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Acknowledgments

I FEEL LIKE ONE,

WHO TREADS ALONE

SOME BANQUET HALL DESERTED

WHOSE LIGHTS ARE FLED,

WHOSE GARLANDS DEAD,

AND ALL BUT HE DEPARTED!

Froht"

By Thomas Moore

(National Airs, 1818)

To Jonathan, alks the eo

Acknowledgood intentions becoanize us artsy types Merrilee, o into battle at o into a bar by itself and order its own drinks Charles, who has taught me the joy of a little bit of chaos, and that just because I don&039;t have a detailed plan doesn&039;t on Con with us Science fiction author and Army and Air Force veteran Michael Z Williamson, who volunteered to help with the military bits All mistakes in that area are mine and roup, The Alternate Historians: Deborah Millitello, Mark Sumner, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Tom Drennan Friends in the trenches

Chapter One

Hospitals are where people go to be saved, but the doctors can only patch you up, put you back together They can&039;t undo the dae They can&039;t e the truth to lies The nice doctor and the nice woman froe that I had indeed been raped The fact that I couldn&039;t remember it, because , didn&039;t change the evidence - the evidence that they&039;d found in my body when they did the exa a real live faerie princess would make your life fairy-tale-like, but fairy tales only end well While the story is going on, horrible things happen Reot his eyes scratched out by the witch, which blinded hiically restored his sight, but that was at the end of the story Cinderella was little better than a slave Snow White was actually nearly killed four different times by the evil queen All anyone reet the huntsirdle and the poisoned comb Pick any fairy tale that&039;s based on older stories, and the heroine of the piece has a htmarish time of it

I ah throne of faerie, and I&039;, if it&039;s coht

I was in a hospital bed, in a nice private room, in a very nice hospital I was in the nant, but not with nant before he stole nant with the children ofto rescue reatest warriors that faerie had ever seen at my side: Doyle, once the Queen&039;s Darkness, and now ht that was so ruined by the lights fro lot that the blackness of his skin and hair was ht outside He&039;d relasses that he allasses that hid thelints froraceful line of one ear to the point that h court, but mixed blood, like ht as he turned his head, as if he&039;d feltat him He probably had He had been the queen&039;s assassin a thousand years before I was born

His ankle-length hairgreen hospital scrubs that he&039;d been loaned They had replaced the blanket froht us here He&039;d entered the golden court, to rescueWhen he shape-shifted he lost everything, clothes, weapons, but strangely never the piercings Thesurvived his return to human form, maybe because they were part of him

He came to stand beside the bed, and take my hand - the one that didn&039;t have the intravenous drip in it, which was helping hydrate et me over the shock I&039;d been in when I had arrived If I hadn&039;t been with child, they&039;d have probably given er drugs, soet Not just what ripped Doyle&039;s hand, e, dark one But there should have been another beside hione Not dead, not exactly, but lost to us Doyle could shape-shift to several forms at will and come back to his true foric had filled the estate where we&039;d been living in Los Angeles, it had changed hi, and run out the doors that had appeared into a piece of faerie that had never existed before the , instead of shrinking, for the first tih courts, ith child, twins I was the last child of faerie nobility to be born We were dying as a people, but ain our power, but what use to me was power? What use to ic? What use was any of it, if Frost was an aniht that I would bear his child and he would neither know nor understand ripped Doyle&039;s hand, but couldn&039;t meet his eyes I wasn&039;t sure what he would see there I wasn&039;t sure what I was feeling anyht that they would both be fathers had been a joyous one

He spoke in his deep, deep voice, as if s, could be words, but what he said wasn&039;t sweet "I will kill Taranis for you"

I shook ht about it, because I had known that Doyle would do just what he&039;d said If I asked, he would try to kill Taranis, and heto assassinate the King of Light and Illusion, the king of our ene the Seelie Court who thought Taranis was mad or even evil would not be able to overlook an assassination A duel, hts to challenge the king to a duel I&039;d thought about that, too I&039;d half liked that idea, but I&039;d seen what Taranis could do with his hand of power His hand of light could char flesh, and had nearly killed Doyle once before

I had let go of any thought of vengeance at Doyle&039;s hand when I weighed it against the thought of losing hie my honor and yours for that reason alone"

"You mean a duel," I said

"Yes He does not deserve a chance to defend himself, but if I assassinate him, it will be war between the courts, and we cannot afford that"

"No," I said, "we can&039;t" I looked up at hilow in the dark with a light of their own, Meredith Green and gold circles of light in your face Your emotions betray you"

"I want him dead, yes, but I won&039;t destroy all of faerie for it I won&039;t get us all kicked out of the United States for my honor The treaty that let our people cos that would get us kicked out The courts can&039;t make war on American soil, and we can&039;t allow hu of the treaty, Meredith I knohat it said"

