Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)

Kitto's screams were high and piteous like the sounds a baby rabbit makes when the cat's got it. He scrambled out of my lap, across the bed, to fall over to the other side.

Frost rushed into the room with a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. He searched for an enemy, then just frowned at us all when there was nothing to shoot. "What's happened? What's wrong with Kitto?"

"Doesn't my little trullup want to greet his master? Have you forgotten everything I taught you, Kitto?" the thing on the chair said.

Doyle had gone to kneel by Kitto, and was trying unsuccessfully to soothe him. I heard the deep voice through the screams, but when Kitto finally found his words again, it was to say, "No, no, no, no, no." Over and over and over.

I'd tried to turn and help Kitto, but Rhys's hands had tightened on my shoulders. One glance at his face, and I knew that Kitto wasn't the only one who needed help. I didn't know what to do, but I stayed where I was, with Rhys kneeling so that his body touched the back of mine. I stayed there so he could lean against me and not fall over.

I turned back to the goblin in the chair and waited for my eyes to make sense of it. At first it looked like a huge black, hairy spider. A spider the size of a large German shepherd. But the head had a neck, and there was something vaguely human about the mouth; it had lips and fangs. There were huge black legs on either side of the bloated body that were pure spider, but the two hands that stuck out of the front of it weren't. It seemed to have eyes everywhere, and every one of them was tricolored in rings of blue. It raised up as if trying to get more comfortable on the chair, and flashed a glimpse of pale breasts. Female. I couldn't bring myself to call it a woman.

I never thought I'd see anything among the fey that I truly thought was nightmarish. I was Unseelie sidhe; we were the stuff of nightmares. But Siun was a nightmare for nightmares. If she had been a little less of one thing, and a little more of the other, it would have made her less terrible, but she was what she was, and there was no saving it.

That strangely shapely mouth, caught in the midst of all that black hair and those eyes, spoke. "Rhysss, how very, very good to ssee you. I still have your eye in a jar on my shelf. Come visit us again. I'd love a matched pair."

I felt a shiver run through Rhys, as if his entire body trembled in some unseen wind. His voice came out empty like a shell tossed on a beach, echoing with its loneliness. "If you didn't want us to agree to this treaty, you should have just said so, Kurag, and saved us all the time and energy."

I patted his hand that still gripped my shoulder, but I'm not sure he felt anything in that moment.

"Frost," Doyle said, "tend to Kitto."

Frost sheathed his sword and holstered his gun, moving to kneel beside Kitto. In day-to-day arrangements Frost and Doyle argued, but in an emergency all the guards obeyed Doyle. Centuries of habit were hard to break.

Doyle spoke as he moved to stand beside us. "What is your intention with this, Kurag?"

Siun said, "I wanted to see the pretty sidhe."

"Shut up, Siun." Kurag said it without looking at her, as if he just expected her to do it. Surprisingly, she did.

"I felt Merry deserved to see what you were offering her up to." Something close to his usual leer crossed his face. "Besides, Darkness, it won't be Merry in Siun's bed."

"It won't be anybody," Rhys said.

Doyle touched his arm. "You cannot intend that she will bed either Rhys or Kitto again."

"You volunteering?" Kurag asked.

Doyle blinked at him, unreadable. "What are you saying, Kurag?"

"If I agree to an extra month for every goblin you make sidhe, then you must agree to bring over every sidhe-side who wants to try it."

Doyle's black gaze flicked to Siun, then up to Kurag. "Why are you fighting this, Kurag? Why don't you want magic in the veins of the goblins again?"

"I'm not fighting it, Darkness, I'm agreeing to it, on certain conditions. I'm even giving Merry her month per goblin whom she brings over."

Doyle made a small gesture toward Siun. "To insist that we bed all who come our way is an insult."

"Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours?"

"Her mother wasn't raped," Rhys said, and his voice was still empty, still horrible to hear.

Kurag ignored the comment, but Doyle said, "What do you mean, Rhys?"

"She bragged that her mother had raped one of us during the last war." His hands dug into my shoulders until it almost hurt. "Don't blame this particular horror on the sidhe, Kurag. The goblins did this to themselves."

