Read Ill Met by Moonlight for Free Online

clothing lent her white skin a creamy pallor, like that of the finest silk.
    She would come to Quicksilver, she would ask him to dance and loudly repeat it, making it unseemly for him to refuse.
    Prince Quicksilver had no time and scant patience for lovesick kings, and even less for lovesick elven maids of high birth and little mind.
    Turning abruptly, before Ariel could reach him, he made for the wide, arched opening to the outside world, beyond the palace, beyond the enchanted realms of fairyland. He escaped toward the world of mortals, that place of crude and simple beings, which seemed to him, suddenly, to beckon like a promised land.
    He rushed outside—past the black-diamond armored guards who bowed their heads to him—down the broad marble steps, to the cool dark night beyond.
    He ran through the night, heedless, until he got far enough away from the bubble of light cast by the fairy palace. In the semidark, he leaned against the bark of a rough tree and took greedy breaths of air perfumed with the deep, earthy scents of trees and grass.
    The voices of the small, scurrying creatures of the night surrounded him. Hurry, hurry, hurry , cried the mind of the mouse skittering through the undergrowth, while above him the sharper mind of the owl screamed of hunger and blood.
    Quicksilver’s anger sang in harmony with the owl, and his fear of his brother and his brother’s power screamed in unison with the mouse.
    Peevishly, he pulled off his gloves and, holding them both in his right hand, smacked them on his left leg as he resumed walking. His movement was intended to disperse his impotent anger, rather than to carry him anywhere. While he strode, unminding, through the forest around the charmed palace, his errors, his many-splendored mistakes, taunted him like mocking demons.
    He should have said something in his own defense. He should somehow have salvaged his plans to leave the kingdom. He should have answered his brother’s derisive tones, Sylvanus’s implication that Quicksilver wasn’t a proper elf, his intimation that Quicksilver might conspire against the kingdom. And he should, he should , have answered the barbed arrows aimed at his youth, his inexperience, his mutable nature.
    With such flimsy excuses, such vile murmuring, his brother had managed to snatch the throne away. And no one had protested the usurpation. No one. With such flimsy excuses had Quicksilver been robbed of his inheritance.
    Flogging his thigh, as one would flog a sluggish horse, he welcomed the stings of his blows, the pain that came through the black velvet of his breeches to remind him always that he had no power. No power to rebel. No power to do anything.
    Maybe he was a child, maybe he was ineffective and foolish. Why else would he have allowed his brother to thus dispossess him? Even there, in the salon, he had found no answer to his brother’s public mocking, his veiled challenge.
    How could Quicksilver hope to prevail over Sylvanus’s perfidy if he couldn’t even reply to the king’s taunting?
    “Quicksilver, my lord, wait,” a woman’s voice called from behind him.
    This high, harmonious voice almost set Quicksilver to flight. Yet he checked his feet in their attempt at running, kept them immobile on the woodland ground.
    Ariel had found him and pursued him here. Why? Even she was not usually that importune, no matter how besotted.
    Besotted. Thinking of her devotion, Quicksilver felt something dark and deep uncoil within him, something serpentine and cunning, that wished to vent his anger on anything, anyone.
    This elven girl, an orphan, Pyrite’s sister, even more powerless and even younger than Quicksilver, would be vulnerable to his wrath, his pent-up fury. And even if she was one of his few allies—and spies—in the court, Quicksilver knew he could safely hurt her. She would forgive him. She always forgave him.
    Quicksilver breathed deeply, more furious than ever at Ariel’s folly, her soft, yielding nature. His