Chapter 27

The upside to Kitto's near-death experience was that I got to go back to bed and sleep. I'd suggested that Doyle join us, but Frost had thrown a fit. So Doyle had just begged out, as long as Frost didn't get to join us either. I'd pointed out that Doyle and I had gotten the least amount of sleep last night, but Frost didn't care. I also pointed out that we were just going to sleep, so did it really matter who slept with me? Neither of them were moved by my arguments.

So, I got to go back to bed and cuddle Kitto. I made him take my usual side of the bed, though, so I could spoon around his body without lying on the shoulder that he'd bitten. I'd taken some Advil, but the shoulder still ached fiercely like it had its own pulse. It hadn't hurt nearly this much the first time he'd marked me. Maybe it was a good sign. I hoped so. I hated to have something hurt this much for no good purpose.

Jeremy had been furious that none of us were coming back to the office, until he found out that Kitto had nearly died.

He was silent for a long time, long enough for me to say his name softly.

"I'm here, Merry, just bad memories. I've seen fey fade away before. Do what you need to do to take care of him. We'll muddle through at the office. They're going to keep Teresa overnight for observation. She's sedated, so I don't know how much they're going to be observing."

"Is she going to be all right?"

He hesitated. "Probably. But I've never seen her like she was today. Her husband yelled at me for endangering her. He doesn't want her doing any more crime scenes. I can't blame him."

"You think Teresa will agree with him?"

"I don't know if it matters, Merry. I've made an executive decision. The Grey Detective Agency no longer does police work. I'm a good magician, but I had no clue what did that today. I could feel the remnants of a spell, but that was all. I told Detective Tate what I'd felt, but Lieutenant Peterson didn't want to hear it. He's determined that it's something mundane. Extraordinary, but mundane." Jeremy sounded tired.

"You sound like you need to go to bed and cuddle up to somebody, too.

"You volunteering?" He laughed. "Greedy ol' Merry wanting to take up all the fey men in L.A."

"If you need to come over and be held, you'd be welcome."

He was quiet for a moment. "I'd almost forgotten that."

"Forgotten what?"

"That it's okay to be held by your friends in ways that humans consider sexual. That it would be all right for me to come and cuddle close to you while we slept."

"If you need it."

"I've been out among the humans too long, Merry. I don't think entirely like a trow anymore. I don't know if I could go to bed with you and not have it turn sexual."

I hadn't known what to say to that.

When I woke, the light against the drapes was fading to dusk. I was still spooned around Kitto's body, and he was still pressed against me as tight as he could get. It was as if neither of us had moved all day. I lay there for a moment feeling how stiff my body was from simply being immobile for so long. The shoulder ached distantly, ignorable. Kitto's breathing was still deep and regular. What had woken me?

Then a soft knocking sounded at the door again. It opened before I could say anything. Galen peered through. He smiled when he saw me awake.

"How's Kitto?"

I moved enough to prop myself up on one elbow and look down at the goblin. He made a small sound and cuddled in against me so that there was again no space between his body and mine.

"He looks better, and he's warm." I combed my ringers through his curls. His head moved to cuddle in against the movement of my hand, but he never woke.

"Is anything wrong?" I asked.

Galen made a face that I couldn't quite read. "Well, not exactly."

I frowned at him. "What is it?"

He came into the room, gently closing the door behind him. We talked in low voices, so as not to disturb Kitto.

Galen came to stand at the end of the bed. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt whose pale green color brought out the green tint in his skin, intensified the darker color of his hair. The pants were just faded blue jeans washed until they were almost white. There was a hole in the middle of his thigh where white threads gave hints of the pale green skin underneath.

I realized he'd said something and I hadn't been paying attention. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

He grinned, flashing white teeth. "Queen Niceven's representative is here. He says he has strict orders to collect the first payment before he tells us the secret of how to cure me."

My gaze went back to the hole in his pants, then traveled up his body until I met those grass green eyes. The heat in his eyes matched the tightening in my body.

Kitto stirred beside me, opened his blue, blue eyes. Talking, doors opening, and my moving hadn't stirred him; but the tightening of my body in response to Galen, that had woken him.

I explained briefly that Niceven's man was here. Kitto had no problem with the demi-fey coming into the room. I'd known he would have no problem. I'd asked for politeness' sake. The queen wouldn't have asked, but I think it was more that she didn't care what someone thought, rather than her knowing they wouldn't mind.