It was plain on Kurag's face that he had known the truth. "You have lied to us, Kurag," Doyle said.

"No, Darkness, I said, Would she be like this if one of your people hadn't raped one of ours? I made it a question, not a statement of fact."

"That is splitting the truth a wee thin," I said.

Kurag looked at me. He nodded. "Perhaps I have learned from the sidhe just how thin the truth may come."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rhys said.

Doyle held up his hand. "Enough of this. Either we are going to agree to Kurag's terms, or we walk away and have the goblins for another two months, and only two months."

"I'll give you time to talk among yourselves," Kurag said. He raised a hand as if he'd wipe the mirror.

"No," Doyle said, "no, if we give you time you'll come up with some other reason to avoid this agreement. We do it now, today."

I looked at Doyle and could read nothing from his face, or his body. He was the untouchable Darkness, the left hand of the queen. The figure I'd feared as a child. Though admittedly I'd never seen him this unclothed. The Queen's Darkness wore clothes from his neck to his ankles to his wrists, all year, all weather. Once to see Doyle's bare arms had been tantamount to him being undressed in public, but here he stood wearing only the tiny black thong, and somehow clothes or no clothes, he was still the same untouchable, unreadable, frightening Darkness.

"Which of you will bed Siun?" Kurag asked.

"I will," Doyle said.

I was the one who said, "No."

"None of us touches her," Rhys said.

"We will make this agreement, Rhys," Doyle said.

Rhys was shaking his head. "No, I swore that I'd kill Siun when next we met. I swore blood price on it."

"You swore blood price?" Doyle asked.

Rhys only nodded.

Doyle sighed. "We agree to trying to bring over all the half-sidhes you have, Kurag, but this Siun must answer to Rhys when we come to your court."

"What if she kills him?" Kurag asked.

"Then the blood price is satisfied. We will not seek vengeance for it."

"Done," Kurag said.

"And after I have killed Rhysss," Siun said, "I will have his trull, my Kitto. I will ride him till he shines underneath me." She glared at Rhys with her dozen eyes, all ringed with blue, sky blue, cornflower, and violet. The eyes were lovely, and belonged in a different body. "Thisss one wouldn't shine for me. If you'd have glowed underneath me, I wouldn't have taken your eye."

"I told you then, and I tell you now. You can force yourself on me, but you can't make me enjoy it. You're a lousy lay."

She swarmed off the chair and was suddenly filling the mirror, as if she'd grown larger, all those legs reaching for us, those hands, and that strange half-formed mouth. She battered at the glass with her limbs and shrieked, "I will kill you, Rhysss, and the princessssss will not save Kitto. I will have him, and I'll make him sssshine for me!"

Kitto screamed from the far side of the bed. We all turned and looked at him. His face was pale, his blue eyes huge in his face. He flung out his right hand as he screamed, "Noooo!"

Rhys flung us both off the bed a second before I felt the spell shiver through the air above us. It was as if the glass had melted, and Siun began to slide through that melting. Head, one arm, her other arm flailing, searching for something to hold on to. She slid farther, fighting the fall, and not able to stop it.

Kitto put both hands in front of him as if to ward her off, and he screamed again, wordless this time, pitched high with terror.

Rhys pressed me to the carpet, covering my body with his. There was more screaming, and not all of it was Kitto's. Doyle's voice said, "Let the princess up, Rhys." He sounded puzzled.

Rhys went to his knees, looking around the room, then staring toward the glass, and it was Doyle's hand that helped me to my feet.

Frost was holding Kitto, rocking him as you'd comfort a child. I turned to look where Rhys was staring.

Siun had stopped sliding through the mirror. Half her long black legs were on this side of the glass, and the other half were still back with Kurag. One of her hands reached into this room; the other was beating on the glass on the other side, as if trying to break it. She was cursing low and steady. She tried to struggle free, flashing her breasts in the sunlight, but she was trapped. If she'd been mortal, she'd have died, but she wasn't mortal, and she wasn't dying. She was just stuck.

Doyle went close to the glass, but stayed out of the reach of Siun's struggling legs. "It seems solid now."