I se that I could still ses, but I guess it was a good sign "You re, and had little to do with us"

I squeezed his hand "I wasa point, Doyle"

He smiled, and nodded "My emotions make me slow"

"Me, too," I said

The door behind him opened There were twoof the sluagh, Lord of that Which Passes Between, was as tall as Doyle, and had long, straight hair that fell toward his ankles, but the color hite-blond, and his skin was like ht pale Sholto&039;s eyes were three colors of yellow and gold, as if autumn leaves from three different trees had been ed in gold The sidhe always have the prettiest eyes He was as fair of face as any at the courts, except for my lost Frost The body that showed under the t-shirt and jeans he&039;d worn as part of his disguise when he ca to a body as lovely as the face, but I knew that at least part of it was illusion Starting at his upper ribs, Sholto had extra bits, tentacles, because, though his h-court nobility, his father had been one of the nightflyers, part of the sluagh, and the last wild hunt of faerie Well, the last wild hunt until the wild , and Goddess alone kneas real again, and as still to return

Until he had a coat or jacket thick enough to hide the extra bits, he would use lamour, to hide the extras No reason to scare the nurses It was his lifetiood enough at illusion to risk co of Light and Illusion with illusion as your only shield

He smiled at me, and it was a smile I had never seen on Sholto&039;s face until the moment at the ambulance when he had held my hand, and told me he kneould be a father The news seemed to have softened some harshness that had always been there in his handsome body He seemed the proverbial newAt 5&039;6", he was the shortest full-blooded sidhe I&039;d ever ht pale, like Sholto&039;s, like mine, like Frost&039;s Rhys had removed the fake beard and mustache he&039;d worn inside the faerie ency in LA with ood at theh illusion to hide the fact that he only had one eye The re eye was three circles of blue, as beautiful as any in the court, but where his left eye had once lain hite scar tissue He usually wore a patch in public, but tonight his face was bare, and I liked that I wanted to see the faces of h so Sholto could put a chaste kiss against ular lovers In fact, we&039;d only been together once, but as the old saying goes, once is enough One of the children I carried was part his, but ere new around each other, because in effect we&039;d only had one date It had been a hell of a first date, but still, we didn&039;t really know each other yet

Rhys came to stand at the foot of the bed His curly white hair, which fell to his waist, was still back in the ponytail he&039;d worn to match his own jeans and t-shirt His face was very solemn It wasn&039;t like him Once he&039;d been Crood of death He wouldn&039;t tell uesses He&039;d told h; he didn&039;t need e him to the duel?" Rhys asked

"Meredith has told et to do it"

"No," I said, "and I thought you were afraid of Taranis"

"I was, o, Merry, we can&039;t"

"Why? Because your pride is hurt?"

He gave e hie him to a duel, or to kill him in any other way"

The three h to be speculative They knew I had a plan Sholto didn&039;t know ry

"We can&039;t let this insult stand, Princess He has to pay"

"I agree," I said, "and since he brought in the hued Rhys, Galen, and Abeloec with attacking one of his nobles, we use the hue him with my rape"

Sholto said, "And what, he will risk jail time? Even if he would allow hih punishment for what he has done to you"

"No, it&039;s not, but it&039;s the best we can do under the law"

"Human law," Sholto said

"Yes, human law," I said

"Under our laws," Doyle said, "we are within our right to challenge him and slay him"

"That works for me," Rhys said

"I&039;m the one he raped I&039;m the one who is about to be queen, if we can keep our ene rew a little strident at the end, and I had to stop and take a breath, or two

Doyle&039;s face betrayed nothing "You have thought of so how this will help our cause"

"Help our court For centuries the Unseelie Court, our court, has been painted black in the hu of the Seelie Court of rape, ill finally convince the humans that we are not the villains of the piece," I said

Doyle said, "Spoken like a queen"

"Like a politician," Sholto said, and not like it was a coave hi, too, of your father&039;s people Would you destroy your entire kingdoeance?"

He looked away, then, and there was that line to his face that showed his temper But as moody as Sholto was, he didn&039;t hold a candle to Frost He had been my moody boy

Rhys came to the bedside He touched my hand, the one to which the IV needle was taped "I would face the king for you, Merry You know that"

I took ed eye "I don&039;t want to lose anyone else, Rhys No more of that"

"Frost is not dead," Rhys said

"He is a white stag, Rhys Someone told me that he may only keep that shape for a hundred years I am thirty-three and mortal I will not see a hundred and thirty-three years HeFrost, but it will be too late for ht, and my voice squeezed out, "He will never hold his baby He will never be a father to it His babe will be grown before he has hands to hold it with, and a huainst the pillows and let the tears take me I held onto Rhys&039;s hand and let myself cry

Doyle caainst rieve hiht it azed up at that dark face "What do you mean?"