Galen went back to the door and opened it wide. A tiny figure fluttered in. The body was about the size of a small Barbie doll. His wings were larger than the rest of his body, and mostly rich butter yellow with lines and bars of black and spots of blue and orangey-red. He hovered over the bed, above me. His body was a slightly paler version of the rich yellow of his wings. He wore a filmy yellow skirt, or kilt, as his only clothing.

"Greetings to Princess Meredith of the Unseelie from Queen Niceven of the demi-fey. I am known as Sage, most lucky fey to be chosen as our royal majesty's ambassador to the Western Lands." His voice was like the sound of tinkling bells, a laughing sound. It made me smile, and I knew instantly it was glamour.

I tsked at him. "No glamour between us, Sage, for that is a kind of lie."

He pressed tiny perfect hands to his chest, his wings beating faster, sending a breath of air against my face. "Glamour, I? Would a humble demi-fey be able to do glamour to a sidhe of the Unseelie Court?"

He had been careful not to deny the charge; he simply skirted the issue. "You can drop the glamour, or it can be stripped from you. You can put it all back, but for our first meeting I want to see what, or whom, I am truly dealing with."

He flew closer, close enough that the wind from his wings played in the strands of hair around my face. "My lovely maiden, you wound me. I am as fair as you see me here."

"If that is true, then light upon me and let me test the truth of your words. For if you are truly as you appear, then touching my flesh will not change you, but if you play me false, then the mere touch of my skin will show your true self." The very formality of the words was a type of spell. I had spoken truly and believed utterly what I had said; thus it was true. When he touched my skin, he would be forced to appear as he truly was.

I sat up so I could extend a hand. The sheets slipped down, pooling at my waist. Kitto curled himself closer around me, his large eyes staring at the fluttering fey. He watched the tiny figure like a cat fascinated by a bird. I knew that the goblins were not above cannibalizing other fey. The look on Kitto's face said that, perhaps, demi-fey were a delicacy.

"Are you all right, Kitto?"

He blinked and looked up at me. His gaze slid from the fluttering fey, across my bare breasts, and the look of hunger changed but a very little. That one look frightened me. Something must have shown on my face because Kitto hid his own face against my bare hip, snuggling under the sheet.

"The taste of flesh has made our little goblin bold." Doyle was in the doorway.

The little fey turned in midair to give a small bow. "The Queen's Darkness, I am honored."

Doyle gave the barest of bows, a mere nod to courtesy. "Sage, I must say that I am surprised to see you here."

The tiny flying man rose upward so that he could come close to seeing Doyle eye to eye; but he stayed out of reach, like the shy insect he resembled.

"Why surprised, Darkness?" His voice didn't sound so much like joyous bells now.

"I did not know that Niceven could spare her favorite lover."

"No more that, Darkness, and well you know."

"I know that Niceven had child and husband by another, but I didn't think the demi-fey cared so very much for the niceties."

Sage flew a little higher, a touch closer. "You think because we are not sidhe that we do not know the law." The anger could have sounded impotent coming from that tiny chimelike voice, but it didn't. It was the sound of chimes when storm winds strike them, a frightening music.

"So," Doyle said, "no longer queen's lover. Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Sage?" I had never heard Doyle so chiding before. He was deliberately baiting Sage. I'd never seen Doyle do much of anything that didn't have a purpose to it, so I let it go. But it all had a personal feel to it. What could this minute man have done to the Queen's Darkness, to earn such personal attention?

"I have had the whole of our kingdom's women to please me, Darkness." He flew almost into Doyle's face. "And you, one of the queen's eunuchs, what have you been doing with yourself?"

"Look at what lies in the bed, Sage. Tell me that that is not such a bounty as man or fey would sell their soul for."

The fluttering man didn't even bother to turn around. "I did not know that you liked goblins, Doyle. I thought that was Rhys's peculiarity."

"You can be deliberately obtuse, Sage, but well you know the meaning of my words."

"Rumors are swift things, Darkness. They say that you guard the princess but do not share her bed. There has been much speculation as to why you would pass by such a bounty, when the others have partaken of it." The little man flew close enough that his wings almost brushed Doyle's face. "Rumor whispers that perhaps there was more than one reason Queen Andais never took you to her bed. Rumor would have you eunuch in truth and not merely in lack of use."

I couldn't see Doyle's face through the rapidly beating wings of the demi-fey. I realized that though his wings looked like butterfly wings, they beat much faster, and the physical motions weren't identical to the insect he mimicked.

