"Go, Saraid," I said. "Go if being near Aisling makes you this uncomfortable."
"It's okay," Galen said, his face sober, worried even. "Merry is in good hands." He hugged me closer to him, and I wrapped my arms around the slim smoothness of his waist.
"I just don't want you to think I hold my personal safety above that of the princess. I would lay down my life for her."
"I believe that, Saraid," Galen said. "We both do, but this is not life and death."
"You're dismissed, Saraid, Dogmaela; now go with my blessing," I said.
"And mine, if it matters," Galen said.
"It matters," Dogmaela said, smiling, a little sadly.
She and Saraid exchanged another glance; then they bowed, arms crossing their chests so their hands rested over their hearts, turned, and left.
"Why do they do that, touching their hearts, do you know?" I asked.
"It was Cel's idea, to show that he owned not just their bodies but their hearts."
I looked up at him and must have looked as horrified as I felt.
He hugged me tight against the front of his body, and I pressed my cheek against the warmth of his chest and wrapped my arms tight around his waist, holding on.
"I'm so glad you killed Cel," Galen whispered against my hair.
"So am I," I said, breathing in the scent of his skin and the slight dew of sweat, but it wasn't a masculine smell, it was almost like sweet cut grass.
"Now if you could just kill a few more of your relatives, we could live in peace."
"The queen is behaving herself," I said.
"All right, just one of your relatives then," he said.
I drew back enough to look up into his face. "Since when did you get so bloodthirsty?"
He smiled, but his green eyes were empty of it. "When he hurt you, and then when he tried to sue for visitation rights with our babies. He needs to be dead."
I hugged him as tight as I could, gazing up at him, studying his face. I didn't know why, but I was suddenly frightened for him. "Promise me you won't do anything foolish, Galen."
"I'm your bodyguard; it's my job to keep you safe. I'm the father of your children, and a husband in all but name; that gives me all the right I need to do anything to protect or avenge you, my Merry."
"If the king tries to kidnap me again, then do whatever you can, or want, but just promise me you won't go off and try to beard the tyrant in his lair, so to speak?"
He kissed me, and I kissed him back, but I studied his face as he drew back from it. "Galen, promise me."
He smiled at me, fingers tracing the edge of my cheek. "I can't."
"Don't get hurt, or worse, please, Galen. I've lost enough people in my life, all right?"
He hugged me tight again, and gave me a little shake. "I love you, Merry, and I love our children. I want to be here for you and them."
"Then don't do anything stupid, okay?"
"Me, stupid?" He gave me that look that was charming and self-deprecating, and in that moment I didn't trust it at all. I was suddenly so afraid for him that my chest was tight with it, as if I couldn't breathe past it.
"Remember, I don't want you to die for me, Galen; I want you to live for me."
He grinned. "I already live for you."
I would have pushed it, but Doyle yelled a warning, and Galen took me to the ground with him on top of me. I got a glimpse as I was falling backward of one of the Red Caps flying over us, tumbling through the air, before Galen's chest blocked my view of everything.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
I COULD FEEL Galen's heart pounding underneath my hand where it was trapped against his bare chest, as his arms wrapped me close, pressing me between his body and the rough grass, his body a shield to protect me. I knew it was his job, but in that moment all I could think was, if he actually gave his life for mine, I wasn't sure I'd ever recover from the loss.
His chest filled my vision; I could see nothing but the edges of grass and sun haloing us. I felt him move and knew he was looking around. What was happening?
I heard voices yelling, "Is she all right? Merry! Is she hurt?" I felt and heard people running toward us. Funny how much you could feel vibrating through the ground when you were lying on it.
A deep rumbling voice said, "Don't worry about me, I'm fine."
Galen got to his feet and helped me stand. There were enough Red Caps standing around that they put us in the shade as if a grove of small trees had magically sprung up around us. Doyle was there, taking my other arm, while Galen still held me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No, startled, that's all." I looked at him, knew something was different, and then realized the white tank top had been badly ripped down the front, so that it flapped around him as he moved.
