A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

She stopped screamingand started apologizing. Apparently I’d caught my fingers on her rose-thorn bracelet. My fingertip held a minute spot of blood.

Doyle’s deep voice cut off Peasblossom’s babbling apology. “Why were you hiding from us?”

A rough male voice said, “I wasn’t hiding from you; I was hiding from him.”

I tried to peer around Adair and Hawthorne, but when I tried to move around them they moved with me, blocking my view and keeping me safe.

I called, “Doyle, is it safe?”

“Hawthorne, Adair, let the princess see our prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” the rough voice said. “Princess, there’s no need for that.” There was something vaguely familiar about the voice.

The two guards moved, and I was finally able to see the hairy, smallish figure Frost and Galen held between them. He was a hob, a relative to the brownie.

Harry Hob, he’d worked in the kitchens off and on for years. Off when Maggie May caught him drunk on the job, on when he could control himself. He was only about three feet tall and covered in so much thick, dark hair that it took a minute to realize he was naked.

“Why are you afraid of Onilwyn?” Doyle asked.

“I thought he’d come to kill me, the way he killed my Bea.”

I think we all took a breath and forgot to let it out.

“Did you see him do it?” Doyle asked. His deep voice fell into the silence like a stone thrown down a well. We waited for the stone to hit bottom.

But it was Onilwyn’s voice that came first. “I did not.” His voice was thick, not with emotion, but with blood and the broken mess of his nose. “I did not know her well enough to kill her.” He struggled to his feet, and with no prompting from anyone, Adair and Amatheon took his arms, as if he were already a prisoner. In that moment I knew I wasn’t the only one who disliked Onilwyn.

He kept protesting his innocence in that same thick voice that sounded like he had a very bad head cold, but I knew it was his own blood he was choking on.

“Silence!” Doyle said, not a yell, but his voice carried all the same.

Onilwyn was silent for a moment, until Harry Hob said, “I saw…”

Onilwyn cut him off. “He lies.”

Harry made himself heard then, bellowing loud enough to shake the cups on their shelves. “I lie! I lie! It takes a sidhe to be a liar inside fairie.”

Doyle stepped between them, motioning them both to silence. “Hob, did you see Onilwyn kill Beatrice?” He turned at a sound from Onilwyn.