Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Seventeen



Doyle lay back on the blanket of petals, all that rich, black skin against the soft pastel of it. I admitted to myself that he looked like the devil slipped into some springtime heaven, but he was my devil, and all I wanted in that moment. There had been nights with Frost when I had had them both touching me at the same time, but tonight I wanted to concentrate just on Doyle. I didn't mind the audience, but I didn't want to be distracted either.



He let me crawl over his body until I could put my hands and mouth back where I wanted them. He'd accepted my logic, and I could finally taste him in my mouth. I played with that loose skin one more time, then teased it back, until he lay long and hard, exposed to my hands, my lips, my mouth, and, ever so gently, my teeth. I was using less pressure than a bite, but you have to be careful not to scrape, or what is an added pleasure becomes pain. I wanted no pain tonight for my Darkness. I wanted only pleasure for him and for me.



He protested, "But it will not be enjoyable for you."



"I can fix that," Sholto said.



We all looked at him. He smiled, and motioned at the tattoo on his body. "If you will allow, I can return the favor you are doing our captain so that you are equally pleasured."



It seemed like another lifetime ago when Sholto and I had managed to have our first encounter in Los Angeles. He had proven to me that the extra bits had more uses than the obvious. "You mean the little tentacles with the suction on them."



"Yes," he said, and there was a weight to his gaze. It wasn't an idle offer. He wanted to know how I truly felt about his extra bits, and he was wasting no time finding out. We'd had sex, but he had been terribly wounded, and no extra bits had been used.



I studied his face, then looked down at Doyle. He watched me patiently, almost passive in his waiting. He would abide by whatever I said, in that moment. Centuries of service to the queen had taken men who might have been more dominant and accustomed them to taking orders both in bed and out of it. Doyle could be a very dominant lover, but when it came to choices and preferences, he was like most of the queen's guard; he waited for my lead. It was up to me to make this moment what it was to be: good, ill, hurt feelings, or simply pleasure.



I said the only thing I could think of when a man offers me oral sex. I held my hand out toward him and said "Yes."



He gave me that smile that I had only recently known was possible for him, a smile that made all that handsomeness a little more human, a little more vulnerable. I valued that smile, and it made the yes worth it. I shoved my small doubts down, and watched his body go from an exotic tattoo to the reality of the image. I didn't know if it had been the magic of the wild hunt, or the times he had used the extra bits to comfort me this past night, but I could no longer see him in all his glory as anything but beautiful.



The tentacles were the same moonlight white as the rest of him; the thickest ones were just at the point where chest gave in to stomach. They were as thick as a good-sized python, but white with a marbling of gold on the skin. I knew from my nightflyer tutor, Bhatar, that those were for heavy lifting. They were what the nightflyers picked you up with, and carried you away. Under them was a line of longer, thinner tentacles, the equivalent of fingers, but a hundred times more flexible and sensitive. Then just above the belly button was a fringe of shorter tentacles with darker tips. I knew that those were secondary sexual organs like breasts because there was no human male equivalent. If I'd been a female nightflyer they would have had other tasks to do, but he had proven in our one brief moment in Los Angeles that there were uses for me too. Inches below all that was something as straight and thick and lovely as any man in court could boast. Without the extras in between, Sholto would have been welcome in any bed.



Once I had been horrified at the thought of having to embrace him with all the extras revealed, but as he knelt beside us and reached for me, all I could think of was how many uses we might find for so many of his extra bits. Was it the magic of faerie? Was it part of the magic that made me queen to his king that I could think of nothing but pleasure when reaching for him? If it was magic, it was good magic.



He took me in his arms, wrapped me against his body so that all of him touched me, but he did not try and embrace me with all of it. He simply laid it against my body as his two strong arms held me, and he kissed me. He kissed me, gently but firmly, but there was part of him that held back, like a tension in his body. I thought I understood; he was waiting for me to recoil from his touch. Instead I moved into that kiss, ground myself against all those extra bits, and let one hand caress one of those thick, muscular tentacles. He pressed himself harder against me, responding to my passion and my lack of fear. With most men I'd have been very aware that his erection was pressed against the front of my body, and I might have shuddered at the promise of it, but there were so many sensations with Sholto that it was almost as if my body couldn't pick and choose. The thicker parts streatched around me like extra arms. The thinner pieces caressed and tickled along my skin, and the lowest pieces eased their way between our bodies, between my legs, and I felt those searching "fingers" seeking that most intimate of spots. One of the long, stretching fingers found the spot, and proved to me once more that they had suction on the end, like small mouths that seemed designed to fit around that part of a woman's body, so that it was like some perfect key to fit the lock of my body. The sensations began to build almost immediately.



I felt the hum of energy from Sholto before I opened my eyes to see that his skin glowed with power. The white of his skin was all moonlight, but the tentacles had other colors. The bigger arms had bands and shapes that moved like colored lightning around me. Some were marbled with gold to match the yellow and gold of his eyes. The lower ones glowed white, their tips like red embers. I knelt embraced in color and magic humming against my skin, so that I made a small sound just from that.



"I take it the tentacles do other things than just glow," said Doyle, still lying next to me.



I nodded wordlessly.



"It is a combination of sidhe and nightflyer," Sholto said.



"It looks like colored lightning," Mistral said. He reached out, as if to touch one of the tentacles, then drew his hand back.



Sholto reached a thick limb and touched the other man's fingertips. A tiny jolt of colored light jumped between them. The air smelled of ozone, and every hair on my body stood to attention.



