A Stroke of Midnight - Page 6/20

Chapter 11

DOYLE SNIFFED THE AIR, AND A MOMENT LATER I SMELLED IT, TOO. Fresh blood. I moved toward him. "What do you smell, Darkness?" Maggie May asked.

He put his hand to his sword, and the other men were suddenly unsheathing weapons. I don't think any of them had smelled what we had, but they trusted Doyle's instincts.

"It's all right," he said, but he unsheathed his sword, and that didn't comfort anyone in the room. When he had the blade completely free of its sheath, blood welled on the naked blade, as if the sword were bleeding.

Harry stumbled back away from him and that dripping sword. I couldn't blame him. Peasblossom screamed, and Mug hid her face against Galen's neck.

"Goddess save us," Frost said. "What is it?"

"Cromm Cruach," Doyle said.

It took me a second to realize he was using Rhys's original name, when he'd been a deity. Cromm Cruach, red claw. As I watched the blood drip on the scrubbed kitchen floor, I began to understand where the name may have come from.

Maggie May said, "Cromm Cruach, aye. Well, what does he say?"

The blood formed letters on the floor: DON'T YOU CARRY ANY NONMAGICAL WEAPONS?

"Oh," Doyle said, and I swear he looked almost embarrassed. "May I borrow a kitchen knife, Maggie May?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, but nodded. "Aye."

He took one of the long, wicked-looking chopping blades and laid a finger down the flat of the blade. The silver of the blade fogged instantly.

Rhys's face shone in the shiny surface. "Do you know how much blood I've had to waste trying to get you?"

"I did not think I was carrying only enchanted blades," and again, I had the rare treat of seeing Doyle shamefaced at not thinking of something.

"Whose blood did you use?" Galen called.

"Mine. I heal now, but it still hurts to do it, and it's totally freaked the cops out."

"How many additional men do you need?" Doyle asked.

"I'm not sure. It all depends on how many of the police Merry lets into the sithen."

I went to stand by Doyle, so Rhys could see me better. "How many police are there?"

"Counting the local cops or the feds?" Rhys asked.

"Feds?" I said. "You mean FBI?"

"Yep."

"I didn't call them into this."

"They say you called an Agent Gillett."

"I called him, but not to invite the FBI."

"Well, Agent Gillett called the local contingent of feds and invited them to the party. He told them, or implied, that you wanted federal help."

"Are you calling to ask if the feds get to come inside?"

"Not exactly, I'm calling because the area around the faerie lands is federal property, and the feds are trying to tell the locals they have no right to be here."

"Please, tell me you're exaggerating," I said.

His image blurred for a moment before I realized he'd moved his head. "I'm not exaggerating. We have a major mine's-bigger-than-yours contest starting out here."

"Can you put the head agent on?"

"No. Do you have any idea how many times I had to cut myself to get enough blood on the blade to write that message? None of them are going to come near this blade. If you want to talk to the humans you are going to have to pick a more mundane method of communication. Though I don't think a phone call will do it."

"What do you suggest?" Doyle asked.

"Get the princess out here because she's the one who made the calls. What little credibility I had with them vanished into the blood-soaked snow. They're afraid of me now." He sighed hard enough that it fogged the blade for a moment. "I'd forgotten that look in a human's eyes. It was a part of being Cromm Cruach that I didn't miss."

"Forgive me for making such measures necessary," Doyle said. "The princess and I will be there soon."

"See you then," and the blade went back to just brightly polished metal.

"Your Agent Gillett misunderstood you, I think."

I shook my head. "He didn't misunderstand. He hasn't seen me in person since I was eighteen or nineteen. He's reacting as if I'm still that person."

"He hopes to push his way into this investigation," Doyle said.

I nodded.

"You don't want to make the feds angry at us," Galen said. "There's a chance that the local police lab might need a little more help with something they find tonight." He began walking to me, forcing Mug to raise her face and adjust her balance.

It was a good point, a good clearheaded point. I smiled and went to him, and touched his face. I touched the cheek opposite the one Mug sat by. "Always looking to make peace."

He laid his hand over mine, pressing it against his cheek. "Just to keep as much of it as I can."

I went up on tiptoe, and he bent down so I could lay a gentle kiss upon his mouth. Mug made a sound, not a bad sound, almost a yummy sound like she liked being this close to both of us. "Give us room, Mug," I said. She pouted, but flew off. I let myself lean into him for a moment, let his strong arms wrap around me. If we lived in different times, gentler times, Galen would have been perfect - if peace was truly what we were after, but it wasn't, not exactly.

