"Rhys, go with him," Doyle said. "See that he comes to no harm."
Rhys went without a word. He was still nude, as was Sage. I had a moment to hope that there wasn't anyone outside the wall with a night-vision camera. Then I realized that bad publicity was the least of our worries. The fact that I'd thought of it at all proved that I'd been too long away from faerie, too long out among the humans.
"What harm could Sage come to?" I asked.
"His own," Doyle said.
"You mean he'll harm himself because he can't fly."
Doyle nodded. "I have known other winged fey to let themselves fade and die when they lost their wings."
"I meant him no harm."
"The sidhe are at their most dangerous when they mean us no harm," Frost said, and his voice held a bitterness that I'd never heard before.
"It's my night," Nicca said. He hadn't taken part in the conversation until now, and when I looked into his brown eyes what I saw tightened things low in my body. His need was so raw, and it wasn't the gentle need that he usually held, but something far more fierce.
"Look at you," Doyle said. "You are still power-besotted. I think the chalice is not done with you yet, Nicca, and I fear what that would do to our Merry."
Nicca shook his head, eyes still on me, as if nothing else were truly real. "My night."
Galen had come into the room and was gazing at Nicca's wings. "Wow, that's new."
"There are many things new tonight," Doyle said, and he sounded wary.
Nicca ignored them all. "My night." He held his hand out to me.
"No," Doyle said, and he took my hand and led me back away from the bed.
"She's mine tonight," Nicca said, and for a moment I thought we'd see a fight, or at least an argument.
"Technically, it was Rhys's night," Doyle said, "and you have both had your pleasure."
"If Rhys has had his night," Frost said, "then it is your night, Doyle."
Nicca balled his hands into fists. "No, we aren't finished." And his voice was like something that should call you from deep within the ground. He might have had wings, but his energy was all earth.
Doyle moved me behind him so that he formed a barrier between me and Nicca where he still knelt on the bed, those wings draped behind him like some magical cloak. "Listen to yourself, Nicca. I do not know what the Goddess has planned for you, but until we are sure it will not harm Merry, we will be cautious. Your godhead, or whatever, is not worth our Merry's life."
I peeked around Doyle's smooth dark arm and watched Nicca fight for control. It was as if something else wanted this, and that something else didn't necessarily care what Nicca wanted, or did not want.
He ended up on all fours, those wings flowing back along his body. His hair spilled across his face and over the foot of the bed like thick brown water. He took a breath that trembled along his back, shivered the rainbows of his wings. He raised his face up to the light with a look almost of pain, but he nodded. "Doyle's right, Doyle's right," he muttered over and over, as if to convince not just himself but whatever was riding him.
Doyle stepped forward and laid a gentle hand against Nicca's face. "I am sorry, my brother, but Merry's safety must come first."
Nicca nodded, almost as if he was unaware that Doyle had touched him. His eyes weren't focused on anything in the room.
Doyle moved back from the bed, using his body to move me backward, as if he still didn't trust Nicca. "No one who has not become a god can sleep with Merry until we understand what the chalice and the Goddess want."
"That means only Frost and Rhys," Galen said. He didn't sound happy.
"Only Frost until we know for certain how much power Rhys has recaptured," Doyle clarified.
"Not as much power as I'd hoped," Rhys said from the doorway. "Sage rolled me like a wino on Saturday night."
"Where is Sage?" I asked.
"It seems Conchenn was attracted by all the power. She's comforting our newest sidhe."
"I thought he'd had enough sidhe for one night," Galen said.
Rhys shrugged. "Conchenn can be very persuasive."
"How desperate she must be to take him into herself," Frost said.
"I don't know," I said. "She's made it pretty plain over the last two weeks that she'd love to have any of us in her bed."
"She's had us in her bed," Doyle said.
I looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Only to hold her while she cried herself to sleep, Doyle. That's not the kind of bed I mean."
Doyle gave a ghost of a smile. "When Maeve's grief began to abate she did make it... plain that she would have taken more active comfort."
I wondered at that smile! Perhaps Maeve had been more "active" in her attempts to seduce my Darkness than I'd known.
Rhys snorted. "Well, she's getting very active comfort right now."
"You don't understand," Frost said, "none of you."