"I give you my most solemn oath," Doyle said, "that I have taken the pleasure of Princess Meredith in the way that a man may take pleasure with a woman."

Sage hovered for a wing beat, then his entire body dipped as if he'd almost forgotten to fly for a second. He regained himself, fluttering up to meet Doyle's eyes again. "So, you are no longer the queen's eunuch, but now the princess's lover." The voice sounded low and evil, a tinny hiss. Whatever was happening was definitely personal.

"As you say, Sage, rumor runs rife, and rumor whispers that Niceven took a page from Andais's book. You were her favorite lover before her one-night tryst with Pol got her with child. When she was forbidden from your bed, you were forbidden from anyone else's. If she could not have her favorite, then no one would."

Sage hissed at him like an angry bee. "Much pleasure must you take in our two places being switched, Darkness."

"Whatever do you mean, Sage?" But Doyle's voice was low and held a note that said he knew exactly what the demi-fey meant.

"I taunted you and yours for centuries. The great sidhe warriors, the great ravens of old, reduced to court eunuchs, oh, yes, I taunted you all. I boasted of my prowess and my queen's delights, like an evil whisper in your ears."

Doyle just looked at him.

Sage flew a little distance from him, doing a circle in the air like one might pace on the ground. "Now what good does my prowess do me? What good is it to see her in all her beauty but be unable to touch her?" He turned back to Doyle. "Oh, I have thought long these many years, Darkness, on how I didst torment you. Do not think the irony of it is lost upon me, simply because I am not sidhe." He got very close to Doyle's face, and though I knew it was a whisper, the hiss of it filled the room. "Irony enough to choke upon, Darkness, irony enough to die of, irony enough to kill to rid myself of it."

"Then fade, Sage, fade and be done with it."

The little fey winged backwards. "Fade yourself, Darkness. Fade and be done with you. I am here at Queen Niceven's command to act as her surrogate. If you wish cure for the green knight, then you must deal with me." His voice was thick with menace.

Galen came to the still-open door from the living room. "I wish to be cured, but not at any price." His usual smile was gone, his face somber.

"Enough of this," I said, voice soft, not angry.

They all turned to me. I glimpsed the rest of the men, including Nicca, crowding just outside the doorway. "I bargained with Niceven, not Doyle. And I alone bargained for Galen's cure. The price for that cure was my blood."

Sage fluttered over the bed, not quite over Kitto and me. "One drink of your blue blood, one cure for your green knight, as my queen has bid me." His voice wasn't the ring of bells anymore. It was almost normal, small, thin, but a man's voice.

His dark eyes had become flat and black like the eyes of a doll. There was nothing particularly friendly on that pretty toy-size face.

I held up a hand, and he alit upon it. He was heavier than he looked, more solid. I remembered Niceven being lighter, more bone than muscle. She felt as cadaverous as she looked. Sage was... meatier, or rather his slender body held more substance than Niceven's seemed to.

His wings went still, showing them as huge perfect butterfly wings. They fanned softly as he stared at me. I wondered if the wings beat in time to his heart.

His butter yellow hair was shaggy, thick, straight, falling in careless strands around his triangular face. The hair brushed his shoulders in places. There was a time when Andais would have punished him for letting his hair grow so long. Only the sidhe men were allowed to have hair long as a woman's. It was a mark of status, royalty, privilege.

His hands were no bigger than the fingernail on my smallest finger. He put one of those hands on his slender waist, the other hanging by his side, one foot in front of the other, a defiant pose.

"If we are given privacy, then I will take payment and give you the cure for your knight." He sounded petulant.

It made me smile, and the smile made his face fill with hatred. "I am not a child to be looked upon with indulgence, Princess. I am a man." He made a sweeping gesture with both hands. "A small one by your reckoning, but I am still male. I do not appreciate being looked upon as you would smile upon a naughty child."

It was almost exactly what I'd been thinking, that he looked cute standing there so defiant, so tiny. I had been treating him like a doll, or a toy, or a child.

"I apologize, Sage, you are correct. You are fey and you are male, size notwithstanding."

He frowned at me. "You are royal and you apologize to me?"

"I was taught that true royalty lies in knowing when one is wrong or right, and admitting the difference; not in false perfection."

He turned his head to one side, an almost birdlike movement. "I have heard from others that you deal fairly with all, like your father before you." His thin voice sounded thoughtful.

"It is good to hear my father spoken of still."

"We all remember Prince Essus."