"What will you do about the FBI?" Doyle understood that I wasn't going to do exactly what Galen had suggested.

"I'll go introduce myself to the local agent, and give him a message to take back to Gillett."

"And what will that message be?" he asked.

"That I'm not a child anymore, and he can't manipulate me like one."

Frost frowned. "You invited human science into our sithen to help solve these murders. That is all well and good, but I know enough of their system to agree with Galen. We cannot afford to alienate them completely."

"Because we may need them later," I said.

Frost nodded. "Yes."

It was rare for Galen and Frost to agree so completely, which meant they were probably right. "I will do my best not to offend the FBI, but if we go out there and appear weak, they won't leave, and they will delay everything. We do not have time for everyone to play turf wars. And besides, this is our turf."

"Then let us go make that point to the authorities," Doyle said, "both local and federal." He actually offered me his arm, and I took it, feeling the solidness of muscle underneath the leather of his jacket. I realized, then, that my winter coat was still back at the airport, unless someone had thought to rescue it. I was going to need something to wear out into the December cold. I wondered whose coat I'd borrow.

We sent Onilwyn to find a healer. I still didn't know whether to believe what he had said. Had he come ahead of us to curry my favor, or had he something else in mind? Something more sinister, or maybe I was just looking for an excuse not to have sex with him. Maybe, or maybe Onilwyn had earned my distrust.

Chapter 12

DOYLE AND FROST ESCORTED ME BACK TO MY ROOM FOR FRESH clothes. And warmer ones. I don't know whose cloak iI borrowed, but it fit me, the hem barely brushing the floor of my room. The fur was cream and amber and a gold that was almost auburn. It was truly beautiful, but I felt about it the way I usually felt about fur coats; I thought the fur would have looked better on the animal it belonged to. I'd actually tried to argue that I wanted a leather coat, or something out of wool, but since it had been centuries since the sidhe had had domestic animals of their own, wool and leather were in short supply. Besides, Frost assured me that when it was killed, they had eaten it.

"What was it?" I asked. I'd never seen anything with fur quite this color.

"Troll," he said.

I stopped petting the fur. I'd never seen a troll, but I knew they were a type of fey, and though not the brightest, they still had culture, were still people. "That's not exactly an animal; that's more like cannibalism."

"He never said it was an animal," Doyle said, "you did. Shall we go? The police are waiting."

"If I have a problem wearing animal fur, didn't it occur to either of you that wearing something made out of what amounts to one of us would bother me even more?"

Frost sighed and settled back into a huge black chair, which unfortunately matched the new decor the queen had put in my room. It looked like a set for a gothic porn movie, or a funeral where the corpse was going to get a little too much attention.

"I killed the troll. The fur is a trophy. I don't understand your problem with wearing it." Frost looked ghost pale against the black leather chair, and strangely decadent in his fur coat. His ankle-length silver-fox coat had made it back from the airport. It made me think that the leather coats had gone missing because no one was certain who they belonged to, and the fur stayed because who else but one of my men would have a full-length fur coat that would fit over a set of shoulders that broad.

I turned to Doyle. "It would be like wearing a person's skin for a coat."

Doyle grabbed my arm. His grip was bruising, and his face held the anger that his hand pressed against my flesh. "You are a princess of the Unseelie Court. You will rule us someday. You cannot show this much weakness, not if you expect to survive!"

His black eyes held bits of brilliant color like psychedelic fireflies. There was an instant of vertigo, and then I was on solid ground in my snow boots, and I could look into his eyes and not be swayed. If he'd done it on purpose, it might not have been so easily cast aside, but it was his anger that brought his power, not his will. Anger is easier to avoid than force of will.

Frost had pushed to his feet. "Doyle, it is not such a large problem as all that." He sounded uncertain, and I knew why. This was Doyle, their captain, the immobile, unfeeling Darkness. He did not have fits of temper, ever.

Doyle jerked me close to his body, and I felt the creeping line of energy as his power began to unfold. He snarled into my face, "Won't wear the skins of our honored enemies. The police await us, our men stand in the cold, and you don't like your coat! Such delicate sensibilities for someone who just fucked a stranger on the floor in front of us all."

I stared at him openmouthed, too astonished to do or say anything.

