ABELOEC'S TONGUE MADE LONG, SURE STROKES AROUND THE edge of my opening, then a caress at the top as he moved downward again. Mistral's hands played with my breasts in the same way he kissed, as if he could not fill his hands with enough of my body, as if the sensation was something that he had to have. He rolled my nipples between his fingers, and finally moved his mouth from mine to join his hands at my breasts. He took one breast into his mouth, as far as he could, as if he would truly eat my flesh. He sucked hard, and harder, until his teeth began to press into me.

Abeloec moved up to that sweet place at the top of my opening and began to roll his tongue over and around it. Mistral's teeth pressed in slowly, as if he were waiting for me to say stop, but I didn't. The combination of Abeloec's mouth, sure and gentle between my legs, and the inexorable pressure of Mistral's mouth on my breast, tight and tighter, was exquisite.

A soft breeze danced across my skin. A trickle of wind pushed strands of Mistral's hair across my body, pulling strands free from his long ponytail. His teeth continued their relentless press. He was crushing my breast between his teeth, and it felt so good. Abeloec's tongue flicked fast and faster over that one sweet point.

The wind blew harder, sending dead leaves skittering across our bodies.

Mistral's teeth were almost met in my breast, and it hurt now. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but in that moment Abeloec flicked that one last time I needed. He brought me screaming, my hands flinging outward, upward, searching for something to hold on to, while Abeloec built the orgasm with tongue and mouth.

My hands found Mistral. I dug nails into his bare arms, and only when one of my hands reached for his thigh did he grab my wrist. To do it, he had to release my breast from the prison of his mouth. He pinned my hands into the dry earth, while I screamed and strained to reach him with nails and teeth. He stayed just above me, pressing my wrists into the ground. He stared down at me with eyes flickering with light. My last sight of his eyes, before Abeloec made me fling my head from side to side, fighting against the pleasure, was that they were full of lightning, flickering, dancing, so bright it made shadows on the glow of my skin.

Abeloec's hands dug into my thighs, holding me in place, while I struggled to break free. It felt so good - so good - that I thought I would lose my mind if he didn't stop. So good that I wanted him both to stop, and never to stop.

The wind blew harder. Dried, woody vines screeched in the growing wind, and trees creaked with protest, as if their dead limbs would not last the wind.

The lines of color that fed out from Abeloec, red and blue and green, grew brighter with the wind. The colors pulsed bright and brighter. Maybe because the light was so intensely colored, it didn't so much push back the darkness as make the darkness glow - as if the endless night had been brushed with neon lights.

Abeloec let go of my thighs, and the moment he did the lights dimmed, just a little. He knelt between my legs and began unlacing his breeches. His modern clothes had been ruined in last night's assassination attempt, and he, like most of the men who rarely left faerie, had few things with zippers or metal buttons.

I started to say no, because he hadn't asked, and because the magic was receding. I could think again, as if the orgasm had cleared my mind.

I was supposed to be having as much sex as I could, for if I didn't get with child soon, not only would I never be queen, but I'd probably be dead. If my cousin Cel got someone with child before I got pregnant, he would be king, and he would kill me, and all who were loyal to me. It was an incentive to fuck that no aphrodisiac could match.

But there was something sharp under my back, and more smaller pains up and down my body. Dead branches and bits of plant poking and biting at me. I hadn't noticed it until after the orgasm, when the endorphins were receding at a rapid rate. There'd been almost no afterglow, just mind-blowing orgasm, and then this feeling of fading, of being aware of every discomfort. If Abeloec had missionary position in mind, we needed a blanket.

It wasn't like me to lose interest so quickly. If Abeloec was as talented with other things as he was with his mouth, then he was someone I wanted to bed, just for sheer pleasure. So why did I suddenly find myself with no upon my lips and a desire to get up off the ground?

