“King Sholto,” Agnes corrected me.
“King Sholto,” I said dutifully.
“Why would that request bring you to our garden, Princess Meredith?” Sholto asked.
“Doyle told me to get us back to the dead gardens. I did just that: I called a door to the dead gardens. But I did not specify which garden, and you know the rest.”
Sholto stared at me. The triple gold of his irises — molten metal, autumn leaves, and pale sunshine — made his face beautiful, but it did not make the look one bit less intense. He stared at me as if he would weigh me with a look.
“This cannot be true,” Agnes said.
“If it was a lie, they’d have a better one than this,” Sholto said.
“Do you still believe everything that a piece of white sidhe flesh tells you, King Sholto? Have you learned nothing from what they did to you?” Agnes asked. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I guessed it had to do with the bandages he wore.
“Silence,” Sholto said, but there was something in his face, the way he turned, that spoke of embarrassment. The last time I’d seen Sholto, he had hidden behind a mask of arrogance, much as Frost did. Whatever mask he had built to hide behind in court seemed to have shredded, so that he now had nothing for his emotions to hide behind.
“May we approach you, King Sholto?” I asked, and my voice was clear, but softer. The tall, elegant, arrogant man whom I’d met in Los Angeles wasn’t the same man who stood before me now, shoulders slightly hunched.
“No, you may not,” Agnes said, in her strangely rich voice. Most night-hags spoke in a cackling voice, as if they’d swallowed gravel.
Sholto turned on her, and the movement cost him, for he nearly stumbled. It seemed to feed his anger. “I am king here, Agnes, not you. Me!” He thumped himself in the upper chest. “Me, Agnes, not you, me! I am still king here!”
He turned to us. The front of his bandages showed fresh blood, as if he’d torn stitches. Sholto was half highborn sidhe and half of the sluagh, and the sluagh were even harder to injure than the sidhe. What could have hurt him this badly?
“Bring her onto solid land, Darkness,” Sholto said.
Doyle led me forward, carefully. Rhys’s hand never left my other arm. They eased me out onto the broader shoreline. The others followed, mincing their way onto secure ground.
Doyle took my hand and led me forward, very formally, toward the waiting sluagh. We had to come forward slowly, because of the bones. We’d seen what they’d done to Abe, and we were both barefoot. We’d had enough injuries for the night.
“How I hate you, Princess,” Agnes said.
Sholto spoke without turning around to look at her. “I am very close to losing my patience with you, Agnes. You don’t want that.”
“They move like shadow and light, so graceful through the bone field that is our garden,” Agnes said, “and you watch her as if she were food and drink, and you were starving.”
The comment made me look up, away from the dangerous bones. “Do not do this, Agnes,” he said, but his face was naked to his need. She was right about that look on his face. It was more than just lust, though it wasn’t love, either. There was pain in his gaze, like a man watching something that he knew he could not have, and he wanted that thing more than anything else in the world. What had laid Sholto bare to the eyes of the world? What had stripped him to this?
Doyle stopped in a space of ground mostly clear of bones, just out of reach of the sluagh — or as far out of reach as we would get here. The other men had followed a few steps behind us, as if Doyle had given them some signal that I hadn’t seen, so they wouldn’t crowd Sholto and his guards. We were in the wrong. We had invaded their land, not the other way around, so we needed to be the more polite. I understood that, but looking into Sholto’s face I felt like we had walked into the middle of something that had nothing to do with us.
I began to kneel and pulled Doyle down with me. I bowed my head, not just to show respect, but because I couldn’t bear the look on Sholto’s face anymore. I didn’t deserve such a look. I was wet, splattered with mud. I must have looked like something the cat dragged in out of the storm, yet he stared at me with a desire that was painful to see. I’d already agreed to have sex with him, as he was part of the royal guard for the queen, as well as a king in his own right. He would have me, so why did he look at me the way Tantalus must have looked in Hades?
“You are princess of the Unseelie Court, in line to be queen. Why do you bow to me?” Sholto’s voice tried to be neutral, and almost achieved it.
I spoke, still gazing at the ground, my hand still resting in Doyle’s. “We came to your lands accidentally, but uninvited. It is we who have trespassed. We who owe you an apology. You are King of the Sluagh, and though you are a part of the Unseelie Court, you are still a kingdom in your own right. I am only a royal princess — perhaps heir to a throne that rules over your lands — but you, Sholto, you are already a king. A king of the dark host itself. You and your people are the last great host, the last wild hunt. They are a wondrous and fearsome thing, the people that call you king. They, and you, deserve respect in your own lands from anyone less than another high ruler.”
I heard someone shift behind me, as if one of the other guards would have protested some of what I said, but Doyle’s hand was peaceful under mine. He understood that we were still in danger; besides, what I said was true. There had been a time when the sidhe understood that you respected all the kingdoms in your care, not just the ones that were blood of your blood.
“Get up, get up, and do not mock me!” Sholto’s words were inexplicably rage-filled.
I looked up to find that handsome face consumed with anger, twisted with it. “I do not understand — ” I began, but he didn’t give me time to finish the sentence. He strode forward, grabbed my hand, and jerked me to my feet. Doyle came with me, tightening his grip on my other hand.
Sholto’s fingers dug into my upper arm as he pulled me closer and raged inches from my face. “I did not believe Agnes. I did not believe that Andais would allow such outrage, but now I do. Now I believe it!” He shook me hard enough to make me stumble. Only Doyle’s hand kept me from falling.
I fought to keep my voice even as I said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you, don’t you!” He let go of me abruptly, sending me stumbling back against Doyle. Sholto dug his uninjured hand into the bandages at his chest and stomach, tearing at them.
Doyle turned his body so that I was on the other side of him, and his body would be between me and whatever was about to happen. I didn’t argue with him. Sholto was moody, but I’d never seen him like this.
“Did you come so you could see what they did? Did you want to see it?” He screamed the last, filling the cave with echoes, as if the walls themselves screamed back.
I could see what was under the bandages now. Sholto’s mother had been a noble lady of the Unseelie Court, but his father had been a nightflyer. The last time I’d seen Sholto’s upper body bare, without him wasting magic to make it look smooth and muscled, and fully sidhe, there had been a nest of tentacles starting a few inches below the breast area to stop just above his groin. He had the full set of tentacles that the nightflyers used as arms and legs, as well as the tiny suction-tipped tentacles that were secondary sexual organs. It had been these little extras that had made me avoid taking him to my bed — Goddess help me, I’d seen them as a deformity. But that wasn’t a problem now. The skin where the tentacles had been was now just raw, red, naked flesh. Whoever had done it hadn’t just chopped the tentacles off, they had shaved them away, along with most of his skin.
CHAPTER 11
“THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE, MEREDITH — YOU DIDN’T KNOW. YOU really didn’t know.” His voice sounded calmer, half relieved, half reinjured, as if he hadn’t expected it.