A Stroke Of Midnight - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,69

touched his fingers to my lips. "Shhh," he said, and leaned in to lay a kiss where his fingers had laid their warmth. "You showed the world how you feel about me. That's enough. I don't have to own your whole heart." He left us at a jog, hand on his sword hilt, the thin braid of his hair bouncing against his back.

"Galen!" I said. But he didn't look back, and then the hallway turned, and he was gone. A feeling of foreboding came over me. Prophecy had never been my gift, but now I was suddenly so afraid I couldn't draw a good breath.

I grabbed Frost's arm. "He shouldn't be alone. Something bad. Something bad is coming."

Frost didn't argue. "Adair, Crystall, go with him."

The moment the other two men vanished around the corner the panic eased. I could breathe again. And something heavy dropped into my other hand, the one that was still hidden under the furred cloak. I grasped the heavy metal stem of the chalice. I let go of Frost, and put both my hands under the cloak to help hold the heavy cup. I'd never realized how heavy it was until that moment. Power is a burden.

"Are you all right?" Rhys asked.

I nodded. "Yes, yes." I did not want everyone in the hallway to see what I held, but I also knew that if my panic was true, it was because the chalice had warned me. I had meant to tell the queen that the chalice had come to me, but the time never seemed right to tell her. All right, she never seemed sane long enough to have a metaphysical and political discussion. Now the chalice had materialized in my hand, and that usually meant it had an agenda. Something it wanted, at this moment. Something I needed to do. If it had just wanted to help Galen, it wouldn't have been heavy in my hand. The chalice was quite capable of helping out magically without materializing. So why was it here now? What was about to happen? The tightness between my shoulder blades said, something bad.

I took a deep breath, and used my cloak and Frost's coat to give him and Rhys a flash of gold metal under my cloak. Rhys's eye went wide, and Frost's face went even more arrogant, more angry. Rhys turned surprise to that joking half smile that he wore when he wanted to hide what he was thinking. It had taken me months to realize what that smile meant.

It was Ivi's voice, full of laughter and with an edge of that joking that hid so much. "Oh, my," Ivi said, and I knew that he'd seen it, too. I half expected him to tell the rest of the hallway what he'd glimpsed, but he didn't. He just looked at me with that surprised laughter all over his face, as if he had beheld some wonderful private joke.

Hawthorne and Amatheon stood to either side of him, and they said nothing. Amatheon's pale face had gone bloodless inside the hood that he had kept in place to hide his beauty from the woman. His flower-petal eyes went wide, but I doubted anyone but myself and Frost could see his face past the hood. Hawthorne's reaction, or even if he had seen, was hidden behind his helmet.

"What is wrong?" Arzhel asked.

Amatheon said, "Nothing. I simply was not aware the princess was gifted with prophecy, that is all." His voice sounded a little breathy, but otherwise normal, maybe even a little bored. You do not survive in the high courts of faerie by giving things away. We are the hidden people, and most of us earn that name.

Arzhel put his head to one side, as if he wasn't entirely certain he believed Amatheon, but he said nothing. I did not know Arzhel that well, but I was certain he'd never guess that I held the chalice under my cloak.

Carmichael approached Ivi the way you'd sneak up on a statue in an art museum, afraid to touch it, compelled to run your hands down the smooth, hard curve of it. Afraid someone will tell you to stop.

"Carmichael," Dr. Polaski said. "Carmichael." She touched the other woman's arm, but she might as well have been touching the wall for all the good it did her.

"Rhys, choose someone other than Ivi to watch her," I said.

Rhys grinned, and moved himself between the woman's hesitating hand and Ivi's body. "Andais would have ordered me. I like a