Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [86]
I wondered if he knew that, and something moved me to tell him. “It was your eyes that night, Mistral, that made me risk death at the queen’s hands.”
He frowned. “You barely knew me then.”
“True, but you looked at me while she bled some of you and made the others watch. Your eyes told me what you thought of me, that I was just another useless royal.”
He studied my face. “You nearly died that night because I looked at you?”
“I had to prove you wrong, Mistral. I had to risk everything to save you all, because it was the right thing to do. It was the dutiful thing to do.”
He held my hand in both of his, though his hands were so big, and mine so small, that he was holding more of his own skin than mine. He was still studying my face, as if judging the weight of my words.
“She does not lie,” Doyle said from the other side of me.
“It’s not that. It’s that I have not had a woman care so much what I thought in longer than I can remember. That she reacted so, from just that glance….” He frowned at me, then asked, “Were we always destined to be together? Is that why one glance from me did so much?”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. “I do not know. I only know that it is what happened. You make me have to be more than I planned on being, Storm Lord.”
He smiled then. It was a smile that any man might have given a woman. A smile that said how pleased he was, and how much my words had meant to him. Everyone thinks that the magic of being with all the men is about the otherworldliness of them and me, but some of the most precious moments are the most ordinary. Moments that any man and woman could share, if they loved, and spoke the truth.
Did I love Mistral? In that moment, as he gazed up at me, I had only one answer: Not yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE SERVANT CAME IN WITH A COAT. IT WAS LEATHER pieced together with heavy Frankenstein stitches. The leather was shades of black, different sections having different textures, and some pieces of gray and white among the blackness, as if the coat had been made from different kinds of animals. The stitches and differences in skin should have made it an ugly coat, but it didn’t. Somehow it all worked like a club kid meets Goth, with a little motorcycle thrown in.
The really surprising thing to me was that it fit, not just closely, but perfectly. It was so tight through the arms and upper body that I had to take the bloody hospital gown off to fasten the buttons. I knew the feel of the buttons; they were carved bone. The coat fit tightly enough that my cleavage was framed nicely in its V-neck. The tightest part of the coat was under my breasts, so it was almost an empire waist. Then the coat spilled out and down like a ballgown. It buttoned all the way to the floor.
Sholto actually knelt in front of me to finish the buttoning. He smiled up at me. “You look lovely.”
Was it shallow to feel better just because I had a coat that fit me well? Maybe, but as bad as I was feeling, I’d take anything that made me feel better.
“It fits perfectly,” I said. “Whose clothes am I borrowing?”
“It was made for the queen of the sluagh,” he said, standing.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that the court seamstress had a dream some months back. She was told that I would take a queen and that she should sew accordingly.”
I rubbed my fingertips down the leather. It was so soft. The seamstress had lined the inside of the coat so that the stitching didn’t rub my skin.
“You’re saying your seamstress knew Meredith would be queen before anyone else?” Mistral asked.
“Not Meredith, not by name, but the measurements, yes.”
“And you let her sew for some phantom queen?” Doyle said.
“Mirabella has sewn for this court for centuries. She has earned the right to be indulged a little. But many of the clothes were made of scraps and pieces, like this coat, so it wasn’t a loss.” He gave me an appreciative smile. “Seeing Meredith in it lets me know that nothing