A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

He looked past me at the others, and they were all busy trying to do their jobs, collecting evidence with none of their gadgets working. He didn’t let go of my arm. “We need to talk,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm.

“In private,” I added.

He nodded.

Frost said, “Let go of the princess.”

“It’s all right, Frost.” I led the way around the corner and a little way down the hall. Shiny white marble with veins of gold and silver was replacing the grey stone where Mistral and I had made love. It was as if something that we had done was changing the very nature of the sithen. The queen would not be pleased, but one problem at a time.

When we were alone except for my ring of guards, he said, “Show me what I’m feeling, Princess, because it’s not the same thing I’m seeing.”

Should I have tried to trick him? Maybe, but I was tired of games. We still didn’t know where Amatheon had disappeared to. The chalice had gone AWOL, and who knew when and where it would reappear. The only reason I had had Frost with me when I suddenly materialized in the other hallway was that he had grabbed me when I started to fade. But for that, I would have appeared alone, unguarded, in the middle of the fight.

I dropped the glamour, and had the small satisfaction of watching Major Walters’s eyes go wide before he found his cop face. But I’d seen the moment, and knew I must be even messier than I thought.

“What the hell happened to you?” He had let me go and now had some of the drying blood on his hand.

“There was another assassination attempt,” I said, leaving out that it wasn’t aimed at me. “Galen was injured in the fighting.” Truth, as far as it went.

Walters looked at Galen. I nodded, and Galen dropped the glamour. He even turned around so Walters could see the worst of the blood.

“How is he up walking around?”

“The sidhe heal faster than mere mortals,” I said.

“He lost that much blood and he’s healed?”

“I’m a little light-headed,” Galen said, “but give me an hour or two, and I’ll be good as new.”

“Jesus, I wish we could heal like that.”

“So do I,” I said.

He looked at me. “I forgot, you’re mortal, like us.”

I shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

“You don’t heal as fast as the rest of them.”

“No.”

“Your arm isn’t in a sling anymore,” he said, and motioned to it.

“No, it got healed in a ritual.