Chapter Thirteen

We ended up with an impromptu entourage of reporters and uniformed police. At one point the reporters were such a solid mass that Wright and O'Brian couldn't move us forward without laying hands on them, and apparently they'd been ordered not to manhandle the press. They were experiencing the problem that my bodyguards had been having for weeks. How do you stay politically correct with strangers shouting in your face, flashes going off like blinding bombs, and the crowd turning into a mass of bodies that you were not allowed to touch?

The reporters yelled questions. "Are you helping the police with a case, Princess?" "What investigation are you helping the police with?" "Why were you crying?" "Is the shop owner really a relative of yours?"

Wright and O'Brian tried to push a way through without actually pushing, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Doyle and Frost stayed on either side of me, because the crowd had grown beyond the reporters. Human and fey had come out of the shops and restaurants to see what the commotion was about. It was "human" nature to be curious but they began to add to the press around us so that forward movement stopped.

Then suddenly the reporters fell silent, not all at once, but gradually. First one went quiet, then another, and they began to look around, as if they'd heard a noise, a disturbing noise. Then I felt it, too: fear. Fear like a cold, clammy wind across your skin. I had a moment to stand there in the bright California sunshine and feel a shiver creep down my spine.

Doyle squeezed my arm and that helped me think. It helped me tighten my magical shields, and the moment I did, the fear washed away from me, but I could still see it on the reporters' faces.

Wright and O'Brian had their hands on their guns, looking around apprehensively. I spilled my shields outward to them, the way I'd done the glamour over Doyle and Frost earlier. Wright's shoulders dropped as if a weight had gone from him. O'Brian said, "What was that?"

"Is that," Doyle said.

"What?" she asked.

The reporters parted like a curtain. They simply didn't want to be near whatever was walking between them. The Fear Dearg walked toward us grinning his snaggletoothed grin. I'd been right; it was an evil grin. His enjoyment of the reporters' fear showed in his face and the jaunty roll of his walk.

He came to stand in front of us, and then went down on one knee before us. "My queen," he said.

A camera flashed, freezing the image for tomorrow's news, or tonight's. The Fear Dearg looked in the direction of the flash and there was a yell, then a man went running down the sidewalk. His many cameras jangled as he raced away screaming, as if all the devil's Dandy Dogs were chasing him.

The other reporters took a collective step back. The Fear Dearg gave an evil chuckle, and just the sound of it was enough to make me break out in goose bumps. If I'd been alone on some dark road it would have been terrifying.

"You must practice that laugh," I said. "It's positively evil."

He grinned up at me. "A fey likes to know his work is appreciated, my queen."

A reporter called out in a shaking voice, "He called you his queen. Does that mean you did keep the throne?"

The Fear Dearg got to his feet and bounced at them, hands up, and said, "Boo!" The reporters fled on that side. He made a move toward the other group, but most of them backed away, hands held out, as if to show that they meant no harm.

One woman asked in a breathless voice, "Meredith, are you queen of the Unseelie Court?"

"No," I answered.

The Fear Dearg looked at me. "Shall I tell her the crown that sat upon your head first?"

"Not here," Doyle said.

The Fear Dearg glared up at him. "I did not ask you, Darkness. If we were kin, then it would be different, but I owe you nothing, only her."

I realized that Doyle refusing to acknowledge that his ancestry was similar to the Fear Dearg's had insulted the fey.

Doyle seemed to figure it out then too, because he said, "I do not hide my mixed heritage, Fear Dearg. I only meant that I had none of your blood in my veins, which is only truth."

"Ay, but you've had our blood on your sword, haven't you? Before you were the Queen's Darkness, before you were Nudons and healed at your magic spring, you were other things, other names." The Fear Dearg lowered his voice with each word, until the remaining reporters began to come closer trying to hear. I had known that Doyle had been something before he was worshipped as a god, and that he had not sprung full grown at the side of Queen Andais, but I had never asked. The older of the sidhe did not like to talk about the time before, when our people were greater.

The Fear Dearg whirled and jumped at the reporters with a loud "Hah!" They ran, some falling down and others trampling them underfoot in a mad panic to be away from him. The ones on the ground got up and raced after the others.

O'Brian said, "It's not strictly legal to use magic on the press."

The Fear Dearg cocked his head to one side like a bird that has spied a worm. The look made O'Brian swallow a little harder, but with my shields around her she held her ground. "And how would you have moved them, girlie?"

"Officer O'Brian," she said.

He grinned at her, and I felt her flinch, but she didn't move back. It earned her a point for bravery, but I wasn't certain that taunting him after he'd shown such obvious sexual interest in her during Bittersweet's questioning was a good idea. Sometimes a little fear is a wise thing.

He started to invade her personal space, and I stepped between them. "What do you want, Fear Dearg? I appreciate the help, I do, but you did not do it out of the goodness of your heart."

He leered at O'Brian, then turned the leer to me. It didn't bother me. "I have no goodness in my heart, my queen, only evil."

"No one is only evil," I said.

The leer grew until his face was a mask of evil intent, but it was the kind of evil they put on Halloween masks. "You're too young to understand what I am."

"I know what evil is," I said, "and it does not come with a cartoon mask and a leer. Evil comes in the face of those who are supposed to love and care for you, but they don't. Evil comes with a slap, or a hand holding you underwater until you can't breathe, and all the time her face is serene, not angry, not mad, because she believes that she has the right."