"What don't we understand?" I asked, looking up into that coldly handsome face.
"How great her need must be to take Sage."
"He's sidhe now. Whether it's permanent, I don't know, but for tonight he's sidhe."
"It will be permanent," Frost said.
I frowned up at him. "No," I said, "you can be made sidhe for a night through magic, like Branwyn's Tears, but you're either born sidhe or you're not."
"That is not true," Frost said.
I had a sudden image of him as the beautiful child dancing across the snow. I had no problem with someone who had begun "life" as something other than flesh becoming sidhe. It seemed somehow right. But lesser fey, or humans, did not suddenly become sidhe. They just didn't.
"Once we brought sidhe to us like harvesting the fruits of the forest," Frost said. "They simply came to us."
"My father never spoke of such a thing." I didn't mean to imply that I didn't believe him, but doubt was in my voice.
"It was two thousand years, or more, ago," Doyle said. "We lost such abilities with the first weirding. Many of us refuse to speak of things that are truly lost."
"I think it is not so lost as we've been led to believe," Frost said.
"No one has deceived us," Doyle said.
Frost gave him a long look. "It was the Seelie Court that lost us the chalice, Doyle. They who stripped us of much of what we were."
Doyle shook his head. "I will not have this argument with you, or any of you," he said, looking at Rhys and Galen.
Galen held his hands out wide. "I've never had this argument with anyone."
"You're too young," Doyle said.
"Then can you explain it for those of us under five hundred?"
Doyle gave a small smile. "Most of the great relics that simply vanished were Seelie relics. The Unseelie relics remained, though lessened in power. Some believed that the Seelie court angered the Goddess, or the God, to lose such favor."
"We believed that they had done something so terrible that the face of deity turned from them," Frost said.
I looked at him. "I assume you believe that."
He nodded, and his face was like some beautiful sculpture, too handsome to be real, too arrogant to touch. He had retreated behind the cold mask he'd used for centuries in the Unseelie Court. I understood now that it was a form of protection, camouflage, if you will, to keep his pain hidden. I'd peeled back some of those layers and found what he'd hidden. Unfortunately, we seemed stuck at the moody, pain-exploration stage. I was looking forward to drilling through to another layer. There had to be more to him than mood. There had to be, didn't there?
"Many believe that," he said.
Doyle shrugged. "I know only that we diminished, and we came to the Western Lands. Beyond that, I know nothing for certain." He gave Frost a fierce look. "And neither do you."
Frost opened his mouth to speak, but Doyle cut him off with a gesture. "No, Frost, we will not reopen this wound. Not tonight. Is it not enough that you will share her body until we are sure the rest of us are safe?"
"I'm going back to bed," Rhys said, and it was abrupt enough that we all looked at him. "I want no part of this old argument, and after Sage's glamour took me so easily, I don't trust that I am truly Cromm Cruach. If I am not a god, then I'm too dangerous to be around Merry." He blew me a kiss. "Good night, sweet princess, we have to pack in the morning and catch a plane to St. Louis. So don't all of you stay up talking all night." He wagged a finger at us and left.
Galen looked at all of us. "I might as well go, too." He gave me a look of such pain. "Whatever is happening, I hope we clear it up soon."
I called after him, "Check on Kitto. This much noise should have woken him."
He nodded and left, carefully not looking back, as if he didn't want to see.
"To your room as well, Nicca," Doyle said.
"I am not a child to be sent to my room, Doyle."
We all blinked at him, because Nicca never spoke back to Doyle - really, to anyone. "It seems you have gained nerve with your wings," Doyle said.
Nicca gave him a very unfriendly look. "If you leave with me, then I will go."
"Are you implying that Doyle is trying to get rid of you so he can have me to himself?" I asked.
Nicca just kept that unfriendly look on Doyle.
Frost came out of his deep funk long enough to look at Nicca. "Nicca, it is I who ask Doyle to stay."
Nicca sent that dark look to Frost. "Why?"
"Because I trust him to keep Meredith safe."
Nicca crawled off the bed and stood before us, very straight, a slender, muscled brown vision framed with a fall of thick wild hair, and those wings. The wings seemed to fascinate me more than they should. It wasn't that they weren't lovely, but they drew my eye, my attention. Something wanted me to touch them, to roll myself along the brilliance of them, and cover my body in the brush of multicolored dust.