"No one gives a tinker's damn if a goblin gets hurt, it's all about the sidhe." It was the Red Cap that I'd seen go overhead. He was only about nine feet tall, with skin a deep charcoal gray setting off the scarlet of his eyes like rubies. His face was smooth and strangely pleasant, and though his mouth was almost lipless, it wasn't a bad mouth. Considering all the Red Caps had once had a mouth full of jagged teeth, or even fangs, it was a very good mouth indeed. His round skullcap was almost black.
"Hello, Talan," I said.
His brilliant red eyes narrowed. "I would not have been thrown so, before your magic changed me."
Doyle let go of my arm, taking a half step in front of me. "Do not blame Merry for your lack of prowess on the battlefield," he said in a voice that held an edge of growl to it. It wasn't his dog form coming out, just that first rush of testosterone, before the real fight began.
Talan started forward, but another figure was already there, moving between Doyle and the Red Cap. Jonty's skin had been the color of dust when I met him; now it was a nearly silver gray, shining almost metallic in the sunlight. He was shorter than Talan, but broader through shoulders and back. His biceps were as round as medium tree trunks; the weight lifting that Doyle had insisted on for all of them had made Jonty lean and filled him out at the same time, so that he was even bigger than he'd started, but now you could see the muscles with no extra flesh to hide them, and he was simply massive. The cap on his head was fresh scarlet and bleeding. His cap bled whether I was around or not, which was one of the reasons he was the leader of the Red Caps.
"Apologize to Merry," Jonty growled.
"I will not apologize for the truth."
"Merry didn't make you a whining bitch, Talan; you were always that." I saw Jonty plant his back foot.
Doyle motioned and Galen was moving me back. I didn't argue; if the two Red Caps were going to actually fight I didn't want to be standing less than ten feet behind them. Twenty feet would be about minimum safe distance. Galen seemed to agree with me, because he kept moving me back until we were near where the fight had started at the practice circle.
Only Aisling was left kneeling in the center of the circle. His hands were held up to his face as he rocked forward, those glittering shoulders hunched as if he huddled around some great pain. He was hurt, badly hurt, because the warriors of faerie do not show pain unless it is too great to bear.
Galen and I went hand in hand to him. There was blood in a spatter of glittering crimson on the grass in front of him. He must have heard us, because he folded in upon himself, burying his face against his knees.
"Aisling, how badly hurt are you?" Galen asked.
"Don't look at me!" He yelled it, voice high with fear and pain.
Galen dropped my hand and moved toward the other man. "Talan couldn't have done anything to mar your beauty, Aisling, not without a weapon. Even a Red Cap can't hit one of the sidhe that hard," Galen said, and he put a note of joking in his voice.
Aisling's voice came muffled. "You're half right, Galen. He didn't mar my beauty, but he hit me hard enough to do harm."
"Aisling, how hurt are you?" Galen touched one of those bare shoulders.
Aisling screamed, and scuttled away on
knees and one hand. "Don't touch me! Goddess help me, don't touch my bare skin."
"True love is proof against your magic, Aisling. Let me see how hurt you are; you will not bespell me."
Aisling thrust one hand back as if to ward off a blow, and the other hand stayed at his face. I realized that he was covering his face, and that I could see the complicated braids that held all that yellow and gold hair tight to the back of his head. The mask that had been covering his hair and his face was gone. A thrill of something close to fear went through me from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head. Galen might have been sure that true love would protect him, but he was immortal, and I wasn't. I knew that the immortal sidhe were not proof against Aisling's power, but he wasn't allowed to show his face to any human, no matter how in love they might be. Mortal blood just didn't protect against magic as well as immortal.
Galen reached out and grabbed Aisling's outflung hand. "Let me help you, Aisling." Galen's voice held pain; he could never stand to see someone so distressed without wanting to make it better.
Aisling's hand made a fist, and he went very still. "You are a good man, Galen; do not let me hurt you by accident."
