A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"

I shook my head again. "No good, Doyle. The sidhe never lie, not outright, and you've avoided answering my question twice. Answer me now. For the third time, when did you sense something had tested the wards?"

He looked half-uncomfortable, half-angry. "When I was whispering in your ear."

"You saw it through the drapes," I said.

"Yes." One clipped, angry word.

Rhys said, "You didn't know that anything tried to get in. You just came through because you heard Merry moving around."

Doyle didn't answer, but he didn't need to. The silence was answer enough.

"These wards are my doing, Doyle. I put them up when I moved in to this apartment, and I redo them periodically. It was my magic, my power, that kept this thing out. My power that burned it so that we have its… fingerprints."

"Your wards held because it was a small power," Doyle said. "Something large would still get through any ward you could put in place."

"Maybe, but the point is that you didn't know any more than we did. You were just as in the dark as we were."

"You're not infallible," Rhys said. "Nice to know."

"Is it?" Doyle said. "'Is it really? Then think on this — tonight none of us knew that some creature of faerie crept to this window and tried to get in. None of us sensed it. It may have been a small power, but it had big help to hide this completely."

I stared at him. "You think Cel's people risked his life tonight, by trying to take mine again."

"Princess, don't you understand the Unseelie Court by now? Cel was the Queen's darling, her only heir for centuries. Once she made you coheir with him, he fell out of favor. Whichever one of you produces a child first will rule the court, but what happens if both of you die? What happens if you are assassinated by Cel's people and the Queen is forced to execute Cel for his treachery? She's suddenly without heir."

"The Queen is immortal," Rhys said. "She's agreed to step down only for Merry or Cel."

"And if someone can plot the death of both Prince Cel and Princess Meredith, do you really think they will stop at the death of a Queen?"

We all stared at him. It was Nicca who spoke, voice soft. "No one would risk the Queen's anger."

"They would if they thought they wouldn't get caught," Doyle said.

"Who would be that arrogant?" Rhys asked.

Doyle laughed, a surprised bray of sound that startled us all. "Who would be arrogant enough? Rhys, you are a noble of the sidhe courts. The better question would be who would not be arrogant enough?"

"Say what you like, Doyle," Nicca said, "most of the nobles fear the Queen, fear her greatly, fear her much more than they fear Cel. You have been her champion for eons. You don't know what's it like to be at her mercy."

"I do," I said. They all turned to me. "I agree with Nicca. I don't know anyone but Cel who would risk his mother's anger."

"We are immortal, Princess. We have the luxury of biding our time. Who knows what tricksy serpent has been waiting centuries until the Queen was weak. If she is forced to kill her only son, she will be weak."

"I'm not immortal, Doyle, so I can't speak for that kind of patience or cunning. All we know for certain is that something tried the wards tonight, and it will bear a burn on its hand, or paw, or whatever, a mark. It can be matched just like fingerprints."

"I've seen wards set up to harm something that tries to break them, or even mark the intruder with a scar or burn, but I've never seen anyone take imprints before," Rhys said.

"It was clever," Doyle said. Which from him was a great compliment.

"Thank you." I frowned at him. "If you've never seen anyone do something like this with a ward, how did you know what you were seeing through the drapes?"

"Rhys said that he had never seen anything like it. I did not say that."

"Where else did you see it?"

"I am an assassin, a hunter, Princess. Tracks are a very good thing to have."

"The print on its hand will match this, but it won't leave tracks as it travels."

Doyle gave a small shrug. "A pity, it would have been useful."

"You can make a creature of faerie leave magical tracks?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But they would see them with their own magic and ruin the spell." He shrugged. "I've never found the world big enough to hide quarry that I tracked."

"You're always so … perfect," I said.

He glanced past me at the window. "No, my princess, I fear I am not perfect, and our enemies, whoever they may be, know that now."

The breeze had become a wind, billowing out the white drapes. I could see the small-clawed print frozen in the glittering magic. I was half a continent away from the nearest faerie stronghold. I'd thought L.A. was far enough away to keep us safe, but I guess if someone really wants you dead, they'll catch a plane or something with wings. After years of exile I finally had a little slice of home with me. Home never really changed. It had always been lovely, erotic, and very, very dangerous.



Chapter 2

The windows of my office showed a nearly faultless sky, like somebody had taken a single blue cornflower petal and stretched it to fill the air above us. It was one of the most perfect skies I'd ever seen over Los Angeles. The buildings of downtown sparkled in the sunlight. Today was one of those rare days that allows people to pretend that L.A. sits in an eternal summer where the sun shines constantly, the water is always blue and warm, and everyone is beautiful and smiling. Truth is that not everyone is beautiful; some people are downright grumpy (L.A. still has one of the highest homicide rates in the country, which is pretty grumpy if you think about it); the ocean is more grey than blue; and the water is always cold. The only people who go into Southern California waters without a wetsuit in December are tourists. We actually do get rain occasionally, and the smog is worse than any cloud cover I've ever seen. In fact, this was the prettiest, most truly summery day I'd seen in over three years. It must happen more often than that for the myth to survive. Or maybe people just need some magical golden place to believe in, and Southern California seems to be that for some people. Easier to get to and less dangerous than faerie, I guess.

I actually hated to waste such a beautiful day inside. I mean, I was a princess; didn't that mean I didn't have to work? Nope. But I was a faerie princess; didn't that mean I could just wish for gold and it would magically appear? I wish. The title, like so many royal titles, came with very little in the way of money, land, or power. If I actually became queen, that would change; until then, I was on my own.