Seduced by Moonlight

CHAPTER 3

I heard Kitto's voice in the hallway long before we got to the bedroom. I couldn't hear everything he said, but the tone was pleading, and the voice that answered him wasn't Kurag's. It was Kurag's queen, Creeda. Over the last month I'd learned to truly dislike her.

Kitto stood in front of the mirrored dresser, drawn up to every inch of his four-foot height. He was the only man I'd ever taken to my bed who made me feel tall. The bare back he showed us was perfectly masculine, with a swell of shoulders, chest, a narrow waist, just done small. From the front he looked human enough, but from the back, without his shirt, you could see the scales. They were bright and iridescent, a glittering rainbow of color that ran down the middle of his back on either side of his spine. I knew that they spread out onto either side of his very upper buttocks. The rest of him was a white perfection of skin like mother-of-pearl. His Seelie mother had been raped by a snake goblin in the last great goblin war.

I noticed that his curly black hair had grown long enough to trail over his neck where the scales began. He'd need a haircut soon if he were to maintain the goblin tradition of doing nothing to hide his deformities.

He was saying, as we entered, «Please, Goblin Queen, do not make me do this.»

She sat in the mirror, not a reflection, but as clear as if she sat just in front of us. She wasn't much taller than Kitto, and her hair was long and black, but where his hair was silken, hers looked as dry and harsh as it truly was. She had more eyes scattered about her face than I could count. That along with a nest of arms around her middle gave her the look of some great spider. A smile split the wide lipless mouth and flashed fangs enough to make any spider proud. She had only two legs and two breasts. If those had been multiples, she'd have been the epitome of goblin beauty.

Seeing the female goblins always made me wonder why the goblin men wanted sidhe women. Maybe it was more of a power thing than a sex thing, like most rapes.

The queen, Creeda, leaned toward her side of the mirror, filling our vision with her dozens of eyes and that oddly off-center mouth. There was a nose in there somewhere, but it was so overwhelmed by everything else that you had to concentrate to notice it. «You will do what ye're told,» she said, and her voice had taken on that whining growl we'd all begun to dread.

Kitto's small hands went to the top of his shorts, and he began to slide them down.

«Stop, Kitto,» I said, making sure my voice was clear and cheerful, and that my face didn't show how much I disliked Creeda.

Kitto pulled his shorts back into place and turned to me, the gratitude on his face so plain that I hurried to make sure he wouldn't turn toward the mirror again. I drew him against the side of my body with one arm and placed my other hand against his soft hair. I pressed his face gently into the curve of my neck and shoulder so he wouldn't turn and look at Creeda. If she once understood how truly afraid of her he was, she'd make the Summerlands into a wasteland to have him at her mercy.

«You have interrupted,» she whined.

I smiled, and knew my face was pleasant, even bright and shiny. I'd been relearning a lifetime of polite lies that had kept me alive as a child in the faerie courts. You had to be able to lie with your face, your eyes, your entire body language, to maneuver through the politics of the courts. I wasn't always perfect at it, but the goblins were less noticing of such things. The true test was always my aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness: She noticed everything.

«Greetings, Goblin Queen. I am so sorry that I have kept you waiting.»

She snarled at me, flashing a mouth full of fangs, as if she had more of them than she needed, like she had eyes. I wondered if she had trouble eating without molars. I knew beyond doubt that her bite was poisonous. Of course, so was Kitto's, but his one pair of fangs were retractable. Creeda's were not.

Her face was a mask of fury as she mouthed her pleasantries. «Greetings, Meredith, Princess of the Sidhe, I have enjoyed my wait. Truly, if you have other things to do, Kitto and I will be busy for a little while longer.» She shifted most of her eyes to stare at Kitto with a hungry look. But there were too many eyes, and they were too randomly placed for her to turn all of them his way. Some moved independently to watch as Rhys and Doyle entered the room behind me.

I smiled harder. «Whatever do you mean?»

«If he is truly sidhe, as you claim, I want to see him nude and shining.»

