The ring was a heavy silver octagonal, not perfectly round, as if it molded to all the fingers it had encircled. It was actually a very plain, almost mannish-looking ring. Inside there were words carved, in an ancient form of Gaelic, too old for me to read, but I knew translated to read, "Insert."
There was nothing threatening about it. And yet... I touched its cool silver with a fingertip, and nothing happened. But then nothing ever did until it was on your finger. It was picky that way.
"You must put it on, Meredith," Doyle said. I'd almost broken them all of calling me anything but Merry. It was the beginning of the return to court formality. I hated it.
"I know, Doyle."
"Then hesitating is foolish. We must know what problem it represents before we land. There will be human police to hold back the press, but there will still be cameras and reporters to catch whatever befalls. Best that it befall us now, and here in private." He turned in his seat to face me more fully, forcing him to let go of one of the seat arms. I had some idea what that cost him. "Put it on, Meredith, Merry, please."
I nodded, and took it from its box. It was warm to the touch, but nothing more. I took a deep breath, and wasn't sure whether to pray before I slipped it on, or not. Prayers had taken on an entirely new meaning in the last twenty-four hours.
I slipped the ring on my finger. It was too big for me, but almost instantly I felt that first spark of magic. It would be exactly my size now. A small magic. I looked up at all of them. "I don't feel any difference in it."
"You stopped wearing it because it was giving us all shocks when we had sex," Rhys said. "It never did do much from a distance."
"Not on my finger," I said.
He grinned. "Can we try touching it to bare skin and see if that's changed?"
"I think that would be wise," Doyle said.
Rhys shrugged. "My idea. If no one objects I'll be the first guinea pig." He started forward, but Frost spoke.
"I object."
Rhys hesitated. He glanced at me, then at Doyle, and shrugged again. "Be my guest. We'll still have to try more than one of us with the ring, just to see."
"Agreed," Frost said, "but I want to be first."
No one argued with him, but Galen's face said plainly that he wanted to. It was a tribute to how much more grown up he was than Frost himself that he let it go.
Frost came to stand in front of me and gazed down at the ring on my hand. He held his own hand down toward me, and I raised my hand up to meet his. His hand closed over mine, his fingers brushing the ring.
It was as if some huge invisible hand caressed the front of my body, as if there were no clothes, nothing but my skin, for the magic to stroke. Frost collapsed to his knees, his eyes wide, lips half open in a movement caught between desire and surprise. His hand convulsed around mine, pressing his flesh harder into the ring. The magic responded in a second wave of desire more powerful than the first. It ended low in my body, throwing me back against the seat, bringing a cry from my lips. My body spasmed and my hands jerked against Frost's, breaking the ring's contact with him.
He half fell onto the floor, barely room for his broad shoulders between the seats. He was panting and weak, and I wasn't much better.
"I know Merry just had an orgasm," Rhys said, "a small one, but a real one. Did you, Frost?"
He shook his head, as if speech was too much. He finally managed a breathy, "Almost."
"The magic of the ring was distracting before," Doyle said, "but not this distracting."
"Is it just Frost?" Galen managed to sound neutral and worried at the same time.
Rhys grinned and climbed over the seats to wedge himself between the seats and my legs. "I don't think Frost can stand yet."
"Help him up," Doyle said.
Nicca came forward, but his wings got in the way so badly that he gave it up and stepped back. Galen helped Frost into one of the nearby seats, clearing the aisle and giving Rhys room to drop to one knee beside me.
"Not so far to fall," he said, grinning.
"You never have far to fall," Galen said.
Rhys gave him a look but didn't rise to the bait. "You're just jealous because I get to go next."
Galen tried to make another joke, but finally just stepped back and said, "Yeah, I am."
Rhys touched my shoulder, bringing my attention from Galen's somber face back to him. "I like to know a girl's at least looking at me during sex."
I gave him a look. "You know how it is, Rhys, a man gets as much attention during sex as his skills deserve."
"Oooh," he said, holding a hand over his heart, "that one hurt." But his tri-blue eye sparkled with more than humor. "If I didn't think I'd knock out a tooth, I'd kiss your hand instead of just holding it."
It made me laugh, and I was still laughing when his hand closed over mine, where it lay in my lap. All laughter ceased, all breathing ceased, and for one frozen moment there was nothing but a wash of sensations, as if one sensual pulse built into the next, and the next. It wasn't until someone's voice said, "Breathe, Merry, breathe," that I realized I hadn't been.