"Doyle!" Frost came to stand near us, his hand moving toward me, as if he would take me away from the Darkness. But he let his hand fall back, because Frost, like me, wasn't certain what Doyle would do if he tried to wrest me from him. He was behaving so unlike himself that I was afraid, and, I think, so was Frost.

Doyle threw his head back and screamed. It was a sound of such anguish, such utter loneliness. The sound ended on a howl that raised the hairs on my body. He released me abruptly, and half threw me against Frost. Frost caught me and turned me so that his broad shoulders were between me and his captain.

Doyle collapsed to the floor in a pool of black leather, his braid curling like a serpent around his legs.

It took me a moment to realize that he was sobbing. Frost and I looked at each other. Neither of us had a clue as to what was happening to our stoic Darkness.

I moved toward him, but Frost held me back, and shook his head. He was right. But it made my chest tight to hear such broken sounds coming from Doyle.

Frost knelt beside him and laid a white hand on Doyle's dark shoulder. "My captain, Doyle, what ails you?"

Doyle covered his face with his hands and hunched over until his hands were nearly flat to the ground. He curled in upon himself, and his voice came thick with tears, and thicker with anger. "I cannot do it." He raised up on hands and knees, his head hanging down. "I cannot bear it." He looked up, and grabbed Frost's arm, much as he'd grabbed mine, almost pleading. "I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong, or that good."

Frost nodded, and drew the other man into his arms. He held him tight and fierce, and the face he showed to me was raw with sorrow.

I had missed something. Something important. Something had happened not just to Doyle but to Frost as well. This was not his typical moodiness; this was mourning. But what did they mourn?

"What has happened?" I asked.

Doyle shook his head, pressed into Frost's shoulder. "She doesn't understand. She doesn't know what it means."

"What?" Fear was beginning to tickle my stomach, march up my spine. My skin was cool with the beginnings of dread.

Frost looked at me, and I realized that there were unshed tears glittering in his eyes. "The ring has chosen your king, Meredith."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Mistral," Doyle said, raising his head, so I could see his face. "The ring has chosen Mistral. And I cannot let him have you."

I stared at him. "What are you babbling about? There is only one way for my king to be chosen, and I am not with child."

"Are you certain of that?" Frost asked. His face was so calm, empty of the emotional turmoil I would have expected from him. It was almost as if with Doyle fallen to pieces, he had to hold himself together better than was his wont.

"Yes, I mean..." I thought about what he'd said. "It's too early to be certain."

Doyle shook his head hard enough that his heavy braid rustled against the leather. "The ring has never come to life for any of us. You have never had such sex with any of us. What else could it mean but that he is the ring's choice?"

"I don't know, but..." In the face of his pain, I didn't know what to say. I looked from one to the other of them. Their belief was plain on their faces. I looked at them huddled together, light and darkness entwined, and my chest was tight. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The room felt hot and close. If I was pregnant from Mistral, I would lose them, both of them. I would be bound to Mistral, and I would be monogamous to him and him alone. The sex had been good, maybe great, but it was just sex, and... "I don't love him." The moment I said it, I knew it was a child's plea. A child's wish.

"A queen does not marry for love." Doyle's deep voice held the edge of tears.

"But wait, I thought the ring found your true love, your perfect match."

"It does," Frost said.

"Nicca and Biddy are completely gone on each other," I said. "They look at each other as if there is no one else in the world."

They both nodded. Frost said, "It was always thus with the ones the ring chose."

"But Mistral and I are not looking at each other that way."

"You did not see his face afterwards," Doyle said. "I did."

"As did I," Frost said.

I waved it away. "I was the first sex he's had in centuries. And it was magical sex, power-driven sex. That is heady stuff. Any man would look at me that way, but it was lust, not love."

Frost frowned at me. Doyle just stared as if his emotions had emptied him.

"I certainly don't feel that way about Mistral."

Frost looked positively suspicious. "You do not, truly?"

I shook my head. "If the ring had chosen him, then I'd be in love with him, right?"

Frost nodded.

"I do not feel that way about Mistral."

"How can you not want what we saw in the hallway?" Doyle asked, in a voice that had gone almost empty of emotion, as if it had all been too much for him.

"It was great, but has it occurred to either of you that maybe the sex was that magical because it is the first time I have had sex inside faerie while wearing the ring?"

Doyle blinked and tried to focus. I watched him fighting off the despair that was trying to numb him. Frost spoke for them both. "You have had sex inside faerie with one of us, surely."

