A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“So Kieran, why Galen?” I asked.

“Lord Kieran,” he corrected me.

I shook my head, my hand sliding a little farther down Galen’s chest, so I could feel his heart beating against my palm. “Fine, Lord Kieran Knife-Hand, answer my question.”

He looked at me, his face arrogant and handsome in the way that most of the sidhe were. But his was a cold beauty, or maybe I was just projecting. “You have captured me, but you cannot make me answer your questions. Take me to Queen Andais so I may get on with my night.”

I stared at him, with Galen’s heartbeat under my hand. Was Kieran being that brave, or did he believe that the queen would do nothing to him? “You have attacked a royal guard. You will not be getting on with your night, Lord Kieran.”

“Siobhan nearly killed a royal heir, and yet she lives. Imprisoned, but she lives. The queen’s pet torturer fears the touch of Siobhan’s skin, so she has not even been tortured. She will sit in her cage until Prince Cel is released, then she will be his right hand again. If that is all the queen does to a would-be assassin of royalty, then what more can she do to us? Nerys’s house still lives, even though all of them turned traitor. They tried to kill both you and the queen herself, and they have lost nothing.” He sneered at me, all that beauty turning ugly.

“That is why you and Innis agreed to this,” I said. “You saw Nerys’s people go free, and you think you will go free, too.”

“The queen needs her allies, Princess.”

“How can you be her ally if you toadie for Cel?”

“I toadie to no one, but I admit to preferring him to you. There are many who feel the same.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” I looked at him, so sure of himself, and I needed him not to be. I needed whatever information he possessed, and I needed the court to fear me. To fear harming my people. If the queen would not put that fear into them, then I had to figure out a way to do it myself.

There was a sound like a great hollow gong being struck.

“What is that?” I asked.

It sounded again before the first echoes had died.

Frost reached for a knife at his belt. “I have a call.” It was Rhys.

“What are you doing, Merry? It was all I could do to keep Walters and the police from running to check out your screams. Is Galen all right? You were screaming his name.”

Galen spoke from my lap. “I’m touched that you care.”

Rhys chuckled. “He’s fine.”

“He was attacked, though,” I said.