SHOLTO WAS TALL, MUSCLED, HANDSOME, AND LOOKED EVERY bit a highborn sidhe of the Seelie Court. His long hair was even a pale yellow, like winter sunshine with an edge of snow to it. His arm was in a sling, and as he turned his head to the light, a faint darkness - like a stain of bruises - touched his face. Kitto had said Sholto's own court had attacked him. They were afraid that bedding me would make Sholto completely sidhe and no longer sluagh enough to be their king.
Four robed figures stood behind him. They fanned out, some toward the golden door, some toward us. Doyle said, "King Sholto, we are not here of our own choice. We ask forgiveness for entering your kingdom uninvited."
I would have dropped to my knees, if there had been room, but the crumbling edge of black earth was only inches from my feet, and my back was plastered against the stone wall. There was no room for niceties on this path. There was also precious little room for the guards to fight - if they attacked us now, we were going to lose.
A blade glimmered from the edge of one of the shorter cloaked guards as he spoke. "You are nude and nearly weaponless: Only something desperate would bring you here like this, with the princess in tow."
"It is the beginning of their invasion," came a female voice from one of the tallest guards. I knew that voice. It was Black Agnes, Sholto's chief bodyguard, and chief among his lovers at this court. She had tried to kill me once before for jealousy's sake.
Sholto turned enough to look at her. The movement revealed that wide, pale bandages were all he was wearing on his upper body. Whatever they covered must have been a terrible wound.
"Enough, Agnes, enough!" Sholto silenced her, rumbling echoes around the cavern.
The black-robed figure of Agnes that loomed over him glanced at me. I had a moment to see the gleam of her eyes in the dark ugliness of her face. The night-hags were ugly; it was part of what they were.
One of the shorter, robed guards leaned into Sholto, as if whispering, but the echoes that hissed along the cave walls were not human speech. The high-pitched tittering of a nightflyer was coming from the human-size figure - though it couldn't be a nightflyer, for it walked upright.
Sholto turned back to us. "Are you saying that your queen sent you here?"
"No," Doyle said.
"Princess Meredith," Sholto called, "we are within our rights to slay your guards and keep you here until your aunt ransoms you back. Darkness knows this, as does the Killing Frost. On the other hand, Mistral might have let his temper lead him astray, and Abeloec can turn up anywhere when he's lost in drink, can't he, Segna?"
The figure in the pale yellow cloak spoke in a rough voice. "Aye, he were unhappy when he sobered up, weren't you, cup bearer?" I'd heard Abe called that before as a term of derision, but I'd never understood until tonight. It was a reminder of what he had once been; a way of rubbing his face in what he had lost.
"You taught me to be more cautious about where I passed out, ladies," Abe said, and his voice was his usual casual, amused, bitter tone.
The two hags laughed. The other guards joined in a chorus of hissing laughter, which let me know that whatever the two shorter guards were, they were the same kind of creature.
Sholto spoke. "Don't worry, Darkness, the hags didn't help Abe break his vow of celibacy, for that is a death sentence to all. The tearing of white sidhe flesh amuses them almost as much as sex."
The high twittering voice came faintly again. Sholto nodded at what it had said. "Ivar makes a good point. You are all wet and muddy, and that did not happen here in our garden." He motioned with his good hand at the caked, drying earth and the water trapped feet below us, clearly inaccessible.
"I would ask permission to bring the princess off this ledge," Doyle said.
"No," Sholto said, "she is safe enough there. Answer the question, Darkness...or Princess...or whoever. How did you get wet and muddy? I know that it is snowing aboveground; do not use that to lie."
"The sidhe never lie," Mistral said.
Sholto and his guards all laughed. The high tittering mixed with the rumbling bass/alto of the hags and Sholto's open, joyous laughter. "The sidhe never lie: Spare us that, the biggest lie of all," said Sholto.
"We are not allowed to lie," Doyle said.
"No, but the sidhe version of the truth is so full of holes that it is worse than a lie. We, the sluagh, would prefer a good honest lie to the half-truths that the court we are supposed to belong to feeds us. We starve on a diet of near lies. So tell us true, if you can, how came you wet and muddy, and here?"
"It rained in the dead gardens, in our sithen," Doyle said.
"More lies," Agnes said.
