It wasn't that Maeve Reed's personal jet wasn't comfortable, because it was. The only one of us who hated to fly was Doyle. He had chosen his seat early, buckled himself in, and kept a death grip on the arms of the nice swivelly seat. He closed his eyes tight, hugged the seat, and it was just acknowledged that if we were ever attacked inside an airplane, Doyle would not be that helpful, at least not at first. When I'd discovered his phobia over flying in planes, I'd actually been pleased. It had made him seem less perfect, less the Queen's Darkness and assassin. It seemed like a long time ago that I'd needed that. I looked at him across the narrow aisle. The tension in his body sang in the air around him, almost like a kind of power. Of course, fear can be fuel for magic.
"I would ask what you are thinking," Frost said from beside me, "but it seems obvious."
I turned my head against the padded seat back so I could meet his eyes. "What am I thinking?"
"You're thinking about Doyle." He wasn't angry, and he wasn't pouting. Maybe his voice wasn't happy, but he wasn't pouting. It was progress.
"I was thinking that once his fear of flying made him seem less the queen's perfect assassin."
His face started to close down, that cold mask building up. "That is not all."
I touched his arm. "Don't pout about this, Frost. I was just thinking that if we are ever attacked on an airplane, it's the one place Doyle won't be at his best. That's all."
I watched him struggle to swallow all that sullenness. It looked like it might choke him, but he was trying. He was trying so obviously that I didn't say what else I was thinking: that if I had been sitting there having some wild fantasy about Doyle, it was none of Frost's concern. I was supposed to enjoy all of them, but I kept it to myself. Frost was trying, and chastising him for being possessive, a very un-fey-like emotion, wouldn't have helped.
I squeezed his arm and let it go. Good for me.
Rhys knelt in front of me. He was wearing his white eye patch with the tiny seed pearls on it. It went with the white silk trench coat, white fedora, and pale cream-colored suit. The only color he wore was an icy pink tie. He looked like a cross between an ice cream man and the ghost of some 1940s detective. He'd even piled all that white curly hair up under the hat. He looked younger without the hair, all soft lines and kissable lips. He was hundreds of years older than I would ever be, but kneeling there, he looked like he'd never seen the wrong side of thirty.
He smiled up at me. "Doyle gave me something to give to you." He glanced behind at their leader, still sitting with his eyes tight shut. He turned back to me with a chuckle. "He knew he'd be indisposed." He pulled a white ring box out of his coat pocket.
The smile that I'd given him faded. "Do I have to?"
"Yes, you do." He suddenly looked a decade older, not a bit less handsome, but the boyishness was gone as if I'd imagined it.
Frost leaned in to add, "It is the queen's ring, Merry, given to you from her. It is one of the symbols that you are her heir. You must wear it."
"I don't mind the ring," I said, "but with the chalice on the plane, I'm a little worried that it might up the magic on the ring as it's done on other things."
The two men looked at each other, and I could tell it was the first time they'd thought of it.
"Damn," Rhys said, "that could be a problem."
Frost looked very serious. "A problem, or a salvation. Once the ring was a great relic of power, not merely a chooser of the queen's fertile lovers."
"Funny," I said, "I keep hearing that the ring is a great relic, but no one, not even my father, would tell me what it did once upon a time." I looked from one to the other of them, and they exchanged one of those glances that said neither wanted to tell me.
"What?" I demanded.
They sighed in unison. Rhys sat back on his knees, the ring box still unopened in his hands. "Once, the ring made the Andais irresistible to any man whom the ring reacted to."
"That doesn't sound bad enough for the looks on your faces. What else?"
They exchanged another glance.
"Drop the other shoe, okay."
"Shoe?" Frost asked.
"She means, just tell her," Rhys explained. He was one of the few guards who hadn't spent the last fifty years hiding in the hollow hills. Rhys owned a house outside the faerie mounds. A house with electricity, a television, and everything. He was probably one of the only sidhe who knew who Humphrey Bogart had been, or who Madonna was.
"You know that moment in all the Cinderella movies where she's at the top of the stairs, and the prince looks up, stunned?" Rhys asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Then he walks toward her like he has no choice."
I nodded. "Yes."
"That irresistible," he said.
