A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Her breath came out in a gasp, which let me know just how bad I looked. You don’t get people who work in forensics gasping much. “Major Walters filled me in on some of what’s been happening here today.” She shook her head and took her glasses off, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

“We do not want the general public to know what is happening inside faerie,” Frost said.

“I can keep my mouth shut.” She looked at me, and I saw something in her face that was almost pity. “Are you able to talk to me, Princess Meredith?”

I took a deep breath, and it shook a little. My voice sounded hoarse, and I had to clear it, but I finally managed, “Talk to me, Dr. Polaski, I’ll listen.”

The guards parted for her to come closer to us. I was still sitting in Galen’s lap, my legs wrapped around his waist. If the intimate position made her uncomfortable, she didn’t show it. I stayed where I was because I still wanted to hold Galen as close as I could. It was a way of clinging to him without looking like I was clinging to him. Galen’s hands rested at the small of my back.

Polaski knelt down beside us so we were eye level. “I need to know a few things, and you are the only one I can ask, but by asking, I will give away the suspect I’m most interested in.”

“Understood,” I said.

She put her glasses back on and shook her head. “I don’t think you do. Walters told me that you won’t put whoever I find on trial. You’ll torture them or just kill them. Is this true?”

“Yes,” I said.

She waited, as if she expected me to say more. Then she smiled, and said, “No human I know would have just said yes to that. They would have felt they had to justify taking another life. They would have felt so many things.” She looked at me with those long-lashed eyes. “But you don’t feel what we would feel.”

“It isn’t fey versus human, Doctor, it’s cultural. I was raised in a world where torture is the norm for crimes, and execution is used when necessary, though it’s rare. We do not keep someone on death row for twenty years while they search for legal loopholes.”

“I’ve seen some awful things in my job, Princess Meredith, and there are a handful of people who I would sleep easier knowing they were dead.” She sighed. “I need your word that you will not execute the person I’m about to reveal.”

“I can’t promise that, not without lying.”

“Your word that they won’t be executed until I have processed the evidence we’ve collected.”

I looked at Frost, and Mistral beside him.