Kurag spoke on his end of the glass. "Now isn't this a bitch of a predicament?"

"Yes," Doyle said.

"Can you fix it?" Kurag asked.

Doyle glanced at Kitto, who seemed nearly catatonic in Frost's arms. "It was Kitto's magic. He could reverse it, if he understood how. But no one else in this room can do this."

"What by the Consort's horns did Kitto do?" Kurag was close to the mirror on his side, looking at it, but carefully not touching the glass.

"Some sidhe can travel through mirrors, as most can speak through them. Though I've never heard of any who could travel over this many miles." Doyle was studying the mirror and the trapped goblin as if it were a purely academic problem and he was trying to figure out how it worked.

"Can Kitto undo it?"

"Frost," Doyle said, "ask Kitto if he will free her from the mirror, send her back."

Frost spoke low to the smaller man in his lap. Kitto shook his head violently, huddling in against Frost. "He's afraid that if he opens the mirror again, she'll fall through into this room."

"Just push her back this way," Kurag said.

Frost answered, "He says she can stay in the mirror until she rots."

"She won't rot." Kurag turned back to Doyle. "She's not mortal, Darkness, she won't die." He tapped the glass lightly. "This will not destroy her."

"Well, she can't just stay in the mirror like this," I said. I wasn't sure what we were going to do, but I knew just leaving her there wasn't an option.

"Actually, Meredith, she could," Doyle said.

I shook my head. "I don't mean that it's not possible, Doyle, I mean it's not acceptable. I don't want her in my bedroom mirror like some living trophy mounted on a wall."

"I understand." He looked at the trapped goblin. "I will entertain suggestions, but in honesty, I do not see an easy solution."

"Could we break the mirror?" Kurag asked.

"That would likely cut her into pieces."

"It won't kill her," Kurag said.

"No, no breaking," Siun said.

Everyone ignored her.

"But it might leave one piece on your side of the mirror and one on our side of the mirror," Doyle said. "Can your goblins heal such a terrible wound?"

Kurag frowned. "They won't die of it."

"But once we cut her in two, can she be put back together, or will she live bisected?"

Siun started to push and pull harder. "No breaking the mirror, damn it!"

I couldn't really blame her for that, but it was one of those problems that even among the fey was so peculiar you couldn't really be horrified by it, not yet. Seeing her stuck in the mirror didn't even seem quite real.

"Well, if we can't break the mirror, I'm damned if I know what to do," Kurag said.

Holly came up close to the glass. He touched Siun's body where it went into the glass. He didn't hurt her, but she complained as if he had. Holly's voice came out awed: "Kitto did this. I saw him. I felt the magic race across my body like crawling wind." He traced his hands around Siun where she entered the mirror.

"Ssstop touching me," she said.

Holly looked out at us. "I will agree to what my brother wants. I will come to the princess, if there is a chance to gain such power." He gazed at the mirror, and Siun's body. Then his crimson eyes found mine. "We will come to you, Princess." He looked at me, and there was something close to lust in his gaze, but it wasn't the lust of flesh. It was the lust for power. It's a colder wanting, but it can lead to warmer things, hotter things, dangerous things.

"We will see you all at the banquet, Holly," I said. Saying I look forward to seeing you would have been a lie.

"We will see you there," Ash said.

"Let us be clear, Kurag," I said. "A month for every goblin we make sidhe."

"Agreed," he said.

"And let us also be clear on this," Doyle said. "There are other ceremonies that can bring sidhe into their power. Not all of them are sexual."

"Blood combat, you mean?" Kurag said.

"That, and the great hunts, the great quests."

"There is no more great hunt, Darkness, and the quests are over. We have not the magic for either."

"Perhaps, Kurag, but I want the options open to us."

"If it does not cost them their lives, then you may bring my goblins over as you see fit. In truth, Holly is not the only one who would rather not bed a sidhe." He grinned then, a pale imitation of his usual leer. "None of you has enough extra body parts to be handsome."

"Oh, Kurag," I said, "you ol' flatterer."

"I want one thing very clear," Ash said. "For my brother and I it will be sex with Princess Meredith, or nothing."