A deep voice spoke off camera, as it were, out of sight of the mirror. «All our talking hinges on Kitto being sidhe. There are creatures of faerie who do not glow with magic during sex. Goblins are one of those creatures.» Kurag moved into view. He wasn't as tall as most sidhe, but he was broader. His shoulders were nearly as wide as Doyle was tall. Some of the bigger goblins are among the bulkiest of the fey. After looking at the queen, Kurag's three eyes seemed underdone. His skin was the old yellow of bad wounds; of paper when it's rotten enough to break in your hands. He was covered in lumps, bumps, and warts, each considered a beauty mark among the goblins.

One large lump on his right shoulder held an eye. A wandering eye, the goblins called it, because it wandered away from the face. Kurag's other eyes were a yellow that bordered on orange, but the eye at his shoulder was lavender, with a spill of black lashes to frame it. There was a mouth on his chest, to one side, that matched that lavender eye, lovely lips, and straight, almost human-looking teeth. The small pair of arms on the side of his body near the eye and mouth waved at me.

I waved back and said, «Greetings, Kurag, Goblin King. Greetings also to Kurag's twin, Goblin King's Flesh.» The stray bits were part of a parasitic twin trapped in the goblin's body. The mouth could breathe, but not speak. The eyes and hands moved independently of Kurag. When I was a child, I'd played cards with the hands while my father and Kurag did business. I was sixteen before I realized that it was a whole separate person trapped inside the other male's body. At sixteen Kurag had shown me both his own manhood and that of his twin. He'd thought the idea of two penises would impress me. He'd been wrong.

I'd never truly been comfortable around Kurag after that. The thought of one thinking being trapped in the body of another, unable to speak or choose his own way, or even his own sexual partners, had filled me with a horror that no other trick of genetics among the fey had ever quite exceeded.

From the night I'd realized that the extra bits were a different person, I'd greeted them both. To my knowledge, I was the only person who did so.

«Greetings, Merry, Princess of the Sidhe.» He looked at his queen, and she scampered clown from the great wooden chair. She made sure he didn't have to look at her twice. Kurag was not above hitting her if she was slow to do his bidding. In fact, he wasn't slow to hurt anyone who displeased him. The goblins feared him, and they feared little.

He settled himself into the chair. It creaked under his thick bulk. I don't mean to imply that Kurag was fat; he was not. He was just solid. «We have talked and maneuvered this last moon span, but it was Creeda who said it. If Kitto is not truly sidhe, then we talk for nothing.»

«We have told you he is sidhe. The sidhe may try to trick, but we are forbidden to lie outright.»

«Let us say we wish to see it with our own eyes.» He wore that look that said he was a lot smarter than he appeared, and a lot less ruled by his desires. There was a shrewd mind in that powerful body. Most of the time he hid it, but today he seemed strangely serious, business-like. I wondered what had happened to take the teasing out of Kurag.

I almost asked, then knew it would have been a mistake. One fey does not admit to another that he is so easy to read. It simply isn't done, especially if one of them happens to be king. It is never wise to let any king know that you see too deeply into him.

«What did you have in mind, Kurag?»

His gaze switched from me to Rhys, who had moved up to stand to one side of me. «I see our white knight.» This was usually Rhys's cue to say, I'm not your white knight. Today he just smiled.

Kurag frowned. I don't think he liked his insult being ignored. He held out a great yellow hand, and his queen came to him. He picked her up one-handed as if she were light as air, and sat her on his lap. «Creeda longs for a taste of sidhe flesh. She didn't get to fuck the white knight when he was here.»

I felt rather than saw Rhys stiffen beside me. He wasn't going to be able to pull this off. I'd asked too much of him. Damn it.

But I'd underestimated Rhys.

He sat down on the bed. I glanced behind to see that he sat leaning forward, making the top of the robe gape, framing his chest, white surrounding white like a piece of smooth ivory wrapped up in a cloud. He propped his heels on the underpart of the bed so the robe parted in the middle, not showing much flesh, but giving the promise that only a little more movement would flaunt his legs, his thighs, all of him.