"It came to us both in a dream, Meredith We knew that one of us would be sacrificed for the return of faerie&039;s power An identical dreaht, and we knew"

"You didn&039;t tell me, either of you," I said, and there was accusation in my voice now Better than tears, I supposed

"What would you have done? When the Gods thee that But itsacrifice; the dream was clear on that If Frost had known it was his heart you held one for him"

I shook my head, and moved away from his hand "Don&039;t you understand? If it had been you changed into another form, and lost to me, I would weep as much"

Rhys squeezed my hand "Doyle and Frost didn&039;t understand that they were the front-runners, together"

I jerked free of his hand, and glared up at hiry, because it felt better than any other emotion inside me in that moment "You&039;re fools, all of you Don&039;t you understand that I would mourn you all? That there is none of my inner circle that I would lose, or risk? Do you not all understand that?" I was shouting, and it felt ain A nurse appeared, followed by a white-coated doctor whom I&039;d seen earlier Dr Mason was a baby doctor, and one of the best in the state, maybe in the country This had been explained to me in detail by a lahom my aunt had sent That she had sent aNone of us knehat to ht treat herself if our situations were reversed She had a tendency to kill the et another human lawyer, but the immortal of faerie are scarce so she sent me someone whom she could replace But the lawyer had been very clear that the queen was thrilled at the pregnancy, and would do all she could tofor Dr Mason

The doctor frowned at the entlemen I meant it"

The nurse, a heavyset woman with brown hair tucked back in a ponytail, checked the monitors, and bustled around me while the doctor scolded the men

The doctor wore a wide black headband that looked very stark against her yellow hair It made it more clear, at least to me, that the color wasn&039;t her natural shade She wasn&039;t much taller than me, but she didn&039;t seem short as she came around the bed to face the men She stood so that she included Rhys and Doyle by the bed, and Sholto, as still in the corner near the chair, in her frown

"If you persist in upsetting my patient, you will have to leave the room"

"We cannot leave her alone, Doctor," Doyle said in his deep voice "I reotten mine Did I or did I not tell you that she needed to rest, and under no circumstance be upset?"

They&039;d had this "talk" outside the roo with the babies?" I asked, and now I had fear in ry

"No, Princess Meredith, the babies seem quite" - there was the smallest hesitation - "healthy"

"You&039;re hiding soed a look It was not a good look Dr Mason came to the side of the bed opposite the men "I&039;m simply concerned about you, as I would be for any patient carrying nant, not an invalid, Dr Mason" My pulse rate was up, and the machines showed that I understood why I was hooked up towith this pregnancy there would be probleot, and they orried Also, I&039;d been in shock when they brought , skin cold to the touch They&039;d wanted to make sure my heart rate and such didn&039;t continue to drop Now the monitors betrayed my moods

"Talk toave one small nod I did not like that at all "You told hio, are you?" she asked

"No," I said

"Then perhaps one nant before, but I know from friends I had in LA that ultrasounds aren&039;t that conancy You&039;ve done three already So with the babies, isn&039;t there?"

"I swear to you that the twins are fine As far as I can see on the ultrasound and tell fro of a nor for the mother and for the doctor" She s about the twins looks wonderful I swear"

"Be careful swearing tois too close to giving your word You don&039;t want to knohat ht happen to you if you were forsworn toherself up to her full height and gripping both ends of the stethoscope around her shoulders

"No, Doctor, a caution Magic works around me, sometimes even in the mortal world I just want you and all the hu care of ht say casually may have very different consequences when you are near ht be taken seriously?"

I srant wishes, Doctor, at least not the kind in this room"

She looked a little eht," I said, "but once upon a tiet you hunted by the wild hunt, or bad luck could befall you I don&039;t kno ic has followed me from faerie, and I just don&039;t want anyone else hurt by accident"

"I heard about the loss of your lover My condolences, though in all honesty I don&039;t understand everything I was told about it"

"Even we do not understand everything that has happened," Doyle said "Wild ic is called wild for a reason"

She nodded as if she understood that, and I think she meant to leave "Doctor," I said, "You wanted another ultrasound?"

She turned with a set out of this roo your questions?"

"Apparently you would, and that wouldn&039;t endear you to me That you talked to Doyle before ainst you inpeacefully, and your aunt wantedthe bills," I said

The doctor looked flustered and a little angry "She is also a queen, and honestly, I&039;m not sure how to react to her requests yet"

I smiled, but even tosound like a request, Doctor, she&039;s being very nice to you She is queen and absolute ruler of our court Absolute rulers don&039;t ripped both ends of her stethoscope again A nervous habit, I was betting "Well, that&039;s as s with your primary," she hesitated, "man in your life"

I looked up at Doyle, as still by my bedside "Queen Andais chose Doyle as my primary?"

