Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [39]
He looked back at his father. “I remember who I am, Father, but you taught me that all are equal before the hunt. Did you not call it the great leveler?” Barris’s voice held sorrow, or perhaps disappointment. The fear was beginning to fade under the weight of years. Years of never quite being what his father wanted in a son. Years of knowing that though he looked every inch a Seelie noble, he was pretending as hard as he could.
I looked at Barris, who had always seemed as perfectly arrogant as all the rest. I had never seen beyond that perfect, handsome mask. Was it the magic of the hunt that was giving me clear vision, or had I simply assumed that if you looked perfectly sidhe—tall, thin, and so perfect—you would be happy and secure? Had I truly still believed that beauty was security? That if I had only been taller, thinner, less human-looking and more sidhe my life would have been…perfect?
I looked into Barris’s face, saw all that disappointment, all that failure, because his beauty hadn’t been enough to win him his father’s heart.
I felt something I hadn’t expected: pity.
“Help us save Mistral and you may yet keep your life. Keep silent, let him die, and I cannot help you, Barris.”
Sholto looked at me, his face careful not to show surprise, but I think he’d heard that note of pity in my voice, and found it unexpected. I couldn’t blame him. Barris had helped kill my grandmother, and tried to kill my lovers, my future kings, but it hadn’t been him. He had been trying to please his father, and had bargained with the only asset he had, his pure sidhe blood and all that tall, unnaturally slender beauty.
Finbar had had nothing to bargain with with Cair except his son’s pale beauty. To be accepted in the court, to have a pure-blooded sidhe lover and perhaps husband, that had been the price for Gran’s life. It was the same price for which Gran had agreed to marry Uar the Cruel all those centuries ago. A chance to marry into the Golden Court—for a half human, half brownie, a once-in-a-millennium chance.
“Tell us, Barris, or you will die another night.”
“Tell them,” Cair said, her voice thin with fear. Which said that she didn’t know what their plan was for Mistral, only that there was one.
“We found a traitor to lure him out into the open. Our archers will use cold iron arrowheads.”
“Where is it to take place?” Sholto asked.
Barris told us. He confessed everything while some of the king’s guards held Finbar. The King was indeed gone. He’d vanished to safety. The guards didn’t hold Finbar for what he’d tried to do to me, but because his actions could be seen as acts of war against the Unseelie Court. That was a killing offense at both courts, to act without the express orders of your king or queen in such a way that it could cause war. Though part of me was certain that Taranis had agreed to the plan, although not outright. He was of a flavor of kingship to ask, “Who will rid me of this inconvenient man?” Deniability that he could take oath on. But Taranis was prey for another court, and another day.
I tried to turn my mare toward the doors and the saving of Mistral, but it shook its head. It pranced nervously, but would not move.
“We must finish here, or the hunt will not move on,” Sholto said.
It took me a moment to understand, then I turned to Cair, where she stood pressed to the wall, surrounded on all sides by the great hounds. I could have used them as my weapon. They would have torn her apart for me, but I wasn’t certain if I could sit through that, and it would take longer. We needed something quicker, for Mistral’s sake and for my own peace of mind.
Sholto held out a spear formed of bone. Did it appear out of the air? It was one of the marks of kingship among the sluagh, but it had been lost centuries ago, long before he took the throne. It and the dagger of bone in his hand had returned with the wild magic when we had first made love.
I took the spear.
Cair began to scream, “No, Meredith, no!”
I moved the long pole until I had the weight of it. I would not throw it; there was no room