I knew it was stupid, but the feel of Doyle's fingers wrapped around mine was everything to me. And Gran's fragile grip was still warm, still alive. I was afraid to let go.
Then her hand spasmed against mine. I looked into her face, and the eyes were too wide, the breath not right. They eased her off the spine, and forced the nightflyer back, and as the spine came out, her life spilled with it.
She collapsed toward me, but other arms caught her, tried to save her, pulled her hand away from mine. But I knew she was gone. There might be moments of breath, and pulse, but it was not life. It was what the body does at the end sometimes, when the mind and soul are gone, but the body doesn't understand yet that death has come, and there is no more.
I turned to the other hand still in mine. Doyle gave a shuddering breath. The doctors were pulling him away from me, sticking needles in him, putting him on a gurney. I stood, trying to hold on to his hand, his fingers, but my doctor was there, pulling me backward. She was talking, something about me needing to not upset myself. Why do doctors say such impossible things? Don't get upset; stay off your leg for six weeks; lower your stress; cut back on your work hours. Don't get upset.
They pulled Doyle's fingers out of mine, and the fact that they could pull him away from me said just how hurt he was. If he hadn't been hurt, nothing short of death would have moved him from me.
Nothing short of death.
I looked at Sholto on the floor. They had a crash cart. They were trying to restart his heart. Goddess, help me. Goddess, help us all.
The doctors were clustered around Gran. They were trying, but they had triaged the wounded. Doyle first, then Sholto, then Gran. It should have been comforting, and it was, that they took Doyle first. They thought they could save him.
Sholto's body jerked with the jolt of power they put through his body. I heard their words in snatches, but I saw a head shake. Not yet. They hit him again, with more, because his body jerked harder. His body convulsed on the floor.
Galen tried to hold me, tears streaming down his face, as they put a sheet over Gran's body. The police in the room seemed unsure what to do with the nightflyer. How do you handcuff that many tentacles? What do you do when the room is charred, and the dead woman is the one whom everyone said did it? What do you do when magic is real, and cold iron burns the flesh?
I saw the doctors shake their heads over Sholto. He was so terribly still. Consort help me, help me help them. Help me! Galen tried to press my face into his chest, to keep me from looking. I pushed him away, harder than I meant to, so that he stumbled.
I went to Sholto. The doctors tried to keep me away, or talk to me, but Rhys kept them back. He shook his head, said something I couldn't seem to hear. I knelt by Sholto's body. Body. No. No.
The nightflyers that the police weren't trying to arrest came to me, and to their king. They huddled around him, like black cloaks, if cloaks could have muscle and flesh, and pale unfinished faces.
A tentacle reached out to touch his body. I reached to the nightflyers on either side of me, as you'd reach for a hand of your fellow bereaved. The tentacles wrapped around my hands, squeezing, giving what reassurance they could. I screamed, but not wordlessly this time.
"Goddess, help me! Consort, help me!" I was filled with such rage, horrible, burning rage, as if my heart would burst with it, my skin run in sweat with the heat of my anger. I would kill Cair. I would kill her for this. But tonight, now, this moment, I wanted our king to live.
I glanced into the face of the nightflyer beside me, the black eyes, the pale lipless mouth, the razor teeth. I watched a tear glide down that pale, flattened cheek. Their anger; their rage; their king, but... he was my king, too, and I was his queen, their queen.
I smelled roses. The Goddess was near. I prayed for guidance, and it wasn't a voice in my head. It wasn't a vision. It was knowledge. I simply knew what to do, and how to do it. I saw the spell all the way through, and knew that if it were to work, there was no time to worry that at the end was potentially something horrible. Nothing that faerie could show me tonight would be as horrible as what I'd already seen. Nightmares could not frighten me tonight, for I was past fear. There was only purpose.
I reached out to Sholto; the nightflyers moved their tentacles back so they only held my wrists as I laid hands on their king's body. I had raised magic before, with sex and life, but that was not the only magic that ran through my veins. I was Unseelie sidhe, and there is power in death, as there is in life. There is power in that which hurts, as well as in that which saves.
I had a moment of thinking of using this magic for Doyle, but this magic was only for the sluagh. It would not work for my Darkness.
The Goddess had given me choices along the way; bring life back to faerie with life or death, with sex or blood. I had chosen life and sex over death and blood. In that moment, with Gran's blood on my gown, I chose again.
I looked for Rhys, because I knew Galen would not do what I needed, not in time. "Rhys, bring me Gran's body."
Rhys had to argue with the doctors, and Galen helped him win the argument. Rhys brought her body to me. He laid her body on top of Sholto's, as if he knew what I meant to do.
They say the dead do not bleed, but that's not true. The recently dead bleed just fine. The brain dies, the heart stops beating, but the blood still flows out, for a time. Yes, for a time the dead do bleed.
Gran looked so small lying on top of Sholto. Her blood flowed out and down his pale skin, over the blackened burns the hand of power had made.
I felt Rhys and Galen at my back. I heard, vaguely, unimportantly, Galen arguing. But it didn't matter; nothing mattered but the magic.
I put my hands with the bracelets of tentacles on top of Gran's thin chest. Tears bit at my eyes, and I had to blink them away to keep my vision clear. My skin flared to life, moonlight glow. I called my power. I called all of it. If ever I were truly queen of faerie, princess of the blood, let it be this night, this moment. Give me all of it, Goddess. I ask this in your name.
My hair glowed so brightly I could see the burning garnet of it from the corners of my eyes, see it flow down the front of my gown, like red fire. My eyes cast green and gold shadows. The nightflyers that touched me glowed white, and that glow slid around the circle of them, so that their flesh glowed like sidhe flesh, white and moonlight bright.