A Kiss of Shadows - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,79

someone was lying to me, because they couldn’t both be telling the truth. “Sholto said I was under the queen’s order of execution.”

“Think, Princess. If Queen Andais truly desired your execution she’d drag you home so that the court could see what happens to sidhe who flee the court against royal orders. She would make an example of you.” He motioned at the room, his hands spreading flame as he moved, like afterimages. “She would not have you killed in hiding, where no one would see.” The flame collected back upon itself like water droplets sliding over a plate, but stayed dancing above his fingertips.

I put a hand on the edge of the sink. If this conversation didn’t end soon I was going to be on my knees, because standing wasn’t going to be an option. How much blood had I lost? How much blood was I still losing?

“You mean that the queen would want to see me die,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

Something thudded into the window with enough force that the room seemed to shake. Doyle whirled toward the sound, drawing a long knife, or a small sword, from behind his back. The greenish flames hung floating in the air above one of his shoulders like an obedient pet.

The light played on the blade and the carved-bone hilt. The hilt was a trio of crows, their breasts meeting, their wings entwined, their beaks open bearing jewels for the pommel.

I sank to the floor, one hand on the sink. “That’s Mortal Dread.” It was one of the queen’s private weapons. I’d never heard of her loaning it to anyone for any reason.

Doyle turned slowly from the empty window. The short sword caught the wavering light. “Now do you believe that the queen sent me to save you?”

“Either that, or you killed her for the sword,” I said.

He looked down at me, and the look on his face said he didn’t see the humor in that last remark. Good, because I wasn’t being funny. Mortal Dread was one of the treasures of the Unseelie Court. The sword had mortal blood tied to its forging, which meant that a death wound from Mortal Dread was truly a death wound for any fey, even a sidhe. I would have said that the only way to get the sword was to pry it from my aunt’s cold, dead hands.

Something large was hitting the window over and over again. I’d hoped they’d try to break the wardings by magic, which would take some time, but they were going to simply destroy what I’d warded. If the window was no longer there then the ward would no longer work. Brute force over magic—sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Tonight it was going to work. There was a sharp crumbling sound as the glass cracked around the wire that ran through it. Without the wire in the glass, it would have already broken.

Doyle knelt by me, sword pointed tip down like you’d hold a loaded gun for safety. “We are out of time, Princess.”

I nodded. “I’m listening.”

He reached his empty right hand toward me, and I flinched, falling back on my butt on the floor. “I must touch you, Princess.”

“Why?”

The glass cracked enough that wind oozed through the room. I could hear something large rubbing against the wall, and the high twittering calls of the nightflyers urging their beefy brethren on.

“I can kill some of them, my princess, but not all of them. I will lay my life down for you, but it will not be enough, not against the might of nearly the entire sluagh.” He leaned in close enough that I had to either let him touch me, or lie on the floor and start crawling crabwise backward away from him.

I laid my hand against him, touching the leather of his jacket. He continued pushing forward, and my hand slid off to the black T-shirt underneath. I felt something wet. I jerked back, and my hand was covered black in the eerie half-light.

“You’re bleeding,” I said.

“The sluagh were most persistent that I did not find you tonight.”

I had to put one hand behind me to keep from falling to the ground, because he was that close. Close enough to kiss, or to kill.

“What do you want, Doyle?”

The glass behind us shattered, spraying the floor in a tinkling shower of shards like a sharp hard rain. “My apologies, but there is no time for niceties.”

He let the sword fall to the floor and grabbed my upper