Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)

The golden goddess of Hollywood lay curled into a ball on top of the satin comforter that covered her round king-size bed. It was the bed she'd shared with the late Gordon Reed for more than twenty years. I'd suggested that maybe she could move to a new bedroom until she got over some of her grief. She'd given me a look so scathing that I'd never suggested it again.

Her suit jacket, the color of goldenrods, lay forlorn on the floor. The boots - made of leather so soft, it seemed to still breathe on its own - were scattered, as if she'd thrown them when she undressed. She was still wearing the slacks that matched the jacket, and the copper-colored vest that had been the only shirt she'd worn. The headband that had matched the vest, perfectly, was the last thing dropped by the bed. Her hair lay free and disarrayed across the edge of the bed. The hair was still the color of soft butter, which meant as upset as she was, she was still wasting magic for her glamour. The glamour that had let her pass for human for a hundred years since she was exiled from faerie. For fifty of those years she'd been the golden goddess of Hollywood, Maeve Reed. For untold centuries before that she'd been the goddess Conchenn.

Behind the closed door of the bedroom her personal assistant was in tears, wringing her hands, helpless. Maeve had kicked her out. Nicca had stood next to the door with his long brown hair and pale brown skin. Even his eyes were brown. He looked the most human of all the guards, when you couldn't see the wing-shaped marks on the back of his body, like the world's most elegant tattoo. There but for genetics Nicca would have had real wings. He apologized for being on this side of the door, but Maeve had clung to him a little too forcefully. She hadn't exactly made a pass, but she probably would have responded to one. Nicca thought discretion the better part of valor. I didn't blame him.

Maeve had been a goddess of love and spring. She was still more than capable of turning the charm on. Charm in the original sense of the word, a magic. She was alone in her big bed for the first time in decades. She was lonely, and she was a being of heat, the new life after the long winter. You can fight your basic nature, but under stress, it gets harder. Maeve was under a lot of stress.

The sound of her soft crying filled the room. I walked barefoot toward her. I'd tied my red peekaboo robe tight but hadn't taken time to change. Doyle and Rhys had stayed at the guesthouse to dress and help Kitto clean up. It left me with Frost standing rigid by the door, but he wouldn't come near the bed unless I made him. He didn't care for Maeve's teasing. Frost had been celibate for eight hundred years, give or take. He had coped with that punishment by not flirting, not playing any games. He'd been his namesake, cold, icy, frost.

Galen also stood by the door, but he was at ease, smiling. If Maeve had made polite overtures to him, he hadn't mentioned it. Either she'd started on Nicca only when they were alone in her bedroom, or Galen just didn't think it was important. I agreed with him. Nicca's panic had been odd, come to think of it.

I was beside the bed before I thought to wonder why Nicca had been so upset, or what she might have done. I said her name softly: "Maeve." I repeated it twice more, and there was no reaction. I touched her shoulder, and the crying increased, growing from something quiet to something that shook her shoulders, made her body quiver with its force.

I bent over her, hugging her, resting my cheek against the silk of her hair. "It's all right, Maeve, it's all right."

She twisted against me, turning so that I had to draw back to see her face. She'd dropped some of her glamour, because her eyes weren't the human blue that the movies saw, but the brilliant tricolor that was real. The wide outer edges were rich deep blue, and there were two thin circles around her pupils: one melted copper, the other liquid gold. But what made her eyes like no others was that the gold and copper trailed out across the blue of her irises like streaks of metallic lightning. Her eyes were lightning-kissed, as if the Goddess Herself had decreed she would have the most beautiful eyes in the world.

I stood by the bed, staring down into those eyes, lost for a moment in the wonder of them. Her tear-stained face looked almost desperate. Had she lost control of her own glamour; had she not meant to show her eyes?

She grabbed my wrist, and I could feel the pulse in the tip of each of her fingers like tiny separate hearts, beating against my skin. I suddenly knew why Nicca had panicked. Maeve rose to her knees, hand still wrapped around my wrist. On her knees she was tall enough to bring our faces close together. I stood there immobile, frozen, not with indecision, but with power. Maeve's power.

It was as if a warm spring breeze trailed across my skin. I threw my head back and let that wind blow my hair away from my face. I opened my eyes and gazed down at Maeve, and watched the rest of her glamour fade away, as if the golden glow of her skin rose through her body. Her suddenly white-blond hair danced in the warmth of her power. Those glittering lines in her eyes flashed like a spring storm come to blow away the winter's sloth. It was as if my very skin lifted away like an old coat grown too tight. I felt like some animal that had shed its shape for something lighter, something that should have been able to fly.

My skin glowed as if I'd swallowed the moon. The stray bits of my hair that danced around my face glowed like garnets and rubies spun out into something glittering and alive. I felt my eyes begin to glow, and knew that they shone as if some hand had cut an emerald, a piece of jade, and the gold that held them together, and set them with his own personal fire.

