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Chapter Seventeen

Doyle lay back on the blanket of petals, all that rich, black skin against the soft pastel of it I admitted to time heaven, but he was hts with Frost when I had had theht I wanted to concentrate just on Doyle I didn&039;t mind the audience, but I didn&039;t want to be distracted either

He let me crawl over his body until I could put my hands and ic, and I could finally taste him in my mouth I played with that loose skin oneand hard, exposed to ently,less pressure than a bite, but you have to be careful not to scrape, or what is an added pleasure becoht for my Darkness I wanted only pleasure for him and for me

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

"I can fix that," Sholto said

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

It seeed to have our first encounter in Los Angeles He had proven to me that the extra bits had more uses than the obvious "You mean the little tentacles with the suction on theaze It wasn&039;t an idle offer He wanted to kno I truly felt about his extra bits, and he asting no ti out We&039;d had sex, but he had been terribly wounded, and no extra bits had been used

I studied his face, then looked down at Doyle He watchedHe would abide by whatever I said, in that moht have beenorders both in bed and out of it Doyle could be a very dominant lover, but when it came to choices and preferences, he was like uard; he waited for my lead It was up to ood, ill, hurt feelings, or si I could think of when a man offers me oral sex I held ave me that smile that I had only recently knoas possible for him, a smile that made all that handsomeness a little more human, a little more vulnerable I valued that smile, and it made the yes worth it I shoved o froe I didn&039;t know if it had been the ic of the wild hunt, or the tiht, but I could no longer see hi but beautiful

The tentacles were the saht white as the rest of hiave in to stoood-sized python, but white with a htflyer tutor, Bhatar, that those were for heavy lifting They hat the nightflyers picked you up with, and carried you away Under theer, thinner tentacles, the equivalent of fingers, but a hundred times more flexible and sensitive Then just above the belly button was a fringe of shorter tentacles with darker tips I knew that those were secondary sexual organs like breasts because there was no huhtflyer they would have had other tasks to do, but he had proven in our one brief eles that there were uses for ht and thick and lovely as any man in court could boast Without the extras in between, Sholto would have been welcoht of having to embrace him with all the extras revealed, but as he knelt beside us and reached for ht find for so ic of faerie? Was it part of thethat I could think of nothing but pleasure when reaching for hiic

He took ainst his body so that all of him touched me, but he did not try and eainstarently but firmly, but there was part of hiht I understood; he aiting for round ainst all those extra bits, and let one hand caress one of those thick, ainstto my passion and my lack of fear With most men I&039;d have been very aware that his erection was pressed against the front of ht have shuddered at the promise of it, but there were so many sensations with Sholto that it was almost as if my body couldn&039;t pick and choose The thicker parts streatched around me like extra ar my skin, and the lowest pieces eased their way between our bodies, betweenthat ers found the spot, and proved to me once more that they had suction on the end, like sned to fit around that part of a woman&039;s body, so that it was like soan to build aly froloith power The white of his skin was all er ar around old of his eyes The lower ones glohite, their tips like red eainst my skin, so that I made a small sound just frolow," said Doyle, still lying next to me

I nodded wordlessly

"It is a cohtflyer," Sholto said

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

Sholto reached a thick liertips A tiny jolt of colored light jumped between them The air smelled of ozone, and every hair on my body stood to attention

Doyle sat up "What was that?"

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

"I&039;htflyers answered to the gods of the sky We flew for the that they could call Sood of the sky and a goddess of the dead"

Mistral looked at his hand, then across at the King of the sluagh The look on Mistral&039;s face was one of pain His eyes were the black of the sky before it shatters to earth "I had forgotten," he said, alet"

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

Mistral put a hand across his ive me, Darkness, but do not say that name out loud I am not that name anymore" He took his hand from Doyle&039;s mouth

"Your power calls to ain"

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

"You are he, then," Sholto said

Mistral gave hi you to tell no one, King Sholto"

"It&039;s not every night that athe other er on his face, orwho acted in such arrogance was punished for it, and is no more Whatever I was once, the true Gods took it frooddess," Sholto said "It is said that the gods tore her to pieces and fed her to us"

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

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

"You kept your secret well," Doyle said

"When the gods themselves humble you, Darkness, wouldn&039;t you hide yourself in shaic calls to ic to faerie would waken that in end so old my father never told it to me," I said

"It is part of our lost creation myths," Doyle said, "before the Christians came and sanitized the his head "I cannot afford to be near when Sholto glows"

"Don&039;t you want to knoould happen?" Sholto asked

"No," Mistral said "I don&039;t"

"Leave hi we do with Meredith is about force We will not force Mistral now"

Sholto looked at Doyle, and there was that ance that was all sidhe, and no auise where it caht cross his face and travel all the way through his eyes that he wanted to try He wanted to knoould happen if he and Mistral joined their ht hiant defiance stayed for a second, then he blinked and was siant "As my queen wills it"

I smiled at him because even I didn&039;t believe it He would reet the feel of power Sholto was a very nice guy for a king, but in the end all kings seek power; it is the nature of who they are, and this king would not forget that the "god" who created his race ake again

I did the only thing I could think of to break the terribly serious atood work is undone with this serious talk I&039;ll have to start all over again"

He s dissuades you frooal?"