A small sound drew me back to the mirror. Creeda was making a high, thin noise in her throat. I think it was supposed to be provocative. It came out as an animal sound, but not a sound of any animal that had ever worn fur. There was something definitely insect-like about the noise.

«You gonna flash us?» Kurag asked.

Rhys just smiled.

Kurag's eyes narrowed. I watched the first flush of anger start across his face. In that moment, I realized that Rhys's teasing could backfire, badly.

Doyle stepped into the heavy silence. He pushed away from the post of the bed where he'd been leaning, watching the show. He came to stand on the far side of Rhys, even though there was room to stand on my other side. He was far less dressed, damn near naked, but neither Kurag nor his queen teased Doyle. He was still the Queen's Darkness or, simply, Darkness. The goblins can say what they like, but they were afraid of the Dark, just like everyone else.

«The time for our trip grows near, Kurag, Goblin King, and we need to know if we are visiting your sithen. Is Princess Meredith to grace the goblins' court, or not?» He leaned his long, dark body against the dark wood of the bedpost. He usually stood at attention, but I think he, like Rhys, was playing with the goblins. His arms were crossed over his chest so that the nipple ring glittered against his arm. Even his legs were crossed at the ankle. The bathing suit was so close to the color of his black skin that he looked nude. I knew just how much more compelling he looked with that last bit of cloth gone, but the goblins didn't.

Creeda was making that high-pitched noise again. She reached out with three of her hands, as if she'd try to touch the Darkness.

Kurag pulled her hands back, hugging her to him. A set of her hands moved to caress him. It might have been a nervous gesture, or she might have been so moved by the sight of the men that she needed sex. In goblin culture if you needed sex, you just took it, wherever you happened to be or whatever you happened to be doing. It made business meetings with them, odd.

«Prove that Kitto is sidhe. Prove it beyond doubt.»

«If we prove it,» I said, «you agree to our proposal?»

He shook his great head. «No, but if he is not sidhe, then our talks are finished.»

I let some of my impatience with them show. «So, what, Kitto puts on a show for you, and we gain nothing from it? I don't think so.»

The queen's hands had found Kurag's groin through his pants. Kurag ignored it, as if nothing were happening. «I think all our talks have been for nothing. I still don't think the princess has the balls to do what you're pressing her to do, Darkness.»

«I am pressing her to do nothing, Kurag. Princess Meredith decided this path on her own.»

Kurag shook his head. «I know you would not lie outright, but I also know that a woman besotted with a man will do much from a hint. It doesn't have to be an order. A word here, a word there.» His eyes lost focus for a second, and he pushed the queen's hands away from his body. She struggled to keep her nest of hands on his groin. He squeezed her thin arms in his huge hands like a bouquet of flower stems. Only when pain crossed her face did she release him. He held the pressure for a second longer, as if he meant to crush her arms, then let her go.

She sat in his lap, rubbing her arms with some of her other hands. She looked sulky, like a child told, No. I'd have been angry. Creeda saved her anger for other things.

Doyle finally answered, «I have done nothing to persuade the princess, except remind her she will someday be queen.»

«It is not certain she will be queen. Cel could still be king.»

Doyle pushed away from the bed to stand straight and perfect, as he usually did. «Have you ever known me to stand at the side of the loser of such a contest?»

Kurag took in a great breath of air, then let it out slowly. «No.» He didn't look happy about it.

«Then enough stalling. We have offered you a fair bargain.»

Kurag's gaze flicked to me. «Is the Darkness your voice, Merry?»

«No, but when I agree with everything he's saying, I don't see a problem with letting him finish.»

«So he will finish the bargaining.»

I sighed. «No, that is not what I meant, and you know it. We will bring your warriors into their full power. Think of it, Kurag: Goblin warriors with sidhe magic in their veins.»

«There are those who fear goblins with such magic,» he said.

«I am not one of them.»

He frowned, then stared at me. I let the silence draw out. I learned long ago that most people can't abide silence. They feel compelled to fill it. I waited, and finally he spoke. «Why are you not afraid? All that has kept the goblins from conquering all of faerie is the magic of the sidhe. Give us that to match our strength in battle, and none will stand before us.»