His evil face began to fold down into something more serious. He gazed up at me, and said, "Rumors say you endured much abuse at the hands of your sidhe relatives."

Doyle turned to the police officers. "Give us some privacy, please?"

Wright and O'Brian exchanged glances, then Wright shrugged. "We were just told to get you safely into your car, so fine, we'll wait over here."

O'Brian tried to protest, but her partner insisted. They argued quietly as they gave us our privacy.

Doyle's hand on my arm tightened, and Frost moved closer. They were telling me silently not to share stories out of court, but the queen had never cared that I talked about some things. "And their friends, never forget their friends, I never could," I said.

He looked from Frost to Doyle, and asked, "Did they torment you before they became your lovers?"

I shook my head. "No, I have taken no lover who ever raised a hand to me."

"You have cleared out the Unseelie sithen. They've all come to L.A. with you. Who is left, who tormented you so?"

"I've taken only the guards away, not the nobles," I said.

"But all guards are noble among the sidhe, or they are not worthy of guarding a queen, or a king."

I shrugged. "I have called to me that which is mine."

He went to his knees again, but closer to my feet, so that I had to fight the urge to back up a step. Earlier I would have, but something about this moment made me want to be the queen that the Fear Dearg needed. Doyle seemed to feel me think it, because he put a hand on my back as if to help me not give ground. Frost simply moved to my other side, so that he almost touched me, but he was keeping his hands free for weapons, just in case. In public they tried to keep one of them free for that, though sometimes it was hard to comfort me and guard me at the same time.

"You have not called the Fear Dearg, Queen Meredith."

"I did not know they were mine to call."

"We were cursed and our women destroyed so we would cease to be a people. No matter how long-lived we are, the Fear Dearg are a dying race."

"I have never heard even a hint that the Fear Dearg have women, or of a curse."

He turned those black, uptilted eyes to Doyle at my side. "Ask that one if I speak the truth."

I looked at Doyle. He simply nodded.

"We and the Red Caps almost beat the sidhe. We were two proud races, and we existed on bloodshed. The sidhe came to help the humans, to save them." His voice was bitter.

"You would have killed every man, woman, and child on the isle," Doyle said.

"Mayhap we would have," he said, "but it was our right to do it. They were our worshippers before they were yours, sidhe."

"And what is a god if he destroys all those who worship him, Fear Dearg?"

"What is a god who has lost all his followers, Nudons?"

"I am no god, nor was I ever."

"But we all thought we were, didn't we, Darkness?" He gave that disturbing chuckle again.

Doyle nodded, his hand on my back tensing. "We thought many things that turned out not to be true."

"Ay, that we did, Darkness." The Fear Dearg sounded sad.

"I will tell you truth, Fear Dearg. I had forgotten you and your people and what happened so long ago."

He looked up at Doyle. "Oh, ay, the sidhe do so many things that they simply forget. They wash their hands not in water, or even blood, but forgetfulness and time."

"Meredith cannot do what you want."

"She is crowned queen of the sluagh, and for a brief moment queen of the Unseelie. Crowned by faerie and Goddess, that's what you made us wait for, Darkness. You and your people, we were cursed to be nameless, childless, homeless, until a queen crowned rightly by Goddesses and faerie itself granted us a name again." He looked up at me. "It was a way for them to curse us forever without sounding like it was forever. It was a way to torment us. We used to come before every new queen and ask for our names back, and they all refused."

"They remembered what you were, Fear Dearg," Doyle said.

The Fear Dearg turned to Frost. "And you, Killing Frost, why so silent? Do you have no opinions but the ones that Darkness gives you? That's the rumor, you're his sub."

I wasn't entirely sure that Frost would understand that last part, but he knew he was being taunted. "I do not remember the Fear Dearg's fate. I woke to winter, and your people were gone."

"That's right, that's right, once you were but wee Jackie Frost, just one more retainer in the court of the Winter Queen." He did that head cock to one side again. "How did you turn into a sidhe, Frost? How did you grow in power while all the rest of us faded?"

"People believe in me. I am Jack Frost. They talk, they write books and stories, and children look out their window and see the frost on their windows and think I did it." Frost took a step toward the smaller kneeling man. "And what do the human children say of you, Fear Dearg? You are barely a whisper in the human's minds these days, all forgotten."

The Fear Dearg gave him a look that was frightening, for real, because it held such hate. "They remember us, Jackie, they remember us. We live in their memories and in their hearts. They are still what we made of them."

"Lies will not help you, only truth," Doyle said.

"It's not lies, Darkness, go into any theater and watch their slasher flicks. Their serial killers, their wars, the slaughter on the evening news when a man kills his whole family so they won't know he's lost his job, or the woman who drowns her children so she can have another man. Oh, no, Darkness, humans remember us. We were the voices in the blackest night of the human soul, and what we planted there still lives. The Red Caps gave them war, but the Fear Dearg gave them pain and torment. They are still our children, Darkness, make no mistake about that."

"And we gave them music, stories, art, and beauty," Doyle said.

"You are Unseelie sidhe; you gave them slaughter, too."

