Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (6 page)

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.

I sat on the edge of the bed with Kitto in my lap, his legs straddling my body as if I were the boy and he the girl. His shorts were stretched tight across the firm roundness of his buttocks, and my hands cupped that firm flesh through the cloth. I held him in my lap while my mouth explored his face, his neck, his shoulders. I bit gently at his shoulder, and he shuddered against me. Even through the cloth, I felt him grow firm. I kept one hand on his buttock, to keep him from falling, but the other I trailed up his back. I played on the rainbow scales on his back and found the line of naked skin that traced up his spine. I caressed a fingertip up that long, smooth line of skin, and it brought his breath shivering, flung back his head, put his face up to mine with his eyes closed and his lips half parted. But still he did not shine.

He was beautiful as he sat in my lap, but there was only the magic of bare skin and delighted flesh. He did not glow with power.

"Make him glow, make him glow!" Creeda cried, as if she had waited as long as she could to exclaim.

At the sound of her voice, Kitto wilted, both with the slump of his shoulders and the lowering of his head, and the press of him against my stomach lessened. It was as if just the sound of her voice made him remember unpleasant things. The goblins do not see marriage vows the way we do, and both partners are allowed certain freedoms. Whatever child results from whatever liaison is raised by the married couple as their own. There's no shame or screams of being cuckold. Maybe that's why there's no hereditary monarchy. But whatever the custom, I hadn't known that Kitto had ever been Creeda's pet.

Kurag said, "Hush, Creeda." But the damage was done.

Kitto wrapped his legs around my waist like a child clinging for comfort. He hugged himself to me and buried his face against my shoulder.

I looked up at Kurag. "I didn't know your queen knew Kitto that well."

"She didn't."

I patted Kitto's back and wasn't sure I believed him, but I couldn't think of a good reason for him to lie. "Then I don't understand his level of fear around her."

"Creeda, like most of our women, is eager to try a goblin who is also sidhe. He will have his choice of females at the banquet." Kurag didn't look particularly happy about it, and I wasn't exactly sure why, but it didn't matter, not really.

"Goblins will rape an enemy, or a prisoner, but they do not rape each other," I said.

Kurag looked past me to Rhys. "Your pale prince knows just what we do to prisoners." He gave an ill-tempered leer, as if he was happy to be back on ground he enjoyed. He liked teasing Rhys.

Rhys moved on the bed behind me. He'd been very still during the scene with Kitto. "I know I was a fool, Kurag. The princess has told me that I could have saved myself a great deal of pain, if I'd known what to ask for."

Kurag's leer faded into a frown. "A sidhe admitting he is a fool, it's a miracle."

I glanced back just enough to catch Rhys's nod. "We are an arrogant race, but some of us can learn from our mistakes."

"And what have you learned, pale prince?"

"That before we arrive for any banquet at your court we'll be very clear on what can happen to us, and what can't. To all of us, including Kitto."

"Now, that's arrogant," Kurag said. "No sidhe can deny the goblins access to another goblin."

I added, "If Kitto doesn't want to be with the women, then he can say no."

"I will have a taste of him," Creeda said.

"Not if he says no," I said.

"I will have him," she said, leaning toward the glass.

Kitto cringed in against me. "Control your queen, Kurag," I said.

"Why, she's one of hundreds who feel the same, Merry."

I held Kitto closer. "He might not survive the attentions of hundreds of goblinesses."

Kurag shrugged. "We're immortal. We heal."

I shook my head, but it was Rhys who answered. "No, we won't give Kitto over to that."

"He is mine," Kurag said, that grumbling roar trickling into his voice. "I have given him to Merry, but he is still mine. I am his king, and I say what will and what won't happen to him."

"Kurag," I said, and when those nearly orange eyes were upon me, I continued. "I know your laws. You do not rape your own people, not unless they have broken some law and you have deemed it fit punishment for the crime."

"There is one exception to the rule, Merry."

I must have looked as puzzled as I felt. "I know of no exception to this rule." Silently, I thought,
Except that to refuse your ruler is a dangerous thing.

"I thought your father made sure you were versed in our ways."