I put into oal is such as this, ould anything dissuade me?"

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

Mistral&039;s deep voice said, "I was dying in the field How did I get here, and where in faerie is here?"

"They rescued me from the hospital," Doyle said, then he frowned "You were crowned and " He raised my left hand, and for a moment it didn&039;t look like my hand There was a new tattoo on it, one of thorny vines and bloo at me now He reached across to Sholto

The other ht hand Doyle held the paler hand in his black one, and the same tattoo curled around Sholto&039;s hand and wrist

Mistral walked back to us, andthat the marks of the arrows seemed to have vanished as had Doyle&039;s burns Neither of them looked happy to be healed, but instead were very serious

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

"By the Goddess," Sholto said, and he sounded way too satisfied The threeoddly, and I had one of thoseThat happened sometimes when you are barely more than thirty and everyone else in your bed is hundreds of years old Everyone was young once, but sometimes I wished I had a cheat sheet so I wouldn&039;t need all the explanations

"What&039;s wrong?" I asked

"Nothing," Sholto said, again all too s

Doyle pulled Sholto&039;s hand down so I could see our two hands together "You see the mark?"

"The tattoo, yes," I said "It&039;s a shadow of the roses that bound our hands"

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

"Handfasted You mean " I frowned at hie in that one word

"It took both our ics to save you, Doyle"

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

"I bear children by all of you, so by our laws you are allat it "I&039; to remember when faerie married us to each other Was it always like this?"

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

I stared at the pretty roses on hts to refuse to share Meredith?" Sholto asked

I gave hih"

"Faerie has married us, Meredith"

I shook my head "It helped us save Doyle"

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

"When the Goddess makes me choose, she letsof loss"

"By our laws - " Sholto started to say

I interrupted hiht, Merry," Doyle said

"Don&039;t coht to save you both"

"It is the law," Mistral said

"Only if I am with his child and no one else&039;s, which is not true The goddess Clothra, who got pregnant from three different lovers, wasn&039;t forced to marry just one of them"

"They were her brothers," Mistral said

"Were they really, or is that just what legend ht actually know

Mistral and Doyle exchanged a look Sholto wasn&039;t old enough to know the answer "Clothra lived in a tioddesses were allowed to marry whom they would," Doyle said

"She wouldn&039;t have been the first goddess to marry a close relative," Mistral said

"But the point is, she didn&039;t oddesses, the ones whom hu that you&039;re a sovereign goddess, a living embodiment of the land itself?" Sholto asked with a raised eyebrow

"No, but I a that you wouldn&039;t like ould happen if you tried to amous with just you"

Sholto&039;s handsoh to one of Frost&039;s favorite eht "I know you do not love s, Sholto Don&039;t be ordinary In the old days there were different kings, but only one goddess to ed looks "But they were huoddess outlasted theoddess didn&039;t give up her lovers just because she had a king," Sholto said

Doyle looked down at me I couldn&039;t read the expression on his face "Are you saying you will change a thousand years of tradition a us?" he asked

"If that is what it takes, then yes"

He looked down at ether A frown, a half-smile, amusement in his eyes; but what I valued thethem For it had been fear when he saw the ain," Mistral said "Where are we? I do not recognize this boe rest in"

"We are in h have no place so fair inside their faerie mound," Mistral said, his voice thick with certainty and sarcasm

"Hoould any of the Unseelie nobles knohat is inside dom? Once Meredith&039;s father, Prince Essus, died none of you darkened ht for you, but not to visit" Sholto&039;s voice held that anger that he&039;d co told he wasn&039;t quite good enough to be truly Unseelie There had been years of the sluagh being used as a weapon And like all weapons, you use it, but you do not ask a nuclear bos up You simply push a button, and it does its job

"I have been inside yourWas it anger? Warning? Whatever it was, it wasn&039;t good

"Yes, and the sluagh would not follow the hound when they already had a huntslared across the bed at each other

I&039;d known there was bad blood between them when they first came to ht lay behind it

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

The men looked up at the trees and vines that held the canopy aloft "Perhaps we should finish this discussion in a ree," Doyle said

"What do youa hand on the tree that foran as Soic does that," Doyle said

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

He nodded

A voice called fro, Princess, it is Henry Can you hearto your new roo Should you coain?" He tried for neutral, but the worry was plain in his voice

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

"I a here, Darkness, and I say ill and will not do"

"Gentlemen," I said, "as princess and future queen of all, I&039;ll break the tie We go before the wall grows solid"

