“I couldn’t have done that before you and the Goddess brought me back into my power,” he said.
“I don’t think Doyle and Frost would let you get close enough to touch them,” Galen said.
“I wouldn’t have to touch them now.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I was Cromm Cruach; I lived for blood and slaughter, and I was good at it. I have a sithen of my own again, Merry. It’s disguised as an abandoned Los Angeles apartment building, but it’s a piece of faerie that came into being, because you brought me back to what I was; I don’t have to get close enough to touch someone to cause their death.”
“How do you know that, for certain, I mean?”
He looked away then, and I had to reach up, touch his face, and turn him back to me. “Rhys?”
“Let’s just say that my sithen is in a bad section of L. A. and I’m blond and blue-eyed and don’t exactly look like I belong.”
“Someone attacked you,” I said.
“Someones,” he said.
“Who?”
“Let’s just say that the gang problem in that section of downtown isn’t an issue anymore.”
“You didn’t do it to defend yourself,” Galen said.
I looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”
“They hurt one of the people living near your sithen, didn’t they?” Galen asked.
Rhys shrugged. “Don’t make it sound all noble.”
“I wasn’t.”
Rhys looked at him. “Don’t disapprove either.”
“I wasn’t.”
“If you have a point to make, make it soon,” Rhys said, and he didn’t sound altogether happy.
“I saw the flowers and gifts they leave by your building,” Galen said.
“I would have known if any of you were close to my sithen.”
“Apparently not,” Galen said.
“You scouted me,” Rhys said, and again he wasn’t happy.
It was Galen’s turn to shrug and give a little smile. He was pleased with himself.
“I’d believe that Darkness visited me, but not you.”
“The only one of us better at personal glamour than me is Merry.”
“True, you never need a disguise to do undercover work back when we are all working at the Grey Detective Agency. Sholto’s pretty good at it, too.”
“Good enough that both of you, and Sholto, went inside the Seelie sithen to rescue me with only your glamour to hide you from the king and his nobles.” I grabbed Galen’s hand and then took Rhys’s. “And you in your fake beard and hat. You could have gotten all of you killed.”
“But we didn’t,” Rhys said.
“But now you’re telling me that you killed an entire gang. You risked yourself to do it, Rhys; don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t in much danger; that whole immortal thing, remember.”
“Bullets can hurt you, Rhys, all of you, it’s lead; cold iron can kill us, and steel hurts—no, don’t give me that immortal crap. You could have died.” I sat up. “Did you at least take some of the other guards with you as backup?”
The moment he looked away I knew he hadn’t. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t ever risk yourself like that again, not alone. We’re a court, a court of faerie, Rhys; that means we fight our battles together.”
“I was willing to risk my own life, Merry, but no one else’s. Let’s be honest: If you lost me you’d survive, but if I got Doyle or Frost killed, you’d never forgive me.”
“Yes, I love Frost and Doyle the most, I’m more in love with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Don’t you ever think that I could lose you and it wouldn’t hurt. How dare you think so little of me, Rhys. How dare you believe that my heart isn’t big enough to love more than just two men.” I was yelling at him.
He held his hands up in front of him. “I’m sorry, truly, but I did what I thought was best.”
“If I’m the royal here, the would-be queen, then you don’t get to make decisions like that without consulting me, is that clear?” I was yelling again.
“It’s clear, I’m clear, checking with the queen before I clean up any more neighborhoods.”
“You could have died!” And I burst into tears like some hysterical pregnant woman. Stupid hormones.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I FORGAVE HIM when he made me yell for a much more fun reason, and the first orgasm in months filled my body, flowed over my skin, and brought me screaming. I screamed his name while his fingers brought me, and my nails carved my pleasure in red scratches down his arm, and across Galen’s back, because that was what was under my fingers when Rhys’s hand pushed me over that delicious edge.
My skin had not glowed until that last push of pleasure; only then had my pale skin filled with moonlight glow like the clouds had finally been blown away and the light of a full moon could bathe the world in its luminescence. My skin ran with power and I could see swirls of greens and golds from the corners of my vision and knew it was the colors of my own eyes alight with magic.
My magic brought theirs, and Rhys’s skin was an answering shine to mine, so that it was two moons entwined, filling the world with a light so bright it would make mortals shield their eyes for fear of losing sight, or mind, from the beauty of it. His one eye glittered like three jewels, carved sapphires in a range of blues from palest blue, as if the sky could burn with its own color, a blue so rich, as if cornflowers could explode with their own beauty, and then the color of the ocean where it runs shallow and warm, as if the sun truly did rise from the water in a burst of glory.