Doyle sat up. "What was that?"



Mistral was rubbing his fingers together as if still feeling the sensation. Sholto had drawn his limb back, a considering look on his face. His limbs had pulled away from the more intimate part of my body.



"I'm not certain," Mistral said.



"Once," Sholto said, "the nightflyers answered to the gods of the sky. We flew for them, and rode the lightning that they could call. Some say the nightflyers were created by a god of the sky and a goddess of the dead."



Mistral looked at his hand, then across at the King of the sluagh. The look on Mistral's face was one of pain. His eyes were the black of the sky before it shatters to earth. "I had forgotten," he said, almost as if to himself. "I had made myself forget."



Doyle said, "I did not know that you were... "



Mistral put a hand across his mouth. I think they were both startled. "Forgive me, Darkness, but do not say that name out loud. I am not that name anymore." He took his hand from Doyle's mouth.



"Your power calls to mine," Sholto said. "Perhaps you are he again."



Mistral shook his head. "I did terrible things back then. I had no mercy, and my queen, my love, had less mercy than I did. We were... We killed." He shook his head. "It began in magic and love, but she fell in love with our creations in every sense of the word."



"You are he, then," Sholto said.



Mistral gave him a look of utter despair. "I would beg you to tell no one, King Sholto."



"It's not every night that a man meets his creator," Sholto said. He was watching the other man with an edge of anger on his face, or maybe defiance.



"I am not that. The being who acted in such arrogance was punished for it, and is no more. Whatever I was once, the true Gods took it from me."



"But our dark goddess," Sholto said. "It is said that the gods tore her to pieces and fed her to us."



Mistral nodded. "She would not give up control over you. She would not give you the independence to be your own people. She wanted to keep you as... pets and lovers."



Perhaps I looked surprised, because he spoke to me. "Yes, Princess, I know well that there are many uses for all those parts. She who was once my love and I fashioned them for pleasure as well as terror."



"You kept your secret well," Doyle said.



"When the gods themselves humble you, Darkness, wouldn't you hide yourself in shame?"



"But your magic calls to mine," Sholto said.



"I never dreamed that the return of magic to faerie would waken that in me." Mistral looked frightened.



"This is a legend so old my father never told it to me," I said.



"It is part of our lost creation myths," Doyle said, "before the Christians came and sanitized them."



Mistral crawled off the bed. He was shaking his head. "I cannot afford to be near when Sholto glows."



"Don't you want to know what would happen?" Sholto asked.



"No," Mistral said. "I don't."



"Leave him," Doyle said. "Nothing we do with Meredith is about force. We will not force Mistral now."



Sholto looked at Doyle, and there was that moment of arrogance that was all sidhe, and no amount of tentacled extras could disguise where it came from. I watched the thought cross his face and travel all the way through his eyes that he wanted to try. He wanted to know what would happen if he and Mistral joined their magic.



"No," I said, and touched Sholto's face. I brought him down to meet my gaze.



That arrogant defiance stayed for a second, then he blinked and was simply arrogant. "As my queen wills it."



I smiled at him because even I didn't believe it. He would remember this moment, and he would not forget the feel of power. Sholto was a very nice guy for a king, but in the end all kings seek power; it is the nature of who they are, and this king would not forget that the "god" who created his race was awake again.



I did the only thing I could think of to break the terribly serious atmosphere. I looked down at Doyle and said, "All my good work is undone with this serious talk. I'll have to start all over again."



He smiled at me. "How could I forget that nothing dissuades you from your goal?"



I put into my eyes all that I felt for him. "When my goal is such as this, why would anything dissuade me?"



He came to me, with Sholto still wrapped loosely around me. But when he touched the other side of us, there was no jump of power. For Doyle, Sholto, and me, it was just flesh and the magic of any sidhe when pleasure is in the air. Mistral found a seat on the edge of the garden that surrounded us, and did his best to ignore us. I hated for him to feel left out or sad, but it seemed important for us to make love in this place. It needed love, and so did I.



Mistral's deep voice said, "I was dying in the field. How did I get here, and where in faerie is here?"



"They rescued me from the hospital," Doyle said, then he frowned. "You were crowned and... " He raised my left hand, and for a moment it didn't look like my hand. There was a new tattoo on it, one of thorny vines and blooming roses.



He rose to his knees, but he wasn't looking at me now. He reached across to Sholto.



The other man hesitated, then offered him his right hand. Doyle held the paler hand in his black one, and the same tattoo curled around Sholto's hand and wrist.



Mistral walked back to us, and we saw that the marks of the arrows seemed to have vanished as had Doyle's burns. Neither of them looked happy to be healed, but instead were very serious.



Doyle drew our hands together so the tattoos were touching. "I did not dream it, then. You were handfasted and crowned by faerie itself."



"By the Goddess," Sholto said, and he sounded way too satisfied. The three men were acting oddly, and I had one of those moments when I knew I was missing something. That happened sometimes when you are barely more than thirty and everyone else in your bed is hundreds of years old. Everyone was young once, but sometimes I wished I had a cheat sheet so I wouldn't need all the explanations.



"What's wrong?" I asked.



"Nothing," Sholto said, again all too smug.



Doyle pulled Sholto's hand down so I could see our two hands together. "You see the mark?"



"The tattoo, yes," I said. "It's a shadow of the roses that bound our hands."



"You have been handfasted with Sholto, Merry," Doyle said, and he said each word slowly, carefully, giving me the intensity of those dark eyes.