"Brother, we do not have to do this," Holly said.

Ash shook his head, his blond hair sliding around his shoulders. "I want it." He looked at his brother, and something passed between them, some message that I couldn't read. "I will lie with her, Holly, and where I go, you go."

"I don't like it."

"Don't like it, just do it," Ash said.

Holly gave a small nod.

Ash smiled at us. "We will see you at the banquet, Princess."

"Agreed," I said.

"What about me?" Siun half screamed, half whined.

I shrugged. "I have no idea how to fix this."

"Nor I," Kurag said.

"I know how to fix it." Rhys rose from his knees to stand over Siun. She slashed at him with her spined legs. He jerked out of reach, and laughed. It was a strange laugh, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.

"How?" Doyle asked.

"I claim blood price on Siun here and now."

"Killing her will not rid her from the mirror," Doyle said.

Rhys nodded. "Yes, it will." He stood over the goblin, just out of reach of her one arm and frantic legs. "I saw this done once on purpose to trap an enemy. Once he was dead, the mirror closed and each side of the glass got the parts on its side, but the mirror was whole."

Siun struggled, beating against the glass, her spined legs making great white scratches in the varnished wood of the vanity. "No," she said.

"The last time we were together it was me who was trapped and helpless. I don't think you like it any better than I did."

She lashed out at him, the black spike on the side of one leg striking the wood so hard it stuck, and Siun had to struggle to free the leg.

"Temper, temper, Siun," Rhys said.

"Damn you, Rhysss."

"If she curses any of us," Doyle said, "then we will trade curses with the goblins. The sidhe are much stripped of their power, but you still do not want to trade curses with us, Kurag."

"If she curses again, you can cut off her ungrateful head," Kurag said.

Siun's scream sounded more from anger and frustration than fear. I don't think she feared death here and now. I couldn't blame her. There were very few things that could cause death to the immortal of the fey. It took a great deal of magic invoking mortal blood, or a special weapon. We were fresh out of both.

Rhys stepped out of reach of Siun's struggles and turned to Kitto. "Frost, give Kitto your short sword."

Frost looked at Doyle. Kitto didn't even bother looking up.

"What are you about, Rhys?" Doyle asked.

Rhys walked around the bed to Frost and Kitto. He knelt so that he was at eye level with the smaller man. He stroked Kitto's hair until he turned his head and looked at Rhys. "I was with her for only a few hours, Kitto. I cannot imagine what it was like to belong to her for months."

Kitto's voice came hoarse, but clear. "Years."

Rhys held the smaller man's face between his hands, and pressed their foreheads against each other. He spoke low, and I could no longer understand all the words; only the tone was still clear: persuading, sympathetic, cajoling.

"Do not ask this of him, Rhys," Frost said.

Rhys looked up at the bigger man, his hands still holding Kitto's face. "The only way to cleanse yourself of a fear is to face it, Frost. We will face it together, he and I."

Kitto nodded, his face still held between Rhys's hands.

"Give him your short sword, Frost, or I'll go fetch him one." There was something in Rhys's face, some command, some strength that hadn't been there before. Whatever it was, Frost responded to it. He sat Kitto on the edge of the bed and stood up. He reached underneath his suit coat and came away with a sword that wasn't much longer than a large knife. In Frost's hands it looked too small. He offered it hilt-first to Kitto.

Kitto hesitated, then reached a tentative hand for it. The guards had been teaching him weapons skills. He had some, but goblin tactics relied on strength and body mass. It wasn't the right approach for someone Kitto's size. He was learning to use his body the way it was meant to be used, but he was still hesitant in practice, as if he didn't trust himself yet.

He wrapped his small hands around the hilt, and it was big enough for both of them to hold it, one above the other. He stared down at the naked blade as if it might turn in his hands and bite him.

Rhys knelt out of sight and came back up with a sheathed sword from under the bed. We kept weapon caches throughout the house, just in case. But I guess there wasn't anything short enough to fit Kitto's hands under the bed.

Rhys walked back around the bed with a hand on Kitto's shoulder, half guiding and half pushing. Kitto began to hang back as they rounded the bed. The short sword drooped in his hands.

