Free [Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

know the truth of that question. I’ve known that for centuries, but I do not know why you never looked to Cel. He approached you after Essus died. He offered to help you slay me, if you would help put him on the throne early.”
    I think all of us across the room held our breaths in that moment. I had not known this. The looks on everyone’s faces around me said that most of them had not either. Only Adair and Hawthorne behind their helmets were still hidden from their surprise.
    â€œI warned you of his treachery,” Barinthus said.
    â€œYes, and I had you tortured for it.”
    â€œI remember, my queen.”
    Her smile did not match her words, but then neither did the constant caressing of his face and shoulders. “When Meredith came of age, you turned to her. If she had had the magic she now possesses since her stay in the lands to the west, you would have offered her what you offered Essus, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œYou know the answer, my queen.”
    â€œYes,” she said, “I do. But Cel always had the power to be king. Why did you not put him on the throne? Why did you foster a half-breed mongrel of a princess over my pure-sidhe son?”
    â€œDo not ask me this,” he said.
    She slapped him twice, hard enough to stagger him even on his knees. Hard enough to have blood spill from his mouth. “I am your queen, damn you, and you will answer my question. Answer me!” The last was screamed into his face.
    Barinthus answered her, blood flowing from his mouth. “You are a better queen than Cel will ever be a king.”
    â€œAnd what of Meredith? What of my brother’s child?”
    â€œShe will be a good queen.”
    â€œA better queen than Cel a king?”
    â€œYes,” he said, and that one word dropped into the silence of the room like a stone thrown down a great height. You know it will make a sound, but only after a very, very long fall.
    The sound came with her words. “Meredith, you will do nothing with Barinthus that will chance you being pregnant by him. Nothing, is that clear?”
    â€œYes.” My voice sounded strained and hoarse as if I’d been the one screaming.
    â€œContact the police. Do what you think best. I will announce to the court and the media that you are in charge of this little problem. Do not bother me with it again. Do not report to me unless I ask it. Now go, all of you, get out.”
    We went. All of us, even Barinthus. We went, and were grateful to go.

CHAPTER 5
    I CALLED MAJOR WALTERS OF THE ST. LOUIS POLICE DEPARTMENT , who had been in charge of our security at the airport the day before. I called from the only land line phone in the Unseelie sithen. The phone was in the queen’s office. Which always looked to me like a black and silver version of Louis the Fourteenth’s office if he had liked going to Goth dance clubs for the dissipated rich. It was elegant, dark, expensive, and exciting in that chill-up-your-spine way; modern, but with a feel of the antique; nouveau riche done right. It was also a little claustrophobic to me. Too many shades of black and grey in too small a space, as if a Goth curtain salesman had persuaded them to cover every inch of the room with his wares.
    The phone was white and always looked like bones on the secretary’s black desk. Or maybe that’s just me projecting. I did not understand the mood of the queen tonight. I’d asked Barinthus, as we walked to the office, if she’d given him any clues as to why she was behaving so oddly, and he’d said no. No clues.
    Why was I calling the St. Louis police when the faerie lands are technically in Illinois? Because Major Walters was the current police liaison for the lands of faerie and the human police. Once upon a time, a few hundred years ago, there’d been an entire police unit assigned to us. Why? Because not everyone in America agreed with President Jefferson’s decision to bring the fey to