I had an idea. "I swear by my honor - " I began. One of the hags laughed at that, but I kept going. " - and the darkness that devours all things that it was raining in the Unseelie gardens when we left them." I'd given not just an oath that no sidhe would willingly break - because of the curse that went with the breaking - but the oath that I'd demanded of Sholto weeks ago when he found me in California. He'd sworn the oath that he meant me no harm, and I'd believed him.
The severity of the oath silenced even the night-hags. "Be careful what you say, Princess," Sholto said. "Some magicks still live."
"I know what I swore, and I know what it means, King Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between. I am wet with the first rain to fall upon the dead gardens in centuries. My skin is decorated with soil reborn, dry no more."
"How is this possible?" Sholto demanded.
"It is not possible," Agnes said. She pointed one dark, muscled arm at the door. "This is Seelie magic, not Unseelie. They conspire together to destroy us. I told you, the golden court would never have dared if they did not have the full support of the Queen of Air and Darkness." She pointed a little dramatically at the shiny door. "This proves it."
"Meredith," Doyle said softly, "make the door go away."
"Whispering will not make you my friend, Darkness," Sholto said.
"I told the princess to make the door go away, so that you would understand this is not Seelie business."
Agnes turned so suddenly that her hood fell back to reveal the dry black straw of her hair, the ruin of her complexion, covered in bumps and sores. The hags hid their ugliness, which was an exception among the sluagh. Most of them saw every oddity as a mark of beauty, or power. The hags hid themselves, though - as did the two shorter guards.
Agnes pointed the long hand with its black-taloned claws at me. "She did not conjure this door. She is mortal, and mortal hand never made this doorway."
"Princess, if you would," Doyle said low but clear, so that he couldn't be accused of whispering.
I spoke loudly, so they'd hear me, and the cave caught the echo of my voice, so that it seemed to bounce along the walls. "I need the door to go away now, please."
There was a moment's hesitation, as if the door wanted to give me a second to reconsider; then, when I didn't, the door vanished. Sholto's guards shifted, and Agnes startled as if something had goosed her. "Mortal flesh cannot control the sithen. Any sithen."
"I would have agreed with you, until a few hours ago," I said.
"How did you come here?" Sholto asked.
"I asked for a door to the dead gardens. It never occurred to me that any door I could conjure would bring me to your home, Sholto."
"King Sholto," Agnes corrected me.
"King Sholto," I said dutifully.
"Why would that request bring you to our garden, Princess Meredith?" Sholto asked.
"Doyle told me to get us back to the dead gardens. I did just that: I called a door to the dead gardens. But I did not specify which garden, and you know the rest."
Sholto stared at me. The triple gold of his irises - molten metal, autumn leaves, and pale sunshine - made his face beautiful, but it did not make the look one bit less intense. He stared at me as if he would weigh me with a look.
"This cannot be true," Agnes said.
"If it was a lie, they'd have a better one than this," Sholto said.
"Do you still believe everything that a piece of white sidhe flesh tells you, King Sholto? Have you learned nothing from what they did to you?" Agnes asked. I wasn't sure what she meant, but I guessed it had to do with the bandages he wore.
"Silence," Sholto said, but there was something in his face, the way he turned, that spoke of embarrassment. The last time I'd seen Sholto, he had hidden behind a mask of arrogance, much as Frost did. Whatever mask he had built to hide behind in court seemed to have shredded, so that he now had nothing for his emotions to hide behind.
"May we approach you, King Sholto?" I asked, and my voice was clear, but softer. The tall, elegant, arrogant man whom I'd met in Los Angeles wasn't the same man who stood before me now, shoulders slightly hunched.
"No, you may not," Agnes said, in her strangely rich voice. Most night-hags spoke in a cackling voice, as if they'd swallowed gravel.
Sholto turned on her, and the movement cost him, for he nearly stumbled. It seemed to feed his anger. "I am king here, Agnes, not you. Me!" He thumped himself in the upper chest. "Me, Agnes, not you, me! I am still king here!"
He turned to us. The front of his bandages showed fresh blood, as if he'd torn stitches. Sholto was half highborn sidhe and half of the sluagh, and the sluagh were even harder to injure than the sidhe. What could have hurt him this badly?
"Bring her onto solid land, Darkness," Sholto said.
Doyle led me forward, carefully. Rhys's hand never left my other arm. They eased me out onto the broader shoreline. The others followed, mincing their way onto secure ground.
Doyle took my hand and led me forward, very formally, toward the waiting sluagh. We had to come forward slowly, because of the bones. We'd seen what they'd done to Abe, and we were both barefoot. We'd had enough injuries for the night.
