Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [124]
“Oh, my god,” Hayes whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“What did you do?” Dawson said.
“They will be a couple, and there will be children. Two children.”
“How do you know that?” Brennan asked.
I smiled at him, and knew that my eyes had begun to glow, green and gold.
He swallowed hard, as if the sight disturbed him. “Oh, yeah, magic.”
“Make love, not war,” another solider said.
“Exactly,” I said.
Then there was a shriek from the far edge of the field. Cel stood there, screaming wordlessly at me in his gray and black armor, surrounded by followers in every color of armor and some that looked like bark and leaves or animal pelts, but they would stand up to anything but steel and iron. Those dreamlike warriors carried a figure between them, and from the moment I recognized him, my heart failed me. His hair fell loose around him, blacker than the moon-fed night. Their white sidhe hands seemed an insult against all his dark perfection.
Cel screamed across the field at me. “He still lives, barely! Is this mongrel worth your life, cousin? Will you walk to me across this field to save him?”
I could not take my gaze from him, dark and so terribly still. Was he even still alive? Only death would make him so still. The thought that I had lost them both, my Darkness and my Killing Frost, was too much. Too much pain, too much loss, just too much.
I whispered his name. “Doyle.” I willed him to look up, to move, to let me know that if I walked to him, there would be something to save. My hand went to my stomach, still flat, still so unmoved by the pregnancy, and I knew that I could not trade myself for my Darkness. He would never forgive me if I made such a bargain. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the night swam, but I couldn’t faint. I couldn’t be weak; there was no time for weakness. I pushed the feelings away that would unman me, and clung to the ones that would help me: hatred, fear, rage, and a coldness that I didn’t know I had inside me.
“It’s war, then,” I whispered.
“What?” Dawson asked.
“We will give Cel what he wants,” I said.
“You can’t give yourself to him,” Hayes said.
“No, I cannot,” I said, and my voice sounded like someone else’s, as if I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
“If we don’t give him you, what do we give him?” Mercer asked. “War,” I said simply, and began to walk across the field. My soldiers came with me. Either Cel would die this moment or I would. Seeing Doyle thrown onto the ground like so much motionless garbage, I was content with that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I ORDERED MY SOLDIERS TO SHOOT THE UNSEELIE NOBLES who were standing. Cel was a prince of faerie. He was heir to a throne. He had diplomatic immunity. They shouldn’t have taken my order, but we had crossed a battlefield together. I had saved their lives. My orders through their sergeant had kept us alive and unharmed. We were a unit, and as a unit they fired on my order.
I watched the nobles’ bodies jerk and dance to the explosion of the bullets. The noise was deafening. They were wounded in a sort of silence, because the guns were so loud, and seemed to have nothing to do with the movement at the other end of the barrel. It was as if we fired, but they fell because of something else. But not all of them fell; most remained standing. I had to do something before they unleashed their hands of power on us all.
Blood leaked black in the moonlight, but it wasn’t enough blood. I needed more, so much more. For the first time I felt no dread of my power, no pain at the call of it, just a fierceness that was almost joy. That fierceness poured over my skin in a wash of heat. It hit my left hand and poured out my palm.
Dawson yelled next to my ear. “What are you doing?”
I had no time to explain. I said, “The hand of blood.” I pointed that hand, palm out, toward our enemies. I should have worried that I would hit Doyle, but in that moment I knew, simply knew, that I could do it. I could control it. It was mine, this power, it was me.
Blood fountained in black sheets from their wounds. They screamed, then Cel raised his hand. I knew