"I am always happy to share my father's good memory with others."

Sage watched me closely, though it wasn't the same as being watched by a larger person. His idea of eye contact seemed just that. His whole face seemed to stare at only my right eye, though he'd apparently seen my smile and judged it correctly, which meant he could see all my face. I simply was not accustomed to dealing with the demi-fey. My father had always been respectful of them, but I had not been taken to Niceven's court as I had been to Kurag's and others.

"Prince Essus had our respect, Princess, but time moves on and so must we." He sounded almost sad. He looked at me, face growing arrogant again, and I fought not to smile at this tiny figure looking so full of himself. It wasn't funny or cute; he was just as much a person as anyone else in the room. But it was hard to truly believe that.

"Let us have privacy to fulfill my queen's desires, then you will have your cure for the green knight."

I looked at Doyle and Galen inside the room, the others just outside. Frost was already shaking his head. "My guards do not allow me to be alone with any member of the courts."

"Do you think I should be flattered that they see me as a potential threat?" He turned on my hand and pointed a finger at Doyle. "Darkness knows me of old and knows what I am capable of, or thinks he does." Sage turned back to face me, his bare feet sliding strangely against my skin. "But I would still have privacy for this."

"No," Doyle said.

Sage turned back to him, fluttering inches from my hand. "You should understand this, Darkness. Doing my queen's bidding is all that is left me. Doing exactly what she says is all that I have. What I will do tonight in this room will be the closest I have come to knowing feminine delights in a very long time. I do not think privacy is too much to ask for that."

The guards weren't happy about it, but they finally agreed. Only Kitto stayed wound around my body, tangled in the sheets.

"That one, too," Sage said, pointing at the goblin.

"He faded today, Sage," I said.

"He looks well enough."

"His king, Kurag, has informed me that my body, my blood, my flesh, my magic is what sustains Kitto out here among the humans. He needs to stay in contact with my skin for a time longer."

"You would kick him out of your bed for one of your sidhe warriors."

"No." Kitto spoke softly. "I have been privileged to stay while they mate. I have seen their light cast shadows on the walls, so bright they glowed."

Sage fluttered down to hover over Kitto's upturned face. "Goblin, your kind eats mine in times of war."

"The strong eat the weak. It is the way of the world," Kitto said.

"The goblin world," Sage said.

"It is all I know."

"You are far from that world now."

Kitto cuddled under the sheet so that only his eyes showed. "Merry is my world now."

"Do you like this new world, goblin?"

"I am warm, safe, and she bears my mark on her body. It is a good world."

Sage hovered for a few moments more, then flew back up to my waiting hand. "If the goblin gives his word of most solemn honor that nothing he sees, hears, feels, or senses in any way will he repeat to anyone, then he may stay."

Kitto repeated the promise word for word.

"Very well," Sage said. He gazed down my body; and though he was no taller than my forearm, I shivered and had the most uncomfortable desire to cover myself. A tiny red tongue like a drop of blood licked across his pale lips. "First the bloodletting, then the cure." The way he said cure made me half wish I hadn't agreed to all the guards leaving me alone. He was smaller than a Barbie doll, but in that instant, I was afraid of him.

Chapter 28

He fluttered down off my hand toward my breasts. I put my other arm between him and my body. He ended up on my other wrist, which I moved out from my body in order to see him more easily. I raised the sheet over my chest with my other hand.

He looked disgusted. "Will you deny me heart blood?"

"I saw what your kind did to my knight. I would be foolish to let you near such tender flesh before I see exactly how gently you feed."

He sat down on my wrist, ankles crossed, hands on either side to steady him. He seemed to weigh more sitting down; not much more, but it was noticeable.

"I would be ever so gentle, fair lady." His voice was the sound of chimes in a warm summer breeze. Had his lips been like a tiny crimson flower but a moment ago? He touched that flower-soft mouth to my hand, his body reclined along my arm as I would have reclined upon a couch. He ran his tiny mouth and hands over the minute hairs on my arm. Where a larger lover would have smoothed them with his mouth or fingertips, Sage played with them as if he was making music along my skin -- soundless music that only he could hear, but I could feel it. It played along my skin, my arm, as if it were all larger, more than was actually happening.

I flung him sharply into the air, where he buzzed at me like an angry bee. "Why did you do that? We were having so much fun."

"No glamour, remember," I said, scowling up at him, clutching my sheet.

