A Lick of Frost

I WAS BLIND FROM THE LIGHTS. MY HEAD FELT LIKE IT WAS going to explode from the assault of it all. I wanted to scream at them to stop, but was afraid that would only make it all hurt worse.

I closed my eyes and tried to shield them with one hand. There was shadow against the light, and a woman's voice. "Princess Meredith, I'm Doctor Hardy. We're here to help you."

A man's voice. "Princess Meredith, we're going to put you in a neck brace. It's just a precaution."

There was a wheeled stretcher beside us suddenly, as if it had just sprung into being. The medical team started to swarm me. Dr. Hardy was shining a light in my eyes, trying to get me to follow it. I could follow it, but the other hands that I couldn't see lifting me, starting to do things to me, panicked me.

I started to slap at them, to make small helpless sounds. I don't know what it was about what they were doing, but it was too much. I couldn't see who was touching me. I couldn't see what they were doing. I didn't understand what was happening. I could not bear it.

"Princess, Princess Meredith, can you hear me?" Dr. Hardy asked.

"Yes," I said in a voice that didn't sound like me at all.

"We need to get you to a hospital," Dr. Hardy said. "To transport you there are things we need to do. Can you let us do those things?"

I wasn't so much crying as tears just seemed to be sliding down my face. "I need to know what you're doing. I need to see who's touching me."

She looked behind me at the barrage of media, The police had moved in to form a wall against them, but they would hear most of what we said. The doctor leaned very close to me. "Princess, were you raped?"

"Yes."

Major Walters bent close too, "I am sorry, Princess, but I have to ask. Who did it?"

A sidhe guard by the door said, "The Unseelie did it, as they raped Lady Caitrin."

"Shut up!" Major Walters said. Then he turned back to me. "Is that true?"

"No," I said.

"Then who?"

"Taranis knocked me unconscious and I woke naked in his bed with him beside me."

"Liar!" the guard behind us said.

Shanley, who was in charge of these men, said, "She took oath on it."

"So did our king."

"I cannot help that," he said.

"Taranis hurt me. He and no other. I swear it by the darkness that eats all things."

"You are mad to make such an oath," a voice I didn't know said.

"Only if she lies." I think that was Sir Hugh. But there was so much noise, so many voices. The press had begun to yell at us. They shouted their questions, their theories. We all ignored them.

Dr. Hardy began to speak quietly to me, to explain what was happening to me. She began to introduce me to her team. She would explain, and only then would they touch me. It began to help me lose that edge of hysteria.

Only when a voice sounded on the microphone that I still had not seen did I make them stop. The voice said, "We have told you what happened to the princess. The Unseelie guard who were supposed to protect her beat and raped her. Our king saved his niece from them and brought her to sanctuary here."

It was too much. No matter how I felt, I could not let them ship me to a hospital and leave that lie in the ears of the media.

"I need a microphone, please. I need to tell the truth," I said.

Dr. Hardy didn't like it, but Hugh and others backed me up, and they rolled me to the front of the room. They insisted that I keep the choking closeness of the neck brace on. I was already hooked up to an I.V. Apparently my blood pressure was low and my body was a little shocky.

The doctor stepped up to the microphone.

"I am Dr. Vanessa Hardy. The princess needs to get to a hospital, but she insists on talking to you. She is injured, and we need to get her to a hospital. This will be quick. I hope that is clear?"

Several of them said, "It is clear."

The press secretary was all pink and gold and sidhe beauty. She didn't want to give up the mic. She'd heard enough from the doorway to worry her.

It was Agent Gillett who took it from her, and held it for me. You could feel the eagerness of the press like a sort of magic of their own.

A voice called, "Who hit you?"

"Taranis," I said.

There was a collective sigh of eagerness and an explosion of flashes. I closed my eyes against it.

"Did the Unseelie rape you?"

"No."

"Were you raped, Princess?"

"Taranis knocked me unconscious and kidnapped me, and I woke nude in his bed. He says we had sex. I will be taking a rape kit at the hospital. If it comes back positive for an unknown, then yes, my uncle raped me."

