Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [46]
We needed more allies who were ours by choice, not by threat. Mistral’s life was dripping away. I would not lose him because we hesitated.
I started to step back from Sholto. He held me close for a second, then let me move away from him. The tentacles caressed me reluctantly, like fingertips trailing down my arms.
The ground was colder as I walked away from Sholto. His magic had been keeping me warm. As I moved across the frozen ground, the three sidhe lords watched me, as if I were something to be cautious of, almost as if they were afraid of me. It wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on the faces of the noble sidhe. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I knew I needed it. People only follow you for two reasons, love and fear. Money didn’t mean anything in faerie. I preferred love, but tonight my enemies had proven that there were more of them than I had known and that there were too many plots to reason with them all. When love and sweet reason will not work, you are left with fear and ruthlessness.
I put my hand over my stomach, still barely different, but I’d heard their heartbeats, saw them moving like some magical, almost unreal shapes on the ultrasound. They were inside me, and I had to protect them. I’d honestly believed that once I was with child the sidhe would value that life, not mine but the children’s. I knew I was wrong now, and I could not afford to be soft. Flinching was no longer an option. They say that being pregnant makes women softer, gentler, but in that moment I understood why so many religions have goddesses who are both creators and destroyers. I was barely pregnant, and I was already willing to do things that once would have made me hesitate. The time for hesitation was past.
Yolland had moved Onilwyn off Mistral, so that the Ash Lord lay on his back in the frosted grass. I picked up Onilwyn’s dropped sword. “It is cold iron, sidhe lords. He meant to sheath it inside my body. I will give him back his blade.”
I raised it two-handed, and I prayed for strength, the strength to protect myself and my children. The strength to protect the fathers of my children, and the people I loved. I prayed, and drove the blade down into his body. The blade pierced his chest just under the sternum. I drove it up through the softer tissue under the ribs. I drove it up into his heart, and left it there, as he’d meant to do to me.
I stood up with blood on my hands and arms, spattering my white gown. “Tell the other lords and ladies that I am with child. I am remade, reborn, and threats to my children and my kings will be met with the utmost severity.”
I looked at them, and held out my bloody hands. My skin began to glow through the blood. The power came over me, and I was warm once more. The scent of roses filled the air, and petals began to fall from the sky like pink rain.
A golden cup appeared in the air in front of me. The chalice that had been lost from the Seelie Court centuries before hovered before me. The chalice was to me as the spear and dagger were to Sholto. It appeared and disappeared at whim. It came to my bloody hands, and it was as bright and shining a magic as it had ever been. Blood and death were not evil, but just another part of life.
The petals filled the chalice, and the Goddess moved in my mind. I knelt beside Mistral’s still form, and dipped my fingers into the petals, but when my fingers came out they dripped with liquid, and I smelled wine. I touched it to his lips, and he groaned.
“Take the arrows out of him,” I said.
It was the dark-haired lord, Yolland, who knelt and began to obey. Turloch said, “It cannot be the chalice.”
“Do not trust your eyes; trust your skin, your bones,” Lord Dacey said. “Can you not feel the thrum of its magic?”
Dacey joined Yolland. Mistral moaned as they jerked the arrows free. His hands convulsed with the pain, but at least he was still mostly unconscious. As the arrows came out, I touched the liquid from the chalice to each wound. They did not heal completely, for they were made by cold iron, but they did close partially, as if they had had