Siun began to yell, "Kurag, my king, you can't let them do this."

"Calling me king will not help you now, Siun."

"Help me, Kurag, help me. Would you ssstand idly by while ssidhe ssslay your goblin?" She held out the one white hand that was on his side of the mirror as far as it would stretch, beseeching.

Kurag sighed. "Is there anything I can offer you, white knight? A wergild price to replace her life."

"I won't die, Kurag," Siun said. "They can cut me up, but I won't die!"

"She's right, pale prince, you cannot truly slay her."

Kitto had stopped, refusing to go closer to Siun than the last corner of the bed. Short of Rhys picking him up bodily and carrying him the last few feet, Kitto was not getting closer.

Rhys left him where he was and moved to the mirror, just out of reach of Siun's struggling limbs. He stared down at the trapped goblin, and there was a distant look on his face, a remembering. "Leave the killing to me, Kurag," he said.

"Name something I am willing to offer, pale prince, and I will pay wergild for her. Surely there is something you would trade for?" Kurag had stepped just behind Siun. He stroked her black-furred back, a soothing gesture.

"Her life is all I want, Kurag," Rhys said.

A look of both pleasure and worry crossed Kurag's face, as if he wasn't sure whether it would be too much. His voice was careful as he began, "The life of one of the male goblins who enjoyed your company. Would that be worth Siun's life?" He kept his face and voice as neutral as he could, but there was an eagerness to his orange-yellow eyes that said he enjoyed Rhys's discomfort. I doubt that Kurag had watched Rhys used by men for the sex show, but for the power, for the sight of the mighty thrown low, oh, yes, Kurag had enjoyed that.

Rhys's face clouded with the beginnings of anger, but he smoothed it away. He turned a thoughtful face to Kurag. "Is there some male in particular you'd offer in Siun's place?"

Now it was Kurag's turn to look thoughtful. "You remember any names?" His smile was close to his usual leer.

"Most wanted me to know who it was that would use me. I remembered Siun's name."

Kurag nodded, and his face sobered again, almost as if he'd said something he would take back if he could. There had to be a male among those who'd been with Rhys whom Kurag hated, or saw as a threat. That was the only thing that made sense. For the Goblin King to admit that anyone was a threat meant it was serious, maybe even dangerous. Goblins did not assassinate each other. It was considered cowardice. A king who resorted to letting others do his killing could be executed. But if Rhys did it now, as a wergild price, then Kurag would be blameless. Still, the fact that Kurag had suggested the name  - that would be taken badly. So he stopped short of names. He would not name.

"Then name someone, white knight, name someone."

Rhys shook his head. "If you had asked me to name the one goblin I wanted most to kill, it would be Siun." He gestured at the trapped goblin as he said the last. "No one else's death will satisfy."

"What if the Goblin King could offer something other than a death?" Doyle asked.

Kurag looked at Doyle, but Rhys had eyes only for Siun. "What would you have, Darkness?"

Doyle allowed himself a small smile. "What would you offer?"

Rhys shook his head, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. "No, Doyle, no, I want this death. I won't trade it away." He looked back at the tall, dark man, met Doyle's unhappy gaze. "I am sorry, but not for politics. I won't trade this death away for just politics."

"And if it could gain us some advantage for Meredith?"

He frowned, then finally shook his head. "No." He looked at me, where I stood almost forgotten by the bed. "I'm sorry, Merry, but I will have this death." He turned back to Doyle. "Trust me, Doyle, Siun dead will help us more than Siun alive."

Doyle made a push-away gesture. "As you will."

Rhys held his hand out to Kitto, who still stood frozen by the bed. "Come on, Kitto, let's do this."

Kitto was shaking his head over and over. "Can't," he finally said.

"Yes, you can," Rhys said. He waggled his hand at him. "Come."

Doyle held his hand out to me. "Come, Meredith, let's put you out of the line of - fire." He hesitated over the last word as if he would have said something else. I went to him, stepping carefully between Kitto and Rhys, and the naked blade in Kitto's hand.

