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

decorated with large patches of red and black like a calico cat. I’d left Nicca behind, because his beautiful new wings looked so fragile. I could not bear to see her shred them as some punishment to me. The moment I realized that that was why I’d left him behind, I knew that I had half-expected her to find a way to be angry with me about all this. She had to be angry with someone, and I’d always been a favorite target when I was younger. But only when my father was not at court, never when he was close enough to interfere. After his death, things had been worse in so many ways.
    â€œAnswer me, Meredith,” the queen said, but her voice didn’t sound angry. She sounded tired.
    â€œI am not certain how to answer you, Aunt Andais. I am not aware that I did anything to bring on the deaths of Beatrice and the reporter.”
    â€œBeatrice,” she said, and she started walking toward me, toward us. Her pale feet were bare except for the silver-grey polish on her toes. Her legs were long and slender where they pulled free of the fur. She had no thighs to speak of. The sidhe women are the perfect models for this era; they have no curves, and it’s not due to dieting. The sidhe do not have to diet, they are simply supernaturally thin.
    Even for a sidhe woman, Andais is tall, six feet, as tall as most of her own guards. She stood with all that height over me, leaving one leg artfully bare, and bent so that the line from upper thigh to toe was graceful and framed by the charcoal grey of fur.
    â€œWho is Beatrice?”
    I would like to have thought she was toying with me, but she wasn’t. She truly did not know the name of her own pastry chef. She knew her head cook, Maggie May, but beyond that, I doubted she knew any of the kitchen staff. She was queen, and there were layers of servants and lesser fey between her and someone like Beatrice.
    If I had not been here to say her name, no one else would have known it. That made me angry. I fought to keep it from my voice as I answered, “The fey that was killed. Your pastry chef. Her name was Beatrice.”
    â€œMy pastry chef. I have no pastry chef.” Her voice was thick with scorn.
    I sighed. “The Unseelie Court’s pastry chef, then.”
    She turned and whirled the fur around her like a lightweight cloak. It would have been so heavy I would not have had the strength to move it like that. I was stronger than a human, but I was not as strong as pure-blooded sidhe. I wondered if she’d done that little movement to remind me of that or just because it looked pretty.
    She spoke with her back to us. “But all that belongs to the Unseelie Court belongs to me, Meredith, or did you forget that?”
    I realized that she was trying to pick a fight with me. She’d never done that before. She’d struck out in anger with someone else or with me. She’d tormented me because it pleased her. She argued with me if I disagreed with her, or argued first, but she had never tried to start a fight with me. I didn’t know what to do.
    â€œI have not forgotten that you, my aunt, are queen of the Unseelie Court.”
    â€œYes, Meredith, remind me that I am your aunt. Remind me that I need your blood to keep my family on the throne.”
    I didn’t like the way she worded that, but it hadn’t been a question, so I didn’t try to answer. I stayed kneeling and mute.
    â€œIf you had been strong enough to protect yourself yesterday there would not have been reporters in my sithen.” There was the first warm edge of anger in her voice.
    â€œIt was my duty to keep the princess safe,” Doyle said.
    I reached out to him with my good arm before I could stop myself, but he was just out of reach. I shook my head. Do not bring her anger upon yourself, I tried to tell him with my eyes.
    â€œOur duty,” Frost said from the other side of me.
    I looked at him and gave him exasperated eyes. If she was