"You mean once the ring's reacted to you, you're like some besotted schoolboy."
He sighed. "Not exactly."
"It isn't just the men," Frost said.
I looked from one to the other. "What do you mean?"
Sage tromped up the aisle to us. He was wearing a pair of Kitto's dress slacks and a T-shirt that had had to be ripped up the back to accommodate his wings. His waist was tinier than Kitto's, so he had a belt cinched tight. He wore a pair of Kitto's jogging shoes laced as tight as they would go, because his foot was narrower than the goblin's. He had a blanket wrapped around his upper body, because the jacket ripped up the back wouldn't keep him warm. He needed one of the heavy woolen cloaks that the courts had designed centuries ago for the human-size, or bigger, winged fey. Nicca was also going to be a very cold boy once we landed. But we'd alerted the guards who would meet us at the airport, and they'd have cloaks. Until then, Sage huddled in his blanket as if he could already feel the cold. At his new size he had no clothes that fit him.
"What they are so delicately trying to tell you, Princess, is that once that ring was a matchmaker."
I frowned up at him from my seat.
He sighed. "Oh, to be young again," but he made it sound like a bad thing. "The ring can tell a fertile match, not just from touching bare skin, but from across a room, at first sight. Both the man and woman fell hopelessly in love and lived happily ever after."
"Queen Andais has never struck me as the happily-ever-after type."
"She had control of the ring, Merry, like any good weapon, or tool. She would throw a great ball and invite all the eligible sidhe, and a few of us lesser beings to serve at table or entertain. Then she'd stand near the door, and as each woman came through, she'd touch her with the ring, and almost always someone would step forward. They would fall upon each other like lustful rams, be huge with child within a few months, marry, and be a perfect match. Once upon a time, the ring didn't just pick out which sidhe were fertile. Oh, no, it was the happy-ever-after ring. That's what we used to call it. Where do you think the humans got all that crap from?"
I raised eyebrows at him. "I hadn't really thought about it. I know for a fact that most fairy tales are just that, stories."
"But the elements of them" - he drew a pale yellow hand out of his blanket far enough to shake a finger at me - "the essentials, they got from us, from true stories." He frowned. "Not all of us are Irish, Scottish, or anything that is part of what they call the British Isles. We hold survivors from nearly every part of Europe."
"I'm aware of that," I said.
"Then act like you know. Surely Prince Essus told you that some fairy tales were passed-on true stories."
"My father told me most were simply made up."
"Most," Sage conceded, "but not all." He waved his finger at me again. "If the chalice has brought back the complete power to that ring" - he pointed at the box - "then if you have your perfect match on this plane, you'll know it, and if you don't, you'll know that, too."
I looked at the little box, and suddenly it seemed more important than it had even a moment ago.
"That's not how the queen used it," Rhys said, "not for herself."
"No," Nicca said, softly, from behind us. "Once her own true love was killed in battle, she used the power of the ring to fill her bed. She was able with its help to make another sidhe elf-struck."
I turned and looked at him. He wore slacks that were so dark brown, they were nearly black, and boots that matched underneath. His hair spilled over his naked upper body, because his wings were even larger than Sage's, and though we'd tried to get a silk-and-spandex tee over them, in the end we'd been defeated. They were too huge, and too oddly shaped, all swirls and tail.
"I thought she would go mad when Owain died." Doyle's eyes were still tight shut, his hands gripping the chair arms, but his voice sounded normal enough.
"What no one had realized was that the ring had an added power," he continued in his calm voice. "Apparently, it acted as a kind of protective magic around the couples of its choosing. It guaranteed a happy ending, by making sure no tragedy befell them."
Rhys nodded. "The ring had begun to fade in power - we knew that because the great matchmaking ball had failed some decades before. A sidhe would come to the door of the ballroom, and no one would step forward. But we didn't understand that the ring had kept us safe, not just happy and fertile."
"Until the battle of Rhodan," Frost said, "where we lost two hundred sidhe warriors. Most of them had been wed to their love matches."
"It was the first time in our history that a single couple that the ring had brought together had not had a happy ending," Doyle said.
"It wasn't just one couple," Rhys said, "it was dozens." He shook his head. "I'd never heard such keening."