THEN A VOICE CAME OUT OF THE GROWING DARK AS THE LINES of color faded - a voice that froze us all where we were and sent my heart pounding into my throat. "Well, well, well, I call for my captain of the guard, Mistral, and he is nowhere to be found. My healer tells me that you all vanished from the bedroom. I searched for you in the dark, and here you are." Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, stepped out from the far wall. Her pale skin was a whiteness in the growing dark, but there was light around her, light as if black could be a flame and give illumination.

"If you had stood in the light, I would have not found you, but you stand in the dark, the deep dark of the dead gardens. You cannot hide from me here, Mistral."

"No one was hiding from you, my queen," Doyle said - the first any of us had spoken since we'd all been brought here.

She waved him silent and walked over the dry grass. The wind that had been whipping the leaves was dying now, as the colors died.

The last of the wind fluttered the hem of her black robe. "Wind?" She made it a question. "There has not been wind in here for centuries."

Mistral had left me to drop to his knees before her. His skin faded as he moved away from me and Abeloec. I wondered if his eyes still flashed with lightning, but was betting they did not.

"Why did you leave my side, Mistral?" She touched his chin with long pointed nails, raised his face so he had to look at her.

"I sought guidance," he said in a voice that both was low and seemed to carry in the growing dark. Now that Abeloec and I had stopped having sex, all the light was fading, all the flow on everyone's skin was dying away. Soon we would stand in a darkness so absolute that you could touch your own eyeball without first blinking. A cat would be blind in here; even a cat's eyes need some light.

"Guidance for what, Mistral?" She made of his name an evil whine that held the threat of pain, as a smell on the wind can promise rain.

He tried to bow his head, but she kept her fingertips under his chin. "You sought guidance from my Darkness?"

Abeloec helped me to my feet and held me close, not for romance, but the way all the fey do when they're nervous. We touch one another, huddling in the dark, as if the touch of another's hand will keep the great bad thing from happening.

"Yes," Mistral said.

"Liar," the queen said, and the last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed the world was the gleam of a blade in her other hand. It flashed from her robe, where she'd hidden it.

I spoke before I could think: "No!"

Her voice crawled out of the darkness and seemed to creep along my skin. "Meredith, niece, do you actually forbid me from punishing one of my own guards? Not one of your guards, but mine, mine!"

The darkness was heavier, thicker, and it took more effort to breathe. I knew she could make the very air so heavy that it would crush the life out of me. She could make the air so thick that my mortal lungs couldn't draw it in. She'd nearly killed me just yesterday, when I interfered in one of her "entertainments."

"There was wind in the dead gardens." Doyle's deep voice came so low, so deep, that it seemed to vibrate along my spine. "You felt the wind. You remarked upon the wind."

"Yes, I did, but now it is gone. Now the gardens are dead, dead as they will always be."

A pale green light sprang from the darkness. Doyle holding a cup of sickly greenish flames in his hands. It was one of his hands of power. I'd seen the touch of that fire crawl over other sidhe and make them wish for death. But as so many things in faerie, it had other uses. It was a welcome light in the dark.

The light showed that it was no longer her fingertips that held Mistral's chin upward, but the edge of a blade. Her blade, Mortal Dread. One of the few things left that could bring true death to the immortal sidhe.

"What if the gardens could live again?" Doyle asked. "As the roses outside the throne room live again."

She smiled most unpleasantly. "Do you propose to spill more of Meredith's precious blood? That was the price for the roses' renewal."

"There are ways to give life that do not require blood," he said.

"You think you can fuck the gardens back to life?" she asked. She used the edge of the blade to raise Mistral up high on his knees.

Doyle said, "Yes."

"This, I would like to see," she said.

"I don't think it will work if you are here," Rhys said. A pale white light appeared over his head. Small, round, a gentle whiteness that illumined where he walked. It was the light that most of the sidhe, and many of the lesser fey, could make at will; a small magic that most possessed. If I wanted light in the dark, I had to find a flashlight or a match.

Rhys moved, in his soft circle of light, slowly, toward the queen.

She spoke: "A little fucking after a few centuries of celibacy makes you bold, one-eye."

