A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

But isn’t it true that some of the noble sidhe of the Unseelie Court are concerned that you are not sidhe enough to rule them? That even if you gain the throne, they will not acknowledge you as queen?”

I smiled into the flash of lights and thought furiously. Someone had talked to him. Someone who should have known better. Some of the sidhe did fear my mortality, my mixed blood, and thought that if I sat on the throne I would destroy them. That my mortal blood would take their immortality. It had been the reason behind at least one, maybe both, of the extra attacks yesterday. We had an entire noble house, and the head of another, imprisoned now, awaiting sentencing. No one had briefed me on what to say if the question arose, because no one had dreamt that any sidhe, or lesser fey, would have dared talk to the press, not even to hint.

I tried for half-truth. “There are some among the nobility that see my human and lesser fey blood as inferior. But there are always racists, Mr….”

“O’Connel,” he said.

“Mr. O’Connel,” I said.

“Do you believe that it is racism then?”

Madeline tried to stop me, but I answered because I wanted to know how much he knew. “If not racism then what, Mr. O’Connel? They don’t want some mongrel half-breed on their throne.” Now if he pushed it, he’d look like a racist. Reporters from the Chicago Tribune don’t want to look like racists.

“That’s an ugly accusation,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

Madeline stepped in. “We need to move on. Next question.” She pointed to someone else, a little too eagerly, but that was all right. We needed to change topics. Of course, there were other topics that were almost as bad.

“Is it true that a magic spell made the policeman shoot at you, Princess Meredith?” This from a man in the front row who looked vaguely familiar in the way that on-air personalities often do.

The sidhe do not lie. We make a sort of national sport out of almost lying. We can lie. But if we do, then we are foresworn. Once upon a time you were kicked out of faerie for that. The answer to the question was yes, but I didn’t want to answer it. So I tried not to. “Let’s drop the ‘princess,’ guys. I’ve been working as a detective in L.A. for three years. I’m not used to the title anymore.”

I wanted to avoid having anyone ask who had done the spell. It had been part of the attempted palace coup. We were so not sharing that a sidhe noble had caused one of the police helping to guard me to try to kill me.

Madeline picked up her cue perfectly, calling on a new reporter with a new question. “This is quite a display of sidhe muscle, Prince—Meredith.” The woman smiled when she left off the “princess.” I was hoping they would like that. And I didn’t need the title to know who I was. “Is the extra muscle because you fear for your safety?”

“Yes,” I replied, and Madeline moved us on.

It was a different reporter, but he repeated the dreaded question. “Was it a spell that caused the policeman to shoot at you, Meredith?”

I drew breath, not even sure what I was going to say, when I felt Doyle move up beside me. He leaned over the microphone like a black statue carved all of one piece—black designer suit, black high-collared dress shirt, shoes, even his tie, of the same unrelieved blackness. “May I take this question, Princess Meredith?” The silver earrings that traced the curve of his ear all the way up to its point flashed in the lights. Contrary to all the faerie wannabes with their cartilage implants, the pointy ears marked him as not pure high court, as something less, something mixed like me. His black hair was ankle-length, and he could have hidden his “deformity,” but he almost never did. His hair was pulled back in its usual braid. The diamond stud in his earlobe glittered next to my face.

Most of his weapons were as monochrome as the rest of him, so it was hard to spot the knives and guns, darkness on darkness. He had been the Queen’s Darkness, her assassin, for more than a thousand years. Now he was mine.

I fought to keep my face as blank as his, and not let the relief show. “Be my guest,” I said.

He leaned down to the microphone in front of me. “The attempt on the princess’s life yesterday is still under investigation. My apologies, but some details are not ready to be discussed publicly.” His deep voice resonated over the mike. I saw some of the female reporters shiver, and it wasn’t fear. I’d never realized he had a good voice for a microphone. I think he, like Frost, had never been on mike before, but unlike Frost, it didn’t bother him. Very little did. He was Darkness, and the dark isn’t afraid of us; we’re afraid of it.

“What can you tell us about the assassination attempt?” another reporter asked.

I wasn’t sure if the question was directed at Doyle or me. I couldn’t see his eyes through his wraparound black-on-black sunglasses, but I swear I felt him look at me. I leaned into the mike. “Not much, I’m afraid. As Doyle says, it’s an ongoing investigation.”

“Do you know who was behind it?”

Doyle leaned into the mike again. “I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but if you insist on asking questions that we are not free to answer for fear of hindering our internal investigation, then this press conference is over.”

On one hand, it was neatly done; on the other hand, he’d said a bad word—internal.

“So it was sidhe magic that bespelled the policeman,” a woman yelled.

Shit, I thought.

Doyle had caused it, he tried to clean it up. “By ‘internal’ I meant that it involves Princess Meredith, the potential heir to Queen Andais’s throne. It does not get much more internal than that. Especially not for those of us who belong to the princess.” He was deliberately trying to distract them into asking about my sex life with my guard. A much safer subject.

Madeline cooperated by picking one of the tabloid reporters for the next question. If anyone would fall for sex over internal politics, it was the tabloids.

They swallowed the bait. “What do you mean, you belong to the princess?”

Doyle leaned in closer to the mike, close enough that his shoulder brushed against mine. It was very subtle and very deliberate. It would probably have been more eye-catching if Frost and I hadn’t played kissy-face first, but Doyle knew how to play to the press. You had to start slow and give yourself someplace to go. He’d only started playing to the media in the last few weeks, but as with everything, he learned quickly and did it very well. “We would give our life for her.