Rhys unsheathed the sword in his hand and flung the empty sheath toward Doyle, who caught it without looking, with his free hand. The other hand stayed in mine, and there was the faintest dew on his palm. Doyle was nervous. Why?

I was missing something. I had no idea what, but if it made Doyle nervous, it was probably a bad thing to miss. I was princess here, which meant I was supposed to be the ruler, but as so often seemed to happen, I was out of my depth. If I hadn't had the touch of Doyle's hand in mine, I would never have suspected he was nervous. That meant the goblins didn't know it at all. We needed to keep it that way.

Rhys raised the long silver blade up over his head for a great downward strike. Siun pleaded, "My king, my king, help me!"

"I offered you his sex and his flesh, Siun. I didn't tell you to maim him." Kurag stroked her furry back one last time, then stepped back. "If you can kill sidhe, do it, but don't fuck them up and leave them alive, because they never forget, and they never forgive." He looked at Rhys. "She's yours." He didn't sound happy about it, but he wasn't brokenhearted, either. I don't think he cared for Siun one way or the other. He'd tried to save her because she was one of his people, nothing more.

Siun tried to plead with Rhys, but to raise her one arm up to him she had to stretch her body upward. Her pale breasts flashed, and a look came over Rhys's face, a look that I never, ever wanted to see directed at me. "Do you remember what you made me do with those?" he asked, in a voice that seemed to burn through the room.

"No," she said, and she held out that arm, opened that mouth, and begged.

"I do," Rhys said, and the blade flashed down. The sword bit into the back of her body with a sound like cracking plastic, and that sound alone let me know that whatever skeletal system Siun had, it wasn't sidhe. But the blood was still red. Rhys chopped at her like you'd fight a tree that couldn't fight back. One of her black legs with its dagger-like spurs slashed through his robe to the skin beyond. The second slash was down his side, and it made him hesitate, clutching at the wound.

Kitto was suddenly there, his clean silver blade catching a leg before it could slice at Rhys. He severed the leg with one blow, and it went spinning onto the carpet at our feet. Doyle moved me farther away from them, and I didn't argue.

Frost started to cross the room, to join the fight, I think. Doyle stopped him with the sheath of Rhys's sword, held like a barrier. He shook his head twice, and Frost stood beside us, one hand holding his other wrist, as if he had to hold something if he couldn't fight.

Kitto was screaming, a high, maddened wail. It was a battle cry of sorts, but the battle cry of the damned, the lost, the wounded, risen up to smite their masters. The sound raised the hair at my neck and made me huddle against Doyle's body. He hugged me to him, wordless, his eyes on the fight.

Rhys stepped back from the body. He leaned against the wall, favoring his wounds, letting the gore drip down his sword. The front of his robe was soaked with Siun's blood and his own. A splatter of crimson stained the side of his face and his white hair. He didn't seem tired; he had just stopped fighting. Was he hurt?

Kitto alone struggled with the goblin, chopping and slicing, whittling her away a piece at a time. She'd tried to protect her head, rolling it under her body in a way that no human shape could have done, but Kitto split her head wide in a fountain of blood and thicker things. And still she lived.

Kitto was covered in blood and gore nearly from forehead to feet. His blue eyes looked so blue, it was like watching blue fire pool in a mask of blood.

I looked at Rhys, who was just leaning against the wall. He had to be hurt. I started to go to him, but Doyle held me back, shook his head.

"We have to help Kitto then," I said.

Doyle just shook his head, his face grim.

I grabbed his arm. "Why not?" I turned back to watch Kitto struggling with the dagger-like legs that slashed and fought even as he cut them away. The goblin could still hurt him badly.

For the first time I wished Doyle had been wearing a shirt, so I could shake him by it. "He'll get hurt."

Doyle hugged me against his body, and it wasn't exciting as it had been earlier, with Rhys, it was irritating. "Let me go."

He leaned close and whispered against my face, "It is Kitto's kill, Merry, let him have it."

