[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight Read Online Free PDF

the rough sloughing of the sea. Barinthus moved toward us in a swirl of his hair, the color of oceans. The turquoise of the Mediterranean; the deeper medium blue of the Pacific; a grey-blue like the ocean before a storm, sliding into a blue that was nearly black, where the water runs deep and thick like the blood of sleeping giants. The colors moved and flowed into one another so that the actual where and what his hair looked like was ever-changing, like the ocean itself. He’d once been a god of the sea. I’d only recently discovered that he had been Manannan Mac Lir, but that was a secret. Now he was Barinthus, a fallen god of the sea. He moved gracefully across the stage, all near seven feet of him. His eyes were blue but with a slit pupil like a cat or a deep-sea animal. He had a second clear membrane that could close over his eye when he was underwater, and would often flicker when he was nervous. It flickered just a touch now.
    I wondered if anyone in the crowd of reporters knew how much it cost this very private man to have suggested a kiss, and make himself the target of all these cameras?
    Galen had realized he’d misbehaved because he showed me with his eyes that he was sorry. Unfortunately, his face wasn’t that hard for anyone to read, including the reporters. The queen had said no favorites. Our behavior was going to force me to try to prove I had none. After what Galen and I had just done, that was going to be difficult.
    A lot of the men standing with me would have played for the cameras, and it would have cost them, or me, nothing. Barinthus was not one of them. He’d been my father’s friend, and by American standards we hadn’t had sex. Not even by Bill Clinton’s standards. If I’d been him, I would have stayed against the wall, but he held to a higher standard of truth even than most of the sidhe.
    I looked up at Barinthus, and with me sitting and him standing, it took awhile to get all the way to his face. “If you like.” I kept my voice light and my face pleasant. Barinthus and I had never kissed, and the first kiss should not be on film.
    It was Rhys who saved the day. “If Barinthus gets a kiss, then so do I.”
    Doyle said, “To be fair, we all should.”
    Barinthus gave a slight smile. “I would bow to the larger need, and take my kiss in private.”
    â€œGalen and Frost have already had theirs,” Rhys said, and as Galen went back to his place in line, Rhys pretended to box his ears.
    Barinthus did a very graceful bow and tried to slink back to his place. But that wasn’t happening. A reporter asked, “Lord Barinthus, have you decided to go from being kingmaker to being king?” No sidhe would have called him kingmaker to his face, or queenmaker either. But the media, well, he couldn’t box their ears.
    He knelt beside me, rather than lean into the mike. Kneeling down, his head was about even with mine. “I doubt I will stay with the princess as a permanent member of her guard.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI am needed elsewhere.”
    Truth was that before Queen Andais had accepted him into the Unseelie Court after the Seelie Court kicked him out, Barinthus had to promise that he would never accept the throne here, not even if it was offered. He’d been Manannan Mac Lir, and the queen and her nobles all feared his power. So he’d given his most solemn oath that he would never, personally, sit on our throne.
    He bowed to the room in general and simply went back against the wall. He made it clear that he was done with questions for the day. Kitto, the half-goblin sidhe, had already moved back to his place. He was only four feet tall, and that made a lot of the media try to portray him as child-like. He was old enough to remember what the world was like before Christianity was a religion. But his appearance made the media uncomfortable. His short black curls, pale skin, and sunglasses made him look