"Let me see what is bleeding on you." Galen knelt beside the other man, his hand still holding his arm.
Aisling cried out and jerked free of him, crawling away from Galen, using both hands to scramble faster, and looked directly at me. He hadn't realized I was standing just behind them.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
WE HAD A long, frozen moment of staring at each other. I waited to be bespelled, but though his skin was what the sidhe called sun-kissed as mine was moonlit, and though his face, like the rest of him, seemed to be sprinkled with gold dust, still there were others in faerie whose skin was more beautiful to me. The blue of his eyes was the color of a late-spring sky, but then part of Rhys's eyes were a similar color. Aisling did have spirals in his eyes, as if someone had tattooed them on his irises, so that the spirals took attention away from the sky blue, but again there were others in faerie with more unusual eyes. I don't think I would have been so critical if I hadn't grown up being told he was so beautiful that to gaze upon his bare face was to fall in instant, irresistable lust, if not actual love. I tried to see the lines of his face and found him beautiful, but I thought Frost was fairer of face. Maybe I was prejudiced, but though Aisling was amazing, his was not the most amazing face I had ever seen. I had my father to compare him to, as well, and I still thought my father was one of the most handsome men I'd ever known. Maybe I was prejudiced, but then isn't that what love, all kinds of love, is supposed to do?
I smiled, and Aisling let out a wail of despair and hid his face behind both of his hands.
Galen said, "Merry."
I smiled at him, that face that I had loved since I was fourteen. "I'm fine."
Doyle called out, "Merry!"
I turned and watched that tall, dark body stride toward us. He was moving so fast that his long braid bounced and I could see the flash of it as he stepped. The torn white shirt looked like some prop in a strip club, artfully ripped to give glimpses of his chest and stomach. The sunlight glittered off the silver earrings in the high, graceful points of his ears and caught the glint of the nipple ring on the left side. I just watched him and enjoyed the view, and the fact that he was mine, and I was his.
I turned back to Aisling, who still had one hand held up in front of his lower face like some movie harem girl, so that only those blue eyes with their spiral shapes showed. I smiled at him, and he closed his eyes as if in pain. He raised his other hand and hid even his eyes from view.
I realized he was saying, "No, no, no," over and over again.
Doyle grabbed me and whirled me round to face him. He searched my face with nearly frantic eyes, and whatever he saw there calmed him, because he smiled. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed. We kissed long and thoroughly, until I could wrap the sun-warmed feel of his body around me like a perfume made of flesh and warmth and love.
We broke the kiss and came away from each other's lips smiling. "I love you, my Merry."
"And I love you, my Darkness."
His smile widened, and he ran his hand along the edge of my hair. "Let us comfort our fallen man."
I nodded.
We went to him still holding hands. "Aisling," Doyle said, "Merry is not bespelled by you."
He just shook his head, hands still covering almost every bit of his face.
Doyle knelt beside him. "I saw your face when Talan struck you and ripped your mask off, and I was not bespelled either."
"You saw what happened to Melangell," he murmured through the shield of his hands.
Doyle touched his arm, and Aisling jerked away from the touch. Doyle touched him again.
"Don't touch me!"
Doyle grabbed both his upper arms and held him tight when the other man tried to flinch away. "Your skin is just skin to me, Aisling, no more or less beautiful than all the sidhe."
Aisling just kept shaking his head, hiding behind his hands, and whispering, "No, no, no."
I knelt beside Doyle and touched Aisling's shoulder. He tried to move away, but Doyle's grip was too firm. If he wanted to escape from Darkness he would have to fight.
I petted his shoulder the way you'd comfort a friend. "It's all right, Aisling; I've looked into your face and I'm not befuddled, I swear."
"Look at me," Doyle said.
"No."
"Aisling, look at me."
He lowered the one hand just enough to gaze over it at Doyle. "You have not harmed me, Aisling."
He closed his eyes and whispered, "You don't understand."
