A Stroke of Midnight
Chapter 15-16

Chapter 15
IT WAS FROST WHO PLACED HIS HAND AGAINST THE SNOW covered hill and called the door. The opening appeared with a peal of music that made all the policemen smile, even Major Walters. It was the door to faerie, all humans go through smiling, but they don't always come out that way. Inside this hollow hill was a human who was going out in a body bag.
The door stretched wide and bright, though I knew the light was actually dim. It looked bright because we'd been walking in the snowy dark.
The police hit that dimly lit hallway and made exclamations of surprise. Cops do not show surprise, at least not those who have been on the job awhile. Cops are the best ever at jaded tiredness, boredom. Been there, done that, didn't want the T-shirt. One of the uniforms said, "Oh, my God, the colors are so beautiful."
The walls were grey and empty. There was no color.
Major Walters stared up at those bare walls, as if he saw something indescribably beautiful. All their faces showed delight, wonderment. Some oohed and aahed as if they were watching fireworks. The guards and I looked at empty grey walls.
"Rhys, did you forget to use the oil on the nice policemen?"
"The reporters didn't need it," he said. "How was I to know that hard-boiled police and forensic scientists would be more susceptible to faerie magic?"
"They should not be," Frost said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The queen gave vials of oil to the guard as a precaution in case the reporters became befuddled by the magic that is intrinsic to the sithen, but it was merely a precaution. The main hallways of the sithen have not affected humans in this way for more than fifty years."
"Well," I said, looking at the humans who were gazing around them as if the hallway were a carnival midway, "whatever is causing this, we need it to stop or they are useless to us. They can't do policework like this."
"Did a spell cause it?" Arzhel asked as he pushed the dark fur of his cloak back from a face framed by thick brown curls that spilled down to his knees. That thick mane of fur was held back from his face only by a silver circlet. He was dressed in hardened leather armor, sewn here and there with silver. His body under the armor was tattooed with fur, much as Nicca's had been with his wings. The tattoo was so real that it made you want to pet the fur that was not there. His face and most of the front of his body was bare and pale and as moonlight, like my own skin. It made the brown and gold of the fur look darker by contrast. With his armor and cloak, he could almost have passed for a human, except for the eyes. They were a reddish brown, a color that could have been human but wasn't. They weren't sidhe eyes either, but those of an animal of some kind. I'd found a picture in a book once, a two-page close-up of the eyes of a bear. Staring at the picture I knew I'd seen those eyes in Arzhel's face.
"It is not a spell," Frost said. "We would feel it."
Arzhel nodded. "Have you searched for it?"
"I have."
"As have I," said Crystall, his voice like chimes in the wind. He was still hidden behind his white cloak.
"Use the oil on them," I said. "Ears, eyes, mouth, hands, the works."
Arzhel asked, "The works?"
"The princess means to make certain they can function completely unaffected by the sithen," Rhys said, undoing his trench coat and taking a small stoppered bottle from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He worked the stopper out of the dark clay bottle, then stood in front of Dr. Polaski. He asked her to take her glasses off, but it was as if she couldn't hear him, and maybe she couldn't. He took her glasses gently off her face. She blinked at him as he touched one eye just below the brow. "That you may see truly," he said. She jerked back from him, then stared around at the walls. She covered her eyes with her hands. "Oh, God, oh, God, what's happening to me?"
"Let me do the other eye, and you'll feel better," Rhys said. "Just keep them closed until I'm done."
He had to push her hands down from her face, but she kept her eyes closed. He touched the other eyelid, and said, "To see truly." He pushed her hair back from her ears, and traced the oil down the curve of one ear, and then the other, with the words "That you may hear truly."
"The music stopped," she said, and tears began to seep out from her closed lids.
He touched her lips. "So you may speak truly of what you find." He put her hands palm up. "So you may touch and be touched truly." He knelt and traced the tops of her snow-soaked boots. "So you may step truly and know what lies before you." He stood in front of her, and laid the last touch to her forehead. "So you may know and think truly." He did more than just touch there; there he laid a protective symbol. For a moment I saw the flare of magic trace the cool spiral and circle on her forehead, then it sank into her skin.
She blinked, and looked around her as if she didn't quite know where she was. "What the hell was that?"
"Welcome to faerie, Dr. Polaski," Rhys said, and handed her back her glasses.
Frost handed me a bottle. "Doyle gave me his, for he does not need it."
