A Kiss Of Shadows   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Now wasa time for action. I looked into his face. Not at his handsome, open face, or his pale green curls, or the way his laugh made his entire face glow—I looked at him as my father must have looked at him once when he decided to give me to someone else. I didn't have time to explain things that Galen should already have been thinking of. I searched the crowd peering down at me like gawkers at a car wreck, simply better dressed and more exotic. "Where is Doyle?"

There was movement in the crowd to my right. Doyle stepped forward. He looked very tall from where I lay on the floor. A black-cloaked pillar to loom above me. Only the peacock-feathered earrings framing his face softened the unrelieved intimidation of his figure. The look on his face, the set of his shoulders under the cloak, all of it was the old Doyle. The queen's Darkness stood beside me, and the colorful feathers looked out of place. He'd been dressed for a party and found himself in the middle of a fight. His expression told nothing, but the very lack of expression said he was not happy.

I suddenly felt six again and vaguely frightened of this tall dark man who had stood at my aunt's side. But he wasn't at her side now. He was at mine. I settled back in Galen's lap and found comfort in his touch, but it was Doyle I turned to for help.

"Bring Kurag to me if he wishes to ransom this thief," I said.

Doyle arched a line of black eyebrow. "Thief?"

"He drank my blood without invitation. The only greater theft among the goblins is a theft of flesh."

Rhys knelt on the other side of me. "I heard that goblins lose a lot of flesh during sex."

"Only if it's agreed on beforehand," I said.

Galen leaned over me, whispering against my skin. "If you are so weakened by blood loss that you can't bed anyone tonight… " He touched his lips to my face. "I don't think I could stand to watch you in one of her sex shows. You must be well enough to bed someone tonight, Merry. Let Fflur bind your wounds."

His face loomed at the corner of my eye like a pale blur, his lips like a pink cloud next to my cheek. It wasn't that he was wrong. It was that he wasn't thinking far enough ahead. "I have better use for my blood than soaking into bandages."

"What are you talking about?" Galen asked.

Doyle answered, "The goblins consider anything that comes from the body more valuable than jewels or weapons."

Galen stared up at him. He reached down toward my wrist. I felt his chest move against my head as he sighed.