The police were holding the press secretary and some of the sidhe back by force. Some of the nobles and the dogs were helping them mind the crowd. I heard growls around me. The loudest was next to me. The great black head touched my hand. I raised fingers to stroke Doyle's fur. That one small touch was more comfort than anything else had been.

Dr. Hardy yelled above the chaos, "The princess has a concussion. I need to get her to X-ray or a cat scan to see how serious it is. So we're leaving now."

I said "No."

"Princess, you said you'd go quietly if you told the truth."

"No, it's not that. I can't have an X-ray. I'm pregnant." Agent Gillett was still holding the microphone close enough that the room had heard that. If we thought there had been chaos before, we'd been wrong.

The press were yelling, "Who's the father? Did your uncle make you pregnant?"

Dr. Hardy leaned close and whispered/shouted above the cacophony, "How far along are you?"

"Four to five weeks," I said.

"We will treat you and your baby like gold," she said.

I would have nodded, but the neck brace kept me from doing so. I finally said "Yes."

She looked up at someone I couldn't see and said, "We need to get her to a hospital now."

We began to push our way toward the door. There were two main reasons we were having problems moving. One was the press.

They all wanted one last image, one last question answered. The second was the Seelie guards and nobles who opposed Hugh. They wanted me to stay with them. They wanted me to recant.

Inhumanly beautiful faces kept hovering over me, saying things like, "How can you lie about our king? How can you accuse your own uncle of such a crime? Liar. Lying bitch," was the last one before the police got very serious above keeping the golden throng away from my face.

They tried to chase away the black dog, but I said, "No, he's mine."

No one questioned it. Dr. Hardy only said, "He doesn't go in the ambulance."

I didn't argue. Just Doyle beside me, in any form, was an improvement. Every brush of his fur against my hand was better.

There were so many people around the stretcher, so much light that the only way I knew we were finally outside was the brush of night air against my face. It had been night when Taranis took me. Was it the same night, or the next night? How long had he had me?

I tried to ask what day it was, but no one heard me. The press had followed us outside the sithen. They trailed us with shouted questions and mobile lights.

The wheels of the gurney didn't like the grass. The bumps made my head ache more. I fought not to make small sounds of pain, and was able to do it until the medics closed around us so that I could no longer touch Doyle's fur. The moment I lost contact with him the pain was worse.

I spoke his name before I could stop myself. "Doyle," I said softly, a plea.

The huge black head shoved its way under the doctor's arm. It made her stumble. She tried to shove him away, saying, "Shoo."

"I need him, please."

She frowned at me, but she dropped back a step so the dog could be closer to me. Close enough that my hand could caress his fur on most of the bumpy ride. I'd never realized how uneven the grass around the mounds was until smoothness was what I needed. It had always seemed like such level ground until this moment.

One of the cameras peered over the shoulders of the medics. The light blinded me. The pain spiked hard and sharp, and nausea came with it.

"I'm going to be sick."

They had to stop the gurney, and help me lean over the side of it. Between the tubes and board and neck brace, I couldn't have moved myself. I'd never rolled onto my side with this many hands helping me.

Dr. Hardy yelled while I threw up, "She has a concussion! Bright lights aren't good for her."

Being sick made the inside of my head explode, or that's what it felt like. My vision swam in ruins. A hand touched my forehead, A hand that was cool and solid and felt... like I should know it.

My vision cleared to find a man with a blond beard and mustache peering into my face. It was his hand on my forehead. A baseball cap was pulled low on his face. There was something about the blue eyes that looked vaguely familiar. Then while I still looked at this stranger's face, the eyes changed. One eye held three rings of blue: cornflower blue around the pupil, sky blue, then a circle of winter sky.

I whispered, "Rhys."

He smiled through the fake beard. He'd used glamour to hide his eyes and other things, but the beard was simply a good fake. He had always been the best of the men at undercover work when we were with the detective agency.