I took the offered bottle, and wondered where Doyle had gone, and what he had found. "I would feel better if Doyle or the others would contact us."
"As would I," Frost said as he began to lay oil on Walters.
I turned to the only other woman in the group. She wasn't that much taller than myself, which was one of the reasons I chose her. When I took off the cloth cap, it revealed straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a little worse for the sock cap she'd been wearing. Her eyes were a solid medium brown. The face was a delicate triangle, pretty enough, but I'd been too much around the sidhe of late. She looked unfinished to me, as if her hair or eyes needed a different color to make her real.
I told her, "Close your eyes."
She didn't hear me, but it wasn't the walls she was staring at. She was watching Frost while he touched Major Walters's face. I finally touched her eyes just above her open lid, and she flinched away from me.
"Dr. Polaski, can you help her hold still?" I asked. She was one of the CSU, not the police. Polaski came to us, and said, "Carmichael, this will help. Close your eyes and let the princess touch you."
Carmichael seemed strangely reluctant, but she did what her boss said to do. She shivered under my fingers like a nervous horse, skin jumping. She got calmer by the time I'd done her hands, and she seemed calm as I touched the tops of her hiking boots, below the wet of her jeans. When I raised up to trace her forehead, her voice seemed normal. "I'd prefer a cross as the symbol," she said.
"A cross won't work," I said, tracing something much older on her forehead.
Those brown eyes opened to look at me, while I did it. "What do you mean, a cross won't work?"
"We aren't evil, Carmichael, just other. Contrary to popular myth, holy symbols won't stop our magic, any more than holding up a cross would stop a blizzard from harming you."
"Oh," she said, and looked a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean to offend you."
"It's all right, the church has tried to vilify us for centuries, but if you're ever in need of protection from faerie, I'd advise turning your jacket inside out instead of a prayer. A prayer can't hurt, but the coat turning will probably be more effective." I finished the last curve of the design and stepped back from her.
"Why does turning your jacket inside out help?"
"Most in faerie see only the surface; change your surface and the magic has trouble finding you."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well, it doesn't work if the person knows you really well and has never tried to deceive you."
"Never tried to deceive you - what do you mean?"
"Never tried to appear to be other than they are."
"Oh," she said again.
I watched delight vanish from the other humans' faces, as the oiling was completed. One policeman said, "I think I liked it better before. Now it's just grey stone."
"Where does the light come from?" Polaski asked.
"No one really knows," I told her.
"I thought this oil was supposed to make everything look ordinary," Carmichael said.
"It is," I said.
"Then why is he still so damned beautiful?" She pointed at Frost.
I smiled at his face going cold and arrogant. It didn't make him one bit less attractive. Goddess had made it impossible for him to be anything else.
"Maybe ordinary is the wrong word," I said. "The oil helps you see reality."
Carmichael shook her head. "He can't be real. His hair is metallic silver, not grey, not white, silver. Hair can't be silver."
"It's the natural color of his hair," I said.
"Should the rest of us be offended?" Rhys asked.
"Maybe you should be," Ivi said, "but she hasn't seen most of us out of armor and cloaks." He pushed the hood of his cloak back, and drew off the muffler that had hidden most of his face. Ivi's face was a little thin for my tastes, and I knew his shoulders weren't wide enough for me, but the pale green of his hair was decorated with vines and ivy leaves, as if someone had painted his namesake on his hair. When the hair was free, it looked like leaves blowing in the wind as he walked. His eyes were the startling green of emeralds. I guess if you haven't been raised around people with multicolored eyes, the vibrant green of his eyes was worth a stare or two. Carmichael seemed to think so because her gaze went to him as if she couldn't help but stare.
Crystall swept his own cloak back to reveal hair that caught the dim light of the hall and turned it into rainbows, as if his hair were a clear prism that shattered light into colors. His skin was whiter than mine, a white so pure it looked artificial. He flung the lesser white of his cloak back over one arm, and that arm was bare. I had a moment to wonder what he was wearing under the long cloak and above the boots that I could see. His arm shone in the light, like white metal, a gleam that no true flesh ever held.
The woman's gaze went to him again, as if she could not help herself.
"Stop it, all of you," I said. "Leave her alone."
"I am doing nothing to her," Frost said.
I looked at his arrogant face and knew he believed that. Knew that some part of him never understood how handsome he was, not really. The queen's centuries of rejection had left their scars on our Killing Frost.
I patted his arm and turned to Rhys. "Since she seems less impressed with you and Arzhel, one of you gets to shepherd her through faerie."
