A Shiver of Light

“You look very serious all of a sudden, Princess; what ya thinkin’ about?”

I glanced at Becket and smiled. “That I’m part human, not just sidhe, and I need to be reminded of that.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Are you saying we remind you what it’s like to be human?” Cooper asked.

“No, you remind me that I am human.”

He gave me a look, one dark eyebrow rising. “Forgive me, princess, but you aren’t exactly human.”

“My great-grandfather was.”

“And your grandfather is Uar the Cruel, one of the high nobles of the Seelie Court, who is mentioned in myth and folklore going back hundreds of years.”

“My great-grandmother was a brownie.”

“And your father was Essus, Prince of Flesh and Fire. He was worshipped as a god before the Romans conquered Britain.”

“Agent Cooper, are you saying that the noble side of my heritage is more important than the non-noble side?”

He looked startled. “I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I didn’t … I didn’t mean that.”

“She so got you, Coop,” Becket said.

“I didn’t mean to insult you, Princess, but you can’t just say you’re human with the pedigree you have.”

“I didn’t say I’m just human, but I’m not just sidhe either, and I want my children to understand that they’re more than just sidhe. Through me they’re brownie, and through Galen they’re pixie, and Doyle gives them phouka. I want them to understand that they are more than just sidhe of either court. I want them to value all parts of their heritage.”

“It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this,” Cooper said.

I nodded. “For a few days, yes.”

“So you want your kids to grow up being more human?” Becket asked.

“Yes,” I said. A shimmering caught my eye at the edge of the sea. One moment it was just the waves and the sand, and the next Sholto just stepped out of nowhere and started walking up the beach toward us.

“Holy shit!” Becket said.

Cooper had started to reach for his gun, and then forced himself to relax, or at least pretend.

The wind caught Sholto’s hair, streaming it out around him in a pale blond halo that intermingled with the black of his cloak, so that he strode toward me in a cloud of silken hair and dark cloth. The three yellow rings of his eyes had already begun to shine as if they were carved of gold, citrine, and topaz. It almost distracted from the beauty of his face, the broad shoulders, the sheer physicality of him as he strode toward me.

“You can try to be human, Princess, but that’s not human,” Becket said.

“Oh, Agent Becket, you have no idea how not human he is.” Then Sholto was there, sweeping me into his arms, kissing me as if he hadn’t seen me in months, instead of just days. I wrapped myself around him, and he put his hands under my ass and started up the stairs, his mouth still married to mine. He climbed smoothly, easily, as if he could keep kissing me forever, whether he was climbing a set of stairs, or a mountain.

Becket called after us, “I don’t know, Princess, I think the glowing eyes give it away.”

I broke from the kissing long enough to look over Sholto’s shoulder and let the men see that my own eyes had started to burn.

They looked startled, but it didn’t stop Becket from saying, “Humans don’t glow, just so you know.”

I might have said something pithy back, but Sholto ran his hand through my hair and kissed me again, and nothing seemed more important than giving all my attention to the man in my arms.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

WE PASSED THE sidhe in a hurried rush. Some of them looked astonished, others … hungry was the only word I had for it. They all watched us pass, though; Unseelie culture didn’t demand that they look away. In fact, in all fey culture, if someone was trying to be attractive or sexy and you didn’t pay attention, it was an insult; no one insulted us.

Sholto and I made it to the bedroom before the clothes began to come off, but barely. In fey culture we could have been nude in front of the guards and it would have been taken in stride. Nudity taboos were more human, and both the Seelie and Unseelie courts were closer to the rest of the fey; nudity meant just without clothes on, neither good nor bad.

I did toss Cooper’s jacket off to one side so it wouldn’t be in danger of getting messy. If I’d been thinking more clearly I’d have thrown it back to him before we got to the bedroom, but I wasn’t thinking clearly about anything. It was all hands, and mouths, and the weight of Sholto above me as he pressed me to the bed. It wasn’t a time for thinking, it was a time for feeling his smooth skin under my fingertips, his muscles under my hands, him pulling my top over my head in one eager motion so he could stare down at my br**sts in the lacy bra I’d chosen for him.

“Your br**sts were magnificent before, but now they are beyond amazing,” he said in a voice that was low and almost hushed, the way people talk in museums around works of art.

“Hopefully they won’t stay this big,” I said, gazing down at more mounding creamy goodness than I’d ever thought possible on my own body.

He shook his head, all that pale hair sliding around the blackness of his clothes. “No, Meredith, they are beautiful, you are beautiful.”

“I’m just not used to them this big. I pass a mirror and it startles me. The belly is gone, but the br**sts are still out to here.” I laughed.