I was crying and not wanting to, because I was afraid it would hurt.

A voice came from behind him. "Remember our deal."

Rhys answered without turning around. "You'll get your exclusive televised interview as soon as she's well enough. I gave my word."

I must have looked confused because he said, "They let us come in as part of their crew for a promised interview, or two."

I reached for him with my free hand. He took it, and kissed my palm. The camera that had made me sick was back to recording, just at a slightly better distance.

"Is he one of your guys?" Dr. Hardy asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Great, but we need to keep moving."

"Sorry," Rhys said, and he put a hand on my shoulder as they moved me back to my back. My other hand searched again for the touch of fur and found it for a moment, then a hand found mine. I couldn't turn to see, and he seemed to understand, because Galen's face hovered over mine. He had a hat on, too, and he'd used glamour to make his green hair look brown and his skin look human. He let the glamour go while I watched, and it was smoother even than Rhys's. One moment a nice-looking human guy, the next Galen. Magic.

"Hey," he said, and his eyes filled with tears almost immediately.

"Hey," I said back. I had a thought for what might have happened if they'd been recognized earlier inside the mound, but it was a small thought. In that moment I was too happy to see them to worry about it. Or maybe I was just that sick?

Dr. Hardy said, "Any more Romeos going to come out of the woodwork?"

"I don't know," I said, which was the absolute truth.

"One more was inside with us," Galen said.

I couldn't think who else had glamour good enough to risk going inside before cameras and the Seelie. Some people's glamour actually didn't hold on camera, and the Seelie Court was ruled by the master of illusion. He was a bastard, but he would have seen through their disguises. My chest hurt with the thought of what might have happened. I clutched Galen's hand tighter, and wished I could move my head to look at Rhys.

Instead I was trapped staring at the night sky. It was a good sky, black and full of stars. It was the end of January, almost February.

Shouldn't I be cold? The thought was enough to let me know that I wasn't nearly as aware of everything as I thought I was. Hadn't someone said I was going into shock? Or had I dreamed that?

We were at the ambulance. It was as if it had suddenly appeared to me. It wasn't magic, it was injury. I was losing little bits of time. That couldn't be good.

It was at the door of the ambulance that I found out who had had enough glamour to brave the press and the Seelie sidhe.

He had short blond hair, brown eyes, and a nondescript face, until he bent over me. He gave the illusion that the short hair grew into a long braid that I knew would sweep the ground. The brown eyes were three different colors of gold. The nondescript face was suddenly one of the most handsome in all the courts. Sholto, King of the Sluagh, kissed me ever so gently.

"The Darkness told me of his vision from the god. I am to be a father." He looked so pleased, all that arrogance softened.

"Yes." I said it softly. He was so pleased, so quietly happy. He had risked all to come and rescue me, even though I hadn't needed the rescue. But I barely knew Sholto. I had been with him once. It was not that he was not lovely, but I would have traded much for it to be Frost leaning over me, speaking of our child.

"I don't know who you are, exactly, but the princess needs a hospital," Dr. Hardy said.

"I am a fool. Forgive me." Sholto touched my hair with such tenderness. Tenderness that we had not earned as a couple. I knew he meant it, but somehow it seemed wrong.

Then they lifted me and slid me inside the ambulance. The doctor stayed with me, and a male nurse. The rest went to a second ambulance or the driver's area of this one.

Galen called, "We'll follow you to the hospital."

I raised a hand, because I could not rise to see them off. The black dog looked down at me. He had jumped inside. The look in those black eyes was so not dog.

Dr. Hardy said, "No, absolutely not. Out dog, now."

The air was cool as if mist touched me, then it was Doyle in human form kneeling beside me. The nurse said, "What the hell."

"I've seen your picture. You're Doyle," Dr. Hardy said.

"Yes," he said in his deep voice.

"If I tell you to leave?"

"I will not."

She sighed. "Give him a blanket, and tell them to get us out of here before more naked men show up."

