Free Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

Consort, help me!” I was filled with such rage, horrible, burning rage, as if my heart would burst with it, my skin run in sweat with the heat of my anger. I would kill Cair. I would kill her for this. But tonight, now, this moment, I wanted our king to live.
    I glanced into the face of the nightflyer beside me, the black eyes, the pale lipless mouth, the razor teeth. I watched a tear glide down that pale, flattened cheek. Their anger; their rage; their king, but…he was my king, too, and I was his queen, their queen.
    I smelled roses. The Goddess was near. I prayed for guidance, and it wasn’t a voice in my head. It wasn’t a vision. It was knowledge. I simply knew what to do, and how to do it. I saw the spell all the way through, and knew that if it were to work, there was no time to worry that at the end was potentially something horrible. Nothing that faerie could show me tonight would be as horrible as what I’d already seen. Nightmares could not frighten me tonight, for I was past fear. There was only purpose.
    I reached out to Sholto; the nightflyers moved their tentacles back so they only held my wrists as I laid hands on their king’s body. I had raised magic before, with sex and life, but that was not the only magic that ran through my veins. I was Unseelie sidhe, and there is power in death, as there is in life. There is power in that which hurts, as well as in that which saves.
    I had a moment of thinking of using this magic for Doyle, but this magic was only for the sluagh. It would not work for my Darkness.
    The Goddess had given me choices along the way; bring life back to faerie with life or death, with sex or blood. I had chosen life and sex over death and blood. In that moment, with Gran’s blood on my gown, I chose again.
    I looked for Rhys, because I knew Galen would not do what I needed, not in time. “Rhys, bring me Gran’s body.”
    Rhys had to argue with the doctors, and Galen helped him win the argument. Rhys brought her body to me. He laid her body on top of Sholto’s, as if he knew what I meant to do.
    They say the dead do not bleed, but that’s not true. The recently dead bleed just fine. The brain dies, the heart stops beating, but the blood still flows out, for a time. Yes, for a time the dead do bleed.
    Gran looked so small lying on top of Sholto. Her blood flowed out and down his pale skin, over the blackened burns the hand of power had made.
    I felt Rhys and Galen at my back. I heard, vaguely, unimportantly, Galen arguing. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered but the magic.
    I put my hands with the bracelets of tentacles on top of Gran’s thin chest. Tears bit at my eyes, and I had to blink them away to keep my vision clear. My skin flared to life, moonlight glow. I called my power. I called all of it. If ever I were truly queen of faerie, princess of the blood, let it be this night, this moment. Give me all of it, Goddess. I ask this in your name.
    My hair glowed so brightly I could see the burning garnet of it from the corners of my eyes, see it flow down the front of my gown, like red fire. My eyes cast green and gold shadows. The nightflyers that touched me glowed white, and that glow slid around the circle of them, so that their flesh glowed like sidhe flesh, white and moonlight bright.
    Sholto’s body began to glow, as white and pure as our own. His hair ran with yellow and white light, like the first glow of dawn in a winter’s sky. I heard his first breath, a rattling sound, the sound of death living in a gasp.
    His eyes opened, wide and already full of yellow and gold fire. He stared up at me. “Merry,” he whispered.
    “My king,” I said.
    His gaze went to the nightflyers glowing around us. They burned as brightly as any sidhe had ever burned. Sholto said, “My queen.”
    “On the life of my grandmother, I swear vengeance this night. I call kin slayer against Cair.”
    He put his hand over mine, and the glowing tentacles of the nightflyers flowed over his hand