I stood pressed to his body, and didn't understand. It wasn't Kitto's kill, it was Rhys's. Then I looked at Rhys standing there, doing nothing. He watched Kitto. I remembered then what I'd forgotten. When my first hand of power had come in unexpectedly, Doyle had made me give true death to the hag I'd accidentally turned into a mass of living flesh. The hand of flesh is just that, it can take flesh and turn it inside out - a leg, an arm, a whole body. He gave me the choice of killing her, or leaving her like some inside-out ball of flesh forever. She'd never die, just remain. Even with a sword that was capable of giving death to the immortal, the blood had soaked through my clothes to my underwear. I'd been covered in it. When it was done, Doyle had informed me that you needed to bloody yourself in combat after the first hand of power manifests so that it would come again, a sort of blood sacrifice. I'd hated him for making me do that. I hated him and Rhys now, for doing the same to Kitto.

Kitto gave his war cry until his voice broke. He chopped and sliced on the body until he couldn't raise his arms higher than his waist, and fell to his knees on the blood-soaked carpet. He gasped for air, and it was almost loud enough to drown out Siun's high-buzzing scream.

Rhys looked at Doyle, who nodded. Rhys pushed away from the wall and walked wide around what was left of the goblin. He knelt in the blood and hugged Kitto to him. I wondered if he was saying the same ritual words that Doyle had spoken to me that night.

Rhys got to his feet and saluted Kitto with his own bloody sword, then turned to what was left of the goblin. "You have made a mess of her," Kurag said, "but she will not die for you."

Rhys held his sword loosely in one hand, the other hand held out toward the main body that was left. He touched her furred back with his finger, and spoke one word, his voice clear and ringing like a soft bell. "Die," he said, and the body stopped moving. The pieces on the floor that had been wriggling lay still. It was as if Rhys pressed a button. He said, Die, and she died.

Doyle made a sound like a quiet hiss, and I forgot to breathe for a second or two. No sidhe could kill by just a touch and a command. Our magic didn't work that way.

"Consort bless us," Frost whispered.

There were hushed oaths from the younger goblins, but Kurag's voice when it came was deep with weariness. "The last time I saw you do that, it was before the last great war, white prince," he said.

Rhys stood there in his bloody terry-cloth robe, splattered with gore, and said, "Why do you think the goblins almost won that one?" There was a look on his face, a set to his body, that I'd never seen before. It was as if he took up more room than his physical form; as if he were taller than the room could hold, and his presence filled everything for a moment. It was as if all the air had become Rhys's magic.

The moment passed, and I could breathe again, and the air felt sweet and cool, and better than it had a moment ago. I leaned against Doyle's body for support, as if my knees were weak. A second ago I'd been angry with him for forcing Kitto to fight alone; now I huddled against him. I think I would have clung to anyone in that moment. I needed the touch of other flesh, other hands.

Once the goblin was dead, the corpse fell into pieces on either side of the mirror. The mirror was whole again. The goblins agreed to everything we wanted. Rhys blanked the mirror and turned, his robe more red than white. The blood had stained his white hair and skin, like red ink sprinkled on him. Where the blood touched his skin and hair, the red seemed to glow. That shining blood began to vanish, as if his very skin absorbed it, until he stood straight and clean, and untouched, except for the bloody robe. His blue eye was a whirl of colors, like looking into the center of some sky-colored storm.

Doyle used the sword sheath in his hand to salute, and Frost drew his long sword. They both touched their foreheads, but it was Doyle who said it. "Hail, Cromm Cruach, who slew Tigernmas, Lord of Death, for his pride and his crimes against the people."

Rhys raised his bloody sword, saluting them in turn. "It's good to be back." His solemn bloodstained face broke into his usual grin. "Blood makes the grass grow, rah, rah, rah."

"I always thought it was sex that made the grass grow," Galen said from the doorway, and we all turned around to look at him. Except for Kitto, who seemed lost in the blood-covered aftermath of his powers coming online.

Galen moved into the room just enough to lean against the wall. He looked tall and cool, from the top of his short, curling pale green hair - with its one tiny braid that played over his shoulder like an afterthought - to his broad shoulders, slender waist, and hips in their cream-colored suit. The white open-necked shirt brought out the slight green tint to his skin so that he looked more like the fertility god he would probably have been, had he been born a few hundred years earlier. His long legs in their loose slacks ended in brown loafers worn without socks. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a smile shining from his face that lit his grass-green eyes like jewels, not from magic, but from sheer goodwill - sheer Galen. He looked cool and pleasant, like some pale green liquid that you knew would quench whatever thirst you had.

