Chapter Twenty-five

I was snuggled against the sweet scent of Frost's back, one arm across his waist, my hips curving around the firm roundness of his ass. Doyle lay against my back, spooning me just as perfectly. They were a foot and an inch or two taller than I was, so spooning meant we had to choose if we wanted our faces next to each other, or our groins. There was no way to have both.

Doyle snuggled in his sleep, one arm flung across me and over Frost's side. Of all the men, they touched each other the most in their sleep, as if they needed reassurance that not only I was there, but that the other man was, too. I liked that.

Doyle moved a little more and I was suddenly aware that his body was very happy to be pressed up against my ass. The sensation pushed me further out of the drowsy sleep. I couldn't see a clock, so I didn't know how long we had until the alarm sounded, but however long we had, I wanted to use it.

Music sounded. It wasn't the alarm. It was Paula Cole's "Feelin' Love," which meant it was my phone. I felt Doyle and Frost wake instantly. Their bodies tensed, muscles ready to spring out of bed for some emergency. I'd noticed that most of the guards woke like that, unless I woke them with petting and sex, as if anything else always meant some crisis.

"It's my cell phone," I said. Some minutia of tension slid away from their tensed muscles. Frost reached one long arm down to the side of the bed and began to rummage in the clothes pile, which was where all the clothes had ended up last night.

One of the interesting things about the Treo was that it could play an entire song, and that's what it was doing as Frost fumbled through the clothes. For me to reach the ground someone would have needed to steady me so I didn't fall out of bed, but Frost could reach the floor easily. There was no tension in his body as he finally held the phone back up in the air in my general direction.

We were far enough into the song to make me debate once more on the song as my main ring tone. It was fine until it played too far into the song in public. The sexually explicit lyrics didn't bother me, but I kept waiting for some little old lady or mother with small children to protest. So far no one had, or maybe I'd just gotten to the song in time.

I unlocked the phone and was suddenly talking to Jeremy Grey, my boss. "Merry, it's Jeremy."

I sat up, searching for the glowing face of the bedside clock, afraid I'd overslept. The blackout curtains in the main bedroom made the light not helpful. "What time is it?"

"It's only six; you're hours from needing to be in the office." He sounded grim. Jeremy was usually pretty upbeat, which meant something was wrong.

"What's wrong, Jeremy?"

The men had both rolled over on their backs and were watching me. They were tense again, because they, like me, knew that Jeremy wouldn't call this early for anything good. Funny how no one ever wakes you up with good news.

"There's been another fey murder."

I sat up straighter, letting the sheet pool in my lap. "Like the other one?"

"I don't know yet. Lucy just called."

"She called you, not me," I said. "After the mess my presence made of the last murder, I think I'm probably persona non grata."

"You are," he said, "but if I feel I want you and your guard's opinion she's left me a very explicit message. She said 'Bring whatever employees you think will be the most helpful on this. I trust your judgment, Jeremy, and I know you understand the situation.'"

"That is an odd way for her to ask."

"This way when you show up, it's not her bad, it's mine, and I can make the case for needing you better than she can."

"I'm not sure Lucy's superiors aren't right, Jeremy. Her having to come save me made her lose the only witness we had."

"Maybe, but if a fey, especially a demi-fey, wants to run they will. They disappear better than almost any of us."

He was right, but ... "That's true, but it was still a mess."

"Bring only guards who can do enough glamour to hide in plain sight. Bring more guards; two wasn't enough from what I saw on the news."

"If I bring more guards, it's more people to hide," I said.

"I'll have some of the other people meet us there, so we all show up in a mass. We'll hide you with numbers, and leave Doyle and Frost at home. They don't do good glamour, and they're too damn noticeable."

"They won't like that."

"Either you're Princess or you aren't, Merry. If you are going to be in charge, then be in charge. If you're not, then stop pretending."

"The voice of experience," I said.

"You know it," he said. "If I need you, meet Julian here." He gave me the address to meet so we wouldn't show up in a car that was associated with me.

"They won't let this many of us inside a crime scene, Jeremy," I said.

"Some of us don't need to be inside the crime scene to do our jobs, and it won't hurt our reputation to have more of our people on camera milling around with the police."

"Thinking like that is why you're the boss."

"Remember that, Merry. You have to earn the right to keep being the boss. Get off the phone, enjoy a few more hours with your boyfriend, but be ready to go earn the title Princess. Leave your two shadows at home, and bring ones who can blend in better when I call."

I hung up and explained to Doyle and Frost why they were not going with me if I had to go. They didn't like it at all, but I did what Jeremy had told me to do. I was the boss. He was right. Either I claimed the role or someone else would. I'd almost lost it to Doyle before, and now Barinthus. There were too many leaders among us and not enough followers. Doyle and Frost dressed in jeans and T-shirt and suit respectively. I chose a summer weight dress and heels. The heels were for Sholto who was coming to help guard me today. He was as good at glamour as any and could travel instantly from his kingdom to the edge where the sand met the surf because it was a place between and he was the Lord of that which passes between. He and King Taranis were the only sidhe left who could do magical travel.

