Laurell K. Hamilton - Swallowing Darkness

CONTENTS

I FEEL LIKE ONE,
WHO TREADS ALONE
SOME BANQUET HALL DESERTED.
WHOSE LIGHTS ARE FLED,
WHOSE GARLANDS DEAD,
AND ALL BUT HE DEPARTED!

From Oft, in the Stilly Night
By Thomas Moore
(National Airs, 1818)

TO JONATHAN, WHO WALKS THE EMPTY PLACES WITH ME,
AND TURNS ON THE LIGHTS AS WE GO.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Darla, who helps my good intentions become reality. Sherry, who is still fighting the fight to organize us artsy types. Merrilee, my agent, who is always ready to put on her armor and go into battle at my side. Shawn, for a friendship that is now old enough to go into a bar by itself and order its own drinks. Charles, who has taught me the joy of a little bit of chaos, and that just because I dont have a detailed plan doesnt mean it cant work out. Pili and Carri, who braved Dragon Con with us. Science fiction author and Army and Air Force veteran Michael Z. Williamson, who volunteered to help with the military bits. All mistakes in that area are mine and mine alone, but his input kept them to a minimum. My writing group, The Alternate Historians: Deborah Millitello, Mark Sumner, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Tom Drennan. Friends in the trenches.

CHAPTER ONE

HOSPITALS ARE WHERE PEOPLE GO TO BE SAVED, BUT THE DOCTORS can only patch you up, put you back together. They cant undo the damage. They cant make it so you didnt wake up in the bad place, or change the truth to lies. The nice doctor and the nice woman from the SART, Sexual Assault Response Team, couldnt change that I had indeed been raped. The fact that I couldnt remember it, because my uncle had used a spell for his date-rape drug, didnt change the evidencethe evidence that theyd found in my body when they did the exam and took samples.

You would think being a real live faerie princess would make your life fairy-tale-like, but fairy tales only end well. While the story is going on, horrible things happen. Remember Rapunzel? Her prince got his eyes scratched out by the witch, which blinded him. At the end of the story, Rapunzels tears magically restored his sight, but that was at the end of the story. Cinderella was little better than a slave. Snow White was actually nearly killed four different times by the evil queen. All anyone remembers is the poisoned apple, but dont forget the huntsman, or the enchanted girdle and the poisoned comb. Pick any fairy tale thats based on older stories, and the heroine of the piece has a miserable, dangerous, nightmarish time of it.

I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, next in line to a high throne of faerie, and Im in the middle of my story. The happy-ever-after ending, if its coming at all, seems a very long way away tonight.

I was in a hospital bed, in a nice private room, in a very nice hospital. I was in the maternity ward, because I was pregnant, but not with my crazy uncles baby. I had been pregnant before he stole me away. Pregnant with the children of men I loved. Theyd risked everything to rescue me from Taranis. Now, I was safe. I had one of the greatest warriors that faerie had ever seen at my side: Doyle, once the Queens Darkness, and now mine. He stood at the window, staring off into the night that was so ruined by the lights from the hospital parking lot that the blackness of his skin and hair was much darker than the night outside. Hed removed the wraparound sunglasses that he almost always wore outside. But his eyes were as black as the glasses that hid them. The only color in the dim light of the room was the glints from the silver rings that climbed the graceful line of one ear to the point that marked him as not pure blood, not truly high court, but mixed blood, like me. The diamonds in his earlobe sparkled in the light as he turned his head, as if hed felt me staring at him. He probably had. He had been the queens assassin a thousand years before I was born.

His ankle-length hair moved like a black cloak as he came toward me. He was wearing green hospital scrubs that hed been loaned. They had replaced the blanket from the ambulance that had brought us here. Hed entered the golden court, to rescue me, in the form of a large black dog. When he shape-shifted he lost everything, clothes, weapons, but strangely never the piercings. The many earrings and the nipple piercing survived his return to human form, maybe because they were part of him.

He came to stand beside the bed, and take my handthe one that didnt have the intravenous drip in it, which was helping hydrate me, and get me over the shock Id been in when I had arrived. If I hadnt been with child, theyd have probably given me more medicine. For once I wouldnt have minded stronger drugs, something to make me forget. Not just what my uncle, Taranis, had done, but also the loss of Frost.

I gripped Doyles hand, my hand so small and pale in his large, dark one. But there should have been another beside him, beside me. Frost, our Killing Frost, was gone. Not dead, not exactly, but lost to us. Doyle could shape-shift to several forms at will and come back to his true form. Frost had had no ability to shape-shift, but when wild magic had filled the estate where wed been living in Los Angeles, it had changed him. He had become a white stag, and run out the doors that had appeared into a piece of faerie that had never existed before the magic came.

The lands of faerie were growing, instead of shrinking, for the first time in centuries. I, a noble of the high courts, was with child, twins. I was the last child of faerie nobility to be born. We were dying as a people, but maybe not. Maybe we were going to regain our power, but what use to me was power? What use to me was the return of faerie, and wild magic? What use was any of it, if Frost was an animal with an animals mind?

The thought that I would bear his child and he would neither know nor understand made my chest tight. I gripped Doyles hand, but couldnt meet his eyes. I wasnt sure what he would see there. I wasnt sure what I was feeling anymore. I loved Doyle, I did, but I loved Frost, too. The thought that they would both be fathers had been a joyous one.

He spoke in his deep, deep voice, as if molasses, and other, thick, sweet things, could be words, but what he said wasnt sweet. I will kill Taranis for you.

I shook my head. No, you will not. I had thought about it, because I had known that Doyle would do just what hed said. If I asked, he would try to kill Taranis, and he might succeed. But I could not allow my lover and future king to assassinate the King of Light and Illusion, the king of our enemy court. We were not at war, and even those among the Seelie Court who thought Taranis was mad or even evil would not be able to overlook an assassination. A duel, maybe, but not an assassination. Doyle was within his rights to challenge the king to a duel. Id thought about that, too. Id half liked that idea, but Id seen what Taranis could do with his hand of power. His hand of light could char flesh, and had nearly killed Doyle once before.

I had let go of any thought of vengeance at Doyles hand when I weighed it against the thought of losing him too.

I am the captain of your guard, and I could avenge my honor and yours for that reason alone.

You mean a duel, I said.

Yes. He does not deserve a chance to defend himself, but if I assassinate him, it will be war between the courts, and we cannot afford that.