My breath came back in a harsh gasp, and my eyes flew open. Only when I opened them did I realize I'd closed them.
Rhys was half collapsed against the seat in front of me, with a near-drunken grin upon his face. "Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun."
"It's not just Frost," Nicca said.
"No." Doyle didn't look entirely happy about that, though I wasn't sure why. "Galen, next," he said.
There were some protests, but Doyle waved them away. "No, we must know if this reaction is only to those who have godhead, or if it's going to be everyone. If everyone, then Merry cannot touch the guards on the ground in St. Louis, not in front of the reporters or the police."
"Tell me again why we have human policemen waiting for us in St. Louis," Rhys said. His eyes were still unfocused, but his voice was almost normal.
"One of the tabloids ran a picture of all of us rushing into the main house last night, with guns drawn and very few clothes. The ambassador to the courts did not believe the queen's assurances that it was not an assassination attempt on the princess, but simply a misunderstanding. I believe, and the queen believes, that the rulers of St. Louis do not wish to be seen as being careless of the princess's safety. If something goes wrong, they want to be able to say they did their best."
Rulers of St. Louis, Sometimes I forgot for days at a time how old Doyle and the rest were. Then they'd say something like that, and you knew their thoughts and vocabulary were formed in a time before mayors, or Congress, or anything remotely modern.
"The humans are no longer content with some of the queen's stories," Doyle continued. "The ambassador to the courts is most unhappy that they will not show him Prince Cel. He doesn't believe that Cel is merely away."
The tabloids had been the first to speculate why Prince Cel, who had been fairly visible in St. Louis and Chicago attending hot nightspots, had suddenly decided to stay home. Where was the prince? Why had he vanished now that Princess Meredith was back in the land of faerie? That last headline had been a little too close to the truth, but there was nothing we could do about it. Because the truth - that Prince Cel was being tortured for six months as an alternative to a death sentence - could not be shared with the human press, or even the politicians.
Among other crimes, Cel had set himself up as a deity to a human cult in California. I think he'd thought it was far enough from home that he wouldn't get caught. Unfortunately for him, I was in Los Angeles and working as a private detective. If Cel had known that, he would have put his scheme somewhere else, and he'd have tried to kill me sooner. One of the rules that President Thomas Jefferson's government insisted on was that if the sidhe ever set themselves up as gods in the United States, we would all be expelled from American soil. For that reason alone, any other sidhe would have been executed. But Cel also gave the human wizards the ability to magically ensnare, magically rape fey women. Mostly to humans with fey blood in their ancestry, but you do not give the power of faerie to humans to be used expressly to harm the fey. It isn't done. He was also sucking the magical energy of the women in question. He shared some of the power with his human followers, but he ate most of it. Magical vampirism is a crime among us. A crime punishable by death, and a nasty death at that. The only exception to the law is a duel. During a duel, or a war, you can do whatever you can get away with, as long as it doesn't breach your honor. Though some of the fey have an interesting view of honor. Cel should have died for all that, but he was the queen's only child, coheir to the throne. Most of the court had no clue as to the extent of Cel's treachery. They thought he was being punished for trying to kill me. Nope. The queen didn't like me that much.
So instead of death, he'd had the magic he'd given to the humans turned against him. A magic that made your skin crawl with desire and drove you nearly mad to be touched, to be fucked. I'd had it turned on me, so I could speak with some authority. He had been covered with Branwyn's Tears, one of our last great magicks, and chained in the dark with his need and no way to relieve it. It was a horrible thing to do to anyone. But he wasn't enduring anything he hadn't allowed to happen to others, except for the length of the punishment. Six months is a very long time in the dark. He'd endured three months of his punishment, and still had three to go. People were taking bets at the court that his sanity would not survive. They were also taking bets that he'd kill me before I could kill him.
"If the humans do not believe us, there is nothing we can do," Frost said.
"True, but we can give them less to talk about, not more." Doyle turned his head to look at Galen. "Touch the ring and see what happens."
Galen stepped up between the seats. There was heat in his eyes, and a look on his face that brought heat in a rush across my cheeks.
He dropped to his knees beside my chair, and cupped both his hands over mine without touching the ring. He leaned in toward me. "I want the ring to react to my touch." He spoke the last word with his breath against my mouth. "I want it to sing through me, and bring us both to our knees." His lips touched mine, and his hands closed tight over mine, in the same moment.