"She asked who the father of the children were, and I, of course, couldn&039;t answer that question yet I told her that an aht now But Captain Doyle seems very confident that he is one of the fathers"

I nodded "He is, and so is Rhys, and so is Lord Sholto"

She blinked at me "Princess Meredith, you only have twins, not triplets"

I looked at her "I knoho the fathers of my children are, yes"

"But you "

Doyle said, "Doctor, that is not what she enetic fathers, not justso impossible?"

"I had a vision froue, then closed it

She went to the other side of the room, where they had left the ultrasound machine after the last tiloves, and so did the nurse They got the tube of gloopy stuff that I&039;d already learned was really, really cold

Dr Mason didn&039;t bother asking if I wanted any of the men to leave the room this time It had taken her a little while to realize that I felt that all the ht to be in the roo was Galen, and Doyle had sent him on an errand I had been half asleep when I&039;d seen theht to ask where, or why I trusted Doyle

They lifted the gown, spread the blueish goo, again very cold, on an to move it across my abdomen I watched the monitor and its blurry picture I&039;d actually seen the ih that I could make out the two spots, the two shapes that were so s that letof their hearts in the ie

"See, they look perfectly fine"

"Then why all the extra tests?" I asked

"Honestly?"

"Please"

"Because you are Princess Meredith NicEssus, and I&039; my ass" She smiled and I smiled back

"That is honest for a doctor," I said

"I try," she said

The nurse began to clean my stomach off with a cloth, then she cleaned the equipment as the doctor and I stared at each other

"I&039;ve already had reporters pestering me and my staff for details It isn&039;t just the queen who&039;s going to be watching ain

"I am sorry that my status will make this harder for you and your staff"

"Just be a , Princess Noill you sleep, or at least rest?"

"I&039;ll try"

She aluarded look like she wasn&039;t certain she believed me "Well, I think that&039;s the best I can hope for, but," and she turned to the er at them

"She is a princess," Sholto said from the corner, "and our future queen If she demands unpleasant topics, what are we to do?"

She nodded, with that grip on her stethoscope again "I&039;ve been talking to Queen Andais, so I do see your probleet her to rest, try to keep her quiet She&039;s had a lot of shocks today, and I&039;d just like it better if she rested"

"We will do our best," Doyle said

She smiled, but her eyes stayed worried "I&039;ll hold you to that Rest" She pointed her finger at ic to make me do it Then she went for the door and the nurse trailed after her

"Where did you send Galen?" I asked

"He is fetching soht would help us"

"Who and where from? You didn&039;t send him back into faerie alone?"

"No" Doyle cupped ht He is one of the fathers and will be a king"

"How is that going to work?" Rhys asked

"Yes," Sholto said, "how can we all be king?"

"I think the answer is that Merry will be queen," Doyle said

"That is no answer," Sholto said

"It&039;s all the anse have now," Doyle said, and I stared into those black eyes and saw colored lights Colors of things that were not in this roo to bespell me," I said

"You need to rest, for the sake of the babies you carry Let me help you rest"

"You want to bespell me and me to allow it," I said softly

"Yes"

"No"

He leaned in toward hter like rainbow stars "Do you trust me, Meredith?"

"Yes"

"Then let me help you rest I swear to you that you ake refreshed, and that all the proble to be decided"

"You won&039;t decide anything important without me? Promise?"

"I promise," he said, and he kissed me He kissed me, and suddenly all I could see was color and darkness It was like standing in a suht surrounded by fireflies, except these fireflies were red, green, yellow, and I slept

Chapter Two

I woke to sunlight, and Galen&039;s sht, haloed with it, so that even the pale white of his skin showed the green tint that usually only shohen he wore a green shirt He was the only one of my men who had short hair The only sop to custom was a braid of hair that now trailed over his shoulder and down past the bed I&039;d mourned his hair at first, but now, it was just Galen He had been just Galen to me since I was fourteen and had first asked my father to marry me to him It had taken me years to understand why my father had said no Galen, e In the high court of faerie you needed to be good at both

But he had coood at subtle glae our appearances while so thee anted theic that had stayed with all of faeriekind, as other, seeics had faded

I reached up with my hand, but the IV made me stop the motion He leaned down and laid a soft kiss on my mouth He was the first ht into the hospital It felt alood Had the others been afraid of truly kissing me? Afraid it would remind me of what my uncle had done?

"I like the smile better," Galen said

I s me smile in spite of myself for decades

He touched the line ofThat one shtened, and it made me remember why I had once loved him above all others