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"She bragged that her mother had raped one of us during the last war." His hands dug into my shoulders
until it almost hurt. "Don't blame this particular horror on the sidhe, Kurag. The goblins did this to
themselves."
It was plain on Kurag's face that he had known the truth. "You have lied to us, Kurag," Doyle said.
"No, Darkness, I said, Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours? I
made it a question, not a statement of fact."
"That is splitting the truth a wee thin," I said.
Kurag looked at me. He nodded. "Perhaps I have learned from the sidhe just how thin the truth may
come."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rhys said.
Doyle held up his hand. "Enough of this. Either we are going to agree to Kurag's terms, or we walk
away and have the goblins for another two months, and only two months."
"I'll give you time to talk among yourselves," Kurag said. He raised a hand as if he'd wipe the mirror.
"No," Doyle said, "no, if we give you time you'll come up with some other reason to avoid this
agreement. We do it now, today."
I looked at Doyle and could read nothing from his face, or his body. He was the untouchable Darkness,
the left hand of the queen. The figure I'd feared as a child. Though admittedly I'd never seen him this
unclothed. The Queen's Darkness wore clothes from his neck to his ankles to his wrists, all year, all
weather. Once to see Doyle's bare arms had been tantamount to him being undressed in public, but here
he stood wearing only the tiny black thong, and somehow clothes or no clothes, he was still the same
untouchable, unreadable, frightening Darkness.
"Which of you will bed Siun?" Kurag asked.
"I will," Doyle said.
I was the one who said, "No."
"None of us touches her," Rhys said.
"We will make this agreement, Rhys," Doyle said.
Rhys was shaking his head. "No, I swore that I'd kill Siun when next we met. I swore blood price on it."
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"You swore blood price?" Doyle asked.
Rhys only nodded.
Doyle sighed. "We agree to trying to bring over all the half-sidhes you have, Kurag, but this Siun must
answer to Rhys when we come to your court."
"What if she kills him?" Kurag asked.
"Then the blood price is satisfied. We will not seek vengeance for it."
"Done," Kurag said.
"And after I have killed Rhysss," Siun said, "I will have his trull, my Kitto. I will ride him till he shines
underneath me." She glared at Rhys with her dozen eyes, all ringed with blue, sky blue, cornflower, and
violet. The eyes were lovely, and belonged in a different body. "Thisss one wouldn't shine for me. If you'd
have glowed underneath me, I wouldn't have taken your eye."
"I told you then, and I tell you now. You can force yourself on me, but you can't make me enjoy it.
You're a lousy lay."
She swarmed off the chair and was suddenly filling the mirror, as if she'd grown larger, all those legs
reaching for us, those hands, and that strange half-formed mouth. She battered at the glass with her limbs
and shrieked, "I will kill you, Rhysss, and the princessssss will not save Kitto. I will have him, and I'll
make him sssshine for me!"
Kitto screamed from the far side of the bed. We all turned and looked at him. His face was pale, his
blue eyes huge in his face. He flung out his right hand as he screamed, "Noooo!"
Rhys flung us both off the bed a second before I felt the spell shiver through the air above us. It was as if
the glass had melted, and Siun began to slide through that melting. Head, one arm, her other arm flailing,
searching for something to hold on to. She slid farther, fighting the fall, and not able to stop it.
Kitto put both hands in front of him as if to ward her off, and he screamed again, wordless this time,
pitched high with terror.
Rhys pressed me to the carpet, covering my body with his. There was more screaming, and not all of it
was Kitto's. Doyle's voice said, "Let the princess up, Rhys." He sounded puzzled.
Rhys went to his knees, looking around the room, then staring toward the glass, and it was Doyle's hand
that helped me to my feet.
Frost was holding Kitto, rocking him as you'd comfort a child. I turned to look where Rhys was staring.
Siun had stopped sliding through the mirror. Half her long black legs were on this side of the glass, and
the other half were still back with Kurag. One of her hands reached into this room; the other was beating
on the glass on the other side, as if trying to break it. She was cursing low and steady. She tried to
struggle free, flashing her breasts in the sunlight, but she was trapped. If she'd been mortal, she'd have
died, but she wasn't mortal, and she wasn't dying. She was just stuck.
Doyle went close to the glass, but stayed out of the reach of Siun's struggling legs. "It seems solid now."
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Kurag spoke on his end of the glass. "Now isn't this a bitch of a predicament?"
"Yes," Doyle said.
"Can you fix it?" Kurag asked.
Doyle glanced at Kitto, who seemed nearly catatonic in Frost's arms. "It was Kitto's magic. He could
reverse it, if he understood how. But no one else in this room can do this."
"What by the Consort's horns did Kitto do?" Kurag was close to the mirror on his side, looking at it, but
carefully not touching the glass.
"Some sidhe can travel through mirrors, as most can speak through them. Though I've never heard of
any who could travel over this many miles." Doyle was studying the mirror and the trapped goblin as if it
were a purely academic problem and he was trying to figure out how it worked.
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