Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

something that should have been able to fly.
    My skin glowed as if I'd swallowed the moon. The stray bits of my hair that danced around my face glowed like garnets and rubies spun out into something glittering and alive. I felt my eyes begin to glow, and knew that they shone as if some hand had cut an emerald, a piece of jade, and the gold that held them together, and set them with his own personal fire.
    Her power stripped me of all my glamour, even the last bits that I kept almost constantly. The dark hand-shaped scar just under my breast, over my ribs, bloomed to life, like a dark imperfection against all that glowing light. That scar marked where another Unseelie sidhe had tried to use her magic to crush my heart. She'd broken my ribs, torn muscles, but not the muscle she wanted to tear. I knew that if the black hand mark over my ribs was visible, the marks on my back would be, too. They were scars, but not the kind of scars that a human would understand, or even most fey. Another duel gone bad, where a fellow Unseelie had tried to force a shape change on me in the middle of the fight. It wouldn't have killed me. He had been playing with me. Showing off his superior magic, and my lack. I'd driven a blade into his heart, and he'd died. He'd died because the rituals surrounding duels were based on blood rituals: his and mine. Mortal blood makes immortals weak. It's an old bit of magic, and it was all that had saved me.
    I hid my scars even in the midst of magic. Imperfections aren't popular among the sidhe. Being stripped bare of that last bit of hiding made me try to pull away from her, brought something of myself back. I had closed my eyes because I did not want to see the look of revulsion. I was able to say, "Maeve," but when I opened my eyes, I found her face almost touching mine. I had a moment of staring into her eyes from so close that they seemed to fill the world for a moment, a glittering, broken world full of storm and wind and color. She licked her lips, and that one small movement drew my gaze. I'd never noticed how full her lips were, how moist, how pink. Her mouth glistened like some succulent pink fruit, and I knew that it held warm juice that would run down my mouth, my throat. I could almost taste it, almost feel it.
    I tasted her breath upon my mouth, so sweet, like new grass fresh-sprouted from the earth. Our lips touched, and the world was suddenly filled with the perfume of blossoms. I was drowning in apple blossoms as if I'd fallen into some enchanted orchard, where it was always spring, always new, always possible.
    I saw Maeve sitting under a tree in full blossom. There was a hill behind her, and she wore a gown the green-gold of new leaves, with hints of white linen at her bosom and wrist. The linen seemed to glow like white feathers in the sunlight. Her hair fell to her knees like a fall of white frothing water. Her skin was carved of the sunlight itself; golden and shining so bright I could not look upon her, yet even as I felt my eyes begin to burn, I could not look away.
    It began to snow. The warmth began to fade, and the blossoms fell from the tree in a shower of white and pink, and the snow dotted the grass. Cold, it was so cold. I was lying on my back, staring up into Frost's face. He looked worried, and his eyes held that falling snow. I stared into that snow, and again I had the sense that there was someplace behind the snow. That if I stared long enough I'd see it. But I wasn't afraid this time. I knew he'd called me back, saved me somehow. I felt his strong hands on my arms, the press of his body against mine, and I wasn't afraid.
    I saw Frost standing at the foot of a snow-covered hill, except the hill was his cloak, a cloak of snow, that moved with him. His hair glistened like ice in the sun, and his skin was the brilliance of snow when the sun dances on it. A brilliance that would blind as surely as staring at the sun itself.
    The cloak of snow opened, as if Frost had spread his