"The fucking makes me happy," he said. "This makes me bold." He raised his right arm, showing her the underside of it. The light was not strong enough, and the angle not right, for me to see what was so interesting.

She frowned; then, as he moved closer, her eyes widened. "What is that?" But her hand had lowered enough that Mistral was no longer trying to raise himself up on his knees to keep from being cut.

"It is exactly what you think it is, my queen," Doyle said. He began to move closer to her, as well.

"Close enough, both of you." She emphasized her words by forcing Mistral back high on his knees.

"We mean you no harm, my queen," Doyle said.

"Perhaps I mean you harm, Darkness."

"That is your privilege," he said.

I opened my mouth to correct him, because he was my captain of the guard now. She wasn't allowed to simply hurt him for the hell of it, not anymore.

Abeloec tightened his hand on my arm. He whispered against my hair, "Not yet, Princess. The Darkness does not need your help yet."

I wanted to argue, but his reasoning was sound, as far as it went. I opened my mouth to argue, but as I looked up into his face, the argument fell away from me. His suggestion just seemed so reasonable.

Something bumped my hip, and I realized he was holding the horn cup. He was the cup, and the cup was him, in some mystical way, but when he touched it, he became more. More...reasonable. Or rather his suggestions did.

I wasn't sure I liked that he could do that to me, but I let it go. We had enough problems without getting sidetracked. I whispered, "What is on Rhys's arm?"

But Abeloec and I stood in the dark, and the Queen of Air and Darkness could hear anything that was spoken into the air in the dark. She answered me, "Show her, Rhys. Show her what has made you bold."

Rhys didn't turn his back on her, but moved sort of sideways toward us. The soft, white sourceless light moved with him, outlining his upper body. In a battle it would have been worse than useless; it would have made him a target. But the immortal don't sweat things like that - if you can't die, I guess you can make as obvious a target of yourself as you like.

The light touched us first, like that first white breath of dawn that slides across the sky, so white, so pure, when dawn is nothing more than the fading of darkness. As Rhys got closer to us, the white light seemed to expand, sliding down his body, showing that he was still nude.

He held his arm out toward me. There was a pale blue outline of a fish that stretched from just above his wrist almost to his elbow. The fish was head-down toward his hand and seemed oddly curved, like a half circle waiting for its other half.

Abeloec touched it much as the queen had done, lightly, with just his fingertips. "I have not seen that on your arm since I stopped being a pub keeper."

"I know Rhys's body," I said. "It's never been there before."

"Not in your lifetime," Abeloec said.

I glanced from him to Rhys. To him, I said, "It's a fish, why..."

"A salmon," he said, "to be exact."

I closed my mouth so I wouldn't say something stupid. I tried to do what my father had always taught me to do, think. I thought out loud..."A salmon means knowledge. One of our legends says that because the salmon is the oldest living creature, it has all the knowledge since the world began. It means longevity, because of the same legend."

"Legend, is it?" Rhys said with a smile.

"I have a degree in biology, Rhys; nothing you say will convince me that a salmon predated the trilobites, or even the dinosaurs. Modern fish is just that, modern, on a geological scale."

Abeloec was looking at me curiously. "I'd forgotten Prince Essus insisted on you being educated among the humans." He smiled. "When you're reasoning things out, you aren't as easy to distract." He tightened his other hand, with the cup still gripped in it.

I frowned, and finally stepped away from him. "Stop that."

"You drank from his cup," Rhys said. "He should be able to persuade you of almost anything." He grinned as he said it. "If you were human."

"I guess she's not human enough," Abeloec said.

"You're all acting as if that pale tattoo is important. I don't understand why."

"Didn't Essus ever tell you about it?" asked Rhys.

I frowned. "My father didn't mention anything about a tattoo on your arm."

The queen made a derisive noise. "Essus didn't think you were important enough to be told."

"He didn't tell her," Doyle said, "for the same reason that Galen doesn't know."

