards were on either side of him, and I had a moment of anger that they had done nothing to stop this.

They helped Rhys kneel, but when he felt my hand, he recoiled. "Don't touch me, Merry, don't look."

It was Kitto, still kneeling in the cooling blood, who said, "She has returned from the Summerlands with the kiss of birds inside her."

Rhys moved that blind face, as if he'd look at Kitto. "I do not believe you."

I actually did not know the term
kiss of birds,
but I'd ask questions later. "Come to me, Rhys, and let me prove it."

Doyle pushed the others back, and it was he and Frost who guided Rhys to me. His face was covered in blood, but I did not shrink from it or try to brush it away. It was just another part of Rhys. His lips were salty with it. His lips touched mine, but he did not kiss me. I had to put my hand at the back of his neck, and the movement made me gasp.

He drew back, or tried to; only Doyle and Frost's hands kept him from moving away. "She is injured, too," Frost said, "raising her hand to the back of your head caused her pain. It was not a gasp at your appearance." And Frost had said exactly what needed saying. Because Rhys stopped trying to pull back.

"How badly is she hurt?"

"Kiss me, Rhys, and I'll feel better."

This time he came to me, and didn't make me move more than necessary. This time when our lips met, he kissed me back, and it seemed to need both of us to be willing. For that one shared kiss was as if home had a single taste, as if the smell of fresh bread, clean laundry, wood smoke, laughter, and something warm and thick bubbled on that fire. Rhys didn't taste like any particular food, but his lips held the essence of all that was good and made you feel content, sated, happy.

I raised my hands up to hold him, without thinking, but the pain it caused rode away and vanished on the sensation of him. He drew back at last, and I clung to him, for I wanted more of that taste. I opened my eyes.

Rhys blinked down at me. That circle of robin egg blue, winter sky, cornflower blue, looked down at me. I was lost between laughter and tears, staring up at him in silent wonder.

"Goddess be praised." He whispered it so low, I don't think anyone else heard.

"Consort be praised," I said, in a whisper back to only him.

He smiled then, and something inside me loosened at the sight of it; a tightness I hadn't known was there went away. If Rhys could smile like that, everything would be all right.

Rhys moved away, and I took Doyle's wrist. I intended him to be next, for I did not know how long this blessing would last. He shook his head. I opened my mouth to insist, but Mistral appeared, carrying Onilwyn in his arms. I knew that Mistral and Onilwyn were not friends, but in this moment the guards seemed united in a way that was beyond friendship, or whom you like and whom you hate. Onilwyn's head lay backward at an odd angle, the muscles holding it in place severed. His spine was a glistening whiteness in the fearsome wound that had once been his neck. The front of his clothing was blue-violet with his own blood. His pale skin the color of wheat, green and fresh from the earth, had been bleached to a sickly greenish white. Only the wide staring of his green-and-gold eyes let me know he was indeed still alive. She'd slit his throat so completely that his breath whished and hissed, and gurgled wetly through the top of his severed windpipe. If he'd been human his throat would have collapsed under the damage, but he wasn't human, so he still breathed, still lived, but whether he could heal from such a terrible wound depended on how much personal magic he still had left. There was a time when the gods themselves blessed all of us, made of us saints able to withstand a decapitation, but that had been centuries ago. Not all of us could heal such damage now.

There was the very real possibility that Onilwyn would linger for days, but in the end, he would die. He was not a man whom I would have wasted such blessing from the God upon, but I also didn't have it in me to turn away from him. He was still one of my people. He had risked all to help save the others.

I met Doyle's gaze, and I let go of his wrist, slowly, reluctantly, but he was right. He could live and heal his wounds. Onilwyn could not.

Mistral knelt carefully, on the blood-slick floor, and started to lay Onilwyn down beside me. But too much blood had gone down his windpipe and he was choking, and trying to clear it, using nothing but the muscles of his stomach and chest. He made a horrible wet rattling sound, then blood spat out of the end of his neck, and he took the faintest of breaths, as if afraid that more blood would flow back down.

Goddess help us.

"I don't think he'll do well on his back," Mistral said, and his voice tried for neutrality, but failed. He was angry, and I couldn't blame him.

"No." I tried to sit up, but the pain took my breath and laid me back on the bloody floor. I waited until the pain had subsided, then said, "Kitto, help me lean up."

He looked to Doyle before he did it, and when Doyle nodded, Kitto moved in behind me, but Galen was already there. "Let me, Kitto, she healed me, let me help her."

Kitto nodded and moved back.

Galen lifted me, gently, into his lap, so that my head and shoulders were cradled against his body. It didn't hurt, too badly. "A little more," I said.

He did what I asked without looking at Doyle first. I was almost sitting up, fully supported by his body, before the pain came, like a knife, but it was a duller blade than last time. I could bear it. "There, just there." Galen went very still behind me.

"Wait." It was a woman's voice, so it must have been the queen, but it did not sound like her. "Wait," the voice said again, and the one word was pain-filled.

After what she had done to them, to all of us, a body would think none of us would have listened to her, but we did. We should have cursed her, but we didn't. We froze, waiting for her to make a slow progress across the room.

Mistral had moved back, just enough to let me see across the room. The floor was marked by a wide red path as if a heavily bleeding body had been dragged across it. That bloody path ended at the queen. She sat, propped against the wall. She had pulled Eamon into her lap, and I had never been so aware of what a large man he was, or perhaps she seemed smaller. His broad shoulders seemed to overwhelm her. She was a tall woman, and she always filled more space than just the physical, but now she sat with Eamon in her arms, and one arm wrapped around Tyler's naked, blood-soaked leg, and she seemed small.

But she had healed. Her neck wound had been almost as severe as Onilwyn's, but where he was still a broken thing, she had only a hand-size gash in her white throat. The wound seemed to be growing smaller, even as we watched. Not visibly, not like we could actually see the wound closing, but like trying to watch flowers bloom. You knew it was happening, but you just couldn't catch it actually happening before your eyes. She was our queen and that meant that the power of the sidhe ran stronger through her than through any of us.

I looked back at Onilwyn, who lay in Mistral's arms like some huge broken doll, then back to our queen with her nearly healed throat. Anger warmed me. If what Adair had said at the beginning of all this was accurate, then she had been abusing the guards for centuries. How could she treat such a gift so badly?