Doyle touched my arm, and it made me jump. My pulse was suddenly in my throat, and I didn't remember why. "You must leave tonight, Nicca. You fascinate her the way snakes fascinate small birds. I do not know what the cost would be to end this hold you seem to have on her, but I will not risk her life to find out."
Nicca closed his eyes, shoulders slumping, but that brushed the ends of his wings against the floor and he had to straighten his shoulders again. He used one slender hand to brush the fall of hair from his face, so that it fell like a deep auburn waterfall down one side of his body. "You are right, my captain." Something close to pain crossed his face. "I will see if there is another bed open for the night. If we keep ruining bedrooms, we're going to run out." When he was even with me, I reached out to brush his wings, and Doyle grabbed my hand, holding me back against his body, a hand on either of my wrists.
Nicca gazed back over his shoulder at me, then at Doyle. "We will speak of this later, Darkness." Again, it didn't seem like Nicca's voice, and even the look in his eyes was something I'd never seen.
Doyle actually took a step back, holding me against him. "Gladly, but not tonight."
Frost had moved up beside Doyle, his own problems forgotten in the wonder of seeing Nicca threaten Doyle. "Leave now, Nicca," Frost said.
Nicca turned his gaze on the other man. "I will speak to you, too, Killing Frost, if you wish it."
"Don't challenge them, Nicca, please don't," I said.
He turned that look on me, and his gaze went up and down my body. There was something in his look that was almost frightening, as if he wasn't thinking just about sex, but something more permanent. It was a look that held ownership.
"You beg me not to challenge them while you stand like that pressed against Doyle's half-naked body." His expression was one I'd never seen on him before, as if some stranger were inside Nicca's body using his face. He turned that stranger's face to Frost. "And you, who were never meant to be a god, would you now be king over us all? If you are the only man in her bed night after night, you will be." His voice was thick with a jealousy so harsh it was near hatred.
Frost moved a little in front of us. "I have not seen that look for many a long year, but I remember your envy, and what it cost us all."
It was Doyle who said, "Dian Cecht. Somehow you are in the power of Dian Cecht."
I didn't understand what was happening, but it wasn't good, that much even I knew. "Dian Cecht was one of the original Tuatha De Danaan, the healing god, but why do you name this power him?"
"Do you know the rest of his story?" Doyle asked.
"He slew his own son out of jealousy, because the son had surpassed the father in his healing skills."
Doyle nodded.
Nicca hissed at us, and his face, for a moment, was monstrous. Then he was handsome again, except for the hatred in his eyes.
"He's possessed," I said, and my voice was soft with the awfulness of it.
"You stopped the process before it finished," Frost said. "Has that caused this abomination?"
"I do not know," Doyle said, again, but I could feel his heart pounding against my hair. I knew he was afraid, but only the speeding of his pulse showed it.
Nicca slumped, almost swooned, then raised his face upward, and I saw terror there. "I was angry that you stopped us. I was jealous. The chalice brings to you what you bring to it. My anger has done this." He moaned. "I cannot fight this."
I prayed a prayer I'd spoken a thousand times before: "Mother help him." The moment the words left me, I felt the world tighten, as if the universe had caught its breath. There was a glow from across the room, as if the moon had risen beside our bed. We all turned and looked. The chalice sat against the wall where Doyle had dragged it, but there was light coming from it. I remembered my dream where the chalice had first appeared, remembered the taste of pure light, pure power, on my tongue.
"Let me go, Doyle," I said. His hands fell away from me. I don't know if it was to obey me, or because of the moonlit glow coming from that silver cup.
Nicca's face was his own again, but I knew, somehow, that the reprieve was temporary. That when the glow died away, Dian Cecht would return. We needed to be finished before that.
I started to take his hand, to lean into his body, but a hint of ugliness crossed his face. Dian Cecht was still in there, and Nicca's body was strong enough to tear through walls. "Kneel," I said, and because it was Nicca, he simply dropped to his knees without question. He had a moment where he had to settle the tips of his wings along the floor so they would not bend, then he gazed up at me, face patient, waiting.
"Someone hold his wrists."
