Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

I kept my eyes closedso nothing else could catch my eye. I was afraid that if I saw the goblin warriors again, I’d bleed them by accident. I knew what I wanted to bleed, and that was above their heads in the sky. I thought about all the beautiful things that could have flown above their heads. Did it have to be frightening? There was such beauty in faerie, why did it have to be nightmarish?

I heard the sound of wings whistling overhead, and opened my eyes. I’d fallen to the ground on top of Ash’s cloak, though I didn’t remember falling. Above us, so close that the great white wings brushed Jonty’s head, were swans. Swans gleaming white in the moonlight: There had to be more than twenty of them, and had I seen what I thought I saw on their necks and shoulders? Chains and collars of gold? It couldn’t be — this was the stuff of legends.

It was the nameless Red Cap who voiced my thought: “They had chains on their necks.”

I heard the wild call of geese next. They flew just overhead, following the line the swans had taken. I got to my feet, stumbling on the edge of the borrowed trench coat. Jonty caught me, but it didn’t seem to hurt him or me. I felt light and airy, as if the hand of blood had become something else. What had I been thinking just before the swans flew overhead? That the beauty in faerie was too often nightmarish?

There was a flight of cranes then: my father’s bird, one of his symbols. The cranes flew low and seemed to dip their wings at us, almost in a salute.

“They fall!” shouted Bithek.

I looked where he pointed. The storm cloud had vanished, and with it most of the creatures. There had been so many, a writhing mass of them, but now there were only a few — less than ten, maybe — and one of them had already crashed through the trees. A second fell earthward, and I heard the sharp crack of the trees breaking under the weight like a cannon shot, and men scattered, too far away for me to know who was who. Was Doyle safe? Was Mistral? Had the magic worked in time?

Inside my head, I could finally admit, it was Doyle I most needed to survive. I loved Rhys, but not like I loved Doyle. I let myself own that. I let myself admit, at least inside my own head, that if Doyle died, part of me would die as well. It had been the moment at the car, when he’d shoved Frost and me inside and given me to Frost. “If not me, it must be you,” he’d said to Frost. I loved Frost, too, but I’d had my revelation. If I could have chosen my king this moment, I knew who it would be.

Pity that I wasn’t the one doing the choosing.