"Handfasted. You mean... " I frowned at him. "You mean married?"



"Yes," he said, and there was rage in that one word.



"It took both our magics to save you, Doyle."



"The sidhe do not marry more than one spouse, Meredith."



"I bear children by all of you, so by our laws you are all my kings, or will be."



Sholto raised his hand, gazing at it. "I'm too young to remember when faerie married us to each other. Was it always like this?"



"The roses are more a Seelie mark," Doyle said, "but yes, handfasted and marked as a couple."



I stared at the pretty roses on my skin and was suddenly afraid.



"Am I within my rights to refuse to share Meredith?" Sholto asked.



I gave him a look. "I would be careful what you say, King of the sluagh."



"Faerie has married us, Meredith."



I shook my head. "It helped us save Doyle."



"We are marked as a couple." He held his hand out to me.



"When the Goddess makes me choose, she lets me know ahead of time. There was no choice offered, no warning of loss."



"By our laws  -  " Sholto started to say.



I interrupted him. "Don't start."



"He's right, Merry," Doyle said.



"Don't complicate this, Doyle. We did what we had to do last night to save you both."



"It is the law," Mistral said.



"Only if I am with his child and no one else's, which is not true. The goddess Clothra, who got pregnant from three different lovers, wasn't forced to marry just one of them."



"They were her brothers," Mistral said.



"Were they really, or is that just what legend made of them?" I was asking someone who might actually know.



Mistral and Doyle exchanged a look. Sholto wasn't old enough to know the answer. "Clothra lived in a time when gods and goddesses were allowed to marry whom they would," Doyle said.



"She wouldn't have been the first goddess to marry a close relative," Mistral said.



"But the point is, she didn't marry any of them, and the sovereign goddesses, the ones whom humans had to marry to rule, had many lovers."



"Are you saying that you're a sovereign goddess, a living embodiment of the land itself?" Sholto asked with a raised eyebrow.



"No, but I am saying that you wouldn't like what would happen if you tried to make me be monogamous with just you."



Sholto's handsome face set in petulant lines, and it was close enough to one of Frost's favorite emotions to make my chest tight. "I know you do not love me, Princess."



"Don't make this about hurt feelings, Sholto. Don't be ordinary. In the old days there were different kings, but only one goddess to marry to rule, right?"



They exchanged looks. "But they were human kings, so the goddess outlasted them," Doyle said.



"From what I heard, the sovereign goddess didn't give up her lovers just because she had a king," Sholto said.



Doyle looked down at me. I couldn't read the expression on his face. "Are you saying you will change a thousand years of tradition among us?" he asked.



"If that is what it takes, then yes."



He looked down at me, the expressions on his face all mixed together. A frown, a half-smile, amusement in his eyes; but what I valued the most was the fear leaving them. For it had been fear when he saw the marks on Sholto and me.



"I will ask again," Mistral said. "Where are we? I do not recognize this bower we rest in."



"We are in my kingdom," Sholto said.



"The sluagh have no place so fair inside their faerie mound," Mistral said, his voice thick with certainty and sarcasm.



"How would any of the Unseelie nobles know what is inside my kingdom? Once Meredith's father, Prince Essus, died none of you darkened my door again. We were good enough to fight for you, but not to visit." Sholto's voice held that anger that he'd come to me with, an anger forged of years of being told he wasn't quite good enough to be truly Unseelie. There had been years of the sluagh being used as a weapon. And like all weapons, you use it, but you do not ask a nuclear bomb if it wants to blow things up. You simply push a button, and it does its job.



"I have been inside your mound," Doyle said. His deep voice held an edge of something. Was it anger? Warning? Whatever it was, it wasn't good.



"Yes, and the sluagh would not follow the hound when they already had a huntsman." The two men glared across the bed at each other.



I'd known there was bad blood between them when they first came to me in L.A., but this was the first hint I had at what might lay behind it.



"Are you saying the queen tried to put Doyle in charge of the sluagh?" I asked. I sat up in the bed, the petals spilling around, as if the blanket had fallen back to being just flower petals.



The men looked up at the trees and vines that held the canopy aloft. "Perhaps we should finish this discussion in a more solid part of faerie?" Mistral asked.



"I agree," Doyle said.



"What do you mean 'more solid part'?" Sholto asked, laying a hand on the tree that formed one post.



"The blanket has gone back to what it began as. Some faerie magic does that," Doyle said.



"You mean like in the fairy tales, it only lasts a while," I asked.



He nodded.



A voice called from a distance, "My King, Princess, it is Henry. Can you hear me?"



Sholto answered, "We hear you."



"The opening to your new room is beginning to grow narrow, My King. Should you come away before it closes into a wall again?" He tried for neutral, but the worry was plain in his voice.



"Yes," Doyle said. "I think we should."



"I am king here, Darkness, and I say what we will and will not do."



"Gentlemen," I said, "as princess and future queen of all, I'll break the tie. We go before the wall grows solid."



"I will agree with our princess," Mistral said. He crossed to us and held his hand out to me.



I took the offered hand. He smiled at that one touch, wrapping his much larger hand around my small one, but the smile was full of something softer than anything I'd seen before. He started leading me down the path toward the bone gate. The herbs on the path were no longer trying to touch me. In fact, the stones that had been held together by the herbs were a little lose underfoot, as if whatever had formed them was letting go. We left Doyle and Sholto kneeling on the bed still glaring at each other. When we were back in Sholto's original bedroom, I would ask more questions about their mutual dislike.