I shook my head. "I do not believe so, and if I have, I wasn't wearing the ring. Even in Los Angeles, I often didn't wear the ring during sex."

"Because the power was too unpredictable," Doyle said. He looked up at me. "Were we fools to lock it away?"

The ring on my finger pulsed once, as if squeezing my hand. I swallowed hard and nodded. "The ring thinks so."

Doyle rubbed at the tear tracks on his skin. "You truly do not love Mistral?"

"No."

"You could still be pregnant," he said.

"The ring does fertility, but it does more than that," Frost said. "If Meredith does not love Mistral, then perhaps he is not the match for her."

"Does he think he is?"

I watched Doyle collect himself, gathering all that dark reserve. "Most likely."

"I know that Rhys does, for he said so," Frost said.

"Does Galen?"

"He was much besotted with the ring's power. The men that were besotted will most likely not be thinking that clearly."

"Only you, Rhys, Doyle, and Mistral himself did not seem drunk with power."

"Mistral was a part of the magic. Rhys did not appear in time."

"But why the two of you?"

They looked at each other, and it was Frost who spoke, and Doyle who would not look at me. "The ring has no power over you if you are already in love."

"If it is true love," Doyle said, and then he did look at me, and I almost wished he had not. His eyes held the pain that he had let me glimpse. The pain that must have begun to grow when none of them had made me pregnant in Los Angeles.

I looked at the two of them, and for the first time I realized that if it was a choice between the throne or losing these two men, I wasn't certain what I would choose. I wasn't certain I was queen enough to sacrifice that much. But as long as Cel lived, he would see me dead. And I could not give the rest of faerie to him, even if he swore to leave me and the ones I loved alive. I could not give my people over to him. He made Andais look sane, and kindhearted. I could not give us over to Cel's sadism. I was too much my father's daughter to do it. But I stood there and felt the world sink down to nothing at the thought of losing Doyle and Frost.

I thought of something, and said, "So the fact that Galen was besotted means that he is not in love, not true love?"

They looked startled, glanced at each other, then both nodded. "I think the youngling would argue," Frost said, "but yes, that is what it means."

I tried the thought that my sweet, gentle Galen would be in someone else's arms, and the thought did not fill me with regret. In fact, it filled me with a certain peace to know that somewhere out there the ring would find him someone so that he would not mourn me.

I smiled.

"Why do you smile?" Doyle asked.

"Because the thought does not hurt." I went to them, and touched fingertips to both their faces. "The thought of losing the two of you... that is like a wound through my heart." I cupped their cheeks but was careful not to touch Frost's face with the ring. I wanted to touch them without the magic interfering. Doyle's skin was actually warmer than normal for humans, had been since the night he'd rediscovered he could shapeshift into animal form. Frost's skin was a little cooler than normal for humans. It wasn't always so, but often he felt cool to the touch. I'd first noticed it in Los Angeles after he, too, had found some of his godhead through the chalice's power.

I held them, hot and cold, light and dark, and wondered if there truly was a man in faerie who would make me forget them, and turn love-blinded eyes to someone else. I valued this love that we had built slowly over weeks and months. It had taken effort and trust, and I knew that even if all the magic in the world died, I would still love them. And after what they had shown me tonight, I thought they would still love me as well.

I moved their faces until they touched, so I could lay a kiss half on one and half on the other. I bent over them with my face between theirs. I whispered the truth against the silk of Frost's hair, and the warmth of Doyle's skin. "To have you in my bed for the rest of my life, I would give up faerie, the throne, all that I am, or all that I might be."

Doyle's arm found me first, but Frost followed, and they pulled me to my knees, enveloped me against their bodies, pressed me hard and safe against them. Doyle spoke with his face pressed to the top of my head. "If there were anyone else worthy of the throne, I would let you." He laid his cheek against my hair. His grip was almost painful in its fierceness. "For the scent of your hair on my pillow I would trade my life, but I have served this court too long to give it into the hands of Cel."

Frost's hands trailed down my body, idly tracing the edge of my hip under the pants I'd put on. "The stories the prince's guards have told..." He shivered, hands convulsing against my body.

I pushed away enough to see their faces. "I thought the guards were too terrified of Cel to tattle on him."

Doyle pulled me in against them again, but turned me so that I half sat and half lay against their laps. "Some of the prince's guard have access to human newspapers and magazines," Doyle said. "They have noticed that your guards seem to be having a much better time than either the Queen's Ravens or the Prince's Cranes."