The real problem was that only two of the guards were truly that good at personal glamour. Rhys and Galen could go with me as the main guards, but we needed more guards than that. I knew Doyle and Frost well enough to know that if they couldn't be with me, they would insist on more guards, which was fine, but who? Sholto was great at glamour and he was on his way, but who else? Instead of relaxing we spent a lot of the morning debating who would go with me.

Rhys said, "Saraid and Dogmaela are both almost as good at glamour as I am."

"But they have only been with us a few weeks," Frost said. "We have not trusted them with Merry's personal safety."

"We have to try them sometime," he answered.

Doyle spoke from the edge of the bed, where he was sitting as I got dressed. "They were Prince Cel's pet guards only a few weeks ago. I am not so eager to give them personal guard duty over Merry."

"Nor I," Frost said.

Barinthus spoke from near the closed door. "I found them competent guards here at the beach house."

"But that's just running the perimeter," Doyle said. "I would trust all the guards to do that. Merry's safety is a different type of duty altogether."

"We either trust them, or we need to send them away from us," Rhys said.

Doyle and Frost exchanged a look, and then Doyle said, "I am not as distrustful as that."

"Then you must let some of them guard Merry," Barinthus said. "They have already begun to suspect that they will never be trusted because of their association with Prince Cel."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"They have spent centuries with a queen and a prince to answer to; they feel the need of someone to lead them. You have left many of them here at the beach house off and on these few weeks. I am who they have to follow."

"You are not their leader," Rhys said.

"No, the princess is, but your caution to keep them farther from her has left a vacuum of leadership. They are frightened by this new world that you have brought them to, and they wonder why you have not taken any of them as your ladies-in-waiting."

"That was a human custom that the Seelie Court adopted," I said. "It's not an Unseelie custom."

"True, but many of the ones with us now were longer at the Seelie Court than at our own. They would like something familiar."

"Or is it you who would like something familiar?" Rhys asked.

"I don't know what you mean, Rhys."

"Yes, you do." And there was something far too serious in Rhys's voice.

"I say again that I do not know what you mean."

"Coyness does not become you, sea god."

"Nor you, death god," Barinthus said, and there was an edge of irritation to his voice now. It wasn't anger. I'd rarely seen the big man truly angry, but there was some tension between the two of them that I'd never seen before.

"What's going on?" I asked.

It was Frost who answered. "Of those of us at your side, they are two of the most powerful."

I looked at Frost. "What does that have to do with the tension between them?"

"They begin to feel their way back to their full powers, and like rams in springtime they want to butt heads to see who is stronger."

"We are not animals, Killing Frost."

"But you would remind me that I am not truly sidhe. Nor was I one of Danu's children when she first came to the shores of our homeland. All this you remind me with my old nickname. I was the Killing Frost, and once even less than that."

Barinthus studied him. Finally, he said, "Perhaps I do see those who were once less than sidhe, but are sidhe now as lesser still. I do not mean to feel that way, but I cannot deny that I find it difficult to see you with the princess and about to be father to her children when you have never been worshipped and once were but a childlike thing to skip across the still winter's nights and paint the windowpanes with hoarfrost."

I'd had no idea that Barinthus thought that the sidhe who began life as non-sidhe were lesser, and I didn't try to keep the surprise off my face. "You never mentioned any of this to me, Barinthus."

"I would have taken anyone as father to your children if it would have put you on the throne, Meredith. Once you were on the throne, we could have solidified your power base."

"No, Barinthus, we could have taken the throne and been victim to assassination attempts until some of us died. The nobles would never have accepted me."

"We could have made them accept your power."

"You keep saying 'we,' Kingmaker. Define 'we,'" Rhys said.

I remembered Rhys's warning when I'd first entered the beach house.

"We as in us, her princes and nobles," Barinthus said.

"Except for me," Frost said.

"I did not say that," he said.

"But did you mean it?" I asked, and held my hand out to Frost, so he came to stand tall and straight beside me. I leaned my head against his hip.

"Is it true that you were crowned by faerie itself with the blessing of the Goddess herself?" he asked. "Did you truly wear the crown of moonlight and shadows?"

"Yes," I said.

"Was Doyle truly crowned with thorn and silver?"

"Yes," I said, and played with Frost's hand, rubbing my thumb over his knuckles, and feeling the solid comfort of his hip against my cheek.

Barinthus put his hands before his face, as if he could not bear to look at us anymore.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked.

He spoke without moving his hands. "You had won, Merry, don't you understand that? You had won the throne, and the crowns would have silenced the other nobles." He lowered his hands and his face looked tormented.