The bone gate collapsed at Mistral's touch so that it was only a pile of debris. "Whatever held this place together is failing," he called back to them. "We need to get the princess to safety before it collapses completely."



Mistral picked me up, and carried me through the wreck of bones. Beyond the gate we could glimpse Sholto's bedroom, and Henry's worried face peering at us. The wall that had been as large as a cavern mouth was much smaller. I could actually see the stones knitting together like something alive, remaking themselves. They were strangely fluid; it was like watching flowers bloom, if you could catch them at it.



Mistral carried me through the opening, and we were back in Sholto's wine and purple bedroom. Henry bowed to us, then went back to peering behind us for his king. The opening continued to grow smaller, and neither of them was hurrying. Was it some kind of ego contest? All I knew was that with all that had happened my nerves couldn't stand watching them stroll toward the rapidly diminishing opening.



I called after them, "I will be really cross if you both get trapped behind the wall. We leave for Los Angeles tonight."



The two men exchanged a glance, then they began to jog toward us. Under other circumstances I might have enjoyed the view of both of them running toward me, nude, but the wall was closing. If it closed completely, I wasn't certain that we could reopen it. There were hands of power among the sidhe that could blast through stone, but neither Sholto nor Doyle possessed such a hand.



I called, "Hurry!"



Doyle broke into a run, spilling forward like some black, sleek animal, as if running were the purpose all that muscle and flesh had been designed for. I didn't get to see him from a distance much. He was always at my side. Now, I was reminded that without my human movement to hold him back, he could simply move. Like wind, rain, something elemental and more than flesh. I had a moment such as I had not had in months. A moment to watch him and marvel that all that potential would love me. I was, in the end, so terribly human.



Sholto followed behind him like a pale shadow. For a moment I could only see my Frost. He was the one who was supposed to be at Doyle's side. My light and dark; my men. Sholto was handsome and moved well at Doyle's side, but he couldn't keep up. He was a little behind, a little... more human.



Mistral said, "Ask the wall to stay open."



"What?" I asked, and was almost startled to find myself still in his arms, still in Sholto's bedroom.



He sat me down on the floor. "Stop staring at Doyle like a lovesick girl and tell the wall to stop closing."



I wasn't certain that the sluagh's sithen would obey me, but I had nothing to lose. "Wall, please stop closing."



The wall seemed to hesitate, as if thinking about obeying, then it went back to closing the opening. It was slower, but it had not stopped.



Doyle dived through the opening, doing a wonderful roll across the carpet, ending on his feet in a whirl of black hair and dark muscle.



Sholto dived through too, but ended up flat on the carpet in a spill of pale hair and breathlessness. Doyle was breathing heavily too, but he seemed ready to find a weapon and defend. Sholto seemed content to lie on the carpet for a time.



He gasped out, "Did the path get longer as we ran?"



Doyle nodded. "Yes."



"Why would it get longer?" I asked.



Sholto got to his feet, and looked up at the ceiling of his bedroom. I gazed upward, but saw nothing but the stone.



"Someone, or something, is here." He went to a wardrobe on the far side of the room, and got out a robe. It was gold and white, and didn't match the room at all, but it did match his eyes and hair to perfection. He suddenly looked all Seelie Court, and if not for one bit of genetics that had given him those extra bits he'd have been terribly welcome at the Unseelie Court. In the far past, even the Seelie Court would have been happy to have him. But Sholto, like me, could not hide his mixed blood. There was no illusion deep enough to make us one of them.



Doyle gazed up and around. Did he see something too? What was I not sensing? "What is it?"



"Magic, sluagh magic, but not... mine," Sholto said. He started for the door.



"My King," Henry said, and we all looked at him. It wasn't that I had forgotten he was there, but I guess in a way I had. "You were locked in the magical sleep for several days. There are those among the sluagh who feared you might be enchanted for centuries."



"Like Sleeping Beauty, you mean," I said.



Henry nodded. His handsome face was very worried, and I didn't know him long enough to read him that well. "They came and saw the garden, and it was very Seelie, my lord. More than that, none of us could pass its gate or walls. It held us back, and protected you from all who would come close."



"What has happened while we slept, Henry?" Sholto asked. He went to the man, gripping his shoulder.



"My King, the Seelie are encamped outside our sithen. They asked for parlay, and we had no king to speak for us. You know the rules  -  without a ruler, we cease to be sluagh, cease to be free people. We would be absorbed into the Unseelie Court, but before that happens, we would have to deal with the Seelie on our own without a king."



"They've chosen another king," Sholto said.



"A proxy ruler only."



"But it has divided the power of kingship, and whoever has part of the power did not want us  -  me  -  to escape the wall."



"Why are the Seelie outside?" Doyle asked.



Henry looked to Sholto, who nodded. "They say that the sluagh have stolen Princess Meredith away, and are holding her against her will."



"I am not their princess. Why should they be at the gates to rescue me?"



"They want both you and the chalice. They say both have been stolen," Henry said.



Ah, I thought. "They want my magic, not me. But under what right do they make siege upon the sluagh?"



"By right of kinship, your mother came to demand the return of her sweet daughter, and the grandchildren that she carries." Henry looked even more uncomfortable.



"One of the children I carry is Sholto's own. The right of the father supersedes that of a grandmother."



"The Seelie claim that the children belong to King Taranis."



