A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

A nonfertile couple is not allowed to wed, so the guards were doing more than just “guarding”my body.

“Frost, would you give your life for the princess?”

He answered without hesitation. “Of course.” His tone said clearly that that had been a silly question.

A reporter in back who had a television camera next to him asked the next question. “Frost, how did you heal a gunshot wound in less than twenty-four hours?”

Frost gave another deep, shoulder-moving sigh. “I am a warrior of the sidhe.” The reporters waited for him to add more, but I knew he wouldn’t. To Frost, the fact that he was sidhe was all the answer he needed. It had been only a through and through bullet wound from a handgun and no special ammunition. It would take a great deal more than that to stop a warrior of the sidhe.

I hid my smile and started to lean into the mike, to help explain that to the press, when the sweat along his spine suddenly stopped being wet and warm. It was as if a line of cold air swept down his back. Cold enough that I moved my hand away, startled.

I glanced down at his big hand on the table and saw what I’d feared. A white rime of frost was drifting out from his hand. I thanked Goddess that the cloth on the table was white. Only that was saving us from someone noticing. They might notice later when they went back over the camera footage, but that I could not help. I had enough to worry about without thinking that far ahead. In a way this was my fault. I’d accidentally brought Frost into a level of power that he’d never known. It was a blessing of the Goddess, but with new power comes new responsibilities, and new temptations.

I moved my hand from under his jacket to cover his hand with mine, as I spoke into the reporters’ puzzled murmur. I was braced for his hand to be as icy as that slide of power down his back, but surprisingly, his hand wasn’t nearly that cold.

“The sidhe heal almost any injury,” I said.

The frost was spreading out. The edge of it caught the microphone and began to climb it. The mike crackled with static, and I squeezed Frost’s hand. He saw it then, what his fear was doing. I’d known it wasn’t on purpose. He balled his hand into a fist, but with my hand on top of his, my fingers entwined with his. I did not want anyone to notice the frost before it melted.

I turned my face toward his, and he faced me. There was a snow falling in his iris, like a tiny grey snow globe set in his eyes. I leaned in and kissed him. It surprised him, because he’d heard the queen’s admonition about not showing favoritism, but Andais would forgive me, if she gave me time to explain. She’d have done the same, or more, to distract the press from unwanted magic.

It was a chaste press of lips because Frost was that uncomfortable in front of all these strangers. Plus, I was wearing a red lipstick that would smear like clown makeup if we did a tonsil-cleaning kiss. I saw the explosion of the cameras like an orange press against my closed eyelids.

I drew back from the kiss first. Frost’s eyes were still closed, his lips relaxed, almost open. His eyes blinked open. He looked startled, maybe from the lights, or maybe from the kiss. Though Goddess knows I’d kissed him before, and with a great deal more body English. Did a kiss from me still mean that much to him, when we’d kissed so many times I couldn’t count them all?

The look in his eyes said yes more clearly than any words.

Photographers were kneeling as close to the front of the table as the other guards would let them get. They were taking pictures of his face and mine. The frost had melted while we kissed, leaving only a light wetness around our hands. It barely darkened the white cloth. We’d hidden the magic, but we’d exposed Frost’s face to the world. What do you do when a man lets the whole world see just how much your kiss affects him? Why, kiss him again, of course. Which I did, and this time I didn’t worry about clown makeup, or the queen’s orders. I simply wanted, always, to see that look on his face when we kissed. Always and forever.



CHAPTER 2

WE HAD RED LIPSTICK SMEARED OVER BOTH OUR FACES, BUT WE were sidhe, and one of the lesser powers we possessed was glamour. A little concentration, and I simply made my lipstick look perfect, though I could feel it smeared around my mouth. I spilled the small magic across Frost’s face, so that he looked as he had before, and not like he’d laid his face into a pot of red paint and rubbed back and forth.

It was illegal to use magic on the press. The Supreme Court had declared that it infringed on the first amendment, freedom of the press and all that. But we were allowed to use small magic on ourselves for cosmetic purposes. After all, there was no difference between that and regular makeup or plastic surgery for celebrities. The court wisely didn’t try to open that particular can of movie-star worms.

I could have worn glamour instead of makeup in the first place, but it took concentration, and I’d wanted all my concentration for the questions. Besides, if there was another assassination attempt, the glamour would go, and the queen was just vain enough that she’d ordered me into makeup, just in case. I guess so that if the worst happened, I’d look good dead. Or maybe I was just being cynical. Maybe she simply didn’t trust my abilities at glamour. Maybe.

I told Frost that he’d answered enough questions for one day, and it was a feeding frenzy of “Frost, Frost.” There were even a few rude enough to shout out questions like “Is she good in bed…? How many times a week do you get to fuck her?” Gotta love the tabloids, especially some of the European ones. They make our American tabloids look downright friendly.

We all ignored such rude questions. Frost took his post behind me against the wall. I could feel the small magic around him. If he walked too far from me, the glamour would break, but this close I could hold it. Not forever, but long enough to get us through this mess.

Madeline chose one of the mainstream newspapers, the Chicago Tribune , but his question made me wonder if we’d have been better off answering the tabloids. “I have a two-part question… Meredith, if I may?” He was so courteous, I should have known he was leading up to something that wouldn’t be pleasant.

Madeline looked at me, and I nodded. He asked, “If the sidhe can heal almost any wound, then why is your arm not healed?”

“I’m not full-blooded sidhe, so I heal slower, more like a human.”

“Yes, you’re part human and part brownie, as well as sidhe.