"How I hate you, Princess," Agnes said.
Sholto spoke without turning around to look at her. "I am very close to losing my patience with you, Agnes. You don't want that."
"They move like shadow and light, so graceful through the bone field that is our garden," Agnes said, "and you watch her as if she were food and drink, and you were starving."
The comment made me look up, away from the dangerous bones. "Do not do this, Agnes," he said, but his face was naked to his need. She was right about that look on his face. It was more than just lust, though it wasn't love, either. There was pain in his gaze, like a man watching something that he knew he could not have, and he wanted that thing more than anything else in the world. What had laid Sholto bare to the eyes of the world? What had stripped him to this?
Doyle stopped in a space of ground mostly clear of bones, just out of reach of the sluagh - or as far out of reach as we would get here. The other men had followed a few steps behind us, as if Doyle had given them some signal that I hadn't seen, so they wouldn't crowd Sholto and his guards. We were in the wrong. We had invaded their land, not the other way around, so we needed to be the more polite. I understood that, but looking into Sholto's face I felt like we had walked into the middle of something that had nothing to do with us.
I began to kneel and pulled Doyle down with me. I bowed my head, not just to show respect, but because I couldn't bear the look on Sholto's face anymore. I didn't deserve such a look. I was wet, splattered with mud. I must have looked like something the cat dragged in out of the storm, yet he stared at me with a desire that was painful to see. I'd already agreed to have sex with him, as he was part of the royal guard for the queen, as well as a king in his own right. He would have me, so why did he look at me the way Tantalus must have looked in Hades?
"You are princess of the Unseelie Court, in line to be queen. Why do you bow to me?" Sholto's voice tried to be neutral, and almost achieved it.
I spoke, still gazing at the ground, my hand still resting in Doyle's. "We came to your lands accidentally, but uninvited. It is we who have trespassed. We who owe you an apology. You are King of the Sluagh, and though you are a part of the Unseelie Court, you are still a kingdom in your own right. I am only a royal princess - perhaps heir to a throne that rules over your lands - but you, Sholto, you are already a king. A king of the dark host itself. You and your people are the last great host, the last wild hunt. They are a wondrous and fearsome thing, the people that call you king. They, and you, deserve respect in your own lands from anyone less than another high ruler."
I heard someone shift behind me, as if one of the other guards would have protested some of what I said, but Doyle's hand was peaceful under mine. He understood that we were still in danger; besides, what I said was true. There had been a time when the sidhe understood that you respected all the kingdoms in your care, not just the ones that were blood of your blood.
"Get up, get up, and do not mock me!" Sholto's words were inexplicably rage-filled.
I looked up to find that handsome face consumed with anger, twisted with it. "I do not understand - " I began, but he didn't give me time to finish the sentence. He strode forward, grabbed my hand, and jerked me to my feet. Doyle came with me, tightening his grip on my other hand.
Sholto's fingers dug into my upper arm as he pulled me closer and raged inches from my face. "I did not believe Agnes. I did not believe that Andais would allow such outrage, but now I do. Now I believe it!" He shook me hard enough to make me stumble. Only Doyle's hand kept me from falling.
I fought to keep my voice even as I said, "I don't know what you are talking about."
"Don't you, don't you!" He let go of me abruptly, sending me stumbling back against Doyle. Sholto dug his uninjured hand into the bandages at his chest and stomach, tearing at them.
Doyle turned his body so that I was on the other side of him, and his body would be between me and whatever was about to happen. I didn't argue with him. Sholto was moody, but I'd never seen him like this.
"Did you come so you could see what they did? Did you want to see it?" He screamed the last, filling the cave with echoes, as if the walls themselves screamed back.
I could see what was under the bandages now. Sholto's mother had been a noble lady of the Unseelie Court, but his father had been a nightflyer. The last time I'd seen Sholto's upper body bare, without him wasting magic to make it look smooth and muscled, and fully sidhe, there had been a nest of tentacles starting a few inches below the breast area to stop just above his groin. He had the full set of tentacles that the nightflyers used as arms and legs, as well as the tiny suction-tipped tentacles that were secondary sexual organs. It had been these little extras that had made me avoid taking him to my bed - Goddess help me, I'd seen them as a deformity. But that wasn't a problem now. The skin where the tentacles had been was now just raw, red, naked flesh. Whoever had done it hadn't just chopped the tentacles off, they had shaved them away, along with most of his skin.
