Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“It would be a bad night, Queen Andais, to bean oathbreaker.” Doyle’s deep molasses voice seemed to hang on the night, as if his words had more weight on the still, winter air than they should have.

“Are you the huntsman, Darkness? Would you punish me for breaking faith?”

“It is wild magic, Your Majesty; there is sometimes little choice when it fills you. You become an instrument of the magic, and it uses you for its own ends.”

“Magic is a tool to be wielded, not some force one allows oneself to be overcome by.”

“As you will, Queen Andais, but I ask that you do not test these hounds tonight.” Somehow it seemed Doyle wasn’t talking about just the dogs.

“I will honor my word,” she said in a voice that made it clear that she did so only because she had no choice. She had never been a gracious loser, not in anything, large or small. “But you must leave now, Meredith, this moment.”

“We need time to send for the other guards,” I said.

“I will bring all those who wish to come to you, Meredith,” Sholto said.

I turned, and there was an assurance in him, a strength that had not been there before. He stood there with his “deformity” plain to see. He now made it seem just another part of him, though, a part that would have been as surely missed as an arm, or a leg if it were gone. Had being stripped of his extra bits made him realize he valued them? Maybe. It was his revelation, not mine.

“You would side with her,” Andais said.

“I am King of the Sluagh; I will see that an oath given and accepted is honored. Remember, Queen Andais, that the sluagh was the only wild hunt left in faerie until tonight. And I am the huntsman of the sluagh.”

She took a step toward him, as if in threat, but Eamon pulled her back. He whispered urgently against her cheek. I could not hear what he said, but the tension left her body, until she allowed herself to lean back against him. She let him hold her; in the face of those who were not her friends, she let Eamon’s arms hold her.

“Go, Meredith, take all that is yours, and go.” Her voice was almost neutral, almost free of that rage that always seemed to bubble just underneath her skin.

“Your Majesty,” Rhys said, “we cannot go to the human airport like this.” His gesture seemed to note how many of the guards were naked, and bloody. The terriers at his feet gave happy barks, as if it looked all right to them.

Sholto spoke again. “I will take you to the edge of the Western Sea, just as I took the sluagh when we hunted Meredith in Los Angeles.