Her power stripped me of all my glamour, even the last bits that I kept almost constantly. The dark hand-shaped scar just under my breast, over my ribs, bloomed to life, like a dark imperfection against all that glowing light. That scar marked where another Unseelie sidhe had tried to use her magic to crush my heart. She'd broken my ribs, torn muscles, but not the muscle she wanted to tear. I knew that if the black hand mark over my ribs was visible, the marks on my back would be, too. They were scars, but not the kind of scars that a human would understand, or even most fey. Another duel gone bad, where a fellow Unseelie had tried to force a shape change on me in the middle of the fight. It wouldn't have killed me. He had been playing with me. Showing off his superior magic, and my lack. I'd driven a blade into his heart, and he'd died. He'd died because the rituals surrounding duels were based on blood rituals: his and mine. Mortal blood makes immortals weak. It's an old bit of magic, and it was all that had saved me.

I hid my scars even in the midst of magic. Imperfections aren't popular among the sidhe. Being stripped bare of that last bit of hiding made me try to pull away from her, brought something of myself back. I had closed my eyes because I did not want to see the look of revulsion. I was able to say, "Maeve," but when I opened my eyes, I found her face almost touching mine. I had a moment of staring into her eyes from so close that they seemed to fill the world for a moment, a glittering, broken world full of storm and wind and color. She licked her lips, and that one small movement drew my gaze. I'd never noticed how full her lips were, how moist, how pink. Her mouth glistened like some succulent pink fruit, and I knew that it held warm juice that would run down my mouth, my throat. I could almost taste it, almost feel it.

I tasted her breath upon my mouth, so sweet, like new grass fresh-sprouted from the earth. Our lips touched, and the world was suddenly filled with the perfume of blossoms. I was drowning in apple blossoms as if I'd fallen into some enchanted orchard, where it was always spring, always new, always possible.

I saw Maeve sitting under a tree in full blossom. There was a hill behind her, and she wore a gown the green-gold of new leaves, with hints of white linen at her bosom and wrist. The linen seemed to glow like white feathers in the sunlight. Her hair fell to her knees like a fall of white frothing water. Her skin was carved of the sunlight itself; golden and shining so bright I could not look upon her, yet even as I felt my eyes begin to burn, I could not look away.

It began to snow. The warmth began to fade, and the blossoms fell from the tree in a shower of white and pink, and the snow dotted the grass. Cold, it was so cold. I was lying on my back, staring up into Frost's face. He looked worried, and his eyes held that falling snow. I stared into that snow, and again I had the sense that there was someplace behind the snow. That if I stared long enough I'd see it. But I wasn't afraid this time. I knew he'd called me back, saved me somehow. I felt his strong hands on my arms, the press of his body against mine, and I wasn't afraid.

I saw Frost standing at the foot of a snow-covered hill, except the hill was his cloak, a cloak of snow, that moved with him. His hair glistened like ice in the sun, and his skin was the brilliance of snow when the sun dances on it. A brilliance that would blind as surely as staring at the sun itself.

The cloak of snow opened, as if Frost had spread his arms, and there was a soothing darkness underneath all that white. It was a still winter's night when the world waits, holding its breath. I stood in that soothing darkness, and I wasn't cold, though I knew that I was ankle-deep in the snow. The moon rode full overhead and the snow lay white and glistening, but so much gentler than in the light of day. A figure seemed to form from the blue shadows of that winter silence. Smaller even than I, but not by much, with long thin arms and legs, longer than they should have been, if he had been human. But of course he wasn't human, had never been human.

He was dressed in rags, but those rags sparkled in the moonlight to shame the brightest diamond. His skin was the blue of snow shadows in the moonlight. His face was that of a lovely child. His hair streamed behind him the color of silver frost. He held out a hand toward me that was so long-fingered, it held extra joints. He touched my cheek with those slender fingers, and his touch was warmer than it should have been. I stared down into those grey eyes, and smiled.

He turned from me then, and went dancing barefoot upon the snow. Where he passed, the snow remained pure and untouched, as if he weighed nothing. I understood now why we were here in the silent night. He was frost, truly frost. The hoarfrost that rimes the world, but only if it's still. Such delicate work cannot survive a stout wind.

I watched him dance away across the shining snow until he melded with a patch of blue moonshadow and vanished.

I came to myself one more time. Frost was still holding me, but this time there was no snow in his eyes; they were just grey, the grey of a winter's sky. His voice came strained, a whisper, as if he was afraid to speak. "You grew so cold. I was afraid..." He let whatever he was going to say trail away, then he pushed himself off me, abruptly, and walked away. He walked across the room, through the door, and left it swinging open behind him.