"Me, too," Galen said.
I looked at him.
He gave a wry smile. "She isn't drooling over me either."
"Which one of us do you want to assign to her?" Rhys was shaking his head watching Carmichael look from one to the other of the men. The look on her face was somewhere between a kid overwhelmed in a candy store, or a small animal surrounded by predators; half eager yet half afraid.
"You choose, Rhys. You're in charge of guarding the police while they're inside."
"Not Frost?"
"He's in charge of guarding me until Doyle gets back." The words made me wonder again where my Darkness was, and where his spell had led him.
It was as if Frost read my mind, because he said, "I will send someone to see where he is."
I nodded.
"Galen," he said. "Find out where Doyle is, and what he has discovered."
I almost protested. If Doyle, Usna, and Cathbodua were all outgunned, then Galen was not enough to tip the balance, or so I feared.
I actually took a breath to say something, but Galen turned to me with a smile that wasn't entirely happy. "It's okay, Merry, I'll do whatever needs doing to bring him back safe to you."
I opened my mouth, and he touched his fingers to my lips. "Shhh," he said, and leaned in to lay a kiss where his fingers had laid their warmth. "You showed the world how you feel about me. That's enough. I don't have to own your whole heart." He left us at a jog, hand on his sword hilt, the thin braid of his hair bouncing against his back.
"Galen!" I said. But he didn't look back, and then the hallway turned, and he was gone. A feeling of foreboding came over me. Prophecy had never been my gift, but now I was suddenly so afraid I couldn't draw a good breath.
I grabbed Frost's arm. "He shouldn't be alone. Something bad. Something bad is coming."
Frost didn't argue. "Adair, Crystall, go with him."
The moment the other two men vanished around the corner the panic eased. I could breathe again. And something heavy dropped into my other hand, the one that was still hidden under the furred cloak. I grasped the heavy metal stem of the chalice. I let go of Frost, and put both my hands under the cloak to help hold the heavy cup. I'd never realized how heavy it was until that moment. Power is a burden.
"Are you all right?" Rhys asked.
I nodded. "Yes, yes." I did not want everyone in the hallway to see what I held, but I also knew that if my panic was true, it was because the chalice had warned me. I had meant to tell the queen that the chalice had come to me, but the time never seemed right to tell her. All right, she never seemed sane long enough to have a metaphysical and political discussion. Now the chalice had materialized in my hand, and that usually meant it had an agenda. Something it wanted, at this moment. Something I needed to do. If it had just wanted to help Galen, it wouldn't have been heavy in my hand. The chalice was quite capable of helping out magically without materializing. So why was it here now? What was about to happen? The tightness between my shoulder blades said, something bad.
I took a deep breath, and used my cloak and Frost's coat to give him and Rhys a flash of gold metal under my cloak. Rhys's eye went wide, and Frost's face went even more arrogant, more angry. Rhys turned surprise to that joking half smile that he wore when he wanted to hide what he was thinking. It had taken me months to realize what that smile meant.
It was Ivi's voice, full of laughter and with an edge of that joking that hid so much. "Oh, my," Ivi said, and I knew that he'd seen it, too. I half expected him to tell the rest of the hallway what he'd glimpsed, but he didn't. He just looked at me with that surprised laughter all over his face, as if he had beheld some wonderful private joke.
Hawthorne and Amatheon stood to either side of him, and they said nothing. Amatheon's pale face had gone bloodless inside the hood that he had kept in place to hide his beauty from the woman. His flower-petal eyes went wide, but I doubted anyone but myself and Frost could see his face past the hood. Hawthorne's reaction, or even if he had seen, was hidden behind his helmet.
"What is wrong?" Arzhel asked.
Amatheon said, "Nothing. I simply was not aware the princess was gifted with prophecy, that is all." His voice sounded a little breathy, but otherwise normal, maybe even a little bored. You do not survive in the high courts of faerie by giving things away. We are the hidden people, and most of us earn that name.
Arzhel put his head to one side, as if he wasn't entirely certain he believed Amatheon, but he said nothing. I did not know Arzhel that well, but I was certain he'd never guess that I held the chalice under my cloak.
Carmichael approached Ivi the way you'd sneak up on a statue in an art museum, afraid to touch it, compelled to run your hands down the smooth, hard curve of it. Afraid someone will tell you to stop.
"Carmichael," Dr. Polaski said. "Carmichael." She touched the other woman's arm, but she might as well have been touching the wall for all the good it did her.
