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

ordinary in his jeans and T-shirt. The queen didn’t have a designer suit to fit someone so short. There hadn’t been time even for the queen’s seamstress to make those kind of alterations. He got away with hugging his section of the wall.
    â€œPrincess Meredith, how will you choose your husband from among all these gorgeous men?” a reporter was asking.
    â€œThe one who gets me pregnant wins the prize,” I said, smiling.
    â€œWhat if you are in love with someone else? What if you don’t love the one who gets you pregnant?”
    I sighed, and didn’t fight the smile slipping away. “I am a princess, and heir to a throne. Love has never been a prerequisite for royal marriages.”
    â€œIsn’t it traditional to sleep with one fiancé at a time, until you either get pregnant or don’t get pregnant?”
    â€œYes,” I said, and cursed that anyone knew our customs that well.
    â€œThen why the marathon of men?”
    â€œIf you had the chance, wouldn’t you?” I asked, and that got them laughing. But it didn’t distract them.
    â€œWould you marry a man you didn’t like just because he was the father of your child?”
    â€œOur laws are clear,” I said. “I will marry the father of my child.”
    â€œNo matter who it is?” another reporter asked.
    â€œThat is our law.”
    â€œWhat if your cousin Prince Cel gets one of his female guards pregnant first?”
    â€œThen, according to Queen Andais, he will be king.”
    â€œSo it’s a race to get pregnant?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhere is Prince Cel? No one has seen him in nearly three months.”
    â€œI’m not my cousin’s keeper.” In fact, he was in prison for trying to kill me one too many times, and for other crimes that the queen didn’t want even the court to know. He should have been executed for some of them, but she’d bargained for her only child’s life. He was to be locked away for six months, tortured with the very magic he had used against sidhe-ancestored humans. Branwyn’s Tears, one of our most guarded ointments. It was an aphrodisiac that worked even against someone’s will. But more than that, it made your body crave to be touched, to be brought. He was chained and covered in Branwyn’s Tears. There were bets around the court that what little sanity he’d been born with would not survive it. The queen had given in to one of his guards only yesterday, to let the woman slack Cel’s need, save his sanity. And suddenly I had not one, but two, no, three attempts on my life, and one on the queen’s. It was more than a coincidence, but the queen loved her son.
    Madeline was back in front of me, looking at me. “Are you all right, Princess?”
    â€œSorry, I’m getting a little tired. Did I miss a question?”
    She smiled and nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
    They repeated it, and I wished I’d missed it again. “Do you know where your cousin the prince is?”
    â€œHe’s here in the sithen, but I don’t know what he’s doing this exact moment. Sorry.”
    I needed off this subject, off this stage. I signaled to Madeline, and she closed it down with a promise of a photo op in a day or two, when the princess was fully healed.
    A tiny faerie with butterfly wings fluttered into camera range. This was a demi-fey. Sage, whom I’d “slept with,” could make himself human tall, but most of the demi-fey were permanently about the size of Barbie dolls, or smaller. The queen would not be happy about the little faerie fluttering in front of the cameras. When there was press in the sithen, the less-human-looking stayed away from them, and especially away from cameras, or faced the queen’s wrath.
    The figure was a pale blue-pink with iridescent blue wings. She fluttered through a barrage of flashbulbs, shielding her eyes with a tiny hand. I thought