A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

he was the king, and that meant that people didn’t call him on it. But I’d been forced to call him on something similar the last time I’d spoken with him like this; could I afford to start out as rude as I’d ended the last time?
    “Taranis, then, Uncle. Could you please tone down your wonder so that we may all look upon you?”
    “Is the light hurting your eyes?”
    “Yes,” I said, and there were other affirmatives from behind me. The full-blooded humans must have been in real discomfort by now.
    “Then I will dim my light for you, Meredith.” He made my name sound like a piece of candy on his tongue. Something sweet, and thick, and suckable.
    Frost drew my hand to his mouth, and kissed my knuckles. It helped me shake off the effect that Taranis was trying hard to get from me. He’d done this last time, a magical seduction so powerful it damn near hurt.
    Rhys snuggled closer to my side, nuzzling along my neck. He whispered, “He’s not just trying to impress us all, Merry, he’s aiming straight at you.”
    I turned into his face, even with my eyes still closed against the light. “He did this last time.”
    Rhys’s hand found the back of my hair, turning my face toward his. “Not exactly this, Merry. He’s trying harder to win you over.”
    Rhys kissed me. It was a gentle kiss, I think more conscious of the red lipstick I was wearing than of any sense of decorum. Frost rubbed his thumb over my hand. Their touches kept me from sinking into Taranis’s voice, and the pull of the light.
    I felt Doyle standing in front of me before I actually opened my eyes. He kissed me on the forehead, adding his touch to the others as if he already knew what Taranis was doing. He moved to my left, and at first I didn’t realize what he was doing, then Taranis’s voice came, not nearly as happy as he’d sounded before. “Meredith, how dare you come before me with the monsters that attacked my lady, standing there as if they had done no wrong? Why are they not in shackles?” His voice was still a good, rich voice, but it was just a voice. Even Taranis couldn’t make those words, that outrage, work with the warm, seductive tone.
    The light had dimmed some. Doyle was blocking some of my view, and partially blocking Rhys from the king’s view, but I’d seen this show before. Taranis was dimming the light so that it looked as if he were forming from the brilliance. Forming a face, a body, his clothes, out of light itself.
    Biggs said, “My clients are innocent until proven guilty, King Taranis.”
    “Do you doubt the word of the nobles of the Seelie Court?” I didn’t think the outrage was feigned this time.
    “I’m a lawyer, your highness. I doubt everything.”
    I think Biggs meant it as humor, but if he had, he didn’t know his audience. Taranis had no sense of humor that I was aware of. Oh, he thought he was funny, but no one else was allowed to be funnier than the king. The last rumor from the Seelie Court was that even Taranis’s court jester had been imprisoned for impertinence.
    I’d have complained more if Andais hadn’t slain her last court jester some four or five hundred years before.
    “Was that meant to be humor?” The king’s voice reverberated through the room, like a roll of quiet thunder. It was one of his names, Taranis Thunderer. Once he’d been a sky and storm god. The Romans had equated him with their own Jupiter, though his powers had never been as far-reaching as Jupiter’s.
    “Apparently not,” Biggs said, trying to put a pleasant face on it.
    Taranis was finally revealed in the mirror. He was edged with glow, as if the colors of everything about him wavered. His hair and beard were at least his true color, the reds and orange of a spectacular sunset. The locks of his curling hair were painted with the glory of the sky when the sun sinks to the west. His eyes were truly multi-petals of green: jade, grass, shades of leaves. It was as if a green flower had been substituted for the