«And if the goblins go to war on American soil, you will be cast out, not just from faerie, but from the last country that will tolerate you.» I shook my head. «Centuries ago when we warred one upon the other, then perhaps I would fear, but not now. You like it here, Kurag. You like it far too much to risk it all, especially when you can't guarantee victory.»

«There are those among the sidhe who will fear us gaining their magic.»

I nodded. «I know, but that is not your problem. That is mine.» Truthfully, I didn't think that bringing over half a dozen goblins to sidhe would tip the balance of power. Half-sidhe didn't usually survive to childhood among the goblins. When grown and in our power, we are hard to kill, but as children we are fragile things. Goblins come from the womb hard to kill.

He ran his big hands down the much smaller queen, the way you'd pet a dog. «You risk much, Merry.»

«How much I risk is my business, Kurag. I offer you a chance at what the goblins have been denied for millennia. I offer you sidhe magic. No one else can give you that. Cel cannot. Only me, and those who stand with me.»

«An extra month for each goblin you make sidhe is too much. A day extra.»

I leaned forward, forcing my own robe to gape, and knew that the red satin framed my breasts as if they were white jewels. I'd never have tried this on another sidhe. I was far too human to appeal to most of them, but for the goblins, I could be beautiful. «A day extra is insulting, Kurag, and well you know it.»

His gaze was solidly on my cleavage. He licked his thin lips with a large, rough tongue. «A week then.»

Creeda stroked his face, half of her eyes on me, half on Kurag. For whatever reason, I made the Goblin Queen nervous. Kurag had proposed marriage once upon a time, but I think it was desire for sidhe magic in the goblin bloodline more than true desire for me. Oh, Kurag would fuck me if I'd let him, but that wasn't much of a compliment. Kurag would probably have fucked anything if it held still long enough.

I sat up straighter and began to fuss with the robe as if I were hot. «Why not a year for each of the ones I bring over? Yes» — I looked up from undoing the sash of my robe—"yes, I like that. A year for each of them, and that includes Kitto.» I opened the robe to frame the rest of my body. To show clearly how little I was wearing.

«No, no year. If you stripped naked for me, you could not get a year.»

I smiled up at him, putting the shine into my tricolored eyes, two shades of green and a circle of gold. «And you cannot bargain me down to a day.»

He laughed then, a deep, rolling belly laugh. It held all the unfettered joy that the goblins had—and that the sidhe seemed to be missing these years. There was other masculine laughter from out of sight of the mirror. I knew Kurag and Creeda were not alone. I wondered whom he trusted enough to hear us bargain.

«You are your father's daughter, Merry, I'll give you that. You know your worth.»

I looked down, playing coy, because I didn't want him to see my face clearly. I was thinking too hard, and wasn't sure I could keep it off my face. I needed to get Kurag to agree to what we wanted. All he had to do to keep me from succeeding was simply say no. I needed him to say yes. The question was how to overcome his natural caution about interfering in sidhe business. How could I get him to agree to something he didn't want to do? Or maybe was afraid to want.

I let the robe fall to the floor. «How much can I be worth, if you will not sell sky and earth to see me nude? If I were truly beautiful, you would not have said it.» I gave him a face that was questioning, and I put the doubts that I had around the sidhe into my eyes. My own mother had been the worst of my critics. It had only been a few months ago that I'd realized she'd been jealous of me. That I realized my mother looked more human than I did. She had the height and the slenderness of figure, but her hair, her skin, her eyes, they were human. Mine weren't.

Kurag read the doubt in my eyes, and I watched his own gaze cloud over. «You do doubt yourself.» He sounded almost awed by it. «I've never met a sidhe woman who didn't believe she was Goddess's gift to males.»

«Those same women tell me I am too short to be beautiful,» I traced my hands across my breasts, «they say my breasts are too large,» I traced down my waist to my hips, «that I curve in places they do not,» I traced down my thighs. Sidhe women don't have thighs. I let my hair fall across my face as I moved, so that my eyes gazed at him half hidden behind the scarlet of my hair. «They tell me I am ugly.»