"We gave them both," Doyle said. "You hated us because we offered more than just blood, death, and fear. No Red Cap, no Fear Dearg ever wrote a poem, painted a picture, or designed something new and fresh. You have no ability to create, only to destroy, Fear Dearg."

He nodded. "I have spent centuries, more centuries than most acknowledge, learning the lesson you set us, Darkness."

"And what lesson have you learned?" I asked. My voice was soft, as if I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"That people are real. That the humans aren't just for our pleasure and slaughter, and that they are a people, too." He glared up at Doyle. "But the Fear Dearg survived long enough to see the mighty fall as we fell. We watched the sidhe diminish in power and glory, and the few of us left rejoiced."

"Yet you bend knee to us again," Doyle said.

He shook his head. "I bend knee to the queen of the sluagh, not of the Unseelie, or the Seelie Court I bend knee to Queen Meredith, and if King Sholto were here I would acknowledge him. He has kept the faith with his other side."

"Sholto's tentacles are only a tattoo unless he calls them forth. He looks as sidhe as any of us standing here," Doyle said.

"And if I want a fair young maiden, don't I use my glamour to make myself look a bit better?"

"It's illegal to use magic to trick someone into bed," O'Brian said.

I started. I hadn't realized that the police had moved back into hearing range.

The Fear Dearg glared at her. "And do you wear makeup on your dates, Officer? Do you put on a pretty dress?"

She didn't answer him.

"But there's no makeup that will cover this." He motioned at his own face. "There's no suit to hide my body. It's magic or nothing for me. I could make you understand what it's like to be twisted in the eyes of the other humans."

"You will not harm her," Doyle said.

"Ah, the great sidhe speaks and we all must listen."

"You have learned nothing, Fear Dearg," Doyle said.

"You did just threaten to use magic to deform O'Brian," I said.

"No, my magic is all glamour; to deform I'd have to use something more solid."

"Do not end their curse, Meredith. They would be a plague on the humans."

"Someone explain to me what the curse was, exactly."

"I will, in the car," Doyle said, and he stepped forward, putting me behind him. "Fear Dearg, we might have taken pity on you after so very long, but you have shown in just a few words to a human woman that you are still dangerous, still too evil to be given back your powers."

The Fear Dearg reached out to me, past Doyle's leg. "But give me a name, my queen, I beg you. Give me a name and I can have a life again."

"Do not, Meredith, not until you understand what they were and what they might be again."

"There are only a handful of us left in the world, Darkness." His voice was rising. "What harm could we do now?"

"If you did not need Meredith to free you from the curse, if you did not need her goodwill, the goodwill of some queen of faerie, what would you do to some human woman tonight, Fear Dearg?"

The Fear Dearg's eyes held such hate. I actually stepped back behind Doyle, and Frost moved so that I only saw the Fear Dearg between their bodies as I had at the beginning.

He looked at me between the two of them, and it was a look that made me truly afraid. He got to his feet, a little heavily, as if his knees ached from being on the sidewalk so long. "Not just human women, Darkness, or have you forgotten that once we rivaled your magic, and the sidhe were no more safe than the humans?"

"I have not forgotten that." Doyle's voice held rage. I'd never heard quite that tone in his voice before. It sounded of something more personal.

"There is no rule to how we get our naming from the queen," he said. "I have asked nicely, but she would name me to save herself and those babes inside her. You would let her name me to save them."

The two men closed ranks and I lost sight of the Fear Dearg. "Do not come near her, Fear Dearg, for it will be your death. And if we hear of any crimes on humans that smack of your work, we will see that you no longer have to mourn your lost greatness, for the dead mourn nothing."

"Ah, but how will you tell what is my work and what is the work of humans who carry the spirit of the Fear Dearg in their souls? It is not music and poetry that I see on the news, Darkness."

"We are leaving," Doyle said. We said good-bye to Wright and O'Brian, and the men got me into the truck. We started the engine but didn't leave until O'Brian and Wright were lost in the mass of police down the way. I think none of us wanted to leave O'Brian close to the Fear Dearg.

It was Alice in her Goth outfit who came out of the Fael and went to the Fear Dearg. She hugged him, and he hugged her back. They went back into the tea shop hand in hand, but he cast a look back over his shoulder as I put the SUV in gear. The look was a challenge, a sort of Stop Me If You Can. They vanished into the shop. I pulled carefully out into the street and the traffic, then said, "What the hell was all that about?"

"I don't wish to tell the tale in the car," Doyle said, with his death grip on the door and the dashboard. "You do not tell tales of the Fear Dearg when you are afraid. It calls them to you, gives them power over you."

To that I didn't know what to say, because I remembered a time when I thought the Queen's Darkness felt nothing, least of all fear. I knew that Doyle felt all the emotions everyone else felt, but admitting weakness, that he didn't do often. He'd said the only thing that could have kept me from questioning him on the way to the beach. I used the bluetooth to call ahead to the beach house and the main house to let everyone know that we were fine. That the only ones wounded were the paparazzi. Some days karma balances out instantly.

Chapter Fourteen

Maeve Reed's beach house sat above the ocean, half on the cliff and half resting on wood and concrete supports designed to stand up to earthquakes, mudslides, and anything else the Southern California climate could throw at the house. It sat in a gated community complete with a uniformed guard and a gatehouse. It was what kept the press from following us. Because they'd found us. It was almost a type of magic how they always found us again, like a dog on a scent. There weren't as many on the narrow curving road, but enough to stop and look disappointed as we went through the gates.

