Read Online A Shiver of Light by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

months ago,” Doyle said.
    I nodded, hugging Gwenwyfar a little closer, feeling her deeply asleep in my arms. It helped me stay calm and say, “She would have said, ‘Where is my Darkness? Bring me my Darkness,’ and you would have come like a shadow and ended my life.”
    “I would have done the same if you had asked, Meredith.”
    “I know that, but I would not risk you back in the Unseelie Court by yourself, Doyle.”
    “If anyone could assassinate the queen and live to tell about it, it is Doyle,” Sholto said.
    “If anyone could do it, he could, I know that.”
    “Then why have we hesitated?”
    “Because the word
if
is in every conversation we have about this, and I’m not willing to risk Doyle on an
if
.”
    “You love him and the Killing Frost more than a queen should love anyone,” Sholto said.
    “Do you say that from experience, King Sholto?” I asked.
    “You do not love me as you love Doyle, or Frost. We all know that they are your most beloved, so I am not betraying you if I say that I am not in love with you either.”
    “Don’t you love the babies more than duty, or crown?” Galen asked. I’m not sure I would have asked, not out loud.
    Sholto turned and looked at him, so I couldn’t see the expression he gave the other man, but I was almost certain it was his arrogant face. The one that made him look model handsome and was his version of a blank face.
    “I would give my life to keep them safe, but I do not know if I value them above duty to my people and my kingdom. My throne and crown they could have, but not if it cost my people their independence or their lives. I hope I never have to choose between the children and the duty that I owe my people.”
    “You are the best king that faerie has had in a very long time,” Doyle said.
    “You don’t hold duty above the lives of our children, do you, Doyle?” I asked.
    He turned and smiled at me. “No, Merry, of course not; they are more precious to me than any crown, but then I already proved that I prefer love to a throne. If I would give up being King of the Unseelie Court for love of our Frost, then I would do no less for our children.”
    And that was the answer I wanted, that no duty or sense of honor outweighed the love to these small new lives. I laid my cheek against the soft curls, breathed in the sweet scent of our daughter, and asked, “Who has persuaded the king to stay inside faerie?”
    “The lawyers and the police,” Rhys said.
    “Human lawyers and human police? How have they persuaded the King of Light and Illusion to do anything?”
    “Human law confined him to faerie after he attacked us and the lawyers with us.”
    “He hadn’t left the Seelie Court in years,” I said. “It was no hardship for him.”
    “There’s also a court order keeping him five hundred feet away from you and all your lovers and an injunction preventing him from contacting us directly, even by magic.”
    “That was a fun one to get a judge to sign off on,” I said.
    “We have set new precedents for human law and magic,” Rhys agreed.
    “He attacked a room full of some of the most powerful attorneys in California; it helped our case.”
    “Human police will not be able to arrest him,” I said.
    “There will be no arresting him, Merry. If Taranis escapes faerie and comes for you, or the babies, he will die.”
    “He’ll slaughter the humans,” I said.
    “He’s not bulletproof,” Galen said.
    “Human police aren’t trained to kill first, but second, and that will be all the time he needs to kill them,” I said.
    “Soldiers are trained to kill, not save, and that is what is needed,” Doyle said.
    “Is there still a National Guard unit outside the faerie mounds in Illinois?” I asked.
    “You know there is,” he said.
    “I don’t want them dying for me, Doyle.”
    “They won’t die for you, or us, but as I understand it in defense of their country and constitution.”
    “And what does fighting a king of the sidhe have