"Why?" Frost asked, but it was Doyle who simply came to my side. It was Doyle who took Nicca's wrists in his dark hands and held them out in front of the other man.
I moved behind Nicca, stepping carefully over the delicate grace of his wings as they lay across the floor. I pushed my bare feet between his legs, and he widened his knees, so that I could stand between his legs, my body pressed against his buttocks, his waist, his shoulders, his head resting against my breasts. He fanned his wings and for a moment I was lost between them, and that velvet brush left a dazzling spray of color on my skin. I slid my hand up the back of his neck into his hair, plunged my hand through the warmth of it, dug my fingers in against his skin, so I could feel the heat of his body. I drew his head backward with a handful of his own hair like a handle to pry his face back, and to stretch his neck in a long perfect line. I gazed into his brown eyes, his mouth already slack when I bent toward him.
There was a moment when that other person tried to use his face, tried to spread hate and envy through those gentle eyes, but I held him by the hair, his face trapped for kissing, and Doyle held his wrists, like black rope. Dian Cecht struggled, but it was too late. I kissed that mouth, and felt power go from my lips to his. It was as if my breath itself were magic, and I breathed it into his mouth in a long, shuddering sigh.
Nicca's wings closed around me like a velvet shroud, soft and restricting, because I was afraid to fight against them, afraid I'd tear them to bits. His body trembled under my mouth, and his wings shuddered around me until I felt the tiny soft pieces of color fall like dry rain against my skin. The power began to end, and when it faded Nicca's mouth fed at mine. His wings squeezed around me, squeezed and released, squeezed and released, like being hugged by something more delicate than thought, and with every movement of the wings more and more of the color cascaded around me, glittering.
I fell into that kiss, those trembling wings, the velvet caress of the powder falling along my body, and I saw Nicca standing in a meadow, bright with summer flowers. It was night, but Nicca shone so bright that the flowers had opened before him as if he were the sun. The air was suddenly full of demi-fey, not the mere dozens that I knew, but hundreds. It was as if the very ground had opened up and spewed them into the sky. Then I realized that it was the flowers; the flowers had grown wings and filled the sky.
Nicca rose into the air as if he were walking on the tops of the grass, and I realized he was flying, flying upward through a cloud of demi-fey.
Then I was falling, almost as if I fell back into my body. I was still standing pressed against Nicca's body, one hand still entwined in his hair, but it was Doyle's face that I gazed into. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but it was too late. He wasn't touching me, but he was touching Nicca, and so was I.
It was night in a forest that I had never seen before. A huge oak spread like a roof above my head, its great gnarled trunk big as a house. The branches were bare with late fall. Somehow I knew it wasn't dead, but only resting, preparing for winter's cold. As I watched, a thin line of light crossed the bark of the tree. The light widened, and I realized it was a door, a door in the trunk of the tree, swinging open. Music spilled out into the darkness in a wash of golden light. A black-cloaked figure appeared in the door, stepped out into the autumn night, and the door closed behind him. It seemed darker than it had before, as if my eyes had been dazzled by the light. He threw back his cloak, and I saw Doyle's face looking up through the branches, looking up at the cold light of the stars. The shadows under the trees on every side began to grow thicker, more solid, until things moved, and formed, and turned and looked at me with eyes that burned with red and green fire. They opened mouths full of dagger-like teeth, and one by one they set their great dark heads toward the sky and bayed. Doyle stood in the dark listening to that fearful music, and smiled.
I heard Frost's voice, distant as a dream. "Meredith, Meredith, can you hear me?"
I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't remember how to speak. Couldn't remember where I was. Was I in the summer meadow brushed by a thousand wings, or was I in the dark with the music of hounds belling around me? Was I still standing pressed to Nicca's body, still staring into Doyle's startled face? Where was I? Where did I want to be?
That was an easier question. I wanted to be in the bedroom. I wanted to answer Frost's frantic voice. The moment I thought it, I was there. I stepped back from Nicca, who was still kneeling on the floor. Doyle staggered back against the wall. Nicca fell forward onto all fours, as if he'd barely caught himself from falling.
Doyle gasped, "Merry," but it was as if what had happened had drained them both. With Maeve and Frost, I had been drained and weak, but not this time. I turned toward Frost, and he was staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder.