"I still can't get used to hearing them called Cranes. That was my father's bird, his guard."

"Many of them belonged to Essus's guard," Frost said. He held my hand in his. "They were simply given to Cel after Essus's death."

"Were they given a choice?" I asked. At the time, the least of my worries had been my father's guard, for had they not failed him? Had they not allowed him to be killed? Now I wondered how many of them would have dropped their vows as royal guard if they'd been given a chance.

Doyle cupped the side of my face, brought my attention to his face. "It was your sending for the other men last night that has sent some of Cel's birds to speak to us about life under him."

"Why did that loosen their tongues?"

"It showed that you cared for all your guard, not just the ones you like. Such caring is not something the Cranes have seen in many a year."

I could feel Frost's body shudder against mine. "I thought what we endured by the queen's hand was bad enough..." He shook his head. "Such stories."

"We cannot give the court over to him, Meredith," Doyle said. "I believe him truly mad."

"Being imprisoned and tortured isn't going to improve that," I said.

"No," he said.

"Tell her the rest," Frost said.

Doyle sighed. "You remember that the queen allowed Cel's need to be slacked by one of his guards."

I nodded. "Yes, and that night there was an attempt on both my life and the queen's."

"Yes, but we are still not absolutely certain Cel ordered it. It could simply have been those loyal to him moving in desperation to rescue him before he goes so mad that everyone sees him for what he is."

"You think the nobles would refuse to follow him?"

"If he tried to do to the court what he has done to his guard, yes," Doyle said.

I settled back in the curves of their bodies, fur and leather. "What has he done?"

"No, Meredith," Doyle said, "perhaps later when we have the luxury of time and hours to go before we would sleep. None of it is comforting bedtime stories."

"We have a murder investigation; trust me, we won't see sleep for hours," I said.

"What you need to know," Doyle said, "is that he has fixated on you."

"Fixated how?" I asked.

They exchanged another look. Doyle shook his head. But Frost said, "She needs to know, Doyle."

"Then tell her. Why must I always be the bearer of such news?"

Frost blinked at him, and fought not to show on his face what he and I were thinking. We hadn't known that bringing bad news bothered Doyle. He had been the Queen's Darkness, and the Darkness could speak hideous truth and be unmoved, or so it had seemed. It was as if the one outburst had stripped Doyle of some part of himself.

Frost said, "As you will then." He looked down at me. "He called one of the women guards by your name and swore that if his mother is so determined to have you with child, it will be his seed in your body."

I looked into that handsome face, and wanted to ask if he were joking, but I knew he was not. It was my turn to shudder. "I would rather die."

"I'm not certain he would care," Doyle said softly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"One of the lesser fey died during one of Cel's rapes." Doyle sighed again, and a look came into his eyes I hadn't seen often - fear. "He liked that she died during the sex. He continued to rape her corpse until her body became quite decayed."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Or so his guard say," Frost said.

"You saw their eyes, do you truly believe they lied?"

Frost let his breath out in a long sigh, and shook his head. "No." He bent over me, hugging me, burying me beneath a spill of silver hair. "I am sorry, Meredith, but we felt you needed to know."

"I was afraid of Cel before," I said.

"Be more afraid now," Doyle said. "Someone like that cannot be handed the keys to the Unseelie Court, especially now that power seems to be returning to us. With power, we are more dangerous. Too dangerous to be given over to a madman."

"Power returns because of Meredith," Frost said.

"Yes, but once power is reborn in the sidhe, it will be like a gun. It will not care how it is used."

"The Goddess may abandon us forever if the power is misused," I said.

"I thought as much, but think of the damage we could do before she took back her new gifts."

We sat on the floor and contemplated new possibilities for even larger disasters. Doyle hugged me tight, then stood up, and shook himself like a dog. He settled the leather coat around his tall frame, and said, "I thought to keep the news of Cel and his new madness until after we had brought the police inside, but..." He slid the dark glasses over his eyes, so that he was the tall, dark, inscrutable Darkness. Only the silver shine of his earrings gave him color. "We will escort you to the police and the FBI. I am sorry for losing control as I did, Princess, and for delaying us further."

I let Frost help me to my feet. "One fit in over a thousand years, I think you're overdue."

Doyle shook his head. "It is my fault that Rhys and the police are waiting in the cold. Inexcusable."

I touched his arm, but it was hard muscle encased in leather, as if he could not allow himself any softness. "I don't think it's inexcusable."