"You can't know that," I said.

"Even now you stand before me with him at your side. The one you gave up everything for."

I finally understood what was bothering him, or thought I did. "You're upset because I gave up the crown to save Frost's life."

"Upset," he said, and he gave a harsh laugh. "Upset - no, I wouldn't say I'm upset. If your father had been given such a blessing he would have known what to do with it."

"My father left faerie for years to save my life."

"You were his child."

"Love is love, Barinthus. What matters what kind of love it is?"

He made a disgusted sound. "You are a woman, and perhaps such things move you, but Doyle." He looked at the other man. "Doyle, you gave up everything we could have ever wished for to save the life of one man. You knew what would happen to our court and our people with a failing queen and no heir to the bloodline."

"I expected that there would either be civil war or assassins would kill the queen and there would be a new ruler of our court."

"How could you hold the life of one man above the better good of your entire people?" Barinthus asked.

"I think your faith in our people is too great," Doyle said. "I think that Merry crowned by faerie and Goddess or not, the court is too deeply divided with power factions. I think that the assassins wouldn't have stopped with the queen. They would have aimed at the new queen, at Merry, or at those closest and most powerful near her until she stood alone and helpless as they saw it. There are those who would have been happy to turn her into a puppet for their hand."

"With us at her side and in our full power they would not have dared," Barinthus said.

"The rest of us have been brought back into our power, but you have only regained a small portion of yours," Rhys said. "Unless Merry brings you back fully into your powers, then you are not as powerful as most of the sidhe in this room."

The silence in the room was suddenly heavier, and the very air was suddenly thicker, like trying to drink our breath.

"The fact that the Killing Frost may be more powerful than the great Mannan Mac Lir must rankle," Rhys said.

"He is not more powerful than I am," Barinthus said, but in a voice that held some of the slurring of the sea, like angry waves crashing on rock.

"Stop this," Doyle said, and he actually moved to stand between them.

I realized that it was Barinthus's magic making the air thick, and I remembered stories of him being able to make humans fall down dead with water flowing out of their mouths, drowned on dry land miles from water.

"And will you finally be king?" Barinthus asked.

"If you are angry with me, then be angry with me, old friend, but Frost had no say in the choices we made on his behalf. Merry and I chose freely."

"Even now you stand guard over him," Barinthus said.

I stood up, still holding Frost's hand. "Are you bothered that we gave up the crown for just one man, or are you bothered that we gave it up for Frost?"

"I have no quarrel with Frost as a man, or a warrior."

"Then is it really that he's not sidhe enough for you?"

Rhys stepped just enough around Doyle so he could meet Barinthus's eyes. "Or do you see in Doyle and Frost what you wanted with Prince Essus but were always afraid to ask for?"

We all froze, as if his words were a bomb that we could all see falling toward us, but there was no way to stop it. There was no way to catch it, and no way to run. We just all stood there, and I had moments for my childhood memories of my father and Barinthus to run through my head. It was quick flashes. A hand on someone's arm, a hand held a little too long, an embrace, a look, and I suddenly realized that my father's best friend might have been more than just his friend.

There was nothing wrong with love in our court no matter what sex you chose, but the queen didn't let any of her guard have sex with anyone but her, and one of the terms for Barinthus joining her court had been that he had joined her guard. It had been a way to control him, and a way to say that she had the great Mannan Mac Lir as her lackey and hers in every way, only hers.

I'd always wondered about her insisting that Barinthus join her guard. It hadn't been standard at the time for exiles from the Seelie Court Most of the other sidhe who had come from that time had just joined the court. I'd always thought it was because the queen feared Barinthus's power, but now I saw another motive. She had loved her brother, my father, but she had also been jealous of his power. Essus was a name that people still spoke as a god, at least in the recent past, if you counted the Roman Empire as recent, but her own name, Andais, had been lost so completely that no one remembered what she had once been. Had she forced Barinthus to be her celibate guard to keep him out of her brother's bed?

I had a moment to think about Essus and Mannan Mac Lir joined as a couple both politically and magically, and though I didn't agree with what she'd done, I understood the fear. They were two of the most powerful of us. Combined, they could have owned both courts, if they'd been willing to, because Barinthus had joined us before we were cast out of Europe. Our internal wars had been our own business and no matter for human law, so they could have taken first the Unseelie and then the Seelie Court.

I spoke into that weighted silence. "Or was it Andais who made it impossible for you to have his love? She would never have risked the two of you joining your power together."

"And now there is a queen of faerie who would have let you have all you desired, but it is too late," Rhys said quietly.

"Are you jealous of the closeness you see between Frost and Doyle?" I asked it with a careful, quiet voice.