Sholto went for the door. "Wait here. I must talk to my people before we confront the insanity of the Seelie."



"Might I suggest that you wear something else, Sholto?" I called.



He hesitated, then frowned at me. "Why?"



"You look too Seelie in the robe, and one of the things that seems to panic your people is the idea that you and I together will change them from the dark and terrible sluagh to a light and airy beauty."



He looked as if he would argue, then he went back to the wardrobe. He drew out black pants and boots, but he didn't bother with a shirt. And with a wavering of air in front of him, the tentacles came to life again.



"I will remind them that I am part nightflyer and not just sidhe."



"Would me by your side hurt you or help you?" I asked.



"Hurt, I think. I will talk to my people, then return for you all. Taranis has gone mad to besiege us."



"Why has not the Unseelie Court aided the sluagh?" Doyle asked.



"I will find out," Sholto said, and had his hand on the door when Mistral called out.



"My congratulations to you, King Sholto, on being king to Meredith's queen." His voice was almost neutral when he said it  -  almost.



"Congratulations to you, too, Storm Lord, though with so many kings around, I am not certain what kingdom you will share." With that Sholto was gone, with Henry at his side.



"What did he mean, wishing me congratulations?" Mistral asked. "I know that the princess carries Sholto's child and yours, Doyle. I heard that from the conversation in the bed when we woke."



"Mistral, didn't the queen tell you?" I asked.



"I was told that you had finally gotten with child by some of the others. I have had little news of anything but pain." He would not look at me as he said the next. "She was so angry when you left, Princess. Your green knight destroyed her hall of torture, so she took me as a guest to her room to be chained against her wall. There I have been at her mercy since you left."



I touched his arm, but he pulled away.



"I feared she would hurt you for being with me," I said. "I am so sorry."



"I knew it was the price I would pay." He almost looked at me, but finally let his long gray hair fall between us like a curtain to hide behind. "I was content to pay, because I had hoped... " he shook his head. "I hoped too late." He turned to Doyle and held out his hand. "I envy you, Captain."



Doyle came to take his hand, dark to light, clasping forearms together. "I cannot believe the queen did not tell her court the truth."



"I have only been released from the chains this night, so whatever she told her court, I do not know. I am too far out of favor to be told anything. I was released and lured to my death by one of our own. Onilwyn needs killing, my captain."



"He betrayed you?"



"He led me into an ambush of Seelie archers, armed with cold iron arrows."



"This is the first I have heard of it. He will be punished."



"He's already been punished," I said.



They both looked at me. "What do you mean, Merry?" Doyle asked.



"Onilwyn is dead."



"By whose hand?" Mistral asked.



"Mine."



"What?" Mistral asked.



Doyle touched my arm, and studied my face. "What has happened while I was in the human hospital?"



I told them as quick a version as I could. They were full of questions about the wild hunt, and Doyle held me while I confirmed that Gran was dead.



"The Seelie being at the gates here is partly my fault. I sent the Seelie sidhe who were forced to join the hunt back to Taranis with a message  -  that I had killed Onilwyn by my own hand, and that the chalice had chosen to come to my hand."



"Why did you show them the chalice when the queen has forbidden it?" Mistral asked.



"To save your life."



"You used the chalice to save me?" Mistral asked.



"Yes."



"You should not have wasted its magic on me. Doyle you had to save, and Sholto, but I was not worth such a risk."



Doyle looked at me.



"He doesn't know," I said.



"I do not think he does."



Mistral looked from one to the other of us. "What do I not know?"



"I did not mention Clothra's name without purpose, Mistral. Just as she had one son with three fathers, so I will have two babes with three fathers each."



"So many kings; what will you do with all of them, Princess?"



"Meredith, Mistral. Call me Meredith. If I am to bear your child, we should at least be on a first-name basis."



Mistral stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. He turned back to Doyle. "She speaks in riddles. If I had been one of the fathers, the queen would have released me and let me go to the Western lands."



"We found out only moments before the king abducted Meredith. So there was not time for you to come to us in the Western lands because we were here in faerie, and in St. Louis."



"Did she not know that I was one of the fathers?" Mistral asked.



"I informed her that Meredith was with child and who the fathers were personally," Doyle said.



"She unchained me, but she told me nothing." He turned to me, his eyes full of different colors, as if tiny slices of the sky, or clouds of different colors, were blowing through them. He didn't seem to know what to think or feel, and his uncertainty was bare in his eyes.



I went to him, touched his arm, and gazed into those uncertain eyes. "You are to be a father, Mistral."



"But I was only with you twice."



I smiled. "You know what they say; once is enough."



He smiled then, a little uncertainly. He glanced at Doyle. "Is it true?"



"It is. I was there when the visions spoke loudly to more than just Meredith. We are both to be fathers." Doyle flashed that white smile in his dark face.



Mistral's face filled with light. His eyes were suddenly the blue of a clear, summer sky. He touched my face very gently, as if afraid I would break. "Pregnant, with my child?" He made it a question.



"Yes," I said.



I watched clouds slide across his eyes, like a reflection. His eyes were the color of a rainy sky. That sky began to rain down his strong, pale cheeks. I watched him cry, and of all the possible reactions; that was not what I'd expected from the Storm Lord. He was always so fierce in the bedroom and in battle, and now he, of all the fathers, was the only one who wept when he found out. Every time I think I understand men, I'm wrong again.