I went to him, partly to bestow a welcoming kiss, and partly because I could rarely be in a room with Galen and not touch him. Touching him was like breathing; I'd done it so long, I didn't remember how to stop - not and live. The fact that he and I had been lovers for a month and I'd just finished bleeding our hopes of a child away had been both painful, and a relief. I loved Galen, had loved him from the time I was twelve or thirteen. Unfortunately, now that I was all grown up I finally realized what my father had tried to tell me years ago. Galen was strong, brave, joyous, my friend, and he loved me, but he was also the least politically savvy sidhe I'd ever met. Galen as king would be a disaster. I'd lost my father to assassins when I was young. I didn't think I could live through losing anyone else to them, especially not Galen. So part of me wanted to have him in my bed forever, my lover, my husband, but not my king. But my king would be whoever got me pregnant. No baby, no marriage; it was the way of sidhe royalty.

I wrapped my arms around Galen, sliding my arms underneath his jacket, where it held the warmth of his body, pulsing against my arms even through his shirt. I cuddled my face to his chest as his arms held me close. I hid my face from his gaze, because more and more lately I couldn't keep the worry out of my eyes. Galen was hopeless politically, but he understood my moods better than most, and I didn't want to explain these particular facts of life to him, not just yet.

His voice rumbled through his chest against my ear. "Maeve is back from her meeting with the heads of the studio. She's having a crying fit in her room."

Doyle said, "I take it the meeting didn't go well."

"The studio isn't happy that she's pregnant. Publicly they're thrilled, but behind closed doors they're pissed. How is she going to do her next movie, which is a very sexy role with nudity, when she'll be three or four months' pregnant at the time?"

I drew away from him enough to look up into his face. "Are you serious? As much money as she's made these people over the last decade, and they can't let one movie slide?"

Galen shrugged with his arms still wrapped around me. "I only report the news, I don't explain it." He frowned, and the happiness slipped out of his eyes. "I think if her husband wasn't dead... I mean, they seemed to imply that she could get pregnant some other time."

I gave him wide eyes. "An abortion?"

"They never said it out loud, but it was there in the air." He shivered and hugged me so close I couldn't see his face anymore. "When Maeve reminded them that her husband was dead barely a month, and this would be the only chance she had to have his baby, they apologized. They said they never meant to imply any such thing. They sat there and lied." He kissed the top of my head. "How could they do that to her? I thought she was their big star."

I hugged him tighter, pressing myself against his body as if I could take that hurt out of his voice. "Maeve dropped two movies while her husband died of cancer. I guess they were looking forward to having their cash cow back at work."

Galen laid his chin against my hair. "I couldn't imagine doing what they did to her today, to anyone, for any reason. They were all hints, and looks, and never just saying what they meant, and then outright lies." He shivered again. "I don't understand that."

And that was the problem. Galen truly didn't understand how anyone could be so mean. To survive in most arenas of power you must first understand that everyone lies, everyone cheats, and no one is your friend. The paradox is that not everyone lies, and not everyone cheats, and some people are your friends. The problem lies in the fact that one smiling face and handshake looks much like another, and when you're surrounded by consummate liars, how to tell the truth from the lie, friend from foe? Better to treat everyone professionally, pleasantly, smile, nod, be friendly, but never be friends. Because there is no way to tell who is on your side, not really. Galen couldn't grasp that concept. I needed someone who could.

I turned my face enough to see Doyle standing on the other side of the room. He was cool and dark, but he reminded me not of a drink that would quench my needs, but rather a weapon that would protect all I loved.

I stood there wrapped in Galen's arms, but my eyes were for Doyle, and Frost watched us all. Frost, whom I'd begun to love for the first time. Frost who had finally figured out he needed to be jealous of Galen, and had always been jealous of Doyle. The fey are not supposed to be jealous in the way humans are, but glancing into Frost's grey eyes, I was beginning to think that perhaps the sidhe had become more human than they realized.