"I am jealous of the power I see in the other men. That I will admit to, and the thought that without your touch I will never come back to my power is a hard thing." He made certain to give me eye contact, but his face was a mask of arrogance, beautiful and alien. It was a look that I'd seen him give Andais. It was his unreadable face, and he'd never had to use it on me before.

"You flooded every river around St. Louis when Merry and you had sex only in vision," Rhys said. "How much more power do you want?"

This time Barinthus looked away, and would not meet anyone's eyes. That was answer enough, I supposed.

It was Doyle who stepped forward a step or two, and said, "I understand wanting to have all the old power back, my friend."

"You have regained yours!" Barinthus yelled. "Don't try to soothe me when you stand there full to bursting with your own power."

"But it is not my old power, not completely. I still cannot heal as I did. I cannot do many things that I once could do."

Barinthus looked at Doyle then, and the anger in his eyes had turned them from happy blue to a black where the water runs deep and there are rocks just under the surface, ready to tear the hull of your boat and sink you.

There was a sudden splash against the side of the house. We were too far above the sea for the tide to find us, and it was the wrong time of day for it anyway. There was another slap of water, and this time I heard it smack into the huge windows of the master bathroom attached to this bedroom.

It was Galen who slid from the doorway and walked farther into the bathroom to check on the sound. There was another burst of water on the glass, and he came back, his face serious. "The sea is rising, but the water is like someone picked it up and threw it at the windows. It is actually separating from the sea, and seems to float for a moment before it hits."

"You must control your power, my friend," Doyle said, his deep voice going deeper with some strong emotion.

"Once I could have called the sea and washed this house into the water."

"Is that what you want to do?" I asked. I squeezed Frost's hand and then moved forward to stand with Doyle.

He looked at me then, and his face showed great anguish. His hands ground into fists at his side. "No, I would not wash away into the sea all we have gained, and I would never harm you, Merry. I would never dishonor Essus and all he tried to do by saving your life. You carry his grandchildren. I want to be here to see the babes born."

His unbound hair writhed around him, and where most hair seemed to blow in wind, there was something of liquid in the way his hair moved, as if here in this room somehow the currents below touched and played with his ankle-length hair. I was betting that his hair didn't tangle either.

The sea quieted outside, the noise drawing away until it was just the quiet hush of water on the narrow beach below. "I am sorry. I lost control of myself, and that is unforgivable. I, of all sidhe, know that such childish displays of power are pointless."

"And you want the Goddess to give you back more power?" Rhys asked.

Barinthus looked up and that flash of black water showed for a moment, then was swallowed into something calmer, more controlled. "I do. Wouldn't you? Oh, but I forgot, you have a sithen waiting for you, regained from the Goddess only last night." There was bitterness to his voice now, and the ocean sounded just a little rough, as if some great hand stirred it with an impatient hand.

"Maybe there's a reason the Goddess hasn't given you back more of your powers," said Galen.

We all looked at him. He leaned in the doorway looking serious but calm.

"You have no stake in this, boy. You don't remember what I lost."

"I don't, but I do know that the Goddess is wise, and she sees further into our hearts and minds than we do. If this is what you do with only part of your power back, how arrogant would you be with all of it back?"

Barinthus took a step toward him. "You have no right to judge me."

"He is father to my children as much as Doyle," I said. "He is a king to my queen as much as Doyle."

"He was not crowned by faerie and the gods themselves."

There was a knock on the door. It made me jump. Doyle called out, "Not now."

But the door opened, and it was Sholto, Lord of Shadows and That Which Passes Between, King of the Sluagh. He came in with his unbound hair, in a white-blond cloak over a black-and-silver tunic and boots.

He wasted a smile on me, and I got the full impact of his tricolored eyes: metallic gold around the pupil, then amber, then yellow like aspen leaves in the fall. His smile faded as he turned to the other men and said, "I heard you yelling, Sea Lord, and I have been crowned by faerie and the gods themselves. Does that make this fight more mine?"

Chapter Twenty-six

"I do not fear you, Sluagh Lord," Barinthus said, and again there was that angry sound from the sea outside.

Sholto's smile vanished completely, leaving his handsome face arrogant, starkly beautiful, and totally unfriendly. "You will," he said, and his voice held an edge of anger. There was a sparkle of gold as his eyes began to shine.

The sea outside slapped against the glass again, harder, angrier. It wasn't just that it was a bad idea for the men to duel; it was dangerous for all of us here by the sea. I couldn't believe that Barinthus, of all people, was behaving so badly. He'd been the voice of reason for centuries at the Unseelie Court, and now ... I'd missed some change in him, or maybe without Queen Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, to keep him in check, I was seeing the real him after all. That was a sad thought for me.

"Enough of this," Doyle said, "both of you."

Barinthus turned on Doyle, and said, "It is you who I'm angry at, Darkness. If you prefer to fight me yourself that will be fine."

