Page 114 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
“It worked,” I say softly. “He really saved you.”
She nods, biting her lip. Since she makes no move to sit up, I spread the second sheet over her body. With a thick towel, I wipe some of the blood from her face, shoulders, and hands.
“Everything will be all right now,” I tell her. “The Queen is dead, and there are guards running to the wall to find out if the Heartless are gone, too.”
“They are,” she says. “I felt the burning light go out inside me, and I knew immediately that the Queen was gone, and that I would go with her. If Riordan’s spell hadn’t recreated my heart, I would be a dead husk right now.”
She turns her head toward the White Rabbit’s motionless body. When she sees the clay-like color of his face, and the gray spreading down his throat and across his shoulders, her face crumples. A hollow sob breaks from her lips.
“He kidnapped you,” I say gently. “He was going to hurt you, wasn’t he?”
“But he didn’t. He spared me.”
“He didn’t spare others. Fin told me what he has done to humans—”
“You don’t know him!” she snaps. “You don’t. You can’t.”
Shakily she pushes herself up to a sitting position, the sheet clutched over her breasts. “Fin can save him, can’t he?”
“He will try.”
Alice crawls to the Rabbit, stroking his broad lips with her finger, then petting the long ears that lie limp on the ground. Those ears seem so odd to me, but she seems to like them.
Minutes later, Fin rushes back in. “It works! The potion works.” He points to the tiny cut on his hand, the one that has been sluggishly trying to heal since he got the scratch from the Heartless. It’s gone, and his skin is seamless again.
Fin kneels beside Riordan and wrenches his lower jaw down. “Hold it open while I pour this in,” he orders Alice. “Clara, stroke his throat so he’ll swallow.”
Working together, we manage to get most of the concoction into Riordan. The gray of his skin gradually reverts to rich brown, and the heart-wound seals itself.
“So much blood,” Fin says, rising and inspecting the saturated edges of his wings. He produces three cleaning sweets and scatters their powder over us and the room, until the mess disappears from our clothes, our bodies, and the floor.
“A waste of magic,” murmurs a deep voice. “Only the laziest of faeries expends his magical energy on such trifles instead of doing the work himself.”
“I’ve seen you use cleaning spells.” Fin prods Riordan’s side with his boot. “Hush, or I’ll wish I’d let you fade.”
Riordan’s lips widen in a slow grin that puckers his cheek-mouths in the strangest way. Alice doesn’t seem to notice or care. She reaches out, touching his shoulder—but he sits up, letting her hand slide away, and he doesn’t look at her.
“I’m afraid I have no portal devices that will permit swift travel within Faerie,” he says, looking fixedly at a point on the wall. “But in a few days, the items I used for travel to the mortal world should be recharged. I’ll send you home as quickly as possible, kitten.”
Alice pales, but she doesn’t protest. She draws away from him, holding her sheet to her chest.
“Well, this is deliciously awkward,” says Fin brightly. “Come, you beautiful wretches, and we’ll get you both fed and rested. We’ve a party to plan!”
The next night, Fin hosts the celebration of the Queen’s demise. It’s a ghastly affair, because some of the Unseelie insist on incorporating the bodies of the deceased Heartless into the décor—impaling them on stakes and planting them around the courtyard. They don’t seem to care that many of the monstrous corpses were once their friends and neighbors.
Other than the grotesque decorations, the party is gloriously debauched. Fin crafts mounds of a sweet, cold, creamy dessert, and each scoop hides Unseelie delicacies. I sample it daintily to avoid an unpleasant surprise.
Fin also conjures edible flavored fire, a fountain of sweet rainbow water, piles of sugarplums and candied hearts, chocolate eyeballs on sticks, marshmallow blood-puffs, crunchy beetlenut-brittle. And there are fruit tarts which make the eater sneeze uncontrollably, dance maniacally, or have an immediate, mind-cracking orgasm.
Fin and I both leave the festivities before things become too violent and orgiastic. Riordan doesn’t attend at all. At first I suspect he wants to stay home and seduce Alice, but when Fin and I return, Alice and the Rabbit are sitting on opposite sides of the parlor, each pretending to read.
Fin sniffs the air delicately and informs me, in a loud whisper, that “there’s been no fucking in this place. I think we should fix that problem, you and I.”
I oblige him, of course—we sneak down to Riordan’s examination room and make excellent use of the restraints on one of the tables. This time, Fin is the one who’s bound.
Two days later, Riordan shows up masked and gloved at breakfast and announces crisply that the portal is ready.
“Meet me in the study,” he tells Alice, and strides out of the kitchen.