"Rhys, choose someone other than Ivi to watch her," I said.
Rhys grinned, and moved himself between the woman's hesitating hand and Ivi's body. "Andais would have ordered me. I like a queen who delegates."
"She's not queen yet," Ivi said. The bright green of his eyes still held that flash of humor that had covered his surprise.
"What's wrong with her?" Walters asked. He'd gone to help Polaski, taking Carmichael's other arm. She didn't fight them, but she didn't look away from the men either.
"She's elf-struck," Rhys said.
"Elf-struck," Walters said, "but that takes sex with one of you, right?"
"Normally," I said, "but our history is littered with people who caught a glimpse of us in the woods and spent the rest of their lives fascinated with the fey." I sighed at the looks on most of the faces that were suddenly turned to me. "My oath, that it never occurred to me that any of you would be that susceptible to faerie."
"The princess is right," Amatheon said. "It has been centuries since I've seen any human so overwhelmed by merely entering the land." He spoke for them, but his face was all for me and Frost, who was standing behind me. Amatheon's face tried to ask a dozen questions that his words only hinted at. If he hadn't seen this reaction in centuries, what had changed? I'd known that power was returning to the sidhe, but I hadn't understood what that would mean for the humans I had so blithely invited inside. What had I done? And was it fixable?
"She has to leave," I said, "now."
Polaski looked at me. "What did you people do to Jeanine?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing, I swear it."
"Some humans are more affected by faerie than others," Rhys said, "but it's usually not police, or anyone that's seen too much of the harsher side of things. If you're too jaded, you just don't believe in faeries anymore." He said it with a smile, but he was having trouble not showing how worried he was. I could tell, or maybe I was simply projecting.
"Carmichael is new," Polaski said. "She's good, but she's mostly a lab monkey." A look of anguish and guilt came over her face. "I didn't know not to bring her."
"We didn't know either," I said. "It's not your fault. It just never occurred to any of us that anyone would be this affected by just coming through our door."
"Is this permanent?" Walters asked.
I looked at the men. "I've only heard stories of this kind of thing. So, honestly, I don't know." I looked at the men. "Gentlemen, can you answer Major Walters's question, truthfully?"
"Absolutely truthfully?" Ivi asked.
I nodded.
He answered with a mocking smile, but I knew that the mockery was more for himself than anyone else. "Then I am not certain."
"What is so damned funny?"
"Nothing," Ivi said, "absolutely nothing. I admit to enjoying the lady's fascination because I never thought to see such instant obsession on an woman's face again." The humor leaked away to show some of the sadness that underlay most of Ivi's humor - a sorrow like some deep wound that cut through whatever he had once been, so that all that was left of Ivi was that biting humor and that sorrow.
"That is sick," Polaski said.
His face showed that he had one other emotion left to him, arrogance. "And how would you feel, doctor, if once upon a time you were so beautiful that men wept as you walked down a summer's lane, and then, one day, they no longer seemed to see you at all? A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone else's eyes show him that he is beautiful."
Walters called over one of his uniformed officers. "Take her back to the lab, get her away from the beautiful people."
"Miller, go with them. Take Jeanine home," Polaski said, "but don't leave her alone. Stay with her all night. When the sun comes up, she may be okay."
I raised eyebrows at Polaski.
"I read up on some of the things that can go wrong when dealing with your people. Nothing I read cautioned against bringing in new people, or I would have left her at the lab."
"The innocent have always been more susceptible to us," Hawthorne said.
"She's never been in love," I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it. "But she wants to be."
Polaski gave me a funny look. "How did you know that?"
I shrugged, using my fingers to keep the cloak closed over the chalice.
Ivi bent close to her face. "Be careful what you wish for, little one, you may get it, and not know what to do when you unwrap the bow." Again the words were laced with sorrow.
Jeanine Carmichael began to cry.
"Leave her alone," Polaski said.
"I am leaving her with sorrow, Doctor, not lust, not happiness, not beauty. I am making as certain as I can, that when she wakes tomorrow she will remember sorrow, like a bad dream. I wish that she remembers nothing that will send her seeking us again."
"You're disturbing, did you know that?" Polaski asked.
Ivi gave that mocking smile. "You are not the first to say it, though I believe the last woman phrased it differently. She said I was disturbed."
Polaski looked at him as if she couldn't decide if he was joking or telling another bitter truth.
