Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

”

Frost touched his own shoulder and chest, taking his hands from out of Doyle’s and mine. “If you are not a healer, then why do I feel healed?”

“Old magic,” Rhys said. “The morning light will find this magic gone.”

“How can you be certain?” Doyle asked.

“The voice of the God in my head tells me so.”

No one questioned after that. We just accepted it as true.

Sholto led us to the edge of the field and forest. The dogs moved around us, some choosing their masters, others making it plain that they did not belong to anyone here. The ones that chose among us followed as Sholto walked, but the other black dogs began to fall back and vanish into the night, as if we had imagined them. The hound at my side bumped my hand for a pat, as if to remind me that it was real.

I wasn’t certain the hounds would stay, but they seemed magically to give each of us what we needed tonight. Galen walked surrounded by dogs, circled by sleek-looking greyhounds and a trio of small dogs dancing at his feet. They made him smile, and helped chase the shadows from his face. Doyle moved in a circle of black dogs; they fawned and capered about him like puppies. The terriers followed Rhys like a small army of fur. Frost held my hand over the back of the smallest of the greyhounds. He had no dog at his side — only the white stag that had run into the night. But he seemed perfectly content with my hand in his.

The air was warm, and I looked from Frost’s face to Sholto, and found that Sholto was walking on sand. One moment we were walking in snow-covered fields at the edge of the trees, and the next moment sand sucked at my feet. Water swirled over my bare toes, and the bite of salt let me know that I was bleeding.

I must have made some small sound, because Frost picked me up. I protested, but it did me no good. The greyhounds stayed at his side, dancing around us, half afraid of the curl of ocean, and seemingly worried that they couldn’t stay in contact with me.

Sholto led us up on dry land. The three-headed dog and the bone weapons had vanished, but somehow I didn’t think they were any more gone than the chalice was from me. True magic cannot be lost or stolen; it can only be given away.

We stood in the darkness, hours before dawn. I could hear the rushing of cars on the highway nearby. We were hidden by cliffs, but that would change as the dawn grew near. Surfers and fishermen would come down to the sea, and we needed to be gone before then.

“Use glamour to hide your appearance,” Sholto said. “I have sent for taxis. They will arrive very soon.”

“What magic is it,” I asked, “that lets you find taxis in L.A. at a moment’s notice?”

“I am the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Merry, and taxis are always going between one place and another.”

It made perfect sense, but it made me smile all the same. I reached for Sholto, and Frost let him take me, though not just with his arms. The thick muscular tentacles wrapped around my body, the smaller ones playing along my thighs, somehow finding their way under the borrowed trench coat.

“Next time you are in my bed, I will not be half a man.”

I kissed him, and whispered against his lips, “If that was you as only half a man, King Sholto, then I can hardly wait to have you in all your glory.”

He laughed, that joyous sound that had brought the singing of birds in the sluagh’s dead garden. I thought there would be no answer here, but suddenly over the sighing of surf came singing, one birdsong after another, sliding in joyous celebration in the dark. It was a mockingbird, singing for Sholto’s laughter.

We stood for a moment on the edge of the Western Sea with the mockingbird’s song pouring over us, as if happiness could have a sound.

Sholto kissed me back, hard and thorough, leaving me breathless. Then he handed me back, not to Frost, but to Doyle. “I will return so I can bring the rest of the guards who wish to come into exile with you.”

Doyle cuddled me in against his body and said, “Beware the queen.”

Sholto nodded. “I will be wary.” He began to walk back the way we had come. Somewhere before he vanished from sight I saw the white shine of a dog at his side.

“Everybody remember that the glamour is supposed to hide the fact that we’re naked, and bloody,” Rhys said. “Anyone who doesn’t have enough glamour to pull it off, stand next to someone who does.”

“Yes, Teacher,” I said.

He grinned at me. “I can cause death with a touch and a word; I can heal with my hands for tonight. But damn, conjuring this many taxis out of thin air — now, that’s impressive.”

We walked up to the line of waiting taxis, laughing. The drivers all seemed a little puzzled to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, waiting beside an empty beach, but they let us get in.

We gave the taxis the address of Maeve Reed’s Holmby Hills house, and they drove. They didn’t even complain about the dogs. Now, that was magic.