I DIDN'T PASS OUT, NOT COMPLETELY, NOT REALLY, BUT IT WAS as if I were boneless, helpless in the afterglow of Abeloec's power. My eyes fluttered open when the lap my head was resting in moved. I found Mistral above me, his hands still holding my wrists, still cuddling my head. "I want you hurt, not broken," he said, as if he saw something in my face that he had to answer.

It took me three tries to answer. "Glad to hear it," I finally said.

He laughed then, and began to move carefully from under me. He laid my head on the dead earth, gently. Apparently, I'd disarranged our makeshift blanket, because I could feel other patches of dry, scratchy vegetation here and there against my skin.

I turned my head and looked for the others. Abeloec was crawling a little shakily toward my head, as if he and Mistral were going to change places. It took me a moment to focus past Abe, farther into the dark beyond.

The darkness was shot with neon glow, blue, green, and red. The colors were everywhere, some individual burning lines and some entwined like string wound into rope - stronger, thicker for being joined. Doyle knelt closest to us, as if he'd tried to come to me. His sword was drawn as if there was something among us that metal could slay. His dark skin was covered in lines of blue and crimson.

Rhys was just beyond him, covered in blue and red lines, too - and there were other figures in the dark covered in green and blue lines, and images of flowering plants. I caught a shine of long pale hair. Ivi was covered in dead vines and green lines of power. Brii stood near a tree, hugging it, or tied to it with green and blue lines. But it was as if the tree had bent toward him, its thin, lifeless branches embracing his naked body like arms. Adair had climbed a tree and stood on one of the thick upper branches. He was reaching up into it, as if he saw things there that I did not. I caught glimpses of other bodies on the ground, covered in dead vegetation.

Frost and Nicca were kneeling farther away. They had lines of blue only, snaking over their bodies. They were holding someone's arms and legs. It took me a moment to realize it was Galen. He was so covered in the bright green glow that he was nearly hidden from sight. The others seemed to be enjoying the power, or at least not to be in pain, but Galen's body seemed to be convulsing, almost as I had when Abeloec brought me, but even more violently.

Mistral's face appeared above mine, and I realized that he was holding himself above my body, much as Abeloec had earlier. But he didn't kiss me, as the other man had. He made sure that the only thing I could see was his face. "My turn," he said, and the look in his eyes was enough to make me frightened. Not in fear of Mistral, but fear of what was happening. Something powerful - and what would be the price? One thing I had learned early was that all power comes with a price.

"Mistral," I said, but he was already moving down my body. The wind was back, a thin, seeking wind that touched my body like invisible fingers. The dead leaves rustled, and the vines seemed to sigh in the growing wind.

I raised up enough to look down my body at Mistral. I called his name again. He looked up at the sound of his name, but there was nothing in his face that really heard me. This was his one chance in a thousand years to have a woman. When we left the gardens, his opportunity would be gone.

If I'd known the others were safe, then I wouldn't even have tried to argue with the look in his eyes. But I wasn't sure they were. I wasn't sure any of us were. I didn't like not knowing what was happening.

He smoothed his hands along the inside of my thighs, gentle, caressing, but that gentle movement spread my legs with him kneeling between them.

"What's happening, Mistral?"

"Are you afraid?" he asked, but he wasn't looking at my face when he said it.

"Yes," I said, and my voice was soft in the growing wind.

"Good," he said.

Abeloec answered me, "I am the intoxicating cup like Medb for the kings of old. You have drunk deep." I turned my head back to look at him where he knelt behind me.

I knew that medb had been a word for "mead," a sovereign goddess whom nine kings of Ireland had had to mate with before she would let them rule. But most of that was only stories; no one would speak of her among the sidhe, as if she were a real goddess, a real person. I had asked, and been told only that she was the cup that intoxicates. Which had been another way of saying that she was mead. I'd been left to believe she'd never been real.

"I don't understand," I said.

Abeloec smoothed his hand along my face. "I give the power of sovereignty to the queen, as Medb gave power to the kings. I was forgotten, because the world turned to chauvinism and there were no more votes for queens. I was just Accasbel. Denied my purpose. Some human literature says I am an ancient deity of wine and beer. I founded the first pub in Ireland, and was a follower of Partholon. That is all I am now to history." He leaned in close to my face, and I lay back against the ground with his hands on either side of my face. "Until today. I have new duties."

Just then, Mistral's fingers found my opening, and I would have turned to look at him, but Abeloec's hands tightened on my face, kept me looking at him while Mistral began to explore me with his hand. Abeloec whispered, above my face, "There was a time when without me, or Medb, no one ruled in Ireland, or faerie, or anywhere in the isles. The sithen brought us here for a reason. It brought everyone here for a reason, including Mistral."

Dried leaves rushed across my body like brittle fingers tapping my stomach and breasts. "Let us have our reason back, Meredith," Abeloec said.

It wasn't a finger touching me down there anymore, though Mistral hadn't entered me. For someone who liked to cause pain, he was being patient, and gentle.

I whispered, "Reason, what reason?" to Abeloec's face.

"Reason to be, Meredith. A man without a duty is only half a man."

Mistral shoved himself inside me in one long hard movement. It spilled my upper body up off the ground, tore a scream from my mouth. Abeloec released me, and I could finally stare down my body at Mistral.

Mistral's head was flung back, eyes closed. His body was married into mine as deep as he could make it. There were no lines of color on him anymore and I realized there were none on any of the three of us. But there was something in the shining of his skin. It took me a moment to realize that something was moving inside his skin. It looked like a reflection of something, but it was not a reflection of anything around us.

He stayed there, frozen above me, with his lower body as snug to me as he could get it, and his upper body raised back on his hands and arms. He opened his eyes and looked down at me, and I saw clouds glide inside his eyes like windows onto some distant sky. The clouds moved as if hurried by some great wind, and I realized that that was what I was seeing inside his skin. Clouds, storm clouds roiling inside his skin.

The wind was growing, spilling my hair across my face, sending dead leaves in small whirlwinds. A storm was coming, and I was watching it grow inside Mistral's body. Mistral was the master of the winds, master of the sky, a storm god once upon a time. The first lightning flash showed in his eyes.

Once upon a time wasn't as long ago as it used to be.

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