Chapter 16
WE WAITED FOR THE POLICE TO RETURN TO US AFTER ESCORTING their befuddled colleague away. The hallway should have been a short trip, but that long expanse of grey stone had grown longer, and now there was a curve that hid the door from view. The entrance to the sithen never changed.
"I believe the sithen wishes us to have some privacy," Frost said.
The chalice under my cloak grew warm against my skin. I let my breath out in a sigh, and simply nodded. I did not like the chalice appearing like this. It amplified magic, and we'd had some very strange and powerful things happen between the guards and myself when the cup was present. It was almost as if the chalice didn't want to leave me alone to solve the murders. The cup pulsed so hard that it made me gasp.
Hawthorne reached to steady me, but Frost caught his hand and gave a small shake of his head. Too dangerous in the open with the humans coming back so soon. Some things we did not want to explain to the police. Some things we couldn't explain to anyone.
If everyone in the hallway had glimpsed the chalice, it would have been a quicker conversation, but we had guards with us who had been standing where they could not see, so we talked around it.
Ivi began, "I'm all for solving the murders. But I also think that we should be trying to make the princess queen instead of playing copper."
A pulse of power shot from the chalice along my skin. It raised the hair on my body, and collapsed me to my knees. Frost and Hawthorne kept everyone else from touching me.
"What is wrong with the princess?" Dogmaela said.
"And why do you not want us touching her?" This from Aisling, who was still hiding behind his hood and muffler so that only the spirals of his eyes showed. He'd been one of the queen's men, and never mine before or even now. His eyes were not the three rings of color common among the sidhe, but a spiral painted in lines of color, with his pupil at the heart of the design. As a child I'd once asked him how he could see out of them, and he had smiled and replied that he did not know.
Frost, Hawthorne, and I exchanged glances. All the other guards looked at me where I knelt and waited. Waited for me to make up my mind.
The sweet scent of apple blossoms filled the air, and that sense of peace that could come when you worshipped filled me. I wasn't certain it was a good idea but I got to my feet and flung my cloak back, revealing the chalice in my hands.
"That isn't..." Dogmaela began.
"It cannot be," Aisling said.
"But it is." Ivi looked at me with a seriousness that the laughter did not touch. He shook his head. "You've had it since you arrived back at the courts, haven't you?"
I nodded.
"How?" Dogmaela asked. "How?"
"It came to me in a dream, and when I woke it was real."
Several of them were shaking their heads.
Ivi grinned suddenly. "You fell to your knees when I said we should be trying to make you queen, instead of playing copper."
The chalice pulsed between my hands, and my body reacted to it. For an instant my skin glowed white, my hair was a crimson halo around me, and my eyes glowed green and gold, so that for a heartbeat I saw the color out of the edges of my vision. The power vanished as instantly as it had come, leaving my pulse thudding in my throat.
"Hmm, that was fun," Ivi said.
"You just want to fuck her," Dogmaela said, and she made it sound like a dirty thing. An unusual attitude among any fey.
"Yes," Ivi said, "but that doesn't make me wrong."
"The police will return soon," I said, my voice still a little breathy from the power rush.
"And once they return, the investigation will take all your attention," Frost said. "Whatever we are to discuss, it must be now."
I looked up at his face, so carefully arrogant. "Are you saying I should take time out of solving a double homicide to have sex?"
Hawthorne's quiet voice came. "I am sorry that Beatrice and the reporter are dead, but Ivi is correct in one way. My life and the lives of my fellow guards will not change if these murders go unsolved. Prince Cel becoming king will change a great many things." He removed his helmet, exposing his wavy hair, held back by braids, and the green, pink, and red of his eyes. He was lovely, but all the sidhe were lovely. I'd never really thought of how he compared to the other men. It was as if I'd never really seen him before, never noticed that he was fair of face, broad of shoulder, even by sidhe standards.
Frost made a motion that caught my eye. "Meredith, are you well?" His hand hovered just over my shoulder, as if he wanted to touch me but was afraid to.
I dragged my gaze from Hawthorne, and I was suddenly dizzy. "Is it the chalice?"
"Hawthorne," Frost said, and the one word was enough.
"I did not try to bespell her, I merely thought about how much I desire to have what Mistral had in the hallway. Not just the taste I had."
"I cannot blame you," Frost said, with a sigh. "But the fact that your desire turned into magic so easily means you gained more from the hallway than just a taste of pleasure."
"As much as I desire an end to my celibacy," Aisling said, "the chalice sits before us. How can you talk of anything else?"