"I don't feel tired this time," I told him. I moved toward him, leaving the other two men gasping on the floor behind me.
Frost backed away from me, and he must not have been thinking clearly, because he backed between the bed and the dresser, trapping himself. He was shaking his head over and over again. "Look at yourself, Meredith. Look at yourself." He pointed toward the mirror.
The first thing I saw was color. My skin was brushed with swaths of tan, pink, violet-red, purple, and a white that was almost lost against the shining white of my skin. Reddish brown like shining ribbons of dried blood traced down the sides of my body. A crush of vibrant blue-green touched each shoulder, and lower down along my legs. Black and yellow smeared around that iridescent blue-green, and a stroke of blue so bright it looked as if it should move glowed at shoulder and calf. With magic upon me, my skin shone like a pearl with a candle trapped inside it, but the color acted like prisms, so that my magic burned up through every drop of color, so that I was left a gleaming rainbow, as if Nicca's wings had exploded along my skin. My eyes burned with tricolored fire, molten gold, jade green, and an emerald to shame the brightest gem. But my eyes weren't just glowing. Each individual line of color looked as if it were on fire, as if flame licked around my eyes. I remembered the gold and green shadows that my eyes had cast when I was making love with Sage and Nicca, and realized this must have been what my eyes looked like: The colored flames bled into one another so it was more like a true fire, first one color, then the next, ever moving. I peered into the mirror, stretching up on tiptoe to look closer, and realized I was standing as Sage had stood earlier. My hair was like rubies, but tonight it was as if every strand held ruby fire, so that my hair burned around my face, caressing my shoulders.
I'd seen myself with my magic naked for all to see, but never like this. It was as if I truly burned with power this night.
"You don't want me, Merry," Frost said. "I wasn't born sidhe. I'm not fit consort for a goddess."
I turned and gazed at him with my burning eyes. I half-expected the movement to change my vision, but it didn't. It seemed like it should. "I saw you dancing across the snow. You were like some beautiful child."
"I was never a child, Merry. I was never born. I was a thought, or a thing, a concept if you will. Yes, a concept given life by the gods. Given life by the very gods whose power now runs through my body. Their jealousy at watching me grow and become the Killing Frost was why I could not stay at the Seelie Court."
I moved away from the mirror, toward him. "Are they so much less than the queen's Killing Frost?"
"That's just it, Merry, they were my equal. I might best them at weapons, but they looked at me and remembered a time when I was less, and they were more, and it hurt them."
"So they turned you out," I said.
He nodded.
I stood in front of him now, so close that I ran my fingers across his robe, so lightly that all I felt was the silk and not the body underneath. But I wanted the body underneath. I had a sudden image in my head, bright and immediate, of pressing my body along Frost's pale skin until he was smeared with that glowing wash of color. It was so real that it closed my eyes, arched my back, flung my hands outward.
Frost's hands caught my arms. "Merry, are you all right?"
I opened my eyes, found his face worried. I looked down at his hands where they held my forearms. It was one of the few inches of skin that held no color, so that his hands were still just white. "I'm better than all right, Frost." My voice sounded strange, deeper, almost hollow, as if I had become an empty shell that my voice echoed out of. I drew my arms out of his hands and pulled on the sash of his robe. One firm tug and the sash unwound, the robe beginning to open.
Frost grabbed my hands this time. "I don't want to hurt you."
I laughed, and it had a wild sound to it. "You won't hurt me."
His grip on my hands tightened until it was almost painful. "You are power-ridden, Meredith, but that doesn't mean you aren't still mortal."
"You can only get godhead once, and you've had your turn," I said. "Now it's just extra magic that you have to learn to deal with. It's simply a matter of discipline, practice, and control." I pulled on my hands, and he loosened his grip, enough for me to pull free. I reached into that open edge of robe, found the smaller tie that still held it closed, and pulled on it. The robe fell open, revealing a thin line of pale flesh. "And I know you are disciplined, Frost, controlled," I slid my hands inside that silk, touched the skin underneath, "and if practice makes perfect, that is certainly you."
He laughed then, abrupt and almost startling in its sudden joy. "Why is it that you can make me feel better? I almost killed you today."