Galen was still lying in the dead garden. All the other men who had fallen to the ground were still kneeling or sitting in the dead vegetation. A soft greenish white glow began to form above Galen's head. Not a nimbus like that of Rhys, but more of a small ball of light above his head.

Galen found his voice, hoarse, and had to clear it sharply before he said, "I don't know about any tattoos on Rhys, either."

"None of us has told the younger ones, Queen Andais," Doyle said. "Everyone knows that our followers painted themselves with symbols and went into battle with only those symbols to shield them."

"They eventually learned to wear armor," Andais said. Her arm had lowered enough for Mistral to be comfortable on his knees again.

"Yes, and only the last few fanatical tribes kept trying to seek our favor and blessing. They died for that devotion," Doyle said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Once we, the sidhe, their gods, were painted with symbols that were our sign of blessing from the Goddess and the God. But as our power faded, so did the marks upon our bodies." Doyle said it all in his thick-as-molasses voice.

Rhys picked up the story. "Once, if our followers painted their bodies to mimic us, they gained some of the protection, the magic, that we had. It was a sign of devotion, yes, but once long, long ago, it literally could call us to their aid." He looked at the faint blue fish on his arm. "I have not held this mark for nearly four thousand years."

"It is faint and incomplete," the queen said from the far wall.

"Yes." Rhys nodded and looked at her. "But it is a beginning."

Nicca's voice came soft, and I'd almost forgotten him, standing so still to one side. His wings began to gleam in the dark, as if their veins had begun to pulse with light instead of blood. He fanned those huge wings. They had been only a birthmark on the back of his body until a few days ago, when they had sprung from his back, real and true at last. They began to glow as if the individual colors were stained glass gleaming in sunlight that we could not see.

He held out his right hand, and showed us a mark on the outer part of the wrist, almost on the hand itself. The light was too uncertain for me to be sure of what it was, but Doyle said, "A butterfly."

"I have never held a mark of favor from the Goddess," Nicca said in his soft voice.

The queen lowered her blade completely, so that it went back to being invisible in the full black skirt of her robe. "What of the rest of you?"

"You'll be able to feel it, if you think about it," Rhys said to the others.

Frost called a ball of light that was a dim silver-grey. It held above his head much as Galen's greenish light had. Frost began unbuttoning his shirt. He rarely went nude if he could avoid it, so I knew before he bared the perfect curve of his right shoulder that there would be something there.

He turned his arm so he could see it. The queen said, "Show us."

He let her see first, then turned in a slow half circle to us. It was as pale and blue as Rhys's had been, a small dead tree, leafless, naked, and the ground underneath it seemed to hint at a snowbank. Like Rhys's salmon it was dim, and not drawn in completely, as if someone had begun the job but not finished.

"Killing Frost has never held a sign of favor," the queen said, and her voice was strangely unhappy.

"No," Frost said, "I have not. I was not fully sidhe when last the sidhe held such favors." He shrugged back into his shirt and began to button it into place. He wasn't just dressed, he was armed. Most of the others held a sword and dagger, but only Doyle and Frost had guns. Rhys had left his gun behind with his clothes in the bedroom.

I noticed a bulge here and there under Frost's shirt, which meant he held more weapons than could be easily seen. He liked being armed, but this many weapons meant something had made him nervous. The assassination attempts, maybe, or maybe something else. His handsome face was closed to me, hidden behind the arrogance that he used as a mask. Perhaps he was just hiding his thoughts and feelings from the queen, but then again...Frost tended to be moody.

Rhys said, "Let Abeloec and Merry finish what they began. Let us all finish it."

Queen Andais took in a deep breath, so that even across the dimly lit chamber I could see the rise and fall of the V of white flesh in her robe. "Very well, finish it. Then come to me, for we have much to discuss." She held out her hand to Mistral. "Come, my captain, let us leave them to their pleasures."

Mistral did not question. He stood and took her pale hand.

"We need him," Rhys said.

"No," Andais said, "no, I have given Meredith my green men. She does not need the whole world."