"Your needs must be paler things than mine," Hawthorne said.
Amatheon finally spoke as if to himself. "The chalice returned to Meredith's hand. How can this be?"
I looked up at him, watched the struggle in his flower-petal eyes. "You mean that the chalice would never return to the hand of some mongrel half-breed like me."
He swallowed so hard it looked as if he were choking on years of prejudice. "Yes," he said in a voice that was a harsh whisper. He fell to his knees as if some great force had knocked him down, or he had lost the strength in his legs.
He gazed up at me, and the many colors of his eyes glittered in the light, not with magic, but with tears. "Forgive me," he said in that same harsh whisper, as if the words were being torn from his throat, "forgive me." I didn't think it was me he was begging forgiveness of.
The chalice moved toward him, my hands held it, but it was not my will that moved it.
He buried his face in his hands. "I cannot." His broad shoulders began to shake, and I knew he was crying. I let go of the chalice with one hand, so I could touch his shoulder. He sobbed, and threw his arms around my waist, clutching me so hard and sudden that I half collapsed against him. The chalice touched the back of his hair, and that was all it took.
I stood in the middle of a huge, barren plain. Amatheon was still pressed to my waist, his head buried against my body. I wasn't certain that he knew anything had changed.
I smelled apple blossoms again, and I turned toward the scent. The hill that I had seen over and over again in vision stood in the distance. I could see the tree on top of it. The tree that Mistral and I had stood beside while lightning struck the ground. I had seen the plain, but never stood upon it.
Amatheon raised his head from my body so that he could look up at me. The movement of his head brushed the lip of the cup along his bound hair. When he felt the hard metal of it, he pressed himself against it, the way you would lean into the caress of a hand. Only then did he seem to see the plain.
He was very careful not to move from between my body and the touch of the chalice, but he reached down with one hand to touch the earth. His hand came up with grey dirt so dry that it trickled from between his fingers like sand.
He looked up at me again, eyes glittering with the tears he either refused to shed, or could not shed. "It was not like this once." He pressed his head back against the metal of the chalice, as if seeking solace from the touch. "Nothing will grow in this." He opened his hand wide and let the wind take the dirt. "There is no life here."
He raised the hand that was coated in the dry, dead earth up to me like a child that has a boo-boo, as if I could fix it.
I opened my lips to say something soothing, but what came out wasn't my voice and wasn't soothing at all. "Amatheon, you kept your name, though you have forgotten who you are, what you are," the voice said, deeper than my normal voice, rounder vowels.
"The land has died," he said, and the tears finally flowed.
"Do I look dead?"
He frowned, then shook his head. Again the chalice rubbed against his hair, but this time I felt the silken caress of his hair across my skin, down my body. It made me shiver.
"Goddess?"
I touched his cheek. "Has it been so long, Amatheon, that you do not know me?"
He nodded, and the first tear fell from the edge of his jaw. That single drop of moisture fell onto the grey earth, leaving a tiny black print. But it was as if the earth underneath us sighed.
"We need you, Amatheon," and I agreed with the Goddess. The land needed him, I needed him, we needed him.
"I am yours," he whispered. He drew the sword at his belt, and held it up in his hands like an offering. Then he put his head back, so that his throat stretched tight. His eyes were closed, as if for a kiss, but it wasn't a kiss he was waiting for. I understood then that if one tear felt so good to the land, then other body fluids would feel even better.
I understood then what he was offering, and with the Goddess riding me, I knew that his blood would return life to the land. He was Amatheon, a god of agriculture, but he was more than that. He was the spark, the quickening, that let the seed grow in the earth. He was that magic bridge between dormant seed, dark earth, and life. His "death" would bring that back to the land.
I shook my head. "I just saved his life, I will not take it now."
Her voice came from my lips again. "He will not die as men die, but as the corn dies. To rise again, and feed his people."
"I do not doubt that," I said, "and if that is your will, so be it, but not by my hand. I work too hard to keep my people alive to start slaughtering them."
"But this is not real death. This is vision and dream. It is not real flesh and blood that Amatheon offers you."
Amatheon had opened his eyes and lowered his head and his sword. "The Goddess is right, Princess. This is not a real place, nor are we truly here. My death here would not be true death."
"You have not seen the visions that I have seen, Amatheon. I dreamt of the chalice and woke with it solid and very real in my bed. I would not slay you here, and find your bleeding corpse in the hallway."