Ernie was at the gate. He was an older African American who had once been a soldier, but had been injured badly enough that his army career had gone away. He would never tell me what the injury had been, and I knew enough human culture not to ask outright.

He frowned at the cars parked out of reach of the gate. "I'll call the police so we'll have the trespassing on record."

"They stay away from the gate when you're on duty, Ernie," I said.

He smiled at me. "Thank you, Princess. I do my best." He tipped an imaginary hat at Doyle and Frost, and said, "Gentlemen."

They nodded back and away we went. If the beach house hadn't been behind a gate, we'd have been at the mercy of the media, and after watching the windows crack at Matilda's deli, I didn't think that would be a good idea tonight. It would have been nice to think that the accident would make the paparazzi back off, but it would probably make me bigger news, more of a target. It was ironic, but almost certainly true.

The car's phone sounded. Doyle started, and I spoke into the air toward the microphone. "Hello."

"Merry, how close to the house are you guys?" Rhys asked.

"Almost there," I said.

He gave a chuckle that sounded tinny because of the bluetooth. "Good, our cook is getting nervous that the food will get cold before you arrive."

"Galen?" I made it a question.

"Yep, he hasn't even taken anything off the stove, but he's fretting about that so he won't fret about you. Barinthus told me you called and shared some excitement. Are you okay?"

"Fine, but tired," I said.

Doyle spoke loudly, "We are almost to the turnoff."

"The bluetooth only works for the driver," I said, not for the first time.

Doyle said, "Why doesn't it work for everyone in the front seat?"

"Merry, what did you say?" Rhys asked.

"Doyle said something." More quietly to Doyle, I said, "I don't know."

"You don't know what?" Rhys asked.

"Sorry, still not used to the bluetooth. We're almost there, Rhys."

A huge black raven perched on an ancient fence post by the road. It cawed and flexed its wings. "Tell Cathbodua we're fine, too."

"You see one of her pets?" he asked.

"Yes." The raven winged skyward and began to circle the car.

"She'll know more about you than I do then," he said, and sounded a little discouraged.

"Are you all right? You sound tired," I said.

"Fine, like you," he said, and laughed again, then added, "but I just got here myself. The simple case Jeremy sent me on turned out to be not so simple."

"We can talk about it over dinner," I said.

"I'd like your opinion, but I think there's a different agenda for dinner."

"What do you mean?"

Frost leaned up as far as the seat belt would let him, and asked, "Has something else happened? Rhys sounds worried."

"Did something else happen while we were gone?" I asked. I was looking for the turnoff to the house. The light was beginning to fade. It wasn't quite twilight, but it was still a turn I missed if I wasn't paying attention.

"Nothing new, Merry. I swear."

I braked sharply for the turnoff, which made Doyle grab the car tightly enough that I heard the door frame protest. He was strong enough to tear the door off its hinges. I just hoped he didn't dent it because of his phobia.

I spoke as I eased the SUV over the rise at the top of the road and down the steep lip of the private driveway. "I'm on the driveway. See you in a few."

"We'll be waiting." He hung up and I concentrated on the steep drive. I wasn't the only one who didn't like it. It was hard to tell behind the dark glasses, but I think Doyle had closed his eyes as I wound the SUV around the turns.

The outside lights were already on, and the shortest guard I had was pacing outside the front of the house, white trench coat flapping in the ocean breeze. Rhys was the only one of the guards who had gotten his own private detective license. He'd always loved old film noir movies, and when he wasn't doing undercover work he liked his trench coat and fedoras. They were just usually white or cream to match his waist-length curls. His hair was flying in the wind along with his coat. I realized that his hair was tangling in the wind like mine had earlier.

"Rhys's hair tangles in the wind," I said.

"Yes," Frost said.

"Is that why he only has it to his waist?"

"I believe so," he said.

"Why does his hair tangle and yours doesn't?"

"Doyle's doesn't either. He just likes the braid."

"Same question. Why?"

I pulled the car to a stop beside Rhys's car. He started striding toward us. He was smiling, but I knew his body language well enough to see the anxiety. He was wearing a white eye patch to match his coat today. He wore them when he was meeting with clients, or out in the world at large. Most people, and some fey, found the scars where his right eye had once been disturbing. At home when it was just us, he didn't bother with the patch.

"We don't know why some of our hair does not tangle," Frost said. "It's just the way it's always been."

With that unsatisfying answer, Rhys was at my door. I unlocked it so he could help me out of the car, but the anxiety had turned his one blue eye with its three circles of blue - cornflower blue, sky blue, and winter white - to spinning slowly like a lazy storm. It meant that his magic was close to the surface, which usually took a lot of emotion, or concentration. Was it anxiety about my safety today, or was it something the Grey Detective Agency and he were working on? I couldn't even remember, except that it had something to do with corporate sabotage using magic.

Rhys opened the door, and I offered my hand automatically. He took it and raised it to his lips to put a kiss on my fingers that made my skin tingle. Anxiety for me then, not the case, was making his magic swirl closer to the surface. I wondered how much worse the pictures on TV had looked from the outside looking in; it hadn't seemed that bad at the time, had it?