He spilled out of his chair, dumping his queen to the floor. He roared, «Who says these things? I will crush their jaws and see them choke on their own lies!»

The outrage on his face, the trembling rage of him—I took it for the compliment it was. I realized in that moment that Kurag might want me for more than just politics or supernatural bloodlines. In that heartbeat, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the Goblin King loved me, in an odd sort of way. I had expected many things today, but not love.

I don't know why, but I suddenly realized there were tears trailing down my face. Crying because some goblin had offered to defend my honor? I gazed up at Kurag, and I let him see what was in my face, my eyes, all of it. Because I realized that I still didn't believe I was beautiful. The guards wanted me because to be without me was to be celibate. They pursued me so they might be king. None of them wanted me, for me. Maybe that was unfair, but how would I ever know why they came to my bed? I looked at Kurag and knew that here was a man who'd known me since I was a child, and he thought I was beautiful, and worth defending, and he would never bed me, never be my king. Knowing that anyone adored me, just for me, meant something. Something I had no words for, but I let Kurag see that I valued it. That I valued him, and how he felt about me.

«Merry-girl, don't cry, Consort save me from that,» Kurag said, and his voice was softer, though still rough.

Kitto came up from the floor where he'd been sitting so he could lay his mouth against my cheek. His tongue flicked out, caressing my skin, the twin tips tickling along my cheek. When I didn't protest he licked my cheek, drinking in my tears. The goblins considered most body fluids precious and not to be wasted. I understood what he was doing, and frankly, just then, almost any touch would have done. I slid my arm across his shoulders and leaned into his body as he licked my tears away.

Rhys was behind me, on his knees, on the bed. He hugged me from behind. And because Kitto and I were so close, he was forced to hug Kitto as well. Only those of us in the room understood what a breakthrough it was for him to willingly come that close to Kitto. Just his willingness to do it made me feel better.

«Not a year, Merry, not even for your tears. Not even for that look on your face.» Kurag still stood, so wide that he seemed to fill the mirror. He loomed over us, partly because the mirror was raised, and partly because he was standing too close to the glass on his side.

Kitto had drunk me clean on that side of my face. He had to turn the front of his body more firmly against me as he tried to reach my other cheek. He was pressed tight in the circle of Rhys's arm and my body. I expected Rhys to open his arm enough to let Kitto move to the other side of my body, but he didn't. He kept us pressed together in the crush of his arms. The moment I realized we were effectively trapped, unless Rhys released us, my breath caught, my pulse speeding against my throat.

My voice breathed from my body full of that pulse, and that sudden awareness. «Are my tears worth a month, Kurag?»

Kitto twisted against the strength of Rhys's arms. It forced Kitto's body hard against mine, but it was Rhys's whisper against my hair, «Turn your face to him,» that made me turn so that he could reach the other cheek.

Kitto's tongue caressed my cheek, his breath almost hot against my skin. Rhys tightened his arms, and it was like being bound in chains of flesh and muscle. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't think.

«A fuck and a food to turn any goblin's head,» Kurag said, and his own voice was low, growling, but not with anger.

I whispered, «Rhys, please, can't think.»

He loosened his arms, but only enough to give the illusion of freedom. I knew the game, but the middle of political negotiations was not the time for it. Part of me wanted to tell Rhys to let us go, but part of me loved the feel of his arms around us, the solidness of his body pressed against my back, the whisper of his breath against my hair. I knew that Kitto liked few things better than being ordered around, being given no choices. It made him feel safe. It was comforting, but for me it wasn't safety I was seeking.

I managed to focus on Kurag, but I knew that my face showed some of what I was feeling. I kept waiting for Doyle to interfere, to stop this unseemly display, but it was as if the room held only Rhys, and Kitto, and me.

«Let me show you what a real goblin can do for you, Merry,» Kurag said. His gaze slid to Rhys. «Let me cut off a choice piece of flesh. It'll grow back if it's done right. For that I'd agree to almost anything.»

