Chapter Sixteen
It was Hafwyn who moved forward, arms outstretched. "Let me help you, Caswyn."
He was shaking his head over and over, his hair in a wild profusion across his face so that his wide, staring eyes were framed by strands of his hair. It made him look wild, feral, and a little mad.
She started to bend and touch him, but he screamed again, and Galen was suddenly at her side, taking her wrist and saying "Make sure he sees you and not her before you touch him."
"He would never hurt me," she said.
"He may not know it's you," Galen said.
I started to get up off my knees and Rhys's hand was there to help me stand. Doyle and Frost were standing there staring at Caswyn. Their faces showed such grief.
I started toward them with Rhys's hand in mine. He drew back, and I looked at him. "My powers bring death, Merry. That won't help here."
I looked at Doyle and Frost, and even Barinthus still standing against the sliding-glass doors. I could see Amatheon and Adair out on the deck. They looked away when I made eye contact, as if they were happy to be outside cooking steaks, and not inside trying to make this better. That did seem easier, but the point to being a royal, a real one, was that you couldn't just do the easy things. Sometimes you had to do what was hardest if that was what your people needed. Caswyn needed something right now, and I was all we had.
I prayed, "Goddess, help me help him. Give me the power I need to heal him." I smelled roses, which was the scent that I smelled when the Goddess was answering prayers, or trying to get my attention.
Galen said, "Does anyone else smell flowers?"
"No," said Hafwyn.
"Does anyone else smell flowers or plants?" Rhys asked.
There was a chorus of deep bass "nos" throughout the room. I moved toward Galen and Hafwyn where they stood in front of Caswyn. The scent of roses was stronger as I moved toward them. That was one way I knew that the Goddess was saying yes. Inside faerie or a dream I got to see her, but in everyday life it was often perfume, or other less-dramatic signs.
Hafwyn moved away from Galen and Caswyn. Her blue eyes were wide as she said to me, "I can only heal the body, not the mind."
I nodded, and went to stand beside Galen. He looked down at me. "I'm not a healer."
"Me either," I said. I reached for his hand, nervous. The moment his hand wrapped around mine the scent of roses was even stronger, as if I stood beside a bank of wild roses thick with summer's heat.
"Flowers again," he said, "stronger than before."
"Yes," I said.
"How do we help him?" he asked.
And that was the question. How did we help him even with the scent of flowers around us, and the presence of the Goddess on the very air? How did we heal Caswyn outside of faerie?
The scent of roses was so thick it was as if I'd drunken rose water, so that it sat sweet and clean on my tongue. "May wine," Galen said, "I can taste May wine."
"Rose water," I said softly.
I started to kneel, and Galen knelt with me. "Goddess, let Caswyn see us. Let him know that we are his friends."
Galen's hand grew warm in mine, not heat warm, but as if he had been out in the sunshine and his skin held that warmth. He was smiling that welcoming, good-natured smile of his, and Caswyn was looking at him. His wide eyes began to lose their complete panic.
He said, "Galen."
"Yes, Wyn, it's me."
He looked frantically around the room, but he ended up staring at me. "Princess, where did she go?"
"Where did who go?" I asked, but I was pretty certain who "she" was.
Caswyn shook his head, making his hair slide over his face again. "I dare not speak her name after dark. She'll find me again."
"She's not in Los Angeles."
"Los Angeles?" he made it a question.
Galen asked, "Wyn, do you know where you are?"
Caswyn licked his lips, his eyes looking afraid again, but it was a different kind of fear now. It wasn't fear of some post-traumatic-stress vision, it was fear that he didn't know where he was, and he didn't know why he didn't know.
His eyes were wide and frightened as he whispered, "No, I don't know." He reached out to us and we both reached for him together with our unclasped hands. Was it accident or design that we touched him simultaneously, and both touched the bare skin of lower arms where the sleeves had been rolled back? Whatever the cause, the moment we all made skin contact magic breathed through us. It wasn't the overwhelming magic that it might have been inside faerie, but maybe that wasn't what Caswyn needed. Maybe what he needed to heal was something gentle, something like the touch of spring, or the first heat of summer when the roses fill the meadows.
Tears filled his eyes as he gazed at us, and we drew him into our arms and held him while he wept. We held him and the scent of flowers was everywhere.
