A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"There is nothing spoiled here, Aunt Andais," I said, and I knew my tone wasn'tneutral enough. I'd lost the knack of keeping my voice in line over the years I'd been away from the court. I was going to have to relearn, and quickly.

She gave me very cold eyes. "I was not talking to you, Princess Meredith. I was speaking to my Darkness."

She'd used my title; not niece, or just my name, but my title. It was not a good sign.

Doyle squeezed my arm again, tighter this time, as if telling me to behave. He answered Andais, but not in words. He rolled onto his back with his knees bent so his thigh hid him from her view, then he lowered the leg closest to her, slowly, like a curtain coming down.

There was heat in her eyes now, real heat, real need. "My, my, Darkness, you have been keeping secrets."

He turned and looked at her. "Nothing you couldn't have discovered at any time in the last thousand years." Now it was his voice that was not neutral. It was just a slight change in tone, a mild inflection of reproof, but I'd never heard him lose even that much control in front of Andais.

It was my turn to lay a warning hand on his stomach, just a touch to remind him who we were speaking to. I don't think my face showed the fear that was curling along my spine.

King Taranis might not hurt me for fear of Andais, but Andais might hurt me in a fit. She might regret it later, but dead is dead.

The look she gave Doyle was enough to tighten my hand against his skin, just a light digging of nails. It made his body react, and I hoped I'd done enough to remind him to tread lightly.

"Have a care, Darkness, or I will grow distracted and forget why I called."

"We await your news, Queen Andais," I said.

She looked at me then, some of the heat going from her eyes, replaced by puzzlement and, underneath, tiredness. Andais wasn't usually this easy to read, I think because she didn't have to be careful around anyone. "The Nameless is free."

Doyle spilled his legs to the floor and sat up. Suddenly it didn't matter that he was nude, nobody cared. The Nameless was the worst of both courts, Seelie and Unseelie. It was the last great spell that the two courts had cooperated on. They had stripped themselves of everything too awful, too hungry, to allow us to live in this new country. Nobody had demanded it of the sidhe, but we didn't want to be forced out of the last country that would have us, so we'd sacrificed some of what we were in order to become more. . human. Some said that the Nameless was what caused us to begin to fade, but that wasn't true. The sidhe had been fading for centuries. The Nameless was just a necessary evil.