“Yes, I am difficult, uncle; you will not win me.”
He pulled my hair tight enough that it hurt and growled his anger in my ear. “I will have you, Meredith. You can enjoy it, or you can fight me and I will take my pleasure and not worry about yours.”
“Are you saying that I can either enjoy my rape, or not enjoy it?”
His grip in my hair loosened slightly, and some tension went from him, as if by hearing it spoken so bluntly, even he heard that it made no sense.
His voice was calmer when he said, “I can leave this dream now, Meredith. I can free us both of this dream, and call back the assassins that are going to kill Doyle and Mistral, if you will but kiss me here and now.”
“I trust Doyle to kill anyone you send against him, and you must fear Mistral very much to target him, so you know what he is capable of; they are not easy to kill.”
“Sholto shouldn’t have been easy to kill either, Meredith, but he was; think upon that as the minutes tick away. Think upon that and decide whether you would rather your Darkness and your Storm be alive but parted from you, or dead and parted from you forever?”
Fear poured over me again, and the fresh memories of holding Sholto’s body on the beach. I didn’t think I could bear seeing Doyle dead. I admitted to myself that I would not grieve Mistral as much, but I remembered the moment on the battlefield when I’d thought my cousin Cel had killed Doyle. If I left them, then Doyle would still have Frost; they would not be alone, but I would be. I would be worse than alone.
“One kiss, Meredith, one willing kiss, for the lives of two of your lovers, is that so much to ask?”
“No, not if it were just one kiss, but if I give you a kiss, uncle dearest, then what happens next?”
“I kiss you back, of course.”
“I am not stupid, uncle; if I kiss you willingly, what does the spell do?”
“You will no longer be afraid; you will be safe and happy in my arms.”
“But for it to work you must win a kiss from me.” I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “You need to ‘Kiss the Girl,’” I said.
“Yes, I suppose I do need to kiss the girl.”
“No, uncle, I’m quoting a movie that you’ve never seen.”
“I do not know what you are talking about, Meredith. The assassins are even now in place, and I promise you they will strike, as they did this morning for your shadow lord.”
“You don’t even know there was a movie of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ do you?”
“I have read the story by Hans Christian Andersen, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, that is what I mean. I forgot the Seelie Court enjoys reading fairy tales, and laughing at how wrong the humans get things.”
“It would be a shame if you kissed me too late to save them, Meredith. I can only offer their safety for a little while, and then the assassins will do their jobs and it will be too late.”
“They made a movie of the story. They made a movie of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ and there was a song in it called ‘Kiss the Girl.’”
“What does it matter, Meredith? Why this delay, do you want them dead?”
“You don’t understand. By killing Sholto you put them all on alert, and I trust my men, and the human guards, and the human police, to fight.”
“It will not be a fight, Meredith, any more than Sholto had a chance to fight.”
“What of my babies? What happens to them if I let you bespell me?”
He settled his weight more firmly against me, one knee between my legs. “They are our babies, Meredith. They will come with you to the Seelie Court. They will be princesses and prince here with us.”
“You’ll never take them to a Disney movie, or read them a fairy tale without showing your disdain for the human who wrote it. You won’t love them.”
“I will love them, as I love you, Meredith.”
“You don’t love me!” I yelled it at the floor, the echo of my own voice strident in my ears.
“I love you, Meredith.”
“Swear it, swear that you love me truly, swear it by the Darkness That Eats All Things; swear that oath, uncle, and I may give you your willing kiss.”
“That is an Unseelie oath, and I will not utter it.”
“It is an oath that will hunt you down and destroy you if you break it. The only reason not to take such an oath is that you know you do not love me.”
“You will love me, Meredith. You will adore me. Our children will see us as a devoted couple.”
“You are not their father! The genetic tests will come back in a few weeks and that will prove that I was pregnant before you forced yourself on me. The tests will prove that you are a ra**st, a liar, and infertile, and I will do everything I can to get you convicted of my rape. I will plaster it across the human media, that the great King of the Seelie is so insecure that he has to beat and rape rather than seduce.”
“You won’t; you will drop the charges against me, Meredith. You will tell everyone that you came to me willingly, Meredith.”
Of course I would; he was right, of course.
“You will tell the newspapers and the television that the Unseelie kept you prisoner and it was only when Shadowspawn, Darkness, and Storm were dead that you felt safe enough to escape to the Seelie Court with your babies.”
“You always go too far, uncle,” I said. “You almost have me under your spell, and then you say something that is so outrageous that even your magic can’t make me believe it. You are evil, uncle, did you know that?”
He got both of his legs inside mine, and only the dress with all its layers of petticoats kept him from pressing closer, but even through all the clothing I could feel him against me. I had to swallow past the lump in my throat. I prayed to Goddess that he would not touch me again.
“Do you feel that, Meredith?”
“I don’t know what you mean, uncle.” It was a lie, but I was not going to play along.
He ground himself in against my ass. “Do you feel me now, Meredith?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I dressed you for this dream, Meredith; I can just as easily undress you with a thought.”
“Don’t.”
“Kiss me, Meredith, and then you will want me to, and it will not be rape.”
“Lust magic is the same as date-rape drugs in human courts, Uncle Taranis. Even if you bespell me, humans have forensic wizards who specialize in understanding spells like this; I have too many friends among the human police. They won’t believe that I was willing. Even if you win this moment, the police will free me of your spell eventually, and when they do, you will be jailed, or exiled from this country.”
“At worst they would limit me to the Seelie Court, Meredith, and that is where I stay anyway.”
“No, uncle dearest, you had a king of another kingdom assassinated; that is an act of war, and that is the one thing that will get you kicked out of this country.”
“Only you know what I did, Meredith, and once we kiss, you won’t tell.”
“You don’t believe the human wizards will free me once you have me under your spell?”
“No, Meredith, I don’t. Human magic has never been a match for mine. Now, about that dress.”
“No,” I said.
My clothes vanished and I was suddenly na**d against the rugs and the stone. He was still pressed against my ass, but now he felt bigger and harder, eager for his conquest.
“NO!” I pulled my hand free, and I prayed as never before, Let this work, let my hand of power be real here! Taranis made his clothes vanish. I had a moment of feeling him na**d on top of me, pinning me to the floor, and then his h*ps began to shift, to hunt for an angle that would let him enter me, and I shoved my hand against his bare arm. The same arm that I had twisted in the last nightmare he’d given me.
His arm began to fold in upon itself. He let me go, and it was his turn to scream, “NO!”
I turned and saw him on his knees, naked, and maybe he was handsome, but all I could see was the monster he was, and his left arm was a curling, deformed thing. I waited for it to reach the main part of his body and turn him inside out so that he wouldn’t be able to hide the monster inside, behind the handsome façade. I would make him into the truth of himself, and pull the horror out so all the world could see it.