Doyle put a hand on either side of Aisling's face and gave him all the concentration out of those black eyes. "Drop your hands, Aisling, drop them."
Those spiral eyes were too wide, almost wild like a horse that is about to bolt, but he slowly let the other hand fall away. Doyle held his face between those two, big, dark hands and gazed directly into his face. "You do not have to hide from us, my friend."
I touched his arm and said, "You don't have to hide anymore, Aisling, not from us."
Aisling started to tremble, and then to shake as if he were freezing cold instead of kneeling in the warm sunshine. One single silver tear trailed down from the corner of his eye, and then another, until the tears seemed to be racing down his face. Doyle rose high on his knees and kissed him on the forehead.
Galen came to kneel on the other side of Doyle, and when he moved his hands from Aisling's face, Galen kissed his forehead, too. "You're safe," he said.
I hugged Aisling. "You are safe with us."
His shoulders started to shake, and then he started to cry almost hysterically. His arm came around me and around Galen on the other side, so that he held all three of us with Doyle in the middle, and we held each other and we held him, and let him cry.
The Red Caps and sidhe who had been about to have a fight all trooped back into the house quietly, faces averted for the most part. Only Jonty risked a look; he nodded at me, and I nodded back. We were left alone in the warm sunlight, with the smell of eucalyptus filling the dream of eternal summer with a crisp, healing scent. We laid everyone's discarded shirts underneath the shade of the big tree, so we wouldn't be lying on the scratchy, dry grass, and put Aisling in the center of us, so that we could all touch his bare upper body. We petted and stroked him, not as lovers do, but just to fill the terrible skin hunger that he'd had to deny for so long. Babies who don't get enough touch will fail to thrive and die, even if they are well fed and otherwise well cared for; touch is so much more important than most people want to admit.
We touched his back and shoulders at first, and then he rolled over and we ran our hands over his chest and stomach. The three of us gazed into the spiral of his eyes, traced his face with our fingertips. I got within inches of him until I could see that the black spiral lines were formed of tiny birds all flying out of his eyes. I remembered
that moment in the dead gardens when his body seemed to have exploded into tiny songbirds. I traced the line of his cheek and said, "Have the spirals always been tiny birds?"
"Not in a very long time," he said, softly.
Galen peeked over the top of his head, so that he was staring at him upside down from inches away. "I don't remember them ever being tiny birds."
Aisling laughed, and it filled his face with a joy that I had never seen there; even behind his veil he had been a solemn man.
"It has been longer than your lifetime, Galen, since Aisling had birds in his eyes," Doyle said.
The happy glow faded around the edges, and then without looking at any of us, he said, "Would you unbind my hair and ... touch it, please?"
I glanced at Doyle and Galen. They both nodded, and Galen smiled. We had Aisling sit up so that we could take out the pins that held all those small braids tight to his head. Even with three of us doing it, it took a while to undo all the braids. We ran our fingers through the gold and blond of his hair. It didn't shine with its own light the way Fenella's hair did, but it gleamed, catching every bit of light that filtered through the leaves above us.
His hair fell in ankle-length waves, thick and warm, not as soft as Galen's, or Frost's, or even Rhys's, closer to Doyle's texture. Aisling lay down on his stomach and let us pet and play with all that shining hair until we made a cloak of it fanning out around him.
He gave a deep, contented sigh and rose up on his elbows. "Some of the nobles of the Seelie Court contacted me. They offered me the throne."
"When?" Doyle asked.
"A few days ago."
"Why did you wait to tell us?" Galen asked.
"Because I thought you would cast me out, and I have nowhere left to go."
I smoothed his hair back, piling it into my lap like a pet, until I could see the side of his face. "I would not cast you out for the machinations of other nobles. You have no more control over the different factions within the courts than I do."
He glanced at me. "You aren't angry?"
"No," I said.
"You have two factions within the Seelie Court that want you on the throne."
"Sir Hugh's contingent and the king himself, but I know that there are Seelie nobles as there are Unseelie nobles who see me as unfit for either throne."