"I thought you were mad at me, Barinthus," Galen said. That caught me off guard; I'd thought he would know better than to attract the big man's anger a second time.

Barinthus turned and looked at Galen, who was still in the bathroom doorway. The sea slapped against the windows behind him hard enough to shake them. "You didn't betray everything by refusing the crown, but if you want a piece of this fight, you may have it."

Galen gave a small smile, and moved away from the doorway. "If the Goddess had given me a choice between the throne and Frost's life, I would have chosen his life, just as Doyle did."

My stomach tightened at his words. Then I realized that Galen was baiting Barinthus, and the anxiety went away. I felt suddenly calmer, almost happy. It was such an abrupt change of mood I knew it wasn't me. I looked at Galen walking slowly toward Barinthus, his hand out almost as if he was offering to shake hands. Oh, my Goddess, he was doing magic on us all, and he was one of the few who could have because much of his magic showed no outward sign. He didn't glow, or shimmer, or be anything but pleasant, and you just felt like being pleasant back.

Barinthus didn't threaten again as Galen moved slowly, carefully, smiling, hand out toward the other man.

"Then you are a fool, too," Barinthus said, but the rage in his voice was less, and the next slap of ocean against the windows was also less. It didn't rattle the windows this time.

"We all love Merry," Galen said, still moving gently forward, "don't we?"

Barinthus frowned, clearly puzzled. "Of course I love Meredith."

"Then we're all on the same side, aren't we?"

Barinthus frowned harder, but finally gave a small nod. "Yes." That one word was low, but clear.

Galen was almost to him, his hand almost touching his arm, and I knew that if his glamour was working this well from a distance, that one touch would calm the whole situation. There'd be no fight if that hand once touched that arm. Even knowing what was happening didn't completely nullify the effects of Galen's charm, and I was just getting the backwash of it. Most of it was concentrated on Barinthus. Galen was willing him to calm down. He was willing him to be friends.

A scream sounded from outside the room, but it was inside the house. The scream was high pitched and terror filled. Galen's glamour was like most; it shattered with the scream and the adrenaline rush as everyone went for weapons. I owned guns, but hadn't packed one for the beach. It wouldn't have mattered, because Doyle pushed me to the floor on the far side of the bed, and ordered Galen to stay with me. He, of course, would go for the scream.

Galen knelt by me, gun out and ready, though not pointed, because there was nothing to point at yet.

Sholto had the door opened, staying to one side of the doorjamb so he didn't make a target of himself. He was on the queen's guard when he wasn't king of his own kingdom, and he knew the possibilities of modern weapons, and a well-placed arrow. Barinthus was pressed to the other side of the flattened door, the fight forgotten, as they did what they had trained to do for longer than America had been a country.

Whatever they saw out there made Sholto move forward at a cautious crouch, gun in one hand, sword in the other. Barinthus spilled around the door with no visible weapon, but when you're seven feet tall, more than humanly strong, nearly immortal, and a trained fighter, you don't always need a weapon. You are the weapon.

Rhys went next, keeping low, gun in hand. Frost and Doyle glided through the door armed and ready, and just like that it was just Galen and me in the suddenly empty room. My pulse was thudding in my ears, pushing at my throat, not at the thought of what might have caused one of my female guards to scream, but at the thought of the men I loved, the fathers of my children, maybe never coming back through that door again. Death had touched me too early for me not to understand that nearly immortal is not the same thing as truly immortal. My father's death had taught me that.

Maybe if I'd been queen enough to sacrifice Frost for the crown, I would have been more worried about the other women, but I was honest with myself. I'd only been trying to be friends with them for a few weeks, I loved the men, and for someone you love, you will sacrifice much. Anyone who says otherwise has either never truly loved or is lying to themselves.

I heard voices, but they weren't yelling, just talking. I whispered to Galen, "Can you understand what they're saying?"

Most of the sidhe had better-than-human hearing, I did not. He cocked his head to one side, gun now pointed at the empty doorway, ready to shoot anything that came through it.

"Voices, women. I can't understand what they're saying, but I can tell that one is Hafwyn, one of them is crying, and Saraid is pissed. Now Doyle, and Ivi, he's upset but not angry. He sounds panicked, as if whatever's happened bothered him."

Galen glanced down at me, frowning a little. "Ivi sounds contrite."

I frowned, too. "Ivi is never contrite about anything."

Galen nodded, and then was suddenly all attention at the door. I watched his finger begin to pull. I couldn't see anything around the corner of the bed. Then he raised the gun toward the ceiling and let out a breath in a low whoosh, which let me know how close he'd come to pulling that trigger.

"Sholto," he said, and got up, gun still in one hand, and held his other hand down for me. I took it and let him help me stand.

"What's happened?" I asked.

"Did you know that Ivi and Dogmaela had sex last night?" he asked.

