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A Stroke Of Midnight :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 100 из 293It 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.
CHAPTER 13
I DIDN’T SEE THE POLICE BUT I HEARD THEM, A RUMBLE OF DEEP male voices. Sound carried so much better on those still, bitterly cold nights. My cheeks were stinging, and my breath had fogged and frozen in the fur of the hood. Barinthus had kept me warm on the walk to the faerie mounds after the assassination attempt, but I walked on my own power now. The snow was knee high for me, and my boots didn’t quite keep it from soaking into the knees of my jeans. I tried to call the feel of the summer sun to put inside my shield and help keep back the cold, but it was as if I couldn’t remember what summer felt like. The moonless night was clear with a thousand stars flung across the darkness like bits of glittering ice, diamond glints across black velvet. I focused on the fight to lift one foot, then the next, and struggle through drifts that the taller sidhe walked through effortlessly. It was undignified for a princess to fall on her face, but it took effort to keep from doing it. I suppose that struggling through the snow wasn’t exactly dignified either, but that I could do nothing about.
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.
CHAPTER 13
I DIDN’T SEE THE POLICE BUT I HEARD THEM, A RUMBLE OF DEEP male voices. Sound carried so much better on those still, bitterly cold nights. My cheeks were stinging, and my breath had fogged and frozen in the fur of the hood. Barinthus had kept me warm on the walk to the faerie mounds after the assassination attempt, but I walked on my own power now. The snow was knee high for me, and my boots didn’t quite keep it from soaking into the knees of my jeans. I tried to call the feel of the summer sun to put inside my shield and help keep back the cold, but it was as if I couldn’t remember what summer felt like. The moonless night was clear with a thousand stars flung across the darkness like bits of glittering ice, diamond glints across black velvet. I focused on the fight to lift one foot, then the next, and struggle through drifts that the taller sidhe walked through effortlessly. It was undignified for a princess to fall on her face, but it took effort to keep from doing it. I suppose that struggling through the snow wasn’t exactly dignified either, but that I could do nothing about.