It was Rhys who said, «You left Kitto out of the bargaining.» His voice was almost husky.

«He is a goblin, and I can do to him what I choose, when I choose.»

«I don't think so,» I said.

«He's sidhe now,» Rhys said, in that deliciously low voice. «He was anyone's meat once, but that has changed.»

«He is still as he was. He still craves someone to dominate him. I fear no one who seeks a master.»

I found my voice, and it was almost normal again. «Yet you talk about cutting up someone who is his master. What logic is that, Kurag?»

«I do not need his permission to take what I want from Kitto. I can take what I like from any goblin if he has not the strength to keep it from me.» He pointed at Kitto. «And he is not that strong.»

I said, «There are many kinds of strength, Kurag.»

He stepped back from the mirror and sank into his chair once more. He was shaking his head. «No, Merry, there is only one kind of strength: the strength to take what you want.»

«And the strength to keep it,» a male voice said out of sight of the mirror.

Kurag flashed a frown in the direction of the voice, then turned back to me. «Let me fuck you, and taste the white knight, and I'll agree to a month for every goblin you make sidhe.»

Rhys let me go, slowly, almost reluctantly. If he'd had trouble touching Kitto so closely, it didn't show. Kitto had cleaned the last of the tears from my face and stood pressed against the front of my body.

«I can't help you break your marriage vows, no matter how loosely you hold them. Our laws forbid it. As for my guards, all my guards, they are not meat.» I kissed the top of Kitto's head.

«Then we can have no bargain.» For a second I saw the relief of that decision on his face.

Doyle's voice fell into the silence like some deep, heavy bell, the purring beat of his voice playing along my skin. «I was there when the goblins were stripped of their magic, Kurag. I remember your wizards. I remember that there was a time when the goblins' magic was as feared as their physical power.»

«And who slaughtered every wizard and witch among us?» There were the beginnings of anger again.

«I did,» Doyle said. I'd never heard two words so empty of emotion, so carefully nothing.

«And it was sidhe magic that sucked the magic from our veins.»

«That was not an Unseelie spell, Kurag. We meant to win the war, not to destroy you.»

«That bastard Taranis did not destroy us. Him and his shining folk who did the spell. They sucked our magic, and they kept it. Don't believe otherwise, Darkness. That shining bunch of hypocrites kept what they stole.»

«I put nothing past the King of Light and Illusion,» Doyle said.

Kurag stared at Doyle for a second or two, then spoke slowly, even though I could still see the anger on his face. «You helped take our magic. Why would you help give it back?»

«I did not agree that it should be taken the first time. I had no problem with killing your people. They were slaughtering us. If their spells had stayed in place, it might have gone badly for the sidhe.»

«We'd have won, and owned all your shining asses.»

Doyle shrugged. «Who can say what will happen in a war? But I say this now: We can offer you back some of the magic that was stolen away.»

I whispered against the curve of Kitto's ear, «Shine for him, Kitto.»

Kitto raised his head to meet my eyes with his own. His face was so solemn, as if he didn't want to do it. I wanted to ask why not, but I couldn't ask in front of Kurag because I didn't know what answer Kitto would give. I'd learned long ago that in the middle of negotiations, you never ask a question you don't know the answer to. The answer is so likely to hurt you.

Kitto said, in a small voice, «I'm afraid.»

I understood then. Anger, lust, all sorts of emotions could make the magic flare, but fear, strangely, could kill it. It depended on the kind of fear. If it was that mind-numbing, panic-inducing kind of terror, you just couldn't concentrate around it. But a little fear could help you bring it on, and sometimes your greatest fears could manifest your greatest powers. Still, especially at the beginning, when the magic was new, you never knew which way fear would work for you.

Kitto couldn't draw his magic because he was scared to death of Kurag and Creeda. He was too terrified to think clearly, let alone do magic.