He wrapped his arms around me and drew me in against his body. He squeezed and I had a moment of feeling just how very strong he was, and that there was a slight tremor to his body. I tried to push back enough to see his face, and for a moment he held me more tightly so that I had no choice but to stay against him. I let myself feel his body underneath his clothes. Bare skin would have been like his kiss; it would have tingled against my skin, but even through his clothes I could feel the pulse and beat of his power like some finely tuned engine purring against my body from cheek to thigh. I let myself sink into that sensation. Let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the muscled firmness of his body, and for just a moment I allowed myself to let go of all that had happened and all that I had seen today. I let it be chased away by the strength of the man holding me.

I thought of him nude and holding me, and letting the promise of that deep vibrating power sink into my body. The thought made me press my groin more tightly against him, and I felt his body begin to respond.

He was the one who raised his head enough to allow me to gaze up into his face. He was smiling, and he kept his arms tight across my back. "If you're thinking about sex, then you can't be that traumatized." He grinned.

I smiled back. "I'm better now."

Hafwyn's voice turned us toward the door. She came out of the house with her long yellow hair in a thick, single braid to one side of her slender form. She was everything a Seelie sidhe woman should have been. She was an inch under six feet, slender but feminine, with eyes like spring skies. When I had been a little girl this was what I had wanted to look like instead of my all-too-human height and curves. My hair, eyes, and skin were sidhe, but the rest of me had never measured up. Many of the sidhe of both courts had made certain that I knew I was too human looking, not sidhe enough. Hafwyn had not been one of those. She had never been cruel to me when I was just Meredith, Daughter of Essus, and not likely to sit any throne. In fact, she had been nearly invisible to me in the courts, just one of my cousin Cel's guards.

Standing there in Rhys's arms with Doyle and Frost moving up behind us, I did not envy anyone. How could I want to change anything about myself when I had so many people who loved me?

Hafwyn wore a white sundress, simpler than mine, almost a shift like something they once wore under dresses, but the simplicity of the cloth could not hide her beauty. The beauty of all the sidhe reminded me often why we'd once been worshipped as gods. It was only partly the magic. Humans have a tendency to either worship or revile beauty.

She dropped a curtsy as she came to me. I'd almost broken the new guards from such public displays but a century's worth of habits are hard to break.

"Do you need healing, my lady?"

"I am unharmed," I said.

She was one of the few true healers that faerie had left. She could lay hands on a wound or illness and simply magick it away. Outside of faerie her powers were lessened, but then many of our powers were less in the human world.

"Goddess be praised," she said, and touched my arm where it lay against Rhys's body. I'd noticed that the longer we were outside of the high courts of faerie the more touchy-feely the guards became. Touching someone when anxious was considered something that lesser fey did. We sidhe were supposed to be above such petty comforts, but I had never found the touch of a friend a petty comfort. I valued the people who drew strength from touching me, or gave me peace with their own touch.

Her touch was brief, because the Queen of Air and Darkness, my aunt, would have either laughed at her for the need, or turned that kind gesture into something sexual and/or threatening. All weaknesses were to be exploited; all kindness was to be stamped out.

Galen came out of the house still wearing an apron that was all white and very TV chef, unlike the sheer white one we had in the house. He wore that one without a shirt, because he knew I enjoyed watching him. But he'd fallen in love with the food channel and had some more useful aprons now. He was wearing a dark green tank top and cargo shorts under the apron. The shirt brought out the slight green tinge in his skin and short curly hair. His only sop to the long hair that the other sidhe men kept at the Unseelie Court was a long, thin braid of hair that fell to his knees. He was the only sidhe I'd ever known to voluntarily cut his hair so short.

Rhys let me go so I could be wrapped up in Galen's six feet worth of lean body. I was suddenly airborne as he picked me up. His green eyes were so worried. "We turned the TV on just a little bit ago. All that glass; you could have been hurt."

I touched his face, trying to smooth out the worry lines that would never leave a trace on his perfect skin. The sidhe did age in a way, but they didn't really grow old. But then immortal things don't, do they?

I leaned up for a kiss, and he leaned down to help me reach him. We kissed and there was magic to Galen's kiss as there had been to Rhys's touch, but where the other man's touch had been deep and almost electric, like some kind of distant motor humming, Galen's energy was like having my skin caressed by a soft spring wind. His kiss filled my mind with the perfume of flowers, and that first warmth that comes when the snow has finally left and the earth wakes once more. All that poured over my skin from one kiss. It drew me back from him with wide, startled eyes, and I had to fight to catch my breath.

He looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Merry, I was just so worried, and so glad to see you safe."

I gazed up into his eyes and found them just the same lovely green color. He didn't give as many clues as the rest of us did when his magic was upon him, but that kiss said better than any glowing eyes or shining skin that his magic was very close to the surface. If we'd been inside faerie there might have been flowers growing at his feet, but the asphalt driveway was untouched underneath us. Man-made technology was proof against so much of our magic.

There was a man's voice from inside. "Galen, something's boiling over. I don't know how to stop it!"

Galen turned grinning toward the house with me still in his arms. "Let's go rescue the kitchen before Amatheon and Adair set it on fire."

"You left them in charge of dinner?" I asked.

