A Lick of Frost

RHYS'S CLOTHES AND WEAPONS ENDED IN A HEAP BY THE BED. Stripped, he was as amazing as ever. There were guards who had longer waists, or broader shoulders, but no one had the sculpted muscles in stomach, chest, arms, and legs that Rhys did. All of him was smooth and hard and strong.

The bed wouldn't have been big enough for me and two of most of the other men, but Kitto and Rhys both took up less room than most. There was room for the three of us.

I lay between the smooth, muscled weight of the two of them, and it felt so good. The sensation of it made me close my eyes and simply concentrate on the feel of their bodies against mine. I had needed this, to be comforted by people who cared for me, to be held, and not to have to worry. Had Doyle understood that I would have lain there tense, listening for his pain sounds, and not truly rested? Perhaps he had.

Only now, as Rhys and Kitto ran their hands over me, laid a kiss on first one shoulder, then the other, did I realize that it wasn't about sex today. It was about needing to be held, needing to be cared for. Was I so weak that I needed this, even when the man I said I loved was injured? Would I ever be truly content with the touch of just one man, no matter who it was?

I didn't love Doyle any less as I lay between the two men, but they gave me something he could not. They gave me uncomplicated touch. I did not love either of them in that way. I loved them, but... but their tears did not cut my heart. Their sorrows made me sorrow but I did not bleed as they bled. Love makes you weak and strong. There had been that moment earlier today when I'd thought my Darkness was no more. It had been like losing a piece of myself. It had frozen me, made me lose focus. Dangerous, it was. But hadn't I done the same thing when Galen had nearly died by assassination in faerie? Yes, I had. I'd loved Galen since I was a child. A part of me would always love him. But it was the love of a child, and I was no longer a child.

"You're not paying attention," Rhys said.

I blinked up at him where he lay beside me. I must have looked surprised, because he laughed. "Your body was enjoying being touched, but your mind was a thousand miles from this bed." The humor died, leaving his face a little sad. "Has it happened already? Do Doyle and Frost get all of you now?"

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. "No, it's not that."

"She's thinking of politics and power," Kitto said from where his head lay on my hip and thigh.

Rhys looked at the other man. "In the middle of foreplay she's thinking about politics? Oh, that's even worse."

"She often touches me and thinks at the same time. It seems to clear her mind."

Rhys looked down at me from where he was propped up on his elbow. "Did all that touching simply clear your head?"

It was an insult to have not been paying attention. "I was enjoying it, Rhys, honestly. But my mind is racing a thousand miles an hour. I can't seem to make it still." I looked down my body to Kitto. "Do I truly use you simply to clear my mind?"

"I cannot be king for you, we all know that. I am content to have a place in your life, Merry. I wait upon you, and do tasks that most of your noble-born lords deem beneath them. I can be your lady-in-waiting, and no one else could do that for you."

"We have several sidhe women now," Rhys said. "If Merry wanted more ladies-in-waiting she could have them."

"We do not trust them alone with our princess after only a few weeks out of Cel's service," Kitto said.

Rhys's face darkened. "No, we don't. Not yet."

"I love that no one can do these things for Merry but me," Kitto said.

I stroked his curls. "Really?" I asked.

He smiled at me and it filled his eyes with something more than just happiness. He had a place in my life. He belonged. It is not merely happiness we all seek. We seek some place where we belong. For the lucky few, we find it in childhood with our own families. But for most of us we spend our adult lives seeking that place or person or organization that makes us feel that we are important, that we matter, and that without us something would go undone and undoable. We all need to feel that we are irreplaceable.

"You do not touch anyone else but me to simply clear your head. You come to my room when you need to hide from the demands that the others put upon you. You come to me when you want to think. You touch me, I touch you. Sometimes there is sex, but often there is just the holding." He snuggled his cheek against my thigh. "No one has ever held me for comfort before. I find that I like it, very much."

I thought about everything he'd just said and couldn't argue with it.

"I thought you hid in Kitto's room because it was the only one without a mirror," Rhys said.

"That, too," I said.

"She does not just come to me in my room. She pets me when I am sitting under her desk. She has gone from seeing me always at her feet as a burden to counting on me being there to touch and be touched."

"Do the dogs ever crowd you under the desk?" Rhys asked.