I cupped his face in my hands. «I understand.» I glanced behind me at Rhys, and sighed. Rhys had played a good game up to now, but that one forceful hug was the most physical interaction he'd had with Kitto. Asking Rhys to help me do what amounted to foreplay with Kitto was asking too much. My white knight, as Kurag put it, had done his duty for the day.

With his face still cupped in my hands, I laid a gentle kiss on Kitto's mouth.

«What's this?» Kurag asked.

I raised my face enough to see his face. «I want Kitto to call his magic, but he fears you too much.»

«What use to the goblins is such frail magic?»

«In the beginning of your powers, you sometimes need help drawing them.»

Doyle added, «It is like any other weapon, Kurag. Someone new to the sword may hesitate in battle, or be unsure where to strike the blow.»

He frowned, settling into his big chair as if it were suddenly less comfortable. «I don't do magic, but if you say it's like a weapon, then so be it.» I could tell by his face that he'd gotten our meaning, though.

Creeda hopped back into the frame of the mirror. Kurag picked her up absently, as if she were a pet that had asked to be taken onto his lap. «Shine for us, Princess, shine for us,» Creeda said in an eager voice that still held a touch of that high, mechanical whine.

Kurag cuffed her gently on the side of the body. She rolled her eyes up to him. «What? You wanted me to make the little one shine.»

Looking at Kurag, fighting to keep his face neutral, I realized that it was one thing for Creeda to have her fun with Kitto, but another to include me. In that moment, I knew two things. One, I had the advantage of Kurag in any negotiations; two, the other goblins would notice, if they hadn't already, and they'd see it as a weakness. The goblins don't have a hereditary monarchy. You become king because you are strong enough to slay the old king. No Goblin King ever dies quietly in his sleep. They all feared Kurag, but if they sensed one weakness, they'd suspect there were others. Goblins, like sharks, sniff for blood.

«Will the rest of us miss the show?» The male voice that had commented earlier spoke off camera again.

Kurag sent a baleful look in the direction of whoever it was. «The princess doesn't do shows.» He turned back to me. «Or has that changed since you got your harem?» He'd managed to get his face back into a belligerent blankness, using anger to hide whatever he was thinking.

«To ease Kitto's fears, I will caress him.»

There were shouts and sounds from beyond the mirror. They were typically masculine sounds, and wouldn't have been out of place in most bars on a Saturday night.

Kurag ignored them, as he should have, but the effort showed in his big hands, the set of his shoulders. His queen tensed, as if she were poised to leap to safety.

«It will not be much of a show by goblin standards, or even by Unseelie standards, but I will ease his fears and open him to his magic.»

«I've seen him shine, Merry. I believe he's sidhe. I believe he has magic in him. But not the kind of magic that will help on a battlefield. And that is the only kind of magic we need.»

«You say that, Kurag,» Doyle said, «because the goblins have never known any other kind of magic.»

«I say it because it is true.» His eyes were more orange than yellow, colored with his anger.

«Do you want to see him shine with the magic that could be yours, Kurag?» I asked, and I dropped my voice a little. I admit to using his attraction to me against him. If we could gain the goblins for near-permanent allies, we could keep most of our enemies at bay. For the lives of those I held dear, for the future of the Unseelie Court itself, I could manipulate a king.

He gave a gruff nod. Creeda clapped her many hands together, those that had mates to clap, and bounced like a child on his lap.

I looked at Kitto. I asked him with my eyes if he was ready. He mouthed, Yes. I kissed him gently on the mouth, not as foreplay but as a thank-you, and as an apology for making him do something he didn't want to do.

I could feel the reluctance in his body and I was torn. I knew Kitto well enough to put him in the right mind-set quickly, but if I did it in front of the goblins they'd know how to do it, too. I knew how to make Kitto shine, because I was his lover and his friend. If I went slower and did more things, with the touches that were truly his favorites lost in many touches, then Creeda would not have the keys to his body. It would take longer, but I didn't want to help Creeda torment him. I would do my best to see that Creeda never got her hands on him, but I knew too much of royal politics to be certain I could keep him safe. You do not lightly refuse a queen, any queen.

I made my decision, and drew Kitto into my arms.