"Does grass grow without wind and rain?" Doyle asked.

"No," she said, and her voice was unfriendly again, as if she would like to be angry but couldn't afford to be right now. Andais was a creature of her temper; she always indulged it. This much self-restraint from her was rare.

"To make spring, you need many things, my queen," said Doyle. "Without warmth and water, plants wither and die." They stared at each other, the queen and her Darkness. It was the queen who looked away first.

"Mistral may stay." She released his hand, then looked across the cavern at me. "But let this be understood between us, niece. He is not yours. He is mine. He is yours only for this space of time. Is that clear to all of you?"

We all nodded.

"And you, Mistral," the queen said. "Do you understand?"

"My geas is lifted for this space of time with the princess alone."

"Clearly put, as always," she said. She turned her back as if she would walk through the wall, then turned and looked over her shoulder. "I will finish what I was doing when I noticed your absence, Mistral."

He dropped to his knees. "My queen, please do not do this..."

She turned back with a smile that was almost pleasant - except for the look in her eyes, which even from here was frightening. "You mean, do not leave you with the princess?"

"No, my queen, you know that is not what I mean."

"Do I?" she said, danger in her voice. She glided over the dead brush and placed the point of Mortal Dread under his chin. "You didn't come to ask the advice of my Darkness. You came to bid the princess to intercede for Nerys's clan."

Mistral's shoulders moved as if he'd breathed deeply, or swallowed hard.

"Answer me, Mistral," she said, a whine of rage like a razor's edge in her voice.

"Nerys gave her life on your word that you would not kill her people. You - " He stopped talking abruptly, as if she'd nudged the point close enough that he couldn't speak without cutting himself.

"Aunt Andais," I said, "what have you done to Nerys's people?"

"They tried to kill you and me last night, or have you forgotten?"

"I remember, but I also remember that Nerys asked you to take her life, so that you might spare her house. You gave your word that you would let them live if she died in their place."

"I have not harmed a single one," she said, and she looked entirely too pleased with herself.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I merely offered the men a chance to serve their queen as a member of my royal guard. I need my Ravens at full strength."

"Joining your guard means giving up all family loyalties and becoming celibate. Why would they agree to either of those things?" I asked.

She took the blade away from Mistral's throat. "You were so eager to tattle on me. Tell her now."

"May I rise, my queen?" he asked.

"Rise, cartwheel - I care not - just tell her."

Mistral rose cautiously, and when she made no move toward him, he began to ease across the room toward us. His throat was dark in the flickering lights. She'd bled him. Any sidhe could heal such a small cut, but because Mortal Dread had done the damage, he would heal mortal slow; human slow.

Mistral's eyes were wide, frightened, but he moved easily across the dead ground, as if he weren't worried that she would do something to him as he walked away from her. I know that my shoulder blades would have been aching with the fear of the blow. Only when he was out of reach of her sword did some of the panic leave his eyes. Even then, they were that shade of tornado green. Anxiety.

"Far enough," she said. "Meredith can hear you from there."

He stopped obediently, but he swallowed hard, as if he didn't like that she'd stopped him before he got back to us. I didn't blame him. The queen had magic that could destroy from this distance. She'd probably made him stop just so he would worry. She might intend him no more harm, but she wanted him to be afraid. She liked for people to be afraid of her.

"She has put metal chains of binding on all of the house of Nerys, so they can do no magic," said Mistral.

"I can't argue with that," I said. "They attacked us at court, all of them. They should lose their magic for a time."

"She has given the men the chance to become her Ravens. The women she has offered to the prince's guard, his Cranes."

"Cel is in seclusion, locked away. He needs no guard," I said.

"Most of the women would not agree to it, anyway," Mistral said. "But the queen had to be seen giving them all a choice."

"A choice between becoming guards and what?" I asked. I was almost afraid of the answer. She'd been carrying Mortal Dread. I prayed that she hadn't executed them. She would be forsworn before the entire court. And I needed Andais on the throne until she confirmed me as her heir.