The ring flared between us, jerking things low in my body, tingling along my lips, as if I'd tried to kiss something that held electrical current. Galen's lips were soft and willing, but no matter how hard he pressed his hand into the ring, it did not become the near-overwhelming thing it had been with Rhys and Frost. The ring did continue to beat against us like waves of electricity. I wasn't fond of electricity on my skin, and I pulled back from the kiss, tried to draw my hand out of his. He wouldn't let me go.
"Let go, Galen, it's hurting me."
He released me slowly, reluctantly.
I sat in the seat, taking deep even breaths, trying to work past the last vestiges of the power. "That hurt. I mean that really hurt."
"You just don't like electricity," Rhys said.
"I like it just fine in lamps, or computers, but not on my skin, thank you."
"You're just no fun," he said.
I frowned at him, but looked back at Galen, still kneeling before me and looking disappointed. I knew part of his look was from the ring not working for him as it had for the others, but that might not have been all of it. "How about you?" I asked him, gently. "Do you like electricity, too?"
He looked puzzled, but said, "I've never tried it in anything but small appliances."
"Did what the ring do just now feel good to you?"
"Yes."
I made a mental note. Even if I didn't like electricity as foreplay, if some of the men did, then things could be worked out. I was willing to use it on them for their pleasure, as long as I didn't have to experience it more than to check the strength of it. You never hook anything up to anyone else that you haven't let bite your own skin. Just a rule. You don't have to enjoy it yourself, but you do have to know what it's doing to the person who does.
"It would seem," Doyle said, "that the ring has grown in strength in every way."
I nodded. "I don't remember it ever giving that strong of a power surge before."
"But it didn't do between us what it did with Rhys and Frost," Galen said, sounding as unhappy as he looked. Whatever emotion flowed through Galen, you always knew it. It filled his face, his eyes. He'd begun to have moments when he could hide his feelings. I'd both been happy to see it and mourned the necessity of it. Galen with every thought clear in his eyes for all to read was damn near a political liability in the courts. He needed to master his outward emotions, but I had not enjoyed watching the process. It felt like we were stealing some of the innocent joy that made Galen, Galen.
I touched his face with my left hand, the hand I didn't wear the ring on. The queen had always worn the ring on her left hand, and I had first put it on the same hand, out of habit, and found the ring preferred being on my right hand. So it got to be on my right hand. I did not argue with relics of power any more than I could help it.
I pressed my hand against his cheek. He raised sad green eyes to me. "Rhys and Frost have come into their godhead. I think that's all the extra sensation between us meant."
"I'd love to argue," Rhys said, "but I agree with Merry."
"You really think so?" Galen asked, the way a child would, trusting that if you said a thing, then it would be true.
I stroked my fingers down the side of his face, from the soft warmth of his temple to the curve of his chin. "I don't just think it, Galen, I believe it."
"I believe it as well," Doyle said. "So as long as Meredith touches the other guards only briefly, it should not be a problem. All of the Unseelie Court knows that the ring is alive once more on her hand. Though perhaps not how very alive it has become."
"It was growing stronger even before the chalice returned," I said.
He nodded. "That is why we put it away in a drawer, so it would not discomfort our lovemaking."
Rhys did an exaggerated pout. "And I was having such fun."
My hand was still touching Galen, but I said to Rhys, "Do you want to be strapped down and have me run electricity along your skin?"
Rhys reacted as if I'd slapped him. The reaction of just thinking about it shuddering through his body. Watching him respond that strongly to the idea of it made me want to do it. Made me want to give him that much pleasure. "That was a big yes," I said.
He managed a breathy, "Oh, yes."
Galen was laughing, softly.
Rhys frowned at him. "What's so funny, green man?"
Galen was laughing so hard that it took him two tries to say, "You're a death god."
"Yeah, so what?" Rhys asked.
Galen sat flat on the floor, his knees tucked up in the smaller space, but turned so he could see Rhys. "I have this image in my head of you hooked up like Frankenstein's monster."
Rhys started to get angry, then he couldn't manage it. He smiled, a little, and the smile just got bigger until he was laughing with Galen.
"Who is Frankenstein's monster?" Frost asked.
That got them laughing even harder, and spread the laughter through the plane to those who knew the answer. Only Doyle and Frost were left out of the joke. The others had embraced television and all it could offer while in California. Even Kitto was laughing from under his blanket in the back. I don't know if the joke was that good, or you just had to be there, or if it was tension. I was betting on tension, because when the pilot told us we'd be landing in fifteen minutes, it just didn't seem that funny anymore.