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over to your enemies' blades. I'd had Galen wield the knife once, and he'd
been so squeamish about hurting me that two of the wounds had had to be
redone. Cel's friends had damn near slit my wrist.
I looked up into Doyle's darkly handsome face. I wanted to say so many things.
I wanted to kiss him good-bye, but didn't dare. We stood in a magic circle
that the queen had traced upon the stones of the main court. Inside this
circle was a sacred place, and one touch of mortal blood could contaminate, as
I'd proven in other duels. But the last duel that I'd managed to kill someone
in, I'd been armed with a handgun. They'd been outlawed after that duel. I
thought that was unfair, since the gun had acted as the equalizer it was meant
to be. The sidhe who'd died had outweighed me by more than a hundred pounds,
and had had more than double my reach of arm and leg. He'd been a great
swordsman, and I was not.
But he hadn't been much of a marksman. Most of the sidhe weren't, the Queen's
Ravens being the exception. Most sidhe still treated firearms as if they were
some sort of human trick.
But there would be no guns today. No swords, no weapons. I'd chosen magic, and
Miniver was more confident than ever of her victory. I was hoping she would be
overconfident. She was Seelie enough for it.
She stood across the stones from me, in her dress of gold. Blood had begun to
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trace a thin dark line on the front of that dress, as her neck wound bled. The
cuff of her dress was scarlet with her blood. Her blood was only a little
darker red than her mouth, and it only showed crimson as it began to spill
down
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her chin.
I fought the urge to lick my own lip as I felt the blood seep down my chin,
but we were supposed to save that blood for each other.
"Are the wounds satisfactory?" the queen asked from the throne where she sat
to watch.
We both nodded.
"Then make oath to each other." Andais's voice was neutral, but not perfectly
so. Her voice betrayed a niggling sense of anger and unease.
Doyle stepped to one side, and the noble who had wielded the blade for Miniver
did the same on the opposite side of the circle. It left Miniver and I facing
each other over a space of stone floor.
We stayed unmoving for a heartbeat or two, then she started forward, striding
in her full skirt like a confident golden cloud. I walked to meet her. I had
to be more careful, because the high heels I was wearing were not meant for
striding over old stones. It would ruin so much if I twisted an ankle. My
skirt was too short to do anything, and all my clothes were still
blood-soaked. Nothing about me billowed or floated like a cloud.
Her full skirts seemed to wrap around my nearly bare legs. She looked down at
me for a moment, as if she expected me to finish it, but she was a foot taller
than I was, and there was no way for me to close that distance without her
help.
She stood there, blood running down her chin. Hands at her sides. I wasn't
sure what was wrong at first;
then I realized where she was looking. She was staring at my throat, at the
blood that welled there. She was trying to stare as if she were horrified by
the barbarity of it, and most of her face succeeded, but her eyes . . . those
beautiful blue eyes like three circles of perfect sky . . . those eyes held
something close to hunger. I remembered what Andais had said: that whoever
crafted the spell had understood her battle madness, her bloodlust. Whoever
had made the spell had understood Andais's magic. How do you best understand
something, except by experiencing it yourself.
Miniver's eyes stared at the wound in my throat as if it was something
wondrous, and fearful. She wanted the blood, or the wound, or the harm;
something about it fascinated her. But she feared that fascination.
I'd spent my share of time being on the wrong end of Andais's hobbies. I knew
that for her blood and sex and violence were all intertwined to the point that
where one left off, and the others began, had blurred.
Miniver had never by action or word given hint that her power held anything
akin to the queen's. If she was filled with the same hungers that Andais fed,
then Miniver had the control of a saint. Of course, it's easy to be a saint
when you are so terribly careful never to be tempted.
Miniver had spent my lifetime leaving the court when the entertainments were
too bloody. She was too
Seelie to enjoy such blood sport, so she'd said. Now I saw the truth in her
eyes. She hadn't left because she was horrified; she'd left because she did
not trust herself. Just as she did not trust herself at this moment.
I knew what it was to deny your true nature. I'd done it for years among the
humans, cut off from faerie
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and from anyone who could have given me what I craved. I knew what it felt
like to have that craving answered after so very long. It had been
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overwhelming. Would it be the same for Miniver?
I closed the distance between us, wading into that stiff gold cloth until I
could feel her legs, her hips, against my body. She watched the blood at my
throat, as if the rest of me were not there. I finally moved close enough that
I had to put my hands around her waist to keep steady on my high heels.
She backed up then, and made a show of not wanting me to embrace her, but it
hadn't been that, or at least not just that. I'd stepped so close she couldn't
see the blood flowing.
"You are a foot taller than I am, Miniver. I cannot share oath with you,
unless you help."
She stared down that perfect nose at me. "Too short to be sidhe at any court."
I nodded, and winced, made a show of touching my throat. It hurt, but not that
much. She watched me touch the wound, watched me tug at the neck of my blouse.
If she'd been male, or a lover of women, I'd have accused her of enjoying the
flash of clean white breast I gave her, but I don't think it was anything as
simple as flashing the top of my breast at her. I think it was the sight of
clean white flesh with fresh blood on it.
I offered her my hand, the one with the cut wrist. "Come, Miniver, help me
make this oath."
She could not refuse me, but the moment her hand touched mine, felt the slick
play of blood, she jerked back. It must have been torture to her to watch
first the goblins feed, and then the demi-fey.
"If you wish to call this duel off, I will not argue," I said, and my voice [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]