"You are sidhe, for tonight."
He looked at me. "I don't understand," he said.
I sighed. "I know."
He put his hand just above my skin. I glowed with a white, cold light, like moonlight caught behind glass. The amber glow of his hand reflected off the white glow, turning it pale yellow as his hand moved just above my skin. "What can I do with it?"
I watched him move that glowing hand down my body, still careful not to touch my skin. "I don't know. Every sidhe is different. We all have different abilities. Different variations on a theme."
He laid his hand against the scar on my ribs, just under my left breast. It hurt like the twinge of arthritis when it's cold, but it wasn't cold. I moved his hand away from the mark. It was the perfect imprint of a hand, bigger than Roane's, longer, more slender fingers. It was brown and raised slightly above my skin. The scar turned black when my skin glowed, as if the light could not touch it, a bad spot.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I was in a duel."
He started to touch the scar again, and I grabbed his hand, pressing our flesh together, forcing that amber glow into my white. It felt as if our hands melded together, the flesh parting, swallowing. He jerked away, rubbing his hand against his chest, but that slid the oil over his hand, and that didn't help. Roane still didn't understand that he'd had only the first taste of what it could mean to be sidhe.
"Every sidhe has a hand of power. Some can heal by touch. Some can kill. The sidhe I fought placed her hand against my ribs. She broke my ribs, tore through muscle, and tried to crush my heart, all without ever breaking the skin."
"You lost the duel," he said.
"I lost the duel, but I survived, and that was always win enough for me."
Roane frowned. "You seem saddened. I know you enjoyed it. Why such gloom?" He trailed a finger along my face, and the glow intensified where we touched. I turned my face from him.
"It's too late to save you, Roane, but it's not too late to save myself."
I felt him lie down beside me, and I moved my body just enough to keep him from lying the length of himself along the length of me. I looked at him from inches away.
"Save you from what, Merry?"
"I can't tell you why, but I need to leave tonight, not just this apartment, but the city."
He looked startled. "Why?"
I shook my head. "If I told you that, you'd be in more danger than you already are."
He accepted that and didn't ask again. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
I smiled, then laughed. "I can't go to my car, let alone the airport glowing like a rising moon, and I can't do glamour until the oil wears away."
"How long?" he asked.
"I don't know." I stared down the length of his body and found him limp, though he recovered quickly, as a rule. But I knew something he didn't. Tonight, like it or not, I was sidhe.
"What is your hand of power?" he asked, though it had taken him a long time to ask the question. He must have truly wanted to know, to ask that which was not offered.
I sat up. "I don't have one."
He frowned. "You said all sidhe have one."
I nodded. "It's one of many excuses the others have used over the years to deny me."
"Deny you what?"
"Everything." I ran my hand just above the line of his body, and the amber light intensified, following my touch like a fire when you breath on it to make it glow. "When our hands melded, it was one of the side effects of the power. Our entire bodies can do the same."
He raised eyebrows at that.