Doyle draped the blanket around one shoulder and enough of him to make the humans comfortable. The other arm he kept out, so he could hold my hand.

"What would you have done if Hugh's plan had not worked?" I asked.

"We would have rescued you."

Not tried. Just, "we would have." Such arrogance. Such surety. It wasn't human. More than the magic, more than the otherworldly beauty, that was sidhe, and so not human. The arrogance wasn't pretense. Neither was the certainty. He was the Darkness. He had once been the god Nodons. He was Doyle.

He had moved so I could see him easily as the ambulance's wheels hit the road in a sound of gravel. I stared up into that dark, dark face. I looked into those black eyes. There were pinpoints of color in that darkness that were not reflections. He carried colors in the black depths of his eyes that were no colors in the ambulance.

Once he had used those colors to try to bespell me at my aunt's orders. A test to see how weak I might be, or how strong.

The colors were like multicolored fireflies, flitting and dancing in his eyes. "I can let you sleep until we reach the hospital," he said.

"No," I said. I closed my eyes against the pretty lights.

"You are in pain, Merry. Let me help you."

"I'm the doctor here," Hardy said, "and I say no magic on the injured until it's explained to me."

"I do not know if I can explain it," Doyle said.

"No," I said, eyes still closed. "I don't want to be unconscious, Doyle. The last time that happened I woke up in Taranis's bed."

His hand convulsed around mine, clutching at me as if he were the one in need of comfort. It made me open my eyes. The colored lights were fading as I looked into them.

"I failed you, my princess, my love. We all failed you. We did not dream that the king could travel through sunlight. We thought that a lost art."

"He surprised us all," I said. Then I thought of something I wanted to know. "My dogs. He hurt them."

"They will live. Minnie will bear a scar for a time, but she will heal." He raised my fingers to his lips and kissed them. "The veterinarian we took her to said she is going to have puppies."

I stared at him. "The puppies weren't injured?"

He smiled. "They are fine."

For no reason I could think of, that one bit of news made me feel better. My hounds had defended me, and the king had tried to kill them. But he had failed. They would live, and they would have puppies. The first faerie hounds to be born in more than five centuries.

Taranis had tried to make me his queen, but I was already pregnant. I already had my kings. Taranis had failed in every way. If the rape kit came back positive, though positive seemed the wrong word, then I would see King Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, in jail for rape.

The press were going to eat him alive. Charged with the abduction, beating, and rape of his own niece. The Seelie Court had been the shining star of the human media. That was about to change.

It was the Unseelie Court's time to shine, even if it was with a darkling light. We would be the good guys this time.

The Seelie had offered me their throne, but I knew better. Hugh and others might want me, but the golden throng would never accept me as queen. I carried babies whose fathers were Unseelie lords. I'd been the child of an Unseelie prince, and they had treated me as worse than nothing.

There would be no golden throne for me. No, if throne there be, then it would be the throne of night. Maybe the throne needed a new name? Throne of night sounded so sinister. Taranis sat on the Golden Throne of the Seelie Court. It sounded so much more cheerful. Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I didn't believe it. Golden throne, throne of night. Which throne would you rather sit on?

I'd survive tonight. I even knew I was trying to think of anything, everything, to keep from dwelling on what Taranis had done, and the fact that Frost wasn't going to be waiting for me at the hospital. I was finally pregnant, and I couldn't be happy about it. For political reasons the rape kit coming back positive would be good. It meant we owned Taranis. But for my own reasons, I hoped he'd lied. I hoped he hadn't had his way with me while I was unconscious. Had his way with me, nice euphemism. I hoped he hadn't raped me while I was unconscious. I hoped he hadn't raped me while I bled into my skull from the blow he had dealt me.

I started to cry, hopelessly, helplessly. Doyle bent over me, whispering my name and that he loved me.

I buried my hand in the warmth of his hair, drew him close so I could breathe in the scent of his skin. I buried myself in the feel and smell of his body, and wept.

I had won the race to sit on the throne of the Unseelie Court, and it was bitter ashes on my tongue.