A Kiss of Shadows - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,81

I plunged my fingers into his wound; his body stiffened and I felt him react to the pain. I think he would have released me then, but the third thing happened on the heels of his pain, with my fingers plunged inside the meat of his body. The queen’s mark filled his mouth and slid inside mine.

A sweet rush of power filled my mouth, pouring from Doyle’s body into mine and melting warm between our lips, as if we were both sucking on the same piece of candy. The power swelled inside us, melting between us in long sweet strands. It filled us to the brim with warmth, like mulled wine poured into twin cups, until power ran down our bodies, through our bodies, to finally pour in liquid warmth across our skin.

Doyle broke the kiss, pulling away from me. I slid to the floor, not from blood loss this time, but because my knees wouldn’t hold me.

I couldn’t seem to focus on anything, as if I were looking at the world through a haze. Doyle was leaning both hands on the sinks, head down, as if he was light-headed, too. I heard him say, “Consort, save me.”

I don’t know what my snappy comeback would have been, because the door burst open, slamming into the far stalls. Sholto was silhouetted in the doorway. He’d thrown the grey overcoat across his bare chest, but the nest of tentacles showed like some monster trying to pull itself from his skin.

I had a sense of movement behind me, and turned to see Doyle go for the sword that he’d laid in the sink. I felt Sholto’s power rise like a wind in the lighted doorway. I realized suddenly that they both thought the other had come to kill me.

I had time to yell, “No!”

Doyle’s flame vanished, swallowed into a darkness that was velvet and perfect and filled with the sounds of moving bodies.

Chapter 16

I SCREAMED, “DON’T! SHOLTO, DOYLE, DON’T HURT EACH OTHER!” I HEARD flesh hitting flesh, the sliding footsteps as someone glided through the dark, someone drew a hard breath, then small noises.

“Dammit, listen to me, neither of you is here to harm me. You both want me alive.” I don’t know if they didn’t hear me, or didn’t care. There was at least one sword being used in the dark, so I didn’t get up and walk toward the light switch—I crawled. I kept the weight of the sinks to my right and searched the darkness just ahead with my left hand.

The fight continued in almost utter silence. I could hear them straining against each other. Someone cried out, and I said a silent prayer that no one was dead. I almost crawled into the wall, touching it at the last second. I worked my way up until I found the light switch. I hit the lights, and the room was suddenly blindingly bright. I was left blinking in the brilliance.

The two sidhe were locked together, bodies straining against one another. Doyle was on his knees, a tentacle wrapped around his neck. Sholto was covered in blood, and it took my eyes a second to realize that one of his stomach tentacles had been severed and lay twitching next to Doyle’s knee. Doyle still held the sword, but Sholto’s hand and two tentacles held it away from the other sidhe. Their other hands were locked against each other as if they were engaged in a game of finger wrestling. Except this was no game. I was actually surprised that Sholto seemed to be holding his own. Doyle was the acknowledged champion of the Unseelie Court. There were very few who could stand against him and almost none who would win. Sholto wasn’t on that short list, or so I’d thought. Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye: a small glow. When I looked straight at it, nothing was there. Magic is like that sometimes—only visible through peripheral vision. There was something glowing on Sholto’s hand: a ring.

As I watched, the sword slipped from Doyle’s grip and he started to go limp in Sholto’s grasp. Sholto grabbed the sword in his hand before it could hit the ground. The tentacles stayed around Doyle’s arm. I was moving forward before I had time to think of what I’d do when I got there.

Sholto held Doyle’s limp body in his tentacles and raised the sword in a two-handed overhead plunge, like you’d use to drive a knife into someone’s chest.