I ran my hands up his body, traced the edge of his chest, ran fingers over his nipples, made him catch his breath. "We all got surprised today, Frost. But I seem to be getting better at bringing godhead to the sidhe." I spilled my hands to his shoulders, having to stand on tiptoe, to push the robe off his arms. He drew away from the wall enough for the robe to cascade to the floor, where it lay like a puddle of grey silk at his feet.
"I can see that," he said in a voice that grew ever deeper, ever more breathless.
I gazed upon him nude, and found him as beautiful as the first time I'd seen him. The joy of Frost unclothed never diminished. He was almost too beautiful to gaze upon, as if it hurt my heart to see him.
I laid a kiss on his chest, over his heart. I licked his skin, then gave his nipple a quick flick of movement that made him shudder and laugh at the same time. I gazed up into that laughing face, and thought, this, this was what I wanted from him. More than the sex, more than almost anything, his joy.
He gazed down at me, his grey eyes shining with the edge of his laughter. "I look in your eyes and there's no difference."
I began to kiss my way down his chest. "Difference?" I asked.
"You don't think less of me," he said.
I traced my tongue along the edge of his belly button, bit softly into the skin on either side, let my mouth work lower until I could go no farther without bumping into him, straight and firm, and perfect, pressed against his stomach. I slid my mouth over the velvet tip of him, as I dropped my body to my knees. I fought to swallow along his length, to the base of him. He was really too long for this angle, but I managed. He threw his head back, and closed his eyes. I pulled free of him, just enough to say, "Oh, I think more of you, now, much more."
I slid back over him, using my hands to guide him inside my mouth. I had closed my eyes, giving myself over to the thick, muscled feel of him in my mouth, concentrating on breathing, swallowing, when I felt his magic dance through his skin, jump inside my mouth. I knew without opening my eyes that his skin had begun to glow. I could feel it against my tongue, my lips.
He balled his hand into my hair and drew me back from him, forced me to gaze up and meet his eyes. "You don't think less of me for not being born sidhe."
I tried to kiss his body, but his hand tightened, and drew a small gasp from my lips. It sped my pulse more than taking him into my mouth had. "You were breathed to life by a god, Frost. If that's not special enough, I don't know what is."
He dragged me upward by my hair, pulling me to my feet so abruptly that it hurt, and almost scared me. Not real fear, but the fear that rides the edge of violent sex. He kissed me, and it was fierce, full of probing tongues, eager lips, and teeth; as if he couldn't decide whether to kiss me, or eat me. He pulled back from that kiss, and it left me breathless and dazed.
His eyes glinted like silver ice, and the tips of each strand of hair glittered like frost caught in sunlight. "I want you to cover me in this." He ran his free hand up my shoulder, came away smeared with iridescent blue, green, purple. He smeared it down my face, across my lips, then kissed me again, messy, hungry. He drew back with his mouth and one cheek covered in glittering color, like bits of neon smeared across his skin.
I threw my arms around his neck, and he wrapped his around my waist, lifting me up so that our bodies slid along one another. The movement smeared the neon colors along his skin, and just the sight of it brought a soft moan from me. We kissed, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing the hard length of him against me. The feel of him there made me grind my hips against the hardness of him, rubbing the wetness of me against him. His knees went weak, and only a hand on the bed caught us. He eased us back against the bed, and the moment my hips were solid against the mattress, he pushed himself inside me.
I screamed, head back, eyes closed, and a second scream echoed mine. It wasn't until Frost stopped moving, frozen above me, that I realized it wasn't him who was screaming.
I opened my eyes and saw that his face was turned away from me, looking over the foot of the bed. The scream sounded again, and it was close, masculine, and wordless in its pain.
Frost pushed off me, rolling over the foot of the bed. I scrambled onto all fours, crawling to the foot of the bed. Frost knelt near Doyle's head. Nicca knelt near his feet. Doyle's spine bowed, his hands scrambling at the air. It was as if every muscle in his body were straining at once in different directions. If he'd been human, I'd have thought poison, but you couldn't poison the sidhe, not with strychnine, at least.
Another shriek tore from his mouth, and his body rocked with the force of the spasms. "Help him!"
Frost shook his head. "I don't know what this is."
I spilled over the foot of the bed. Before I could touch him, his skin seemed to split, and his body ran like water, if water could scream, and writhe, and bleed.