"Will you leave the land barren?" the voice said, out of my mouth. Having both sides of the conversation coming out of my mouth was a little too psychotic for comfort. And this energy, this Goddess, felt heavier, not just a comforting presence.
"Why are you not happy with me?"
"I am very happy with you, Meredith, happier than I have been with anyone in a very long time."
"I hear your words, but I feel your... impatience. You are impatient with me, and not about this."
She thought her response, but I was mortal, and female, and I had to say it out loud. "You think I waste your gifts by trying to solve the murders."
"You have your human police. Even now Cromm Cruach has them using their science for you."
It took me a second to realize she was referring to Rhys, his original name.
"Not his real name," she said with my mouth, "but the last true name he owned."
"Rhys had a name older even than Cromm Cruach?"
"Once, though few remember."
I started to ask the name, but I could feel her smile, and she said, "You are distracted by trivialities, Meredith."
"Forgive me," I said.
"I do not mean Cromm Cruach's true name, I mean these deaths. They will be reborn, Child. Why do you mourn them so? Even true death is not an ending. Others can find your murderers and clues, but there are duties that only you can perform, Meredith, only you.."
"And what exactly would those duties be?"
She motioned at Amatheon. "Make my land live."
Amatheon offered his sword up to me again, and closed his eyes. He put his neck back at an angle where I could have a clean strike.
"You've done this before," I said.
He opened his eyes just enough to look at me. "In vision, and for truth."
"Doesn't it hurt?"
"Yes." Then he closed his eyes, and lifted the sword up higher, as if that would make me take it sooner.
"He is a willing sacrifice, Meredith. There is no evil here."
I shook my head. "How is that you, who have all eternity, are so impatient, and I, who have only a few decades, want to take the longer road?"
In that moment I felt her sigh, and her happiness at the same time. It had been a test of sorts, not of good versus evil, but of the direction this revival of power would take. She had offered me a quicker, more violent way to bring faerie back to its power. I knew with a knowledge as solid as the foundations of the world that Amatheon would die. It would be true death. The fact that he would rise from that grave, and be reborn to his "life," did not change the fact that it would be my hand that slit his throat. My hand that spilled his blood hot across the earth, across my skin. I gazed down at him as he knelt, eyes closed, face peaceful.
I took the sword by the hilt, and lifted it from his hands. Those hands went to his sides, limp, only a slight tension in the fingers letting me know that he was fighting the impulse to guard himself from the blow.
He had gone from hating me for my mongrel blood to offering me up his pure sidhe flesh, and letting me spill that same pure blood in a hot wash across the ground.
I leaned over him and pressed my mouth to his. His eyes opened, wide and startled. I think the kiss surprised him more than any blow could have. I smiled down at him. "There are other ways to make the grass grow, Amatheon."
He stared up at me, uncomprehending for a moment. Then the shadow of a smile caressed his lips. "You would refuse the call of the Goddess?"
I shook my head. "Never, but the Goddess comes in many guises. Why choose pain and death when you can have pleasure and life?"
The smile widened just a bit. He unbent his neck from its almost painful offering position, then looked from the sword in one hand to the chalice in the other. "What would you have of me, Princess, Goddess?"
"Oh, no," she said, and this time it wasn't my lips. There was a hooded figure not far from us, her feet not touching the bare soil. In fact she was misty, and try as I might, I could not see her clearly. The hand that held the hood close was neither old nor young nor in between. She was all women and no woman. She was the Goddess. "Oh, no, Amatheon, she has made her choice. I will leave her to that decision. She does not need me to finish this task." She gave a small chuckle that held something of the dryness of an old woman's voice, the rich melodious sound of a woman in her prime, and the lightness of a girl. "I do not often agree with Andais, but in this I might. Bloody fertility goddesses." But she laughed again.
"I did not know that Andais still spoke with you, Goddess."
"I did not stop speaking to my people, they stopped listening to me, and after a time, they could no longer hear my voice. But I never stopped speaking to them. In dreams, or that moment between waking and sleep, there is my voice. In a song, the touch of another's hand in theirs, I am there. I am Goddess, I am everywhere, and in everything. I cannot leave, nor can you lose me. But you can leave me, and you can turn your back on me."
"We did not mean to leave you alone, Mother," Amatheon said.
"I was not alone, Child. I cannot be truly alone, but I can be lonely."
"What can I do, Mother, to repent?"
"Repentance is an alien concept to us, Amatheon. But if you wish to make it up to me..."