Chapter Seventeen
I slept that night between Galen and Caswyn with Rhyson the far side of the big bed. There had been no sex, because Wyn needed to be held more than he needed to be fucked. In a very real way he'd been fucked up enough already, and the hands that held him as he drifted off to sleep were there to try to heal that. It had not been the restful end to the day that I'd wanted, but as I drifted off to sleep with Wyn spooned in my arms, and Galen spooned against my back, I realized that there were worse ways to end a day.
The dream started with me in the military Hummer. It was the one that the National Guard had rescued me with when I'd called for help so that my relatives couldn't take me back to either court. But none of the soldiers were in the Hummer. None of my guards. I was alone in the back with the Hummer driving itself. I knew that wasn't right, so I knew it was a dream. I'd dreamed about the bomb going off before, but always before it had been closer to the reality. Then I realized that the Hummer was black, completely, utterly black, and I knew it wasn't a military anything, but a new form of the Black Coach. It was the coach that had been coming to the beck and call of the ruler of the Unseelie Court for centuries. Once it had been a coach and four with horses blacker than any moonless night and eyes filled with fire that had never warmed anyone by a campfire. Then it had changed on its own and become a long black limousine with unholy fire under its hood. The Black Coach was a force of its own, a thing of its own, older than any of the fey courts, older than anyone could remember, which meant that it had existed for thousands of years or else it had simply appeared one day. Either way, it was somewhere between a living being and a magical construct, and it definitely had a mind of its own.
The question was, why was it in my dream? And was it just a dream, or did the Black Coach exist for "real" inside the dreamscape? It didn't talk, so I couldn't ask it, and I was alone so I couldn't ask anyone else.
The car drove itself over the narrow road. We were coming to the open meadow where the bomb had gone off. I'd ended up with shrapnel in one arm and shoulder, huge nails that had fallen out as I magically healed the wounded soldiers. I had never before had the gift of healing by the laying on of hands, but that night I did. But first there was the explosion.
The cold winter air came through the open window. I'd lowered it to use magic against our enemies because the soldiers were dying, dying to protect me, and I couldn't let that happen. They weren't my soldiers, my guards, and somehow giving their life to protect me hadn't seemed right. Not if I could stop it.
The explosion ripped the world apart with noise and force. I waited for the blow and the pain, but it didn't come. The world wavered with the vibration, and suddenly it was daylight, bright hot daylight. I was blinded by the glare of it all, and sand was everywhere. I had never been anywhere with so much sand and rock. The heat through the open window was like peering into a broiling oven.
The only things that were the same were the explosions. The world reverberated with their impact, and the Hummer's wheels rocked on the uneven ground of what had been a road before a bomb had put a crater in the middle of it.
There was another Hummer in desert camouflage colors, and there were soliders on one side of it using it for cover as something too big for a bullet and too small for a rocket whirred past. It made another impact crater in the road.
I heard a voice shouting, "They're getting into our range. They're getting into our range!"
The soldier on one end tried to move out from the Hummer but a bullet whizzed by him and hit the dirt of the road. They were pinned down and about to die.
Then the soldier at the other end of the line turned and saw the black Hummer. He had his rifle across his lap, one hand on it, but his other hand was wrapped around something at his neck. I thought it would be a cross, but then I saw his face, and knew it was a nail. A nail on the end of a leather cord tied around his neck.
He stared at me with large brown eyes, his skin dark enough with the sun's heat that he looked changed from the paler version I remembered. It was Brennan, one of the soldiers whom I had healed at the beginning of it all.
His mouth moved, and I saw the shape of my name. There was no sound over the cry of the weapons. "Meredith," he mouthed.
The Hummer drove to him, and the bullets seemed to not quite hit it, and when the next rocket came, it was just to one side of it. I felt the impact in my gut, as if the vibration ran through my body and hit me in the stomach. Sand and dirt fell like dry rain on the shiny black metal of the Hummer.
I opened the door, but it was as if only Brennan could see me. None of the others were mine. He said my name, and even over the ringing in my ears I heard the whisper of it, "Meredith." He reached up with the hand that had been clutching the nail around his throat. The others asked, "What are you doing?"
It was only as his hand wrapped around mine that the others saw me, saw the car. There were gasps of amazement and guns pointed at me, but Brennan said, "She's a friend. Now get in the Humvee!"
One of the other soldiers said, "Where did she come from? How did it..."