His voice came a little broken around the edges. "Why did she not tell me? Why did she hurt me when I had done what she said she wanted most in all the world? To have an heir of her own bloodline to sit on her throne was her wish, and she tortured me for it. Why?"



I knew who "she" was. I'd noticed that many of the guards spoke of Queen Andais as "she." She was their queen, and the absolute ruler of their fates. The only woman they had had hope of touching for so very long.



I said the only truth I had to offer. "I don't know."



Doyle came and gripped the other man's shoulder. "Logic has not ruled the queen for many years."



It was a polite way of saying that Andais was mad. She was, but to say it out loud was not always wise.



I touched Mistral's other arm. He jerked as if the touch had hurt. "If she finds out that faerie has handfasted you to Sholto, she could use it as an excuse to take the rest of us back into her guard."



"She cannot take the fathers of my children," I said, but I sounded more sure than I felt.



Mistral voiced my fears. "She is the queen, and she can do as she likes."



"She swore to give you all to me if you would come to my bed. She would be forsworn. The wild hunt is real again, and oathbreakers, even royal ones, can be hunted again."



Mistral grabbed my arm hard enough that it hurt immediately. "Do not threaten her, Meredith. For the love of the Goddess herself, do not give her reason to see you as a danger."



"You're hurting me, Mistral," I said softly.



He eased his grip, but did not let me go. "Do not think that being with her brother's grandchildren will keep you safe from her."



"I am not safe inside faerie. I know that. That is why we must leave as soon as possible for Los Angeles. We must bring charges against the king and drag him before the human media. We must get away from faerie. The very magic that allows us to do great things is also a weapon to be used against us all." I turned to Doyle, and laid my other hand on his arm. "The Goddess has warned me that the sidhe have not come round to her way of thinking. There are too many enemies here. We must go back to the city and surround ourselves with metal and technology. It will limit the other's power."



"It will limit ours," Mistral said.



"Yes, but without the magic of faerie, I trust my guards to keep me safe with gun and blade."



"Faerie has come to us in Los Angeles, Merry," Doyle said.



I nodded. "Yes, but the closer we are to the faerie mounds, the more our enemies can gather round us. I'm not even certain that the Seelie are my enemies, but they are not my friends. They seek to control me and the magic I represent."



"Then we must go to Los Angeles," Doyle said.



"Sholto cannot leave his people besieged by the Seelie," Mistral said.



"Nor can we," I said.



"What do you mean to do, Meredith?" Doyle asked.



I shook my head. "I'm not certain, but I know that I need to convince them that the sluagh did not steal me away. I need to convince them that they cannot steal the chalice from me."



"They are asking for you and the chalice," Mistral said. "I think they understand that it is your hand it comes to."



"True," I said. I thought, "What do I do?" Goddess, what do I do to fix this? Then I had an idea, a very human idea. "There's a room in the sluagh mound just like in the Unseelie mound. There's a phone and computer, an office."



"How do you know that?" Mistral asked.



"My father had to make a phone call from here once when I was with him."



"Why did he not use the phone at the Unseelie mound?" Mistral asked.



I looked at Doyle. "He didn't trust the Unseelie," Doyle said.



"Not in that moment. It was only weeks before he died."



"What was the phone call about?" Mistral asked.



"He made me go with Sholto to see another part of the mound."



"I thought you were afraid of the King of the sluagh," Doyle said. "I was, but my father told me to go, and to remember that the sluagh had never harmed me. That the sluagh and goblin mounds were the only faerie mounds where I had never been beaten or abused. He was right. Now the sluagh are afraid that my being Sholto's queen will destroy them as a people, but then I was just the daughter of Essus and they liked my father."



"We all did," Mistral said.



"Not all," Doyle said.



"Who did not?" Mistral asked.



"Whoever killed him. It had to be another sidhe warrior. No other could have stood against Prince Essus." It was the first time I'd heard Doyle say out loud what I'd always known, that somewhere in the faces of those around me at court was my father's murderer.



Doyle turned to me. "Who will you call?"



"I'll call for help. I'll say the truth, that the Seelie are trying to take me back to the king's hands. That they do not believe his guilt, and I need help."



"They cannot defeat the Seelie," Doyle said.



"No, but neither can the Seelie defend themselves against human authority. If they do, they lose their right to live on American soil. They will be banished from the last country that will have them."



The two men looked at me, then Mistral nodded. "Clever."



"You put the Seelie in a situation that they cannot win," Doyle said. "If they fail their king, he could have them killed."



"They have the ability to bring him down as king, Doyle. If they are too weak-willed to do it, then their fate is their own."



"Harsh words," he said softly.



"I thought being pregnant would make me softer, but when I stood alone in the snow and realized that Onilwyn meant to kill me, knowing that I was with child," I shook my head, trying to put it into words, "some terrible resolve took hold of me. Or perhaps it was Gran dying in my arms that finally made me realize."



"Realize what, Meredith?"



"That I cannot afford to be weak, or even too terribly kind anymore. The time for such things must be over, Doyle. I will save faerie if I can, but I will protect my children and the men I love above all else."



"Even above taking the throne?" Doyle asked.



I nodded. "You saw the noble houses when the queen presented me, Doyle. We have less than half the houses supporting me. I thought Andais was strong enough to push whatever heir she chose upon the nobles, but if the nobles of her court are conspiring with the nobles of the Seelie Court, she's lost too much power over them. There is no way to be safe on this throne, unless we can find more allies here."



"Are you giving up the crown?" Doyle asked, words very careful.