"Yes, Goddess, with all my heart."
"Make the earth live again, Amatheon. Spread your seed over that which is barren, and make it live again." She began to fade like mist in the sun.
"Goddess," he said.
Her voice floated to us. "Yes, Child."
"Will I see you again?"
Just her voice now, young and old at the same time. "In the face of every woman you meet." And she was gone.
He gazed at the spot where she had been, and only when I let the sword fall to the ground did he turn to me.
"What would you have of me, Princess? I am yours in any way you want me. Whether by my life, my blood, or my strong right arm, I will serve you."
"You sound as if you're about to pledge me your sacred honor like some knight of old."
"I am a knight of old, Meredith, and if it is my honor you want, you may have it."
"You told Adair you had no honor, that the queen had taken it with your hair."
"I have touched the chalice and seen the face of the Goddess. Such blessings are not given to the unworthy."
"Are you saying your honor is intact because the Goddess treated you as one who is honorable?"
A quick puzzled look flashed through his multicolored eyes, then he said, "Yes, I suppose I am."
"Say what you are thinking."
He smiled, a quick flash of real humor, that made his face less perfectly handsome, but more real, more precious to my sight. "My honor was never gone, because no one can take your honor from you, not without your letting it go. I was going to say that you have given me back my honor, but I understand now."
I smiled at him. "No one can take your honor, but you can give it away."
The smile wilted around the edges. "Yes. I let fear take my honor from me."
I shook my head.
He smiled again, almost embarrassed. "I mean that my fear became more important than my honor."
I stopped his words with a kiss. I wrapped my hands across his back, the chalice still held in my right hand. His arms came up tentatively, as if he wasn't certain how to begin. I think the sex would have been slow and gentle, but I held the symbol of the Goddess, and I was the living symbol of the Goddess. An impatient Goddess. The chalice pulled us backwards as if there was some huge magnet underneath the ground. When the chalice met the earth, it went into the ground, and I was left holding nothing. Amatheon's back hit the spot where the chalice had vanished, and his spine bowed, eyes fluttering closed, his fingers convulsing against my back, his body pushing against mine. The strength of his hands, the solidness of his body, and the raw need in his face, all of it pulled me down to him, put my mouth against his, my hands eager on his body. When my hand slid between our bodies so I could cup the hard, thick length of him, he shuddered and cried out. His eyes were wild when he looked up at me again.
"Please, Princess." His voice was so hoarse it didn't sound like him.
"Please what?" I whispered against his mouth.
"I cannot promise how long I will last."
"What do you want, Amatheon?"
"To serve you."
I shook my head, so close above him that my hair brushed his face when I did it. "Say what it is you want, Amatheon."
He closed his eyes, and swallowed so hard it sounded painful. When he opened his eyes again, he was calmer, but there was something in those flower-petal eyes that was still cautious. His voice was a whisper, as if he didn't want to speak his wish too loudly, as if someone might overhear him. "I want you to ride me, to press my naked body into the dirt. I want to watch your breasts dance above me. I want to feel your body slipped over mine like a sheath to a sword. I want to watch your skin shine, your eyes and hair dance with power while I shove myself into you as far and as often as I can. I want to hear you cry out my name in that voice that women use only at the height of their passion. I want to pour my seed inside your body until it spills down the sides of you, and trails down my own hips. That is what I want."
"Sounds wonderful to me," I said.
He gave a small frown.
I smiled, and touched the lines between his eyes that would have been frown lines by now, if he'd been able to wrinkle. "What I mean, Amatheon, is yes. Let's do all that."
"You mean I get my wish," he said.
"Isn't that what we used to do, grant people's wishes," I whispered, smiling.
"No," he said, "we, none of us, ever granted wishes."
"It was a joke," I said.
"Oh, I'm..."
I put my finger on his lips and stopped him. "Let's make the grass grow."
He frowned.
"Fuck me," I said, and removed my finger from his lips.
He smiled that bright smile that made him seem younger and more... human. "If that is what you wish."
"Now who's offering to grant wishes?"
"I will grant anything that is within my power to give you."
I sat up and pressed my most intimate parts against his most intimate parts, and even through all our clothes, the sensation was amazing. He was so hard, so very hard, that it must have been a pleasure that was nearly pain.
"Give me this," I said, and it was my voice that was hoarse now.
"Willingly. Let us get out of our clothes, and it will be done."
I stared down at his face with that eager hardness pressing up through my jeans. It sounded like a plan to me.