Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

There were screams, and outside the glow of our own magic, I could see people running. Some ran toward the throne to protect their king, others fled to save themselves, and still others huddled near the walls and under the heavy tables. We watched it all through the frosted “glass” of the magic that surrounded us.
    The dogs never hesitated, were never distracted by the spells of others. They had but one purpose, one prey. The hail of spells, and the storms that they themselves were causing, began to die down. The guards had finally realized that we had no interest in the throne. We moved inexorably toward the side of the room. The huge dogs shouldered their way under the tables, and spilled around a figure that was huddled against the wall.
    I felt my mare’s muscles bunch under me, and I had time to shift my weight forward and get a better grip on her mane before she leaped the wide table in one powerful jump.
    The mare danced on the stones, her hooves raising green sparks, little licks of green and red flame coming with the smoke from her nostrils. The red glow in her eyes became small red flames that licked the edges of her eye sockets.
    The dogs had trapped my cousin against the stone wall. She pressed that tall, thin sidhe frame as tightly as she could, as if the stone would give way and she would be able to escape that way. Her orange dress was very bright against the white marble wall. There would be nothing that easy for her this night. Again, that spurt of rage and deeply satisfying vengeance came to me. Her face was lovely and pale, and if she had only had a nose and enough skin to cover her mouth with lips, she’d have been as attractive as any in court. There had been a time when I had thought Cair truly beautiful, because I had not seen what she lacked as a mark of ugliness. I loved Gran’s face, so her face combined with the face of a sidhe, who were all so lovely, well, Cair could be nothing but beautiful to me. But she had not felt that way, and she had let me know with the back of her hand when no one was looking, with small petty cruelties, that she hated me. I realized as I grew older that the reason was that she would have traded her tall, lithe body for my face. She made me think that being short and curved was a crime, but my face with its more-sidhe features was what she wanted. As a child, I had simply thought that I was ugly.
    Now I saw her pressed against the wall, the brown eyes of our grandmother in her face, with its so-similar bone structure, and I wanted her to be afraid. I wanted her to know what she’d done and regret it, then I wanted her to die in terror. Was that petty? Did I care? No, I did not.
    Cair looked up at me with my grandmother’s eyes—eyes filled with terror, and behind the fear, knowledge. She knew why we were here.
    I urged my horse forward, through the growling pack of hounds. I reached out to her with the dried blood on my hands.
    She screamed and tried to move, but the huge white and red dogs moved closer. The threat was there in the bass rumble of their growls, the drawn lips showing fangs that were meant for rending flesh.
    She closed her eyes, and I leaned forward, my hand reaching for that perfect white cheek. My hand touched her, gently. She winced as if I’d struck her. One moment the blood was dried and beginning to cake on my skin, the next it was wet and fresh. I left a crimson print of my small hand against her perfect bone structure. All the blood on my hands and gown was liquid and running again. The old wives’ tale that a murder victim will bleed afresh if its murderer lays hands on it is based on truth.
    I held my bloody hand up so the sidhe could see it, and cried out, “Kin slayer I name her. By the blood of her victim, she is accused.”
    It was my Aunt Eluned, Cair’s mother, who came to the edge of the dogs, and held her white hands out to me. “Niece, Meredith, I am your mother’s sister, and Cair is my daughter. What kin did she slay to