I nodded. "Not exactly, but I knew that Ivi and Brii took lovers among the women who were willing."

Sholto smiled and shook his head, his face halfway between amused and thinking about something far too hard. "It seems that after last night Ivi assumed he could give her a little cuddle, and something he did seems to have terrified her."

"What did he do to her?" I asked.

"Hafwyn was witness and agrees with Ivi about what he did and did not do. Apparently, he merely came up behind Dogmaela, wrapped his arms around her waist, and picked her up off the floor, and she began to scream," Sholto said. "Dogmaela is too hysterical to make much sense. Saraid is being physically restrained from attacking Ivi, and the man seems honestly puzzled by the turn of events."

"Why would just being picked up make her scream?" I asked.

"Hafwyn says that it was something their old master, the prince, would do, but he would then fling them on the bed or hold them for someone else to do very bad things to them."

"Oh," I said, "it's a trigger event."

"A trigger what?" Sholto asked.

Galen said, "It's something usually innocuous that reminds you of abuse or violence, and suddenly it brings it all back up."

We both looked at him, both of us surprised, and unable to hide it. Galen gave me a sour look. "What, I couldn't know that?"

"No, it's just that" - I hugged him - "it was just unexpected."

"That I was that insightful is that big a surprise?" he asked.

There was nothing polite I could say to that question, so I hugged him a little more tightly. He hugged me back, and kissed me on top of my head.

Sholto was standing beside us now, and his eyes were all for me. There was that look that men get when they see a woman who is their lover and more. It was partly possessive, partly excited, and partly puzzled, as if something out in the other room was still on his mind. He held his hand out to me, and I left Galen's hand to go to him. Galen let me do it; we shared well most of the time, and even if we didn't, Goddess had decreed that Sholto was one of the fathers of the babies I carried. The fathers all got privileges. I just think that none of us had expected the genetic miracle of six fathers for two babies.

Sholto drew me into his arms, and I went willingly. He was the newest to my bed of all the fathers. We'd actually only had sex once I got pregnant, but as the old saying goes, once is enough. The newness meant that I wasn't in love with him. I didn't actually love him at all. I was attracted to him, I cared for him, but we hadn't had enough conversations to let me know if I loved him, or could love him. We liked each other, though; we liked each other a lot.

"I've seen the traditional King of the Sluagh's greeting to his queen," Galen said, "so I'll leave you to it. Maybe I can be insightful for Dogmaela." He sounded a little disgusted, but I let him go, because he had surprised me by being smarter than I'd given him credit for and that was my lack of insight.

Sholto didn't wait for Galen to close the door behind him before he showed me just how much he liked me with his kiss, his hands, and his body held as tightly to me as it could be with clothes still on. I let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the satin of his tunic, and the glint of the embroidery and the small jewels sewn into it, so that I ran my hands over his clothes as much as the body underneath them. I thought about him making love to me the way Ivi had done last night with most of his clothes still on so that the satin caressed my skin as we made love. The thought made me respond even more to his kisses, and sent my hands lower to trace his ass underneath the tunic, though I couldn't get as good a grip with one hand as the other because I had to reach around the sword at his waist.

Sholto responded to my eagerness, sliding his hands under my ass and picking me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he walked us back the few feet to the bed. He lowered me to the bed, with my arms and legs still wrapped around him. He kept one hand on my back and the other caught our weight against the bed.

He drew out of the kisses enough to say in a breathless voice, "If I'd known this was the greeting I'd get, I'd have come sooner."

I smiled up at him. "I've missed you."

He grinned. He had one of the most handsome faces in either court, and the grin ruined that beyond-model-perfect perfection, but I loved that grin, because I knew that it was for me. I knew that no one else had ever made him look at them in quite that way. No one had ever made him as happy as he was in the moments we were together. Maybe I didn't love him yet, but I loved how he was when we were together. I loved that he let me see the great King of the Sluagh grin. I valued him letting down those years of arrogant shields so that I could see the man behind them.

"I love that you miss me." As if he'd read my mind, he raised up, forcing me to let him go just enough so he could reach down and begin to undo his pants. He left his sword, belt, gun, and holster in place, undoing only enough of his soft trousers to spill himself out into the light, hard and firm and as fine as any man in court.

Normally, I wanted more foreplay, but in that moment it worked for me. It was partly what Ivi and Brii had done with me last night, but it was also that Sholto had begun to condition me to the greeting.

He laid me back on the bed, my legs still hanging over the edge, and reached under my skirt until he found my panties. He drew them down my legs, slipping them all the way down over my high heels to drop to the floor. He raised my skirt and gazed down at me naked from the waist down except for the shoes. I didn't ask if he wanted me to remove the shoes, because I knew he didn't. Sholto liked me in heels.