He nodded happily as he began to walk toward the still-open door. He carried me effortlessly, as if he could have walked with me in his arms forever and never tired. Maybe he could have.

Doyle and Frost fell into step on one side, and Rhys on the other. Doyle asked, "How did you get them to agree to help cook?"

Galen flashed that hail-fellow-well-met smile of his that made everyone want to smile back. Even Doyle was not immune to the charm, because he flashed white teeth in his dark face, responding to the sheer goodwill of Galen.

"I asked," he said.

"And they just agreed?" Frost asked.

He nodded.

"You should have seen Ivi peeling potatoes," Rhys said. "That was something the queen had to threaten torture to get him to do."

All of us but Galen glanced at him. "Are you saying that Galen simply asked them and they agreed?" Doyle said.

"Yes," Rhys said.

We all exchanged a look. I wondered if they were all thinking what I was thinking, that at least some of our magic was doing just fine outside faerie. In fact, Galen's seemed to be growing stronger. That was almost as interesting and surprising as anything that had happened today, because just as it was "impossible" for the fey to be killed in the manner that they seemed to have been killed, so sidhe magic growing stronger outside faerie was just as impossible. Two impossible things in one day, I would have said it was like being Alice in Wonderland, but her Wonderland was fairyland, and none of the impossibilities survived Alice's trip back to the "real" world. Our impossibilities were on the wrong end of the rabbit hole. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, quoting the little girl who got to go to fairytale land twice, and come home in one piece. That's one of the biggest reasons that no one ever thought Alice's adventures were real. Fairyland doesn't give second chances. But maybe the outside world was a little more forgiving. Maybe you have to be somewhere that isn't full of too many immortal things to have the hope of second chances. But since Galen and I were the only two of the exiled sidhe who had never been worshipped in the human world, maybe it wasn't second chances, but a first chance. The question was, a chance to do what? because if he could convince fellow sidhe to do his bidding, humans wouldn't stand a chance.

Chapter Fifteen

The only light in the huge great room of the beach house was the glow of the roomy kitchen to one side, like a glowing cave in the growing dimness. Amatheon and Adair were in that glow panicking. They were both a little over six feet tall with broad shoulders, their bare arms in the modern T-shirts muscular from centuries of weapon practice. Adair's honey-brown hair was knotted and braided into a complicated club between his shoulder blades; unleashed, it hit his ankles. Amatheon's hair was a deep copper red, and curled enough so that the ponytail of knee-length hair was a foam of burnished red as he leaned down toward the chiming oven. They had kilts on instead of pants, but you just didn't see six feet-plus of immortal warrior panicking about anything often, but panicking in a kitchen with pots in their hands and the oven open while they peered inside in a puzzled manner was a very special and endearing type of panic.

Galen put me down gently but quickly, striding toward the kitchen to save the meal from their well-meaning but ineffectual ministrations. They weren't actually wringing their hands, but their body language said clearly that they'd run away if they could convince themselves it wouldn't be cowardly.

Galen entered the fray totally calm and in control. He liked to cook, and he'd taken well to modern conveniences, but then he'd visited the outside world often all his life. The other two men had only been outside faerie for a month. Galen took the pot out of Adair's hands and put it back on the stove on low heat. He got a towel, leaned in past Amatheon's waterfall of hair, and began taking pies out of the oven. In moments everything was under control.

Amatheon and Adair stood just outside the glow of the kitchen, looking crestfallen and relieved. "Please, never leave us in charge of a meal again," Adair said.

"I can cook over an open fire if I have to," Amatheon said, "but these modern contrivances are too different."

"Can either of you grill steaks?" Galen asked.

They looked at each other. "Do you mean over an open fire?" Amatheon asked.

"Yes, with a wire rack so the meat sits above the flames, but it's real fire and it's outside."

They both nodded. "We can do that." They sounded relieved. Adair added, "But Amatheon is the better cook of the two of us."

Galen got a platter out of the refrigerator, took plastic wrap off it, and handed it to Amatheon. "The steaks have been marinating. All you have to do is ask everyone how they like their steaks cooked."

"How they like them cooked?" he asked.

"Bloody, not so bloody, brown in the middle, gray in the middle," Galen said, wisely not even trying to explain rare, medium, and well done for the men. The last time either of them had been out of fairyland one of the Henrys was king of England. And that had been a brief outing into the human world, then back they'd gone to the only life they'd ever known. They'd had one month of modern kitchens and not having servants to do all the grunt work. They were actually doing better than some of the others who were new to the human world. Mistral was, unfortunately, not taking well at all to modern America. Since he was one of the fathers of my babies, that was a problem, but he wasn't here tonight. He didn't like traveling outside the walled estate in Holmby Hills that we called home. Amatheon, Adair, and many of the other guards were cuter about it, and not so frustrating to the rest of us, which was nice.

Hafwyn joined Galen in the kitchen. Her long yellow braid moved in rhythm against the back of her body as she walked. She began to take things from him and hand things to him as if they'd done this before. Was Hafwyn helping in the kitchen more? As a healer, she didn't have guard duty, and as a healer we didn't feel that her having a job outside of that was a good idea, but she could heal with her hands, so no hospital or doctor would take her. Magic healing was still considered fraud in the United States. There had been too many charlatans over the centuries, so the law didn't leave much room for the genuine article.

