A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“I’m sorry that I didn’t pay attention before,” he said, his cheek against my hair. “I didn’t see a point to it, if I couldn’t have you. I don’t see everything, not the way Doyle does, or Frost, or even Rhys, but I do see some things, and I’m trying to see more.”

There was a lump in my throat so big I couldn’t swallow past it. My chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were suddenly hot, and I knew I was about to cry only a second before it started. I didn’t want to cry. He was safe. We were safe. But feeling the dried blood made me remember the moment I’d seen him lying on his back in a lake of his own blood. That heart-stopping moment when I’d thought he was gone. Thought I’d never hold him warm against me again. Thought his arms would never press our bodies together again. That I’d never see his smile or hear his voice or gaze into his living eyes.

Galen stroked my hair and raised my face up to his. “Merry, are you crying?”

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.

“Why?” he asked.

Nicca said it for me. “She thought she’d lost you today, Galen.”

Galen stared down into my face. “Is that why you’re crying?”

I nodded again, and buried my face against his chest. He leaned back into the water, cradling me against his body. He stroked my skin, petted my hair, and whispered, “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

“But what about next time?” I asked.

“The queen made it clear that I might be the key to bringing babies back to the sidhe. I don’t think they’ll want to hurt me now.”

“Cel’s people will,” Kitto said.

We looked at him.

“I hear things because no one notices me.”

I felt a twinge at that because I’d done it, too. He’d accused me once of talking over him like he was a dog or a chair. That was before he had become my lover, but even now it was easier not to notice him than the rest. He had survived in the goblin mound by being unobtrusive, as invisible as he could make himself. He still had the habit of it.

“I heard some sidhe saying that they did not believe that anyone of Andais’s line would be able to bring life back to the Unseelie.”

“Who said this?”

“They saw me, after they had spoken. I think they would have tried to hurt me, but King Sholto came down the hallway. He had some of his sluagh with him.”

“Was this today?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“If he was here, I wonder why he didn’t come to the throne room.”

“I do not know, but he was wounded,” Kitto said.