I'd never navigated like this, and being inside so much metal and technology, I think I had assumed that the moth would not work very well here, but it was part of my body, and that meant that man-made things did not weaken its magic. I had to trust that all the magic I possessed would work here, and work well.
The elevator opened and the moth flew forward. I stepped in the direction that it wanted to go. Its frantic movements made me begin to run. We were close. Were we running into a trap, or were Doyle's injuries stealing him away from me?
Sholto trotted at my side. He spoke as if he'd heard some of my thoughts. "I can hide us from other denizens of faerie as long as we do not interact with them."
"I know only that he is in danger, not what that danger is," I said. "I have no weapon," he said.
"Our magic works here. Not all of theirs will."
"The hand of power that injured Doyle and me worked just fine," he said.
He had a point but I said, "Brownies have always been able to work magic around men and machinery. It was one of the reasons that Cair used Gran. You need mortal and brownie blood to work major magic here."
Pain doubled me over. It felt as if the moth were trying to tear its way out of my skin. Only Sholto's hand on me kept me upright. I pointed at the door to our left. "In there."
He didn't argue with me, simply made sure I could stand, then reached for the door handle. He was using glamour to hide us, but a door opening on its own was almost impossible to hide. You had to wait for others to open things for you if you wanted to remain hidden, but there was no time. The panic was screaming in my head, the moth frantic against my body.
A doctor, a nurse, and a uniformed policeman sitting in the corner all looked up as the door opened. I started to rush forward, but Sholto held me back. He was right. If we wanted to remain unseen, we had to move slowly and let the door close behind us. If we drew any more attention to the magically opening door, someone might see us.
But it took everything I had not to simply run across the room to Doyle. He lay terribly still against the white sheets. There were tubes and monitors everywhere. Needles pierced his body, and tape held them in place. Liquids ran down tubes into him.
I'd been prepared for an attack, a spell, but I had forgotten. Doyle was a creature of faerie. There was no mortal blood in him. Nor brownie. There was nothing in him but some of the wildest magics that faerie could offer.
"His vitals just keep going down, Doctor," the nurse said.
The doctor had turned from the now-closed door and was looking at Doyle's chart. "We've treated the burns. He should be improving."
"But he's not," the nurse said.
The doctor snapped at her. "I can see that."
The uniformed policeman was still looking at the door. "Are you saying that someone's using magic to kill Captain Doyle?"
"I don't know," the doctor said, "and I don't say that often."
"I know," I said.
They all turned toward my voice, frowning but still seeing nothing. If it had been my glamour hiding us, my speaking would have been enough to break the spell and reveal us, but Sholto's power was stouter stuff.
"Did you hear that, Doctor?" the nurse asked.
"I'm not sure."
"I heard it," the cop said.
"I can save him," I said.
"Who's there?" the cop asked, and he was standing, with his hand going for his gun.
"I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, and I have come to save the captain of my guard."
"Show yourself," the cop said.
Sholto did two things: he made his tentacles back into their lifelike tattoo, and he dropped the glamour. To the humans in the room, we simply appeared.
The cop started to raise his gun, then stopped in mid-motion. He blinked and shook his head, as if to clear his vision.
"So beautiful," the nurse said, and she looked at us with wonderment on her face.
The doctor looked frightened. He backed away from us until the bed was against him. He clutched Doyle's chart as if it were a shield.
I tried to think how we must look to them, crowned with living flowers, covered in the magic of the Goddess, but in the end, I couldn't imagine. I would never be able to see what they saw.
We moved toward the bed, and the policeman recovered himself enough to try to point his gun again. But the gun eased toward the floor once more. "I can't," he said in a strangled voice.
"Take the needles and tubes out of Doyle. You're using man-made medicine on him, and it's killing him," I said.
"Why?" the doctor managed to ask.
"He is a creature of faerie, and there is no mortal blood in him to help ease him around such modern wonders." I touched Doyle's arm, and his skin was cool to the touch. "We must hurry, Doctor, and remove him from this artificial place, or he will die." I reached for the IV in Doyle's arm. "Help me."
The doctor looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head, a frightening one. But the nurse moved to help me. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Disconnect him from all of it. We need to take him back to faerie with us."
"I can't let you take an injured man out of my hospital," the doctor said, his voice regaining the ring of authority it had started with, as if now that he had a concrete fact, he felt better. Sick people didn't get taken from the hospital; it was a rule.
I looked at the policeman. "Can you please help the nurse free Captain Doyle of these machines?"
He holstered his gun, and moved to the other side of the bed to help.
"You're a cop," the doctor said. "You're not qualified to disconnect him from anything."
The cop looked at the doctor. "You just said that he wasn't improving, and that you didn't know why. Look at them, Doc, they're dripping magic all over the place. If the captain is used to living like that, then what is all the machinery doing to him?"
"There are channels to go through. You can't just walk in here and take my patient." He was looking at us.
"He is the captain of my guard, my lover, and the father of my children. Do you truly believe I would do anything to endanger him?"
The nurse and the cop were already ignoring the doctor. The nurse directed the cop, and between the two of them they turned everything off and left Doyle lying in the bed free of it all.
Now we could touch him; it was as if the magic knew that he needed to be free of all that was hurting him before we could heal him.
I touched his shoulder, and Sholto touched his leg. His body reacted as if we had shocked him, spine bowing, eyes wide, breath coming in a gasp. He reacted to pain a second later, but he looked at me. He saw me.
He smiled, and whispered, "My Merry."
I smiled back and felt the bite of happy tears. "Yes," I said. "Yes, I am.