A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"Yes," Frost said.

I looked at all of them slowly. I was pretty sure they were kidding, pretty sure.



Chapter 37

We were finishing lunch the next day when Taranis called back.

I bolted the last of my fruit salad and fresh bread while Doyle spoke with him. Maeve was pregnant; the magic had quickened inside her. Taranis couldn't know that yet, but I feared what he would do when he found out. It added one more little stress to dealing with the king.

I'd chosen a royal purple sundress with a scoop neck and one of those little ties in back. It was very feminine, very nonthreatening, and a style that had been in vogue for a very long time. The only thing that had changed was the hem length. Sometimes when dealing with the Seelie Court, you wanted to go slow into the twenty-first century.

I sat on the freshly made bed, and it wasn't accidental that the purple of my dress complemented the burgundy bedspread and matched the purple pillows scattered among the burgundy and black ones.

I had refreshed the red lipstick and left the rest alone. We were going for dramatic natural. I had my ankles crossed, even though he couldn't see them, and my hands folded in my lap. It wasn't formal, but it was about the best I could do without a formal answering room.

Doyle stood on one side and Frost on the other. Doyle wore his usual black jeans, black T-shirt. He'd added black boots that reached to his thighs, then folded them down to just above his knees. He'd even pulled the spider necklace out of his shirt so that it gleamed in plain sight on his black shirt. The spider was part of his livery, his crest, and I'd once seen him cause the skin of a human magician's body to split as the spiders depicted in the jewels poured out of the man until he'd become nothing but a writhing mass of them. The unfortunate victim had been the man Lieutenant Peterson thought I had killed.

Frost had gone more traditional, dressed in a thigh-length tunic of white, edged with silver, white, and gold embroidery. Tiny flowers and vines were sewn in such detail that you could tell the vines were ivy and roses, with some harebells and violas embroidered around them. A broad belt of white leather, with a silver buckle, fastened at the tunic's waist. His sword, Winter Kiss, Geamhradh Pog, hung at his side. He left the enchanted blade at home most days because it couldn't stop modern bullets; it didn't possess that kind of magic. But for an audience with the king, the sword was perfect. Its handle was carved bone, inset with silver.