"Without glamour the feeding will not be nearly so pleasant for you." He shrugged his thin shoulders, the movement making him dip in midair. "For me it is much the same, for Niceven's purposes it is much the same, but for you, fair princess, it is not the same. Let me save you some pain and discomfort, and let this be a friendly sharing."

If he'd caught me on another day when Kitto's bite didn't still ache, I might have told him no, just to take his queen's blood and be done with it. Goblins could not do glamour of any kind, so Kitto had had no choice; without the natural glamour of sex to soften his feeding, there was nothing he could do magically. Sage was offering me a choice.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then nodded. "Just enough glamour to make it pleasant, but that's all, Sage. If you try for more than that, I'll call for the guards and you won't like what they'll do to you."

He made a sound that would have been rude, except that it came out like a tiny trumpet, as if a butterfly could make an ass's bray. "Darkness has been waiting centuries for me to put a foot out of line, Princess. I know well, perhaps better than you, what he owes me."

"I noticed it seemed personal between you, more than with the others."

"Personal? You could say that." He smiled, and it managed to be pleasant and evil at the same time, as if he was imagining terrible things that would be a great deal of fun to do.

I could have asked Sage what was so personal, but I didn't. Either Doyle would explain or I would never know. I didn't think Doyle would take kindly to me prying his secrets from a fey he hated. It was one thing to gain information from one friend about another friend, but you didn't talk to people's enemies about your friends, and you didn't let those enemies talk to you behind your friends' backs. It just wasn't kosher.

"You may feed, Sage, and you may use a little glamour to keep it from being so unpleasant. But mind your manners."

"Do you need to look so far for protection? You have your goblin there beside you. Will he not reach up and snatch me from the air and grind my bones if I play you false?"

"Goblins have little chance against strong glamour, and well you know it."

He put his hands on his chest, widened his eyes. "But I am but a demi-fey. I cannot have the glamour of a sidhe lord. Why should any goblin fear the likes of me?"

"The demi-fey of every description have powerful glamour and well you know that. They have led travelers and the unwary astray for centuries."

"A little swamp water never hurt anyone," Sage said, hovering closer toward me.

"Unless there happens to be quicksand or sucking mud under that water. You are Unseelie fey, which means if the traveler falls through the murk to his death, so much more the fun."

He crossed his arms, which were thinner than a pencil was round, over his chest. "And what happens when a Seelie will-o'-the-wisp guides travelers into marshy land, and they fall to quicksand? Do not tell me that they then run for help and grab a rope. They may weep pretty tears for a poor mortal, but as soon as his last breath bubbles up from the swamp, they're away, giggling to themselves, looking for another traveler to lead astray. They may avoid that particular patch of swamp, but they won't stop their game simply because it led to some unfortunate's death."

He landed on my sheet-covered knee. "And is it so unfair to lead some net-waving butterfly collector to his death, when if he caught me, he would throw me in a killing jar and mount me with a pin through my heart?"

"You have glamour enough to keep away from that fate," I said.

"Yes, but my gentler brethren, the butterflies and insects that we demi-fey mimic, what of them? One fool with a net can devastate a summer meadow."

Put that way, he had a point, or seemed to. "Are you using glamour now?"

"A sidhe princess should know when she's being tricksied about with," he said, arms still crossed.

I sighed. "Fine, it's not glamour, but I can't agree that you're within your rights to lead an entomologist to his death just because he's collecting butterflies."

"Ah," Sage said, gazing up at me, "but you do agree a little at least, or you wouldn't have asked about the glamour."

I sighed again. I had made the terrible mistake of taking entomology in college. I hadn't understood that you had to kill insects to pass the course. I remembered a carousel of butterflies trapped in a killing jar. It was one of the most lovely things I'd ever seen. Alive they were magical; dead they were like tissue paper and sticks. I'd finally asked how many insects I had to collect for a D, and I'd collected that many and no more. There had been no point to collecting the insects when the college had a complete collection of almost everything the class was killing. It was the last biology class I took where you had to collect anything.

I stared at the little butterfly-winged man on my knee and couldn't find an argument that didn't make me feel like a hypocrite. I wouldn't kill someone for collecting butterflies, but if I had butterfly wings on my back and spent most of my life out among them fluttering from flower to flower, maybe I'd see the death of one butterfly on a different scale. Maybe, if you were the size of a Barbie doll, killing the small creatures was every bit as horrible as killing people. Maybe. Maybe not. But I didn't feel sure enough of my ground to argue.