He put his hands on either side of my hips and pulled me roughly to the firm length of his body. He angled in against me, raising my hips rather than touching himself to change the angle. He pushed himself inside me and I was too tight for him to do it all in one thrust. He had to work his way in, but I was already wet, just tight. I squeezed around him, tighter still, making his head fall a little forward so that his hair swept across my face. He hesitated above me, then he pushed harder, and I made him work for every inch until I orgasmed simply from the sensation of him being so big, so wide, filling me up so completely.

I screamed my pleasure, my head thrown back, my fingers clawing at his satin-covered arms, unable to find something to mark.

He picked me up off the bed with most of him still inside me. He held me in his arms while my body spasmed around him, and I clung to him. He shoved the rest of himself inside me in one long, hard thrust while he held me, and I screamed for him again.

He half collapsed on the bed, half crawled us into the middle of it. He let go of me with his arms, and only his lower body pinned me to the bed. He'd stopped moving once he was as deep as his body could go. He said, "You are my queen, and I am king. This is proof of that."

It was a very old saying among the nightflyers, of which his father had been one. They looked like huge dark manta rays with tentacles, and faces far from human. Among them, only the royals were able to breed, and able to bring the females to orgasm so easily. The female nightflyers reacted to a spine inside the penis that would have killed me, but luckily for both of us, Sholto didn't take after his father that much.

I spoke the next part of the ritual, because Sholto had taught it to me. "You inside me proves that you are royal and I am with child." If I hadn't been pregnant the reply would have been, "You inside me proves that you are royal and I will be with child."

He raised up enough to undo the belt around his tunic waist. He tossed the belt with its sword and gun to one side of us, not off the bed; within reach, but out of the way. He spoke as he began to wiggle out of his tunic with his body still pinning mine to the bed. "I don't remember you being that easy to pleasure, Meredith."

We shared well, all of us, but not so well that I could tell him that it had been partly Ivi and Brii last night that had helped make his entrance so amazing.

"I told you, I missed you."

He grinned again, then was hidden behind the rise of his tunic. He stripped off the undertunic of white linen next, and I could finally see his upper body. He was as muscled as any of the men except Rhys. He was broad of shoulder, simply beautiful, but there was a tattoo on his stomach, tracing up to his rib cage. The tattoo was of the tentacles that he would have had had he taken more after his father. Once they hadn't been a tattoo, but the real thing. Now he could be with me as smooth and human as any sidhe, or he could choose to be everything he could be.

Usually he asked me which I preferred, but one moment he rose above me with that flat and lovely stomach, the next tentacles writhed above me like some fantastic sea creature formed of ivory and crystal with lines of gold and silver running through all that pale beauty. He leaned over me, still hard and fast between my legs, but he leaned over for a kiss, pressing all that muscle and caressing against my body so that when we kissed he held me with more "arms" than any lover I'd ever had. The bigger tentacles were for heavy lifting, and wrapped around me like muscled rope but a thousand times softer, like velvet and satin and more. His more human arms were in the kiss, too, but it was all a part of him, all him hugging me, holding me, kissing me. Sholto loved that I didn't recoil at his extra bits. Once the sight of his uniqueness had disturbed me, no, honestly, it had frightened me, but somewhere in the magic that had joined us as a couple I had come to appreciate that different wasn't a bad thing. In fact, he could certainly brag that he could do things with me that none of the others could do without another man to help them.

The smaller tentacles, very thin and stretchy, had small reddish suction cups near the tips. They tickled between us, and I writhed toward their touch, eager for them to find their purpose. The small ends traced over my breasts until they came to my nipples, and then sucked on them hard and fast so that I made eager noises into his mouth as he kissed me. My hands traced along the muscled length of his back, and spilled over the hard velvet of the tentacles, caressing their undersides, where I knew they were sensitive. It made him begin to pull himself out from inside me, giving himself enough room so that one of the small tentacles could slide between my legs and find that small, sweet spot just under my hood, so that while he began to push his body in and out between my legs, working at the wetness and tightness, another of those small eager mouths sucked me.

He rose onto his arms, the bigger tentacles helping support his weight above me, as he sucked all three spots expertly. He knew I liked to watch him going in and out of me, so he parted all those extras like a curtain so I could raise my head enough to look down the length of our bodies. I had begun by enjoying watching him go in and out between my legs, but now I also liked seeing where he sucked my breasts and between my legs, so it was all him, all long, and firm, and giving me pleasure.

He had finally worked me open enough to move faster inside me. His body began to find its rhythm, and I felt the warmth begin to build between my legs from it, but the other building pressure of pleasure was coming faster.

I found my breath enough to say, "I'm coming soon." He liked to know.

"Which?"

"Upper," I said.

He smiled, and his eyes flashed to life, gold, amber, and yellow glowing above me, and suddenly his body was a glowing, vibrating thing. Magic struck gold and silver lightning along those extra parts of him. He caused my skin to glow, as if the moon were rising inside me to meet the glow and rise of him above me.