"The queen has bid Ezekiel and his helpers to wall them up alive," said Mistral.

I blinked at him. I couldn't quite follow it all. My first thought was to protest that the queen was forsworn; then I realized she wasn't. "They're immortal, so they won't die," I said, softly.

"They will know terrible hunger and thirst, and they will wish to die," Mistral said, "but no, they are immortal, and they will not die."

I looked past him to my aunt. "Tricksy you," I said. "Very damn clever."

She gave a little bow from the neck. "So glad you appreciate the delicate reasoning of it."

"Oh, I do," and I meant it. "You've broken no oath. In fact, technically, you're doing exactly what Nerys gave her life for. Her clan, her house, her bloodline will live."

"That is not living," Mistral said.

"Did you really think that the princess had enough influence with me to save them from their fate?" asked Andais.

"Once I would have gone to Essus, to ask his help with you," Mistral said. "So I sought the princess."

"She is not my brother," Andais snarled.

"No, she is not Essus," Mistral said, "but she is his child. She is your blood."

"And what does that mean, Mistral? That she can bargain for Nerys's people? They have already been bargained for, by Nerys herself."

"You are pixieing on the spirit of that bargain," Rhys said.

"But not breaking it," she said.

"No," he said, and he looked so sad. "No, the sidhe never lie, and we always keep our word. Except our version of the truth can be more dangerous than any lie, and you'd better think through every word of any oath we give our word to, because we will find a way to make you regret you ever met us." He sounded more angry than sad.

"Do you dare to criticize your queen?" she asked.

I touched Rhys's arm, squeezed. He looked first at my hand, then at my face. Whatever he saw there made him take a deep breath and shake his head. "No one would dare to do that, Queen Andais." His voice was resigned again.

"What would you give for a sign that life was returning to the gardens?" Doyle asked.

"What do you mean by sign?" she asked, and her voice held all the suspicion of someone who knew us all too well.

"What would you give for some hint of life here in the gardens?" "A little wind is not a sign," she said.

"But would the beginnings of life here in the gardens be worth nothing to you, my queen?"

"Of course it would be worth something."

"It could mean that our power was returning," Doyle said.

She motioned with the sword, silver gleaming dully in the light. "I know what it would mean, Darkness."

"And a return of our power, what would that be worth to you, Queen?"

"I know where you are going, Darkness. Do not try to play such games with me. I invented these games."

"Then I will not play. I will state plainly. If we can bring some hint of life to these underground worlds, then you will wait to punish, in any way, Nerys's people. Or anyone else."

A smile as cruel and cold as a winter morning curved her lips. "Good catch, Darkness, good catch."

My throat was tight with the realization that if he'd forgotten the last phrase, others would have paid for her anger. Someone who would have mattered to Doyle, or me, or both, if she could have found them. Rhys was right: This was a dangerous game, this game of words.

"For what shall I wait?" she asked.

"For us to bring life to the dead gardens, of course," he said.

"And if you do not bring life to the dead gardens, then what?"

"Then when we are all convinced that the princess and her men cannot bring life back to the gardens, you are free to do with Nerys's people as you intended."

"And if you do bring life to the gardens, what then?" she asked.

"If we bring even a hint of life back to the gardens, you will let Princess Meredith choose the punishment of those who tried to have her assassinated."

She shook her head. "Clever, Darkness, but not clever enough. If you bring a hint of life back to the gardens, then I will allow Meredith to punish Nerys's people."

It was his turn to shake his head. "If the Princess Meredith and some of her men bring even a hint of life back to these gardens, then Meredith alone decides what punishment shall be meted out to Nerys's people."

She seemed to think about that for a moment or two, then nodded. "Agreed."

"You give your word, the word of the queen of the Unseelie Court?" he asked.

She nodded. "I do."

"Witnessed," Rhys said.

She waved her hand dismissively. "Fine, fine, you have your promise. But remember, I have to agree that there is at least a hint of life. It better be some evidence impressive enough that I can't pixie out of it, Darkness, because you know I will, if I can."