Rhys was still beside me in the dimness of the huge living room, but Doyle and Frost had moved across the room past the huge dining room table that was all pale wood gleaming in the moonlight. They were silhouetted against the huge glass wall that looked directly out onto the ocean. There was a third silhouette that stood a foot taller than them. Barinthus was seven feet tall, the tallest sidhe I'd ever met. He was bending that height over the shorter men, and without hearing a word, I knew they were reporting the day's events. Barinthus had been my father's closest friend and advisor. The queen had feared him as both a kingmaker and a rival for the throne. He'd only been allowed to join the Unseelie Court on the promise that he would never try to rule there. But we weren't in the Unseelie  Court anymore, and for the first time I was seeing what my aunt Andais might have seen. The men reported to him and asked his advice; even Doyle and Frost did. It was as if he had an aura of leadership wrapped around him that no crown, title, or bloodline could truly bestow. He was simply a point that people rallied around. I wasn't even sure how aware the other sidhe were that they were doing it.

Barinthus's ankle-length hair was unbound and spilled around his body like a cloak made of water, for his hair was every shade that ocean can be, from darkest blue to tropical turquoise to the gray of storm and everything in between. You couldn't see the extraordinary play of colors in the low light from the moonlit windows, but there was something of movement and flow to his hair even in the dark that made it ripple in the glow of what little light was available as if it were indeed water. His hair actually hid his body so I couldn't tell anything of his clothes.

He lived at the beach house to be near the ocean, and it was as if the longer he was near it, the stronger he grew, the more confident. He had once been Mannan Mac Lir, and there was still a sea god in there trying to get out. It was as if fairyland had drained him of his powers, but being near the ocean gave him back what most of the sidhe had lost when they had left faerie.

Rhys put an arm around my shoulders, and whispered, "Even Doyle treats him as a superior."

I nodded. "Does Doyle realize that yet?"

Rhys kissed me on the cheek, and he'd gotten his power under control enough that it was just a kiss, nice, but not so overwhelming. "I don't think so."

I turned and looked at him; he was only six inches taller than I, so it was almost direct eye contact. "But you noticed," I said.

He smiled and traced the edge of my face with one finger, like a child drawing in the sand. I leaned into that touch and he gave me more of his hand so that he cupped part of the side of my face in his hand. There were other men in my bed who could cup the entire side of my face in one hand, but Rhys was like me, not so big, and sometimes that was nice, too. Variety was not a bad thing.

Amatheon and Adair followed Hafwyn out the sliding-glass doors that led to the huge deck and the huge grill. The ocean rolled underneath that deck. Even without being able to see clearly, you could somehow feel all that power pulsing and moving against the pilings of the house.

Rhys put his forehead against mine and whispered, "How do you feel about the big guy taking over?"

"I don't know. There are so many other problems to solve."

His hand moved to the back of my neck and he moved our faces apart so he could move in for a kiss, but he spoke as he did it. "If you want to stop the power he is building you must do it soon, Merry." He kissed me as he said my name, and I let myself sink into that kiss. I let the warmth of his lips, the tenderness of his touch, hold me in a way that nothing else had today. Maybe it was finally being inside, away from the prying eyes that seemed to be everywhere, but something hard and unhappy loosened inside me as he kissed me.

He hugged me to him, and our bodies touched from shoulder to thigh as close as we could. I could feel his body growing hard and happy to see me against the front of my own. I don't know if we would have tried for a little predinner privacy in the bedrooms, because Caswyn came down the hallway from the bedrooms, and suddenly a lot of the happy seeped away from me.

It wasn't that he was not lovely, for he was, handsome, tall, slender, and muscular as most sidhe warriors were, but the air of sorrow that clung to him made my heart ache. He'd been a minor noble at the Unseelie Court His hair was straight and raven black like Cathbodua's or even Queen Andais herself. His skin as pale as mine, or Frost's. His eyes were still circles of red, red-orange, and finally true orange, like a fire banked down in his eyes. Andais had quieted that fire in him by the torture she'd done to him, the night her son died and we fled faerie. Caswyn had been brought to us by a cloaked woman who told us only that Caswyn's mind would not survive any more of the Queen's Mercy. I wasn't entirely certain his mind wasn't already broken beyond repair. But since Caswyn had been the whipping boy for Andais's anger at us we took him in. His body had healed because he was sidhe, but his mind and heart were more fragile things.

He came down the hallway like a raven-haired ghost in an oversized white dress shirt untucked and billowing over a pair of cream dress slacks. The clothes were borrowed, but surely Frost's shirt had fit him better last week? Was he still not eating?

He came straight for me as if Rhys wasn't holding me. Rhys moved aside so that I could embrace Caswyn. He wrapped himself around me with a sigh that was almost a sob. I held him and let the fierceness of his grip envelop me. He'd been clingy and overly emotional since he had been rescued from the queen's bloody bed. She'd tortured him to punish me in a way, and because my lovers had been out of reach. She'd picked him at random. He'd never been anything to me, not friend or enemy. Caswyn had been as neutral as the courts allowed and centuries of diplomacy had crashed against Andais's madness. The cloaked noblewoman had said, "The queen asked him to bed her and as he was not one of her guards to be ordered so, he politely refused." Caswyn had been one rejection too many for her sanity. She'd turned him into a red ruin on her sheets and made certain to show it to me with a spell that turned a mirror into a video phone better than anything human technology had yet created. When I'd first seen him, he'd been so unrecognizable that I thought he was someone I cared for.