"No, but I am saying that I cannot take it unless my safety and the safety of my kings and children can be guaranteed. I will not lose another person to assassins, and I will not die at their hands as my father did." I put my hands on my stomach. Still so flat, but I had seen their tiny figures on the ultrasound. I would not lose them. "We go to the Western Lands, and we stay there until the babies are born, or until we are certain that we are safe."



"We will never be safe, Meredith," Doyle said.



"So be it, then," I said.



"Be careful what you say, Princess," Mistral said.



"I say the truth, Mistral. There are too many schemes, plots, enemies, or simply people who want to use me. My own cousin used our grandmother as a weapon, and set her up to be killed. So many of the sidhe care nothing for the lesser fey, and that's wrong too. If I am to be queen here, then I will be queen of all, not just of the sidhe."



"Merry... ," Doyle said.



"No, Doyle, the lesser fey haven't tried to kill me and mine yet. Why should I keep being loyal to the very people who keep trying to hurt me?"



"Because you are part sidhe."



"I am also part human and part brownie. We'll need a guide to the phone room. It's been too long since I was there. But we will call the police and they will come and get us out. We will be on a plane to Los Angeles, and the plane itself will be enough metal and technology to protect us."



"It is not a happy thing for me to fly, Meredith," Doyle said.



I smiled at him. "I know that much metal is a problem for most of you, but it is the safest way for us to travel, and it will guarantee that we have human media on the other end waiting for us. We are going to embrace the media, because this is war, Doyle. Not a war of weapons, but of public opinion. Faerie grows stronger on the belief of mortals, so we will give them ourselves to believe in."



"Have you been planning this all along?" he asked.



"No, no, but it's time to embrace my own strengths. I was raised human, Doyle. I realize now that my father took me out of faerie as a child for the same reason I'm going now, because it was safer."



"You are exiling all of us, including our children, from faerie."



I went to him, wrapping my arms around him so that we were pressed together. "Only you lost to me would be exile."



He searched my face. "Meredith, do not give up a throne for me."



"I admit that the fact that they keep trying to kill you hardest of all affects my decisions, but it's not just that, Doyle. The magic around me grows wilder, and I cannot control it. I no longer know how much and what is returning. There are things that were driven from faerie long ago, not at the humans' request, but at our own. What if I bring back things that could truly destroy us all, human and fey alike? I am too dangerous to be this close to the faerie mounds."



"Faerie has come to Los Angeles, Merry, or had you forgotten?"



"That new bit of faerie cost us Frost, so no, I hadn't forgotten. If I had not been in the new part of faerie Taranis could not have taken me. We will put guards on the doors and I at least will stay in the human world, until the Goddess or God tell me otherwise."



"What dream did the Goddess give you, to make you so resolved?" he asked.



"It is the dream and the Seelie outside the sluagh's home. I bring danger to all who would shelter me inside faerie. It is time to go home."



"Faerie is home," he said.



I shook my head. "I saw Los Angeles as a punishment, but no longer. I will treat it as a refuge, and I will make it our home."



"I have never been to the city before," Mistral said. "I am not sure I will thrive there."



I held my hand out to the other man. "You will be by my side, Mistral. You will watch my body grow ripe, and you will hold our children in your hands. What more is home than that?"



He came to me then, to us, and they wrapped me in the strength of their arms. I buried my face in the scent of Doyle's chest, and hid against his body. My resolve would have been firmer if the other arms holding me had been Frost's. By returning to the human world and cutting myself off from faerie, I was cutting myself off from the last piece of him. The white stag was a fey creature, and it would not come to a metal city. I pushed the thought away. I was right in this choice. I felt it, like a firm yes in my mind. It was time to embrace the other part of my culture. It was time to go to Los Angeles and make it my home.



Chapter Eighteen



Chattan, Sholto's cousin, was on the door as guard again. His brother was not with him. A nightflyer stood on the other side of the door, flat upon the floor, its great wings pulled tight around it so that it looked like a black cloak. Standing, the nightflyer was a little shorter than I. I looked into its huge, lidless eyes, and a glance at Chattan's own eyes showed plainly where the genetics for those large liquid dark eyes had come from.



He was Sholto's cousin on his father's side.



Chattan came to attention, saying, "Princess Meredith, it is good to see you up and well. This is Tarlach. He is our uncle."



I knew what he meant by the "our."



"Greetings, Uncle Tarlach. It is good to meet another of my king's relatives."



Tarlach bowed in that liquid way that the nightflyers had, as if their spines worked in ways that human spines never would. His voice had some of the sibilance of a snake goblin, but there was also a sound of wind and open sky in his words, as if the sound that wild geese make in the autumn could be mingled with the edge of a storm and become human speech.



"It has been long since a sidhe called me uncle."



"I bear the child of your nephew and your king. By sluagh law that makes us family. The sluagh have never stood on ceremony to make their family larger. Blood calls to blood." In the Unseelie Court that would have been a threatening line, blood to blood, but among the sluagh it simply meant that I carried Tarlach's genetics in my body.



"You know our ways; that is good. You are your father's daughter."



"Everywhere I go outside the Unseelie Court I find people who respected my father. I am beginning to wish that he was a tenth less likeable and a tenth more ruthless."



Tarlach moved what would have passed for shoulders if he'd had more of them, but I knew from my nightflyer tutor, Bhatar, that it was their nod.



"You think it would have kept him alive?" Tarlach asked.



"I plan to find out."



