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have taken after their sidhe parentage. Before you agree to this, you should see what will come to your
bed." He looked at Rhys now, but that teasing edge was gone. "And not all our half-breeds are male."
"Don't do this, Kurag," Rhys said, and his voice was empty, but that emptiness was full of something,
something that frightened me.
"She is part sidhe, white knight, and she wants her chance at bedding you again."
That clattering, slithering noise came closer, as if something were crawling and dragging itself along at the
same time.
Kitto was making a high-pitched noise deep in his throat, a helpless keening. I held him tight, and it was
as if he couldn't feel me. His body still lay limp in my arms, as if he was withdrawing into himself.
"What's happening?" I asked.
Rhys said one word, a name, with such hatred that it hurt to hear it. He said the name just as something
crawled upon Kurag's great chair. Something that looked as if it had been sewn together from different
nightmares.
"Siun."
Kitto screamed.
CHAPTER 5
Kitto's screams were high and piteous like the sounds a baby rabbit makes when the cat's got it. He
scrambled out of my lap, across the bed, to fall over to the other side.
Frost rushed into the room with a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. He searched for an enemy,
then just frowned at us all when there was nothing to shoot. "What's happened? What's wrong with
Kitto?"
"Doesn't my little trullup want to greet his master? Have you forgotten everything I taught you, Kitto?"
the thing on the chair said.
Doyle had gone to kneel by Kitto, and was trying unsuccessfully to soothe him. I heard the deep voice
through the screams, but when Kitto finally found his words again, it was to say, "No, no, no, no, no."
Over and over and over.
I'd tried to turn and help Kitto, but Rhys's hands had tightened on my shoulders. One glance at his face,
and I knew that Kitto wasn't the only one who needed help. I didn't know what to do, but I stayed
where I was, with Rhys kneeling so that his body touched the back of mine. I stayed there so he could
lean against me and not fall over.
I turned back to the goblin in the chair and waited for my eyes to make sense of it. At first it looked like
a huge black, hairy spider. A spider the size of a large German shepherd. But the head had a neck, and
there was something vaguely human about the mouth; it had lips and fangs. There were huge black legs
on either side of the bloated body that were pure spider, but the two hands that stuck out of the front of it
weren't. It seemed to have eyes everywhere, and every one of them was tricolored in rings of blue. It
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raised up as if trying to get more comfortable on the chair, and flashed a glimpse of pale breasts. Female.
I couldn't bring myself to call it a woman.
I never thought I'd see anything among the fey that I truly thought was nightmarish. I was Unseelie sidhe;
we were the stuff of nightmares. But Siun was a nightmare for nightmares. If she had been a little less of
one thing, and a little more of the other, it would have made her less terrible, but she was what she was,
and there was no saving it.
That strangely shapely mouth, caught in the midst of all that black hair and those eyes, spoke. "Rhysss,
how very, very good to ssee you. I still have your eye in a jar on my shelf. Come visit us again. I'd love a
matched pair."
I felt a shiver run through Rhys, as if his entire body trembled in some unseen wind. His voice came out
empty like a shell tossed on a beach, echoing with its loneliness. "If you didn't want us to agree to this
treaty, you should have just said so, Kurag, and saved us all the time and energy."
I patted his hand that still gripped my shoulder, but I'm not sure he felt anything in that moment.
"Frost," Doyle said, "tend to Kitto."
Frost sheathed his sword and holstered his gun, moving to kneel beside Kitto. In day-to-day
arrangements Frost and Doyle argued, but in an emergency all the guards obeyed Doyle. Centuries of
habit were hard to break.
Doyle spoke as he moved to stand beside us. "What is your intention with this, Kurag?"
Siun said, "I wanted to see the pretty sidhe."
"Shut up, Siun." Kurag said it without looking at her, as if he just expected her to do it. Surprisingly, she
did.
"I felt Merry deserved to see what you were offering her up to." Something close to his usual leer
crossed his face. "Besides, Darkness, it won't be Merry in Siun's bed."
"It won't be anybody," Rhys said.
Doyle touched his arm. "You cannot intend that she will bed either Rhys or Kitto again."
"You volunteering?" Kurag asked.
Doyle blinked at him, unreadable. "What are you saying, Kurag?"
"If I agree to an extra month for every goblin you make sidhe, then you must agree to bring over every
sidhe-side who wants to try it."
Doyle's black gaze flicked to Siun, then up to Kurag. "Why are you fighting this, Kurag? Why don't you
want magic in the veins of the goblins again?"
"I'm not fighting it, Darkness, I'm agreeing to it, on certain conditions. I'm even giving Merry her month
per goblin whom she brings over."
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Doyle made a small gesture toward Siun. "To insist that we bed all who come our way is an insult."
"Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours?"
"Her mother wasn't raped," Rhys said, and his voice was still empty, still horrible to hear.
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