"Some of those left behind chose to fade," Doyle said.
"Suicide, you mean," Rhys said.
Doyle opened his eyes enough to glance at Rhys, then closed them again. "If you prefer."
"I don't prefer, it's just the truth," Rhys said.
Doyle shrugged. "Fine."
Galen had drifted up behind everyone. "Did the ring ever pick more than one person for anyone?" He was dressed all in pale spring green.
"You mean once someone was widowed, did the ring ever find them someone else?" Doyle asked.
"That, or literally pick more than one person for someone. I mean, you may get a child from every match the ring made, but to be truly happy, not just magically in love, did the ring ever have trouble choosing just one person for someone?"
Doyle opened his eyes again and actually turned to look full at Galen. "Do you not believe in soul mates, one perfect love for each person?" It would have seemed an almost silly question from anyone else.
Galen glanced at me, then forced himself to look away to meet Doyle's dark gaze. "I don't believe in love at first sight. I believe true love takes time to build, like friendship. I believe in instant lust."
He moved directly behind my seat. I could feel him like some warming fire, I wanted him to put his hands on the back of the seat, to be closer to that warmth. As if he'd heard me, he put his hands where I wanted them, and it was all I could do not to touch my head against his fingers. But somehow with the ring box sitting there, I wasn't sure I wanted to be touching him when I put it on. I was pretty certain that touching no one was the best idea, until we knew if the ring had been affected by the chalice.
"Could we get the queen's permission not to wear it until we're at the faerie mound?" I asked.
"No," Doyle said, "she was most insistent."
I sighed. We did not want Andais angry with us. We so didn't want that. "Fine, give me the box, and everybody stand back."
"It's not a bomb," Rhys said, "just a ring."
I frowned at him. "After what I've just heard, I'd almost prefer a bomb." Almost, I added in my head.
I didn't want my choices limited here and now. I was afraid of whom the ring would pick, and why. I didn't trust magic in matters of the heart. Hell's bells, I didn't trust matters of the heart at all. Love was an unreliable sort of thing, sometimes.
Rhys handed me the box, and after I repeated my need for privacy, all of them got up and walked away from me. Kitto remained at the back of the plane with a blanket over his entire body, hiding. Hiding from his fear of metal, and modern technology. He was afraid of so many things that it seemed less remarkable for him to be afraid of airplanes, than for Doyle, who feared almost nothing.
The rest of the men divided themselves into two groups. One stood around Doyle, who was still in his seat, though watching everything now. The other stood near the back of the plane.
"Open it," Rhys said, from near Doyle.
"She's scared," Galen said, and his voice held an edge of the nerves that were scrambling around my stomach.
"Scared of what?" Sage said. "Finding her perfect match? What a stupid thing to fear. Most would give their lives to have such a problem."
"Be quiet," Nicca said.
Sage opened his mouth to complain, then closed it, looking puzzled, as if he wasn't sure himself why he listened to Nicca.
I stared at the box in my hands, licked my lipsticked mouth that was suddenly dry, and couldn't for the life of me understand why I was so afraid. Why be afraid of finding out if my perfect match was here, among these men? No, that wasn't the fear, I realized. What if the ring didn't find my perfect match here and now? What if my perfect match wasn't any of them? What if that was why I hadn't become pregnant?
I looked up and scanned the faces around me. I realized that in a strange way, I loved them all. I certainly valued them all. I also wasn't sure how Frost or Galen would take it if the ring chose someone other than him. Both had shown a very un-fey-like tendency to be jealous. If Frost wasn't the chosen one, well, I doubt I'd seen pouting like that from him.
I looked up at Galen, and knew that he loved me, truly loved me, and had loved me when I had no chance of being queen. He was the only one, except Rhys, who had made it clear he wanted to be my lover when it would gain him nothing but my body, and maybe my love. Galen was such a romantic. I think he'd come to terms with not being my husband, not being king to my queen, if I got pregnant by someone else. But I think in his heart of hearts he believed that I was his soul mate. He could give me up, as long as he got to keep the ideal of what could have been.
I stared back down at the box. If the ring chose someone else, Galen would have to find a new dream, a new love, a new everything.
"Open it," Rhys said.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and opened it.