"You plan to be more ruthless than your father?" Chattan asked.



I looked at the taller sluagh and nodded. "Take me to the office so that I can make a phone call, and I will try to be both practical and surprising."



"What help is there from a phone against the Seelie?" Tarlach asked, in his wind and storm voice. Not all the nightflyers had such voices. It was a mark of royal blood among them, but more than that, it was a mark of great power. Even among the royal not all had the voice of storm.



"I will call the police and tell them that my uncle seeks to kidnap me again. They will come and rescue me, and once I am gone the Seelie danger to you all will go with me."



"If the sluagh cannot stand against the Seelie, then the humans cannot," Chattan said.



"But if the Seelie dare to attack human police, it is a breach of the treaty they signed when they first came to this country. It is war on American soil, and war on humans. They can be exiled from this country for that."



"You seek not to fight, but to make it impossible for them to fight," Tarlach said.



"Exactly."



His slit of a mouth smiled enough that it crinkled his lidless eyes into happy smiles, or that's how I'd always thought of it as a child when I'd made Bhatar smile that broadly. "We will take you to the office, but our king and nephew is fighting a different fight, which the human police cannot help with."



"Let us walk as you explain," Mistral said.



Tarlach looked up and gave the tall sidhe a look that was not friendly, though I wasn't certain that Mistral would be able to read it. I'd grown up staring into the face of a nightflyer, so I could.



"The sidhe do not rule here." Then he looked at Doyle.



"Once the queen ordered me to come and try to be your king, but you rejected me, and the sluagh's vote is final. I did as I was ordered, nothing more."



"It left a bad taste on our skin," Tarlach said.



"The queen orders, and the ravens obey," Doyle said, an old saying among the Unseelie that I hadn't heard in a long time.



"Some say the princess is only a puppet for the Darkness, but you have remained silent."



"The princess does well enough on her own."



"Yes, she does." Tarlach seemed to decide something, because he began to walk down the hallway. As graceful as they are in the air, they are less so on the ground.



"We heard that the sluagh had voted a new proxy king because they feared Sholto would not wake in time to deal with the Seelie," I said as I fell in step beside him. Mistral and Doyle came in behind me, much as they would have for the queen herself. Chattan brought up the rear.



"It was more than that, Princess Meredith. The bower you had created was terribly Seelie, though the bone gate was a nice touch."



"It was made of magic from Sholto and myself."



"But it was mostly flowers and sunshine. That is not very Unseelie, and most definitely not very sluagh."



"I cannot always choose how the magic will come."



"It is wild magic, and it chooses its own way like water finding a cleft in a rock," he said.



I simply agreed. "Is there a chance that they will try to dispossess Sholto?"



"Some fear that in joining with you he will destroy the sluagh. They have chosen a full-blooded nightflyer in his place as proxy. Only the fact that Sholto has been the best and fairest of kings saved him from waking to a kingdom that was his no more."



"Forgive me," Doyle said, "but could the sluagh simply vote their king out of office?"



Tarlach spoke without trying to look back at Doyle. "It has been done before."



We walked in silence for a few minutes. The sluagh's sithen looked much like the Unseelie's, with dark stone walls, and floors of cold, worn stone. But the energy was different. That thrumming, pulsing energy that was always present inside a fairie mound, unless you blocked it out, was slightly different. It was like the difference between a Porsche and a Mustang. They were both high-performance cars, but one purred and the other roared. The sluagh's sithen roared, the power calling to me louder and louder as we walked.



I stopped so abruptly that Doyle had to touch my shoulder to keep from walking into me. "What is wrong?" he asked.



"We will call, but Sholto needs me now, right now."



"You at his side will not comfort them," Tarlach said.



"I know I look too sidhe for them, but it is the power that they need to see. The sithen is talking. Don't you hear it?"



Tarlach gazed up at me. "I hear it, but I am nightflyer."



"It is roaring at me, getting louder, like the rain and wind of some great storm coming ever closer. I need to be at Sholto's side while he faces his people."



"You are too sidhe to help him," Chattan said.



I shook my head. "Your sithen doesn't think so."



The sound pulsed against my skin, as if I were leaning against some great engine, so that it vibrated along my body. "There is no time. The sithen chose Sholto as its king, as all the sithens once did. It will not take another, and your people are not listening to it."



"If you are truly his queen, and the sithen truly speaks, then ask it to open the way from here to the chamber of decision. It may speak to you, but does it listen to you?"



I remembered the wall trying to close against my wish, but that had been my desire, and the new king had been working against me. Now the sithen wanted something, and I wanted the same thing. We wanted to help our king.



I spoke. "Sithen, open the way to your king and the chamber of decision."



The vibrating energy grew so loud that I could hear nothing but the roar and pulse of it. It staggered me for a moment so that I reached out to Tarlach's slick muscled form for steadiness. Maybe it was the fact that I reached to a nightflyer and not a sidhe, but whatever the reason, the corridor in front of us ended, and became something else. It was suddenly the opening of a great cavern. I could see seats full of sluagh going up and up in a great amphitheater.



Sholto stood on the sand-covered floor facing a huge nightflyer almost as tall as himself. It unfurled its wings, and shrieked at us. Sholto turned a startled face to us. He only had time to say "Meredith" before the nightflyer launched itself at us. Tarlach threw himself skyward and met the larger form in a twisting fight that went upward.



"You should not have come," Sholto said, but he took my hand in his as the benches began to broil into a riot. The sluagh were fighting among themselves.