"If she comforts us again, we will be even later," Frost said.

Doyle smiled, a quick flash of teeth. "It is nice to be comforted instead of punished." He held up the fur cloak. "Please, just for now. We will find something else more to your liking, but just for now."

I still didn't like the idea of wearing the cloak, but after what I'd just heard about Cel and his guard, it seemed a lesser evil. I allowed him to put the cloak around me. "How does it look?" I asked.

The wall quivered like a horse's skin when a fly lands. Doyle shoved me behind him. Frost already had his sword naked in his hand. Doyle aimed a gun at the rock wall.

A full length mirror surrounded by a gilt frame floated up through the stone, shining in the darkness of the room.

I peered at it around Doyle's body, my pulse in my throat. "Where did that come from?"

Doyle still had a gun pointed very steadily at the bright surface. "I do not know." Almost all the fey could use mirrors to make a sort of phone call. Doyle and some of the other sidhe could travel through mirrors. We stood waiting for a figure to appear, for something terrible to happen. But the mirror just hung on the wall, as if someone had put it there to be a mirror and nothing more.

The tip of Frost's sword lowered.

Doyle glanced at us. "Why did it appear? Who sent it?"

Frost stepped closer to the mirror. "Meredith, look at yourself in the mirror."

Doyle looked skeptical but he moved so I could see myself. The red and gold of the fur went well with my hair and skin, and brought out the gold in my eyes. With the hood up, I looked delicate and a little ethereal, like something between a Victorian Christmas card and a barbarian princess. Well, a small barbarian princess.

"Now, thank the sithen for the use of the mirror, and say you no longer need it."

I frowned at him, but did as he suggested. "Thank you for the mirror, sithen. I do not need it right now."

The mirror stayed on the wall, as if it had always been there.

"Please, sithen, a mirror could be used to harm her, please take it away," Frost said.

It felt as if the very air shrugged, then the wall quivered again, and the mirror began to sink back into the wall. When the wall was empty stone once more I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"Are you saying the mirror appeared because I asked how I looked?"

"Hush," Frost said, then he nodded.

"Now that," Doyle said, "is interesting."

"The sithen hasn't answered to whims since - " Frost stopped as if trying to think how long.

"Long enough, my friend, that I, too, am not certain when the last time was."

"So is this good," I said, "or not?"

"Good," Doyle said.

"But dangerous," Frost added.

Doyle nodded. "I would be careful what I said aloud from now on, Meredith. An idle comment could have grave consequences, if the sithen has truly returned to that much life."

"What do you mean?"

"The sithen is a living thing, but it does not think like any living thing I have ever known. It will interpret what you say in its own way. You ask how you look, and it gives you a mirror. Who knows what it might offer you, depending on what you said."

"What if I yelled for help, would it do anything useful?" I asked.

"I do not know," Doyle said. "I have heard of it giving you objects you asked for, but never touching people. But there are enchanted items locked within its walls, things that simply vanished. Some theorize that they did not go back to the gods, but inside the very walls. There are things that I would not want appearing before you without more help than this."

"More help than you and Frost?"

He nodded.

I started to ask what object could possibly be so dangerous that the Killing Frost and the Queen's Darkness could not keep me safe, but I didn't. One disaster at a time. It was almost as if something wanted to keep us here tonight, distracted by one semi-important event after another. I shook my head. "Enough, we are leaving now. Rhys and the police are waiting."

When we stepped out the door we were in the main corridor just inside the outer doors. My room should have been three levels down, and nowhere near this area. The guards waiting to accompany us were staring at us as we walked out.

Galen said, "That door wasn't there before."

"No," Doyle said, and he got everyone in formation, with me in the center, hidden once again behind a phalanx of guards. I would have said men, but at least three of them were female, including Biddy. She and Nicca would probably be useless in a fight. They were still too magic befuddled, but we were afraid to leave them behind. I was almost certain that without someone to stop them, they would have sex, and until I cleared it with the queen that was an automatic death by torture for both of them. Doyle did make them stop holding hands. He thought the police might get the wrong idea.

Cathbodua and Dogmaela had joined our little band. I suddenly had three women in my personal entourage who might have owed more allegiance to Cel than to me. Doyle made some noises about me needing ladies in waiting, and wouldn't it be useful if they were also trained warriors. But I knew the real reason. We took them with us because the queen might at any moment change her mind and demand them back into Cel's service. We took them out into the snow to meet the police because they were safer with us than without us.