"Your thoughts are far away, Meredith," Doyle said.
I was still walking at his side, hands on his arm, but for a moment only my body had been there. It startled me to realize how far away I'd been.
"I'm sorry, Doyle, were you speaking to me?" I shook my head.
"What were you thinking about so very hard?" he asked. The lights played over his face, painting colored shadows against his black skin. It was almost as if his skin reflected the lights like carved and polished wood. I was touching his arm, so I could feel the warmth, the muscles underneath, the softness of his skin. His skin felt like anyone's skin, but light didn't reflect off skin, not like that.
"I was thinking about my father," I said.
"What of him?" Doyle turned his head to look at me as we walked. The long feathers brushed his neck, mingling with the spill of black hair that was only partially trapped down the back of the cloak. I realized that except for the small knot that captured the front pieces of his hair, the rest of his hair was spilling out underneath the cloak, loose.
"I was thinking about his medals that he won in World War II."
He kept walking but turned his face full to me, never missing a step. He looked bemused. "Why would you be thinking of that now?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. Thinking about faded glory, I guess. The mounds remind me of the plaza in Washington, D. C. All that energy and purpose. It must have been like that here once."
Doyle looked up at the mounds. "And now it is quiet, almost deserted."
I smiled. "I know better than that. There's hundreds, thousands under our feet."
"But yet the comparison of the two cities saddens you. Why?"
I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. We were standing in a pool of yellow light, but there were pinpricks of every color of will-o'-the-wisp in his eyes, swirling like a tiny cloud of colored fireflies. Except the colors in his eyes were rich and pure, not ghostly, and there were reds and purples and colors that shone nowhere near us.
I closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy and nauseated. I answered with my eyes still shut. "Sad to think that Washington may someday be a tired ruin. Sad to know that the glory days passed this place by long before we arrived." I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His eyes were just black mirrors once more. "Sad to think that the fey's glory days are passed and us being here in this place is proof of that."
"Would you prefer that we be out among the humans, working with them, mating with them like the fey that stayed behind in Europe? They are no longer fey, just another minority."
"Am I just a part of the minority, Doyle?"
A look passed over his face, some serious thought that I couldn't read. I'd never been around a man whose face reflected so many emotions, and yet been able to read so few of them. "You are Meredith, Princess of Flesh, and as sidhe as I am. That I will stake my oath on."
"I take that as a great compliment coming from you, Doyle. I know how much store you set by your oath."
His head cocked to one side, studying me. The movement pulled some of his hair farther out of his cloak to fold under but not fall free as he straightened his neck. "I have felt your power, Princess, I cannot deny it."
"I've never seen your hair when it wasn't braided or tied in a club. I've never seen it
loose," I said.
"Do you like it?"
I hadn't expected him to ask my opinion. I'd never heard him ask anyone's opinion of anything.
"I think so, but I'd need to see the hair without the cloak to be sure."
"Easily done," he said, and undid the cloak at his neck. He let the cloak slide off his shoulders, spilling it over one arm.
He was wearing what looked like a leather-and-metal harness from the waist up, though if it had been meant to be armor, it would have covered more. The colored lights played over the muscles in his body as if he were indeed carved of some black marble. His waist and h*ps were slender, long legs encased in leather. The pants clung to him and spilled into black boots that came up over his knees where the loose tops of the leather were held in place by straps with small silver buckles. The buckles were echoed in the straps that covered his upper body. The silver glittered against the blackness of him. His hair hung like a second black cloak boiling in the wind, tangling in long strands around his ankles and calves. The wind sent the feathers that edged his face across his mouth.
"My, look what you're not wearing," I said, trying for flippant and failing.
The wind rushed past us, flinging my hair back from my face. It rustled the tall dried grass in the near field, and beyond that I could hear the cornstalks whispering to each other. The wind blew down the avenue, channeled between the mounds so that it swirled around us like eager hands. It was an echo of that welcoming Earth magic that had greeted me when I first stepped on sidhe land tonight.
"Do you like my hair unbound, Princess?"
"What?" I said.
"You said you needed to see it without the cloak. Do you like it?"
I nodded, wordlessly. Oh, yes, I liked it.
Doyle stared at me, and all I could see were his eyes. The rest of his face was lost to the wind and the feathers and the dark. I shook my head and looked away.
"That's twice you've tried to bespell me with your eyes, Doyle. What's going on?"
"The queen wanted me to test you with my eyes. She has always said they were my best feature."
I let my gaze linger over the strong curves of his body. The wind gusted, and he was suddenly caught in a cloud of his own hair, black and soft, with the near-bare flesh almost lost, black on black.