A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

I had realized only a day or so ago that I'd have given up everything to be with Frost and Doyle — including being queen — but for one thing: To keep these two men with me might require me to give up my birthright. And I was too much my father's daughter to let Cel have our people. But the regret in me was growing.

"Do you have a reply to the accusation, Princess Meredith?"

"My aunt is not perfect, but she loved her brother. I believe that with all my heart. If she discovered who killed him, her wrath would be the stuff of nightmares. None of her guard would have dared such a thing."

"Are you sure of that, Princess?"

"I think you might want to ask yourself, Mr. Cortez, Mr. Shelby, what King Taranis hopes to gain by this accusation. In fact, you might wonder what he might have gained from my father's death."

"Are you accusing the king of your father's murder?" Shelby asked.

"No, I am simply saying that the Seelie Court has never been a friend of my father's family. Whereas one of the queen's guard killing my father would have earned them a death by torture. I think if King Taranis could have plausible deniability of the deed, he would reward his own guard for it."

"Why would he kill Prince Essus?"

"I don't know."

"Do you believe he was behind the assassination?" Veducci asked. That fine mind was all there in those eyes.

"I didn't until now."

"What do you mean by that, Princess?" he asked.

"I mean I can't see what the king hopes to gain by the accusation against my guard. It makes no sense, and it makes me wonder what his true motives are here."

"He seeks to divide you from us," Frost said.

I looked at him, studying that handsome, arrogant face. I knew now that the cold arrogance was his mask when he was nervous. "Divide me from you how?"

"If he could plant such an ugly doubt in your mind, would you ever trust us again?"

I looked down at the table, at his pale hand on mine, my fingers against his skin. "No, I wouldn't."

"If you think about it," Frost continued, "the rape accusation is also meant to make you doubt us."

I nodded. "Maybe, but to what purpose?"

"I don't know."

"Unless he has taken leave of his senses at last," Doyle said, "he has a purpose to all of this. But I confess that I do not see what it could gain him. I do not like that we seem to be deep in a game and I do not know what we are playing."

Doyle stopped talking, and looked across the table at the lawyers. "Forgive us, please. We forgot where we were for a moment."

"Do you believe that this is all some sort of inter court politics?" Veducci asked.

"Yes," Doyle said.

Veducci looked at Frost. "Lieutenant Frost?"

"I agree with my captain."

Last he looked at me. "Princess Meredith?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Veducci, whatever else we are doing, it is most certainly inter court politics."

"His treatment of Ambassador Stevens makes me begin to wonder if we are being used here," Veducci said.

"Are you saying, Mr. Veducci," Biggs said, "that you are beginning to doubt the validity of the charges made against my clients?"

"If I find out that your clients did what they are accused of, I will do my best to punish them to the greatest extent that the law allows, but if these charges turn out to be false, and the king has tried to use the law to harm the innocent, I'll do my best to remind the king that in this country no one is supposed to be above the law." Veducci smiled again, but this time it wasn't a happy smile. It was more predatory. That smile was enough; I knew who I feared the most on the other side of the table. Veducci wasn't as ambitious as Shelby and Cortez, but he was better. He actually still believed in the law. He actually still believed that the innocent should be spared, and the guilty punished. You didn't often see such pure faith in lawyers who had spent more than twenty years on the bar. They had to give up their belief in the law to survive as a lawyer. But somehow, Veducci had held on. He believed, and maybe, just maybe, he was beginning to believe us.



CHAPTER 3

WE HAD ADJOURNED TO A DIFFERENT ROOM. THE ROOM WAS smaller than the conference room, but then so were some single-family homes. There was a huge mirror on one wall, the glass of which held small imperfections, bubbles near one corner. The mirror had an almost smoky quality in a few spots. Its frame was gilt edged, and worn with age. It had belonged to the original Mr. Biggs's great-grandmother. We were here, in Mr. Biggs's inner sanctum, to make a phone call of sorts, though no phones would be involved.

Galen, Rhys, and Abeloec had had their turn at the questioning in the conference room. They hadn't been able to do much but deny the charges. Abe had stood there with his perfectly striped hair: black, shades of gray, white, all perfectly even and artificial like some artful modern Goth, but it wasn't a good dye job, it was real. His pale skin and gray eyes matched the look. He looked odd in his charcoal-gray suit. No amount of tailoring could make it look like the clothes he would have chosen himself. He had been a party guy for centuries, and his clothes usually reflected that. Abe had no alibi because he'd been trying to crawl into a bottle with a drug chaser at the time of the accused attack. He'd been clean and sober only about two days. But the sidhe can't truly be addicted to anything, just as they can't truly drink or drug themselves into oblivion. It was an upside downside.

The fey couldn't get addicted, but they couldn't use liquor, or drugs, to hide from their problems either. You could get us drunk, but only up to a point.

Galen looked cool and boyishly elegant in his brown suit. They wouldn't let him wear his signature green because it brought out the green undertones in his white skin. What they hadn't seemed to understand was that brown made the green undertone darker still, and much more noticeable. His green curls were cut short, with only one thin braid to remind me that his hair had once fallen in a glorious sheet to his ankles. He had the best alibi of the three, because he'd been having sex with me when the alleged attack took place.

Once I would have described Rhys as boyishly handsome, but not today. Today he seemed every inch the grown-up, all 5 6" of him. He was the only one of the guards with me today who was less than six feet. Rhys was still handsome, but he'd lost some boyish quality, or gained something else. A man who was more than a thousand years old, and had once been the god Cromm Cruach, couldn't grow up, could he? If he'd been human, that's what I would have said, that the events of the last few days had helped him grow up at last.