I had enough energy left to raise my hands and touch the moving bits, and my soft glowing hands caused colored lights to burst under his skin, one magic calling the other. But it was the vibrating of his magic along his skin inside me, outside me, and against me that finally pushed that first wave of warm, bursting pleasure over my body, so that I screamed, writhing underneath him. My fingers found the hard, solidness of the heavy flesh and marked them. I painted my pleasure down the colored lights of the heavy tentacles, and where he bled the red glowed so that it spattered against my skin like rubies scattered across the moon.

He fought his body to keep the slow, deep rhythm going between my legs. His head fell forward, his hair mingling with everything, and the hair filled with light so it was like making love inside something spun of crystal. And then between one thrust and the next he brought me, and we screamed together the light of our pleasure so bright that we filled the room with colored shadows.

He collapsed above me, and for a moment I was buried underneath the weight of him, with his heart pounding so hard that it seemed to be trying to come out of his chest where the pulse of it beat against the side of my face. Then he moved enough of his upper body so I wasn't trapped and I could breathe a little more easily. He pulled out from between my legs, the smaller pieces of him already faded, lying against me as if every bit of him were exhausted.

He lay on his side next to me while we both relearned how to breathe. "I love you, Meredith," he whispered.

"I love you, too." And in that moment it was as true as any words I had ever spoken.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sholto and I got dressed and joined everyone in the small living room just off the kitchen and dining room. Since there were no walls to speak of, I thought it was just all the "great room," but the ones living here called it the small living room, so that's what we all called it.

Hafwyn and Dogmaela were on the biggest couch. Dogmaela was still crying softly into the other woman's shoulder. Their blond braids were intertwined and were so close to the same color that I couldn't tell at a glance which hair belonged to whom.

Saraid stood near the huge bank of windows with her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed over her chest, cradling her small, tight breasts. You didn't need magic to feel the anger rolling off of her. The sunlight sparkled in her golden hair. As Frost's was silver, hers was truly golden, as if the precious metal had been woven into hair. I wondered if her hair was as soft as Frost's.

Brii was standing beside her, his yellow hair seeming pale and unfinished next to her true gold. He tried to touch her shoulder, and she glared at him until he dropped his hand, but he kept speaking quietly to her. He was obviously trying to soothe her.

Ivi was near the sliding-glass doors talking quietly and urgently to Doyle and Frost. Barinthus and Galen stood to one side. The bigger man was talking to Galen and obviously upset. But it had to be about Dogmaela and Ivi, because if he'd figured out that Galen had almost rolled his mind with glamour he'd have been more upset. It was a serious insult for one highborn sidhe to try to bespell another. It said clearly that the spell-caster felt superior and more powerful than the one they were bespelling. Galen hadn't meant it like that, but Barinthus would most likely have taken it that way.

Cathbodua and Usna were on the love seat, with her holding him. Cathbodua's raven-black hair spilled only to her shoulders, part of it mingling with the black trench coat that she'd laid on the back of the love seat. The coat was a cloak of raven feathers, but like some other powerful items it could change, chameleonlike, into what worked best for the setting. Her skin looked paler against the pure blackness of the hair, though I knew it was no more white than my own. Usna was a contrast of colors compared to her. He looked like a calico cat, his white moonlight skin marked with black and red. Like the cat his mother had been shape-shifted into when she bore him, he was curled up in her lap, or as much of his six-foot-tall frame as would fit was curled up in her lap.

He'd undone his hair so that it spilled around her black clothes and her stark beauty like a fur blanket. Cathbodua stroked his hair idly as they both watched the emotional show before them. His gray eyes, the most uncatlike thing about him, and her black ones had almost the same expression in them. They were enjoying the turmoil in that dispassionate way that some animals have. Once he'd been able to turn into the cat he was colored to match, and once she could shift into the shape of a raven or a crow, and not have to depend on borrowing the eyes of some true bird for her spying. It made them both a little less human, or sidhe, and something more basic.

Of course, I hadn't realized until that moment that they'd been sleeping together. They'd been partners on guard duty, but until I saw the distant and somewhat scary Cathbodua petting him, I hadn't realized it was more. They had hidden it well.

Sholto seemed to understand, or maybe I looked surprised because he said, "You letting the other guards sleep together made them reveal their own liaison."

"Nothing makes either of them do anything. They chose to share because they thought it was safe."

Sholto nodded. "Agreed." He moved forward farther into the room, and since I had my arm in his, he moved me with him like it was the beginning of a dance.

Galen started toward us, smiling, and then Barinthus moved in a blur that I couldn't follow with my eyes. Galen was suddenly airborne and heading toward the big glass windows and the sea, and rocks, below.

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