Read Online Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan - Free Book Online Page A

gave him the curtsy rank demanded, and not a hair more. “Lord Ifarren.”
    “Lady Lune.” Vidar twiddled a crystal goblet in his bony fingers. “How good of you to come.”
    She waited, but he did not offer her a seat.
    After a leisurely study of her, Vidar set aside the goblet and rose. “We have known one another for a long time, have we not, my lady? And we have worked together in days past — to mutual benefit, as I weigh it. It pains me to see you thus fallen.”
    As a stag in season was pained to see a rival fall to a hunter’s arrow. Lune cast her gaze modestly downward and said, “ ’Tis kind of you to say it, my lord.”
    “Oh, I have a mind to offer you more kindness than just a sympathetic word.”
    She instantly went on guard. Lune could think of nothing Vidar might gain by offering her true help, but that did not mean he
would
not. As cut off as she had been from the inner circles of court gossip, he might have some gambit in play she did not see. But what would she have to offer him?
    No way to find out, save to walk farther into his trap. “I would be most glad to hear anything your lordship might extend to me.”
    Vidar snapped his fingers, and a pair of minor goblins hurried to his side. At his gesture, they began unlacing the points of his sleeves, drawing them off to reveal the black silk of his shirt underneath. Ignoring them, Vidar asked, “You once lived for an extended period of time among mortals, yes?”
    “Indeed, my lord.” He raised one needle-thin eyebrow, and she elaborated. “I was a waiting-gentlewoman to Lady Hereford — as Lettice Knollys was known, then. Her Majesty bid me thence to keep a daily eye upon the mortal court, and report to her its doings.”
    The skeletal fae shuddered, a twitchy, insectlike motion. “Quite a sacrifice to make on the Queen’s behalf. To live, day and night, under a mask of mortality, cut off from all the glory of our own court . . . Ash and Thorn. I would not do it again.”
    It might be the first sincere statement he had made since Lune entered. Vidar’s own mortal masquerade, the one that had earned him his new position, had been more sporadic than sustained, and he had not enjoyed it. She said temperately, “I was pleased to serve her Majesty in such a capacity.”
    “Of course you were.” He let the cynical note hang in the air, then offered, “Wine?”
    Lune nodded, and took the cup a goblin brought to her. The wine was a fine red, tasting of the smoky, fading light of autumn, the flamboyant splendor of the leaves and their dry rustle underfoot, the growing bite of winter’s chill. She recognized it from the first sip: surely one of the last remaining bottles brought as a gift to Invidiana when Madame Malline le Sainfoin de Veilée replaced the old ambassador from France. Some years hence, that had been. Madame Malline had remained at the Onyx Court when the ambassador from the Courts of the North departed, but relations were strained. There would be no more such gifts, not for a long time.
    “You might,” Vidar said, breaking her reverie, “have a chance to serve her Majesty again.”
    She failed to hide entirely the sharp edge that put on her interest. “Say on.”
    “Return to the mortal court.”
    The blunt suggestion made her breath catch. To live among mortals again . . . it was exhausting, dangerous, and exhilarating. Few fae had the knack for it, or even a liking. No wonder Vidar had sent for her.
    But what purpose did he have in mind? Surely not her former assignment, Lettice Knollys. If the fragments of gossip Lune had heard were correct, she was no longer at court; she was in mourning for the death of her second husband, the Earl of Leicester.
    She took another sip of wine. This one burned more than the first. “Return, my lord? To what end?”
    “Why, to gather information, as you did before.” Vidar paused. “And, perhaps, to gain access to — even leverage over — a certain individual.”
    She had concerned