When she told me who it was I'd been puzzled. He was nothing to me. I could still hear Andais's voice, "Then you don't care what I do to him?"

I didn't know how to answer that, but finally I'd said, "He is a noble of the Unseelie Court and deserves protection from its queen."

"You refused the crown, Meredith, and this queen says he deserves nothing for his years of hiding. He's no one's enemy and no one's friend. I always hated that about him." She'd grabbed his hair and made him beg while we watched.

"I will distroy him."

"Why?" I'd asked.

"Because I can."

I'd told him to come to us if ever he could. Days later, with the help of a sidhe who wanted no one to know her identity, he had come. I could not take responsibility for my aunt's deeds. It was her evil and I was just an excuse for her to let out all her demons at once. I think and Doyle agreed, Andais was trying to force the nobles to assassinate her. It was a queen's version of "Suicide by cop."

Moments like that weren't uncommon for Queen Andais, my aunt, and that was one of the reasons that so many of the guards had agreed to exile rather than stay with her once they had a choice. Most of them liked a little tie-me-up-tie-me-down, but there was a line that few would cross willingly, and Andais wasn't a dominant in the sense of modern bondage and submission. She was a dominant in the old sense of might makes right, and being absolute ruler meant absolutely that. The old adage "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" applied to both of my royal relatives on both thrones. What I hadn't foreseen was her idea of pain and sex spreading to outside her personal guard, or that the nobles would keep taking the abuse. Why hadn't someone tried to kill her by now? Why didn't they fight back?

"I thought you were gone," Caswyn said. "I thought you were hurt, or worse; we all did."

"Doyle and Frost wouldn't let that happen," Rhys said.

Caswyn looked at him, still trying to drape all of that six-feet-plus frame around my much smaller one. "And how would they keep Princess Meredith from being cut to pieces with glass? Weapon skill and bravery won't stop every threat. Even the Queen's Darkness and the Killing Frost cannot stop the perils of modern life like man-made glass. It would have cut them all to pieces, not just the princess."

He spoke the truth. Old-fashioned glass made of naturally occurring substances with heat added could fall on my guards all day and not harm them, but anything with artificial additives, or metals, would cut them as much as me.

Doyle came across the room, speaking as he moved. "You are right, Wyn, but we would have shielded her body with ours. Meredith would have been unhurt no matter what happened to us." Aloud we'd started calling him Wyn because my aunt had made his full name a thing whispered in the dark with blood and pain.

I pushed gently on Wyn's chest to make him ease up and not lean so heavily on me. I couldn't take that kind of hugging forever without it beginning to hurt a little. The angle of my neck wasn't right for it.

"And the deli is owned by one of my Gran's cousins, a brownie named Matilda. She would have kept me safe."

Wyn unbent enough for his shoulder to go across mine, and my arm to encircle his waist. I could stand like that for hours, and he just seemed to need to touch me a lot. He was six feet of muscled warrior, but the queen had truly broken him in every way. His body had healed, as the sidhe do, but he only seemed to feel truly safe when he was with me, Doyle, Frost, Barinthus, Rhys, or anyone he perceived as powerful enough to keep him safe. The others made him afraid, as if he feared that Andais would snatch him away if he wasn't with someone strong.

"One brownie does not seem enough protection," he said in that uncertain voice that he'd had since he came to us. He'd never been the boldest of men, but now his fear was always there trembling below his skin, as if it ran in his blood now, so that fear was everywhere inside him.

I smiled up at him, trying to get him to smile back. "Brownies are a lot tougher than they look."

He didn't smile; he looked horrified. "Oh, Princess, forgive me." He actually dropped to one knee and bowed his head, all that pale hair sweeping out and around his body. "I forgot that you are yourself part brownie. I did not mean to imply that you were not powerful." He said all of it with his head bowed, and his gaze fixed on the floor, or at best my sandaled feet.

"Get up, Wyn. I took no offense."

He dropped lower so that he could lay his hands on the floor by my feet. His hair covered his face, so all I had was his ever-more-frantic voice. "Please, your majesty, I meant no offense."

"Wyn, I said that I took no offense."

"Please, please, I didn't mean any harm ..."

Rhys knelt down by him. "Did you hear what Merry said, Wyn? She's not mad at you."

His forehead touched his hands on the floor so that he was in a position of abject abasement. He was saying "Please, please, don't," over and over again.

I knelt beside Rhys, and touched the long unbound hair. Caswyn actually screamed and laid himself flat on his stomach, hands out before him beseeching.

Doyle and Frost came to kneel on either side of him with us. They tried to calm him, but it was as if he couldn't hear us or see us, and whatever he was hearing and seeing was terrible.

I finally yelled at him. "Wyn, Wyn, its Merry! It's Merry!" I lay flat on the hardwood floor near his head. I could see nothing through all that hair, so I reached to smooth it back from his face.

He screamed, and scrambled back from my touch. The men tried to touch him, too, but he screamed at every touch, and scrambled away from us on hands and knees until he found a wall to huddle against. He held his hands out in front of him as if warding off blows.

In that moment I hated my aunt.