Brennan pushed him toward the front door. "Questions later."
Another rocket hit just on the other side of their Hummer, and suddenly there were no more questions. There was an exclamation of, "No one's driving!" But everyone piled in, Brennan squeezing beside me in the back, and the moment we were all inside the Hummer drove away. We drove farther down the road, which was intact enough to drive on, and the next moment the Humvee behind us exploded.
One of the new men said, "They got into our range."
The man from the front seat turned around and asked, "What the fuck is going on, Brennan?"
He looked at me as he said, "I prayed for help."
"Well, God hears you good," the other man said.
"It wasn't God I was praying to," Brennan said, and he looked into my eyes and reached out one hand as if afraid to touch me.
I put his hand against my face. There was grit and dirt and blood. He had a wound in his hand that he'd touched to the nail.
"I was praying to Goddess," Brennan said.
"You called me with blood, metal, and magic," I whispered.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"Los Angeles," I said.
I felt the dream, or vision, or whatever it was begin to soften and waver, and I spoke into the air, "Black Coach of mine, take them to safety. See that no harm comes to my people."
The radio in the front of the Humvee crackled to life, which made us all startle, and then give nervous laughs. The song was "Take it Easy" by The Eagles.
One of the soldiers said, "What is this, a Transformer movie?"
Their laughter was the last thing I heard as the dream faded, and I woke sitting bolt upright in the bed between the men. The bed was covered in pink rose petals.
Chapter Eighteen
Rhys was the only one awake for some reason. Galen and Wyn slept as if nothing was happening. The petals decorated their hair and faces, but they slept on.
Rhys said, "There's something on your face." He reached out and came away with dirt and fresh blood. "Are you hurt?" he asked.
"It's not my blood."
"Whose is it, then?" he asked.
"Brennan's."
"Corporal Brennan - the soldier you healed, who helped us fight?"
"Yes," I said. I wanted to know if Rhys had watched me dream. I wanted to know if my body had stayed here in the bed, or if I'd vanished, but I was half afraid to find out. But I had to know.
"How long have you been watching me?"
"I felt the touch of the Goddess. She woke me, and I kept guard over your sleep, though if you could come away with Brennan's blood on you, maybe I wasn't guarding the right part of you."
"Why are Galen and Wyn not awake?" I asked, my voice soft the way you do when people nearby are sleeping.
"I'm not sure. Let's leave them sleep and talk in the living room."
I didn't argue. I simply slipped out from the petal-covered sheet and the warmth of their bodies. Wyn snuggled into the hole I'd made. When he touched Galen, he stopped moving and settled back into deeper sleep. Galen never moved. That wasn't entirely unusual; he was a heavy sleeper, but not this heavy.
I stared down at him as Rhys gathered his holster, gun, and a short sword that he usually wore at his back. He was licensed to carry the gun here, but the sword was only allowed because technically he was still the bodyguard of Princess Meredith, and some things that might attack me respected a blade more than a bullet.
He gathered his weapons, but he didn't bother with clothes. He held out a hand to me, completely nude, with his weapons in his other hand.
I scooped up a short silk robe that had been lost to the floor. Sometimes I got cold; Rhys seldom did. He, like Frost, had once been a deity of colder things than a Southern California night.
He laid his weapons on the kitchen counter and turned on the light over the oven, making a small glow in the dark, quiet house. He turned on the coffeemaker, which was ready to go for the morning.
I chided him. "You just wanted coffee."
He smiled at me. "I always want coffee, but I think this may be a long talk, and I worked today, too."
"It's industrial espionage using magic, right?" I asked.
"Yes, but the Goddess didn't wake us up to talk about a case."
I slipped the robe on and tied it. It was black with red and green flowers on it here and there. I seldom wore all black if I could help it. It was too much my aunt Andais's signature color. My hair had gotten long enough that I had to sweep it out of the robe to settle the collar.
I enjoyed watching Rhys move around the kitchen nude. I admired the tight line of his ass as he stood on tiptoe to reach mugs from the cabinet.
"The problem with a seven-foot-tall man being the main one who lives here is that he puts things you use every day too damn high."
"He doesn't think about it," I said, and slid onto the bar stool near the front of the outside counter.
He got the mugs down, and turned with a grin. "Were you watching my ass?"
"Yes, and the rest of you. I'm enjoying watching you move around the kitchen in nothing but your smile."