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

I took the offered hand He ser hand aroundsofter than anything I&039;d seen before He started leading ate The herbs on the path were no longer trying to touch ether by the herbs were a little lose underfoot, as if whatever had for on the bed still glaring at each other When ere back in Sholto&039;s original bedroom, I would ask ate collapsed at Mistral&039;s touch so that it was only a pile of debris "Whatever held this place together is failing," he called back to theet the princess to safety before it collapses coh the wreck of bones Beyond the gate we could glimpse Sholto&039;s bedroo at us The wall that had been as large as a cavern mouth was ether like soely fluid; it was like watching flowers blooh the opening, and ere back in Sholto&039;s wine and purple bedroo behind us for his king The opening continued to grow s Was it soo contest? All I kneas that with all that had happenedthe

I called after theet trapped behind the wall We leave for Los Angeles tonight"

The twotoward us Under other circu towardIf it closed completely, I wasn&039;t certain that we could reopen it There were hands of power ah stone, but neither Sholto nor Doyle possessed such a hand

I called, "Hurry!"

Doyle broke into a run, spilling forward like so were the purpose all that et to see him from a distance much He was always at my side Noas reminded that without my human movement to hold hi elemental and more than flesh I had a moment such as I had not had in months A moment to watch him and marvel that all that potential would love me I was, in the end, so terribly human

Sholto followed behind him like a pale shadow For a moment I could only see my Frost He was the one as supposed to be at Doyle&039;s side My light and dark; my men Sholto was handsome and moved well at Doyle&039;s side, but he couldn&039;t keep up He was a little behind, a little more human

Mistral said, "Ask the wall to stay open"

"What?" I asked, and was almost startled to find myself still in his arms, still in Sholto&039;s bedroo at Doyle like a lovesick girl and tell the wall to stop closing"

I wasn&039;t certain that the sluagh&039;s sithen would obey "

The wall see, then it went back to closing the opening It was slower, but it had not stopped

Doyle dived through the opening, doing a wonderful roll across the carpet, ending on his feet in a whirl of black hair and dark h too, but ended up flat on the carpet in a spill of pale hair and breathlessness Doyle was breathing heavily too, but he seemed ready to find a weapon and defend Sholto seeasped out, "Did the path get longer as we ran?"

Doyle nodded "Yes"

"Why would it get longer?" I asked

Sholto got to his feet, and looked up at the ceiling of his bedroo but the stone

"So, is here" He went to a wardrobe on the far side of the rooold and white, and didn&039;t match the room at all, but it did match his eyes and hair to perfection He suddenly looked all Seelie Court, and if not for one bit of genetics that had given him those extra bits he&039;d have been terribly welcome at the Unseelie Court In the far past, even the Seelie Court would have been happy to have him But Sholto, like me, could not hide his h to azed up and around Did he see soic, sluagh ic, but not ," Henry said, and we all looked at hiuess in a way I had "You were locked in thethe sluagh who feared youBeauty, you mean," I said

Henry nodded His handso enough to read hiarden, and it was very Seelie, ate or walls It held us back, and protected you from all ould come close"

"What has happened while we slept, Henry?" Sholto asked He went to the , the Seelie are encamped outside our sithen They asked for parlay, and we had no king to speak for us You know the rules - without a ruler, we cease to be sluagh, cease to be free people We would be absorbed into the Unseelie Court, but before that happens, ould have to deal with the Seelie on our oithout a king"

"They&039;ve chosen another king," Sholto said

"A proxy ruler only"

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

"Why are the Seelie outside?" Doyle asked

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

"I aates to rescue me?"

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

Ah, I thought "They want e upon the sluagh?"

"By right of kinship, your hter, and the grandchildren that she carries" Henry looked even more uncomfortable

"One of the children I carry is Sholto&039;s own The right of the father supersedes that of a grand Taranis"

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

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

He hesitated, then frowned at me "Why?"

"You look too Seelie in the robe, and one of the things that seeether will change theht and airy beauty"

He looked as if he would argue, then he went back to the wardrobe He drew out black pants and boots, but he didn&039;t bother with a shirt And with a wavering of air in front of hiain

"I will rehtflyer and not just sidhe"

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

"Hurt, I think I will talk to one e us"

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

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

"My congratulations to you, King Sholto, on being king to Meredith&039;s queen" His voice was almost neutral when he said it - alh with so doone, with Henry at his side

"What did he ratulations?" Mistral asked "I know that the princess carries Sholto&039;s child and yours, Doyle I heard that from the conversation in the bed oke"

"Mistral, didn&039;t the queen tell you?" I asked

"I was told that you had finally gotten with child by so but pain" He would not look at ry when you left, Princess Your green knight destroyed her hall of torture, so she took ainst her wall There I have been at her mercy since you left"

I touched his arm, but he pulled away

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

"I kneas the price I would pay" He alray hair fall between us like a curtain to hide behind "I was content to pay, because I had hoped " he shook his head "I hoped too late" He turned to Doyle and held out his hand "I envy you, Captain"

Doyle caether "I cannot believe the queen did not tell her court the truth"

"I have only been released froht, so whatever she told her court, I do not know I a I was released and lured to , my captain"

"He betrayed you?"

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