"I know," he said.

She looked at me, then. It was not a friendly look. "Enjoy Mistral, Meredith. Enjoy him and know that he comes back to me when this is done."

"Thank you for loaning him to me," I said, and kept my voice absolutely empty.

She made a face at me. "Don't thank me, Meredith - not yet. You've only bedded him once." She motioned at me with the sword. "Though I see that you have found what he considers pleasure: He likes to cause pain."

"I would have thought that he would be your ideal lover then, Aunt Andais."

"I like to cause pain, niece Meredith, not be on the receiving end."

I swallowed hard, so I wouldn't say what I was thinking. I finally managed, "I did not know that you were a pure sadist, Aunt Andais."

She frowned at me. "Pure sadist - that's an odd phrase."

"I meant only that I didn't know you didn't like pain on your own body at all."

"Oh, I like a little teeth, a little nails, but not like that." Again she motioned at my breast. It ached where he'd bitten me, and I had a near-perfect imprint of his teeth, though he hadn't broken the skin. I would be bruised, but nothing more.

She shook her head, as if to chase away a thought, then turned, and the motion caused her black robe to swirl wide. She grabbed the edge of it, to pull it around herself. She looked back over her shoulder one last time before she stepped into the darkness and traveled back the way she'd come. Her last words were not a comfort. "After Mistral's had his way with her, do not come crying to me that he's broken your little princess." And the piece of darkness where she had been was empty.

So many of us let out a sigh of relief at the same time that it was like the sound of wind in the trees. Someone gave a nervous laugh.

"She is right about one thing," Mistral said, and his eyes held regret. "I like causing a little pain. I am sorry if I hurt you, but it has been so long since..." He spread his hands wide. "I forgot myself. I am sorry for that."

Rhys laughed, and Doyle joined him, and finally even Galen and Frost joined in that soft masculine sound.

"Why do you laugh?" Mistral asked.

Rhys turned to me, his face still shining with laughter. "Do you want to tell him, or do we?"

I actually blushed, which I almost never do. I kept Abe's hand in mine and drew us both across the dry, brittle grass until I stood in front of Mistral. I looked at the blood that trickled dark across his pale neck and gazed up into his eyes, so anxious. I had to smile. "I like what you did to my breast. That's just about as hard as I like it, just this side of drawing blood with teeth."

He frowned at me.

"You like the nail work to be harder than the teeth," Rhys said. "You don't mind bleeding a little from nails."

"But only if you've done the preliminaries," I said.

"Preliminaries?" Mistral said, and sounded puzzled.

"Foreplay," Abeloec said.

The puzzled look faded, and something else entirely filled his eyes. Something warm and sure of itself, something that made me shiver just from him looking at me. "I can do that," he said.

"Then take off the armor," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"Get naked," Rhys called.

"I can speak for myself, thank you," I said, glancing back at him.

He made a little motion as if to say, Be my guest. I turned back to Mistral. I gazed up into his face, and found that his eyes were already beginning to fade to a soft grey, like rain clouds. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, a little uncertainly, as if he wasn't used to smiling much.

"Get naked," I said.

He grinned, a brief flash of it. "Then what?"

"We have sex."

"I'm first," Abeloec said, hugging me from behind.

I nodded. "Agreed."

Mistral's face darkened; I could almost see clouds in his eyes. Not just the color of the irises, but the actual image of clouds floating in the pupils. "Why is he first?" he asked.

"Because he can be part of the foreplay," I said.

"She means, once I've fucked her, then you can do it rougher," said Abeloec.

Mistral smiled again, but this smile was different. This was a smile that made me breathe harder. "You really liked what I did to your breast?" he asked.

I swallowed hard, pressing myself against Abeloec's body, almost as if I were afraid of the taller man in front of me. I nodded and whispered, "Yes."

"Good," he said, and he reached for the leather fastenings that held his armor in place. "Very good," he whispered.