Galen crawled across the bed to sit beside me. He didn't touch me, though, which seemed odd. "Are you all right?" He wasn't smiling when he asked.

I had to think about the question, which usually meant no, I wasn't all right. Something had happened, but for my life, I wasn't sure what. It took me two tries to speak, and even then my voice sounded hoarse and strange. "What happened - " I swallowed, coughed, tried to clear my voice, " -  just now?"

Maeve spoke from the far edge of the bed. "We're not entirely sure."

I looked at her. She was still the goddess Conchenn with her lightning-kissed eyes, long white-blond hair, and golden skin, but she didn't glow. She was gorgeous but her power had left her, for now.

She looked embarrassed, which you don't see in goddesses that often. "It's my fault. I wanted the comfort of another sidhe's touch. I tried to seduce Nicca and it didn't work." She gave me an arrogant face, but it left her eyes uncertain. "I'm not accustomed to being turned down by anyone I really want. I thought you might share one of your men." She looked down again, then up, and she seemed more determined than arrogant now. I didn't know if all actresses did this, but Maeve Reed could go from one emotion to another at the blink of an eye, and they all seemed real. I didn't know if she'd always been this moody, or if it had been the job that had made her that way. "I know it was stupid and thoughtless. You gave Gordon and me the chance to have a child. Your magic, and Galen's, did that, Merry. I am an ungrateful wretch, and I am sorry."

"It's okay," I said, and still my voice sounded strained. My throat was actually sore. I frowned up at Galen. "Why is my throat sore?"

He glanced back, and Maeve met his eyes. They had one of those moments that said, more clearly than any words, something had happened, something I didn't remember, and it had been bad.

"Just tell me." I raised a hand and touched his arm.

He jerked as if I'd bit him and moved out of reach. "Don't touch me, Merry, not just yet."

"Why?" I asked.

"Look at the coverlet," he said, "near your head."

I turned my head and found a wide wet spot on the off-white bedspread. I frowned, and didn't understand, until I touched the wetness and found ice crystals in the water. I frowned up at Galen. "Why is there melting ice on the bed?"

"Because you threw it up."

I stared at him, and wanted to ask if he was kidding, but one look at his face and I knew he wasn't. "How, why?"

"That's the part we're not entirely sure of," Maeve said.

"Tell me the parts you are sure of."

She walked around the edge of the bed until she stood opposite me, but she made no move to get on the bed, or come closer. "I tried to seduce you, and it worked, a great deal better than I'd planned. I forget sometimes that you're part human. I used the power I'd use for another sidhe, another deity."

I nodded, and even that hurt my throat. "I remember that part, but then it changed, became something else. I saw you sitting under a tree, and it hurt my eyes to look at you."

"No mortal can look full upon the face of a god and survive," Galen said.

"What?" I asked.

Maeve leaned against the bed. "I was Conchenn for a moment. I was what I had been. I think I'd almost made myself forget. The loss of faerie is a new wound, Merry, compared to having lost my godhead."

I was getting a headache. "I'm not following this."

"Let me." Galen looked serious, determined, very un-Galen. "Maeve used her powers, or what was left of them, as the goddess Conchenn to try to seduce you. But you brought on more power. You brought her into her godhead again."

I gave him wide eyes. "I thought that once you gave up being a god you couldn't get it back."

"So did I, until today," Maeve said.

I frowned at her. "Besides, only the Goddess can make you a god."

"I believe that is still true," Maeve said. "But perhaps anyone can be a vessel for Her power."

"Not just anyone," Galen said. "If just anyone could have done it, it would have happened centuries ago." He looked at Maeve as if she'd been rude.

"You're right. You are right. I will not belittle the gift. I know the touch of the Goddess when I feel it."

"What goddess?" I asked.

"Danu." She said the word in a whisper that seemed to echo through the room.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, let it out, counted slow, took another breath. I opened my eyes. "I'm hearing things," I said. "I thought you said, Danu."

"I did."

I shook my head, and didn't even care that it hurt my throat. "Danu is the Goddess whom the Tuatha De Danaan, the children of Dana, are named after. She's the Goddess. She was never personified."

"I never said she was a person," Maeve said. "I said that she gave me my godhead, and she did."

I frowned at her, the headache starting to pound between my eyes. "I don't understand."

"In the first treaty we ever signed with the Formorii, both sides worked the first weirding magic. We lessened ourselves lest our two races destroy the land that we now shared. Danu, or Dana, agreed to distance Herself from us for the great spell to be done." Maeve's eyes shimmered, and it was tears, not magic. "I don't think that any of us understood what we were giving up. Except perhaps Danu Herself." She sat on the edge of the bed and let the tears fall. This time I didn't think it was a bad day at work and baby hormones. I think she sat in the Southlands, on the edge of the Western Sea, and wept for a Goddess who had never seen America.