"The dogs don't seem to stay under the desk when Kitto is there." I looked at him, my fingers playing in his hair. "Did you do something to the dogs?"

"My place is at your feet, Merry. They cannot have my place."

"They are dogs, Kitto, no matter how special and magical they may be. They are dogs. You are not."

He smiled, and it was a little sad around the edges. "But dogs fill many of the needs I fill for you. I have seen you stroking them, watched it calm you."

"Are you more jealous of the dogs than of the rest of us?" Rhys asked.

"Yes," Kitto said.

That made me sad, that he would see himself as so unimportant to me. "Kitto, you are important to me. Touching you is not like petting the dogs."

He moved his face so I could not see his eyes. He hid it by kissing my thigh, but he didn't want me to see his expression. "You are my princess."

I'd learned that the phrase "you are my princess" meant various things. That I was being stubborn, and I was wrong, but since he couldn't change my mind, he'd stop trying. It could also mean that he'd thought of something frightening and didn't want to share. Or that I'd done something to hurt his feelings, but he didn't feel that he had a right to complain.

So much one small phrase.

"The goblins don't keep dogs. They never have," Rhys said.

I looked at him. "But faerie dogs are precious to all of faerie."

"The goblins used to eat them."

I looked at Kitto, who still wouldn't give show his face. He kissed a little lower on my thigh, which meant Rhys was probably right.

"If any of the dogs turn up missing, I won't be happy."

"See," Kitto said. "They are important enough for you to threaten me over them."

"They are our pets and a gift of the Goddess and the wild magic."

"I know what they mean to all of you, but it is not me who you should caution. Holly and Ash will likely be too busy to worry over fresh meat, but they are bringing the Red Caps to guard them. The Red Caps will be wandering about while you have sex with the brothers. The Red Caps like their meat fresh and wriggling."

"Crap," Rhys said. "I knew that, but it's been so many years since I've had any dealings with the Red Caps, I forgot."

"They didn't help torture you?" I asked, before I could catch the thought.

"No. They remembered me before as Cromm Cruach, when I shed much blood for them to play in. They still feel that they owe me from back then."

"That must have been some bloodbath for them to feel they owe you anything after so many centuries," I said.

It was Rhys's turn to look away so I couldn't see his expression. "One of my names translated to red claw. It was a true name."

I understood that "true name" meant it was accurate in its description. I gazed at him, so pale and handsome beside me. His face was that boyishly handsome with that full, kissable mouth. The scars were the only thing that made you see past the artifice of youth and humor. Without them to remind you that serious things had happened to this unaged man, you might mistake him for someone casual. Someone to be dismissed. He had certainly played that part for years at the court.

I traced the edge of the scarred area. Once he would have pulled away, but he knew now that, to me, the scars were just another texture on his body, just more things to touch and kiss.

He smiled down at me, and it made his face even more beautiful, in that way that a lover's face can suddenly shine down at you.

Not with magic, but simply with pleasure in something you said or did.

"What?" I asked, voice soft.

"In all the long years since they took my eye, you are the only person who ever touched me like this."

I frowned up at him, and laid my hand against his face, the edge of the scar just another area under my hand. "Like what?"

He gave me a look, as if I knew exactly what.

"We are Unseelie. Things that others consider imperfections are marks of beauty among us," I said.

"Only if you are not sidhe," Rhys said. "To be truly scarred and sidhe is to be a living reminder that their perfect beauty could be forever marred. I am the ghost in the mirror, Merry. I remind them that we are only long-lived mortals, not truly immortal."

"Me, too," I said.

He smiled down at me again, pressing his face harder against my hand. "It's one of the reasons I always thought we'd make a good couple."

I frowned at him. "What?"

"Don't you remember, I took you on a date when you were sixteen."

"I remember." I let my hand fall back to the sheet. "I remember that you tried to persuade me to have sex with you, which would have gotten us both executed."

"I didn't actually try for intercourse. I just wanted to see which flavor of your family you took after."

I was frowning harder. "What does that mean?"

He smiled, gently this time. "Depending on how you responded to my overtures - " He waggled his eyebrows at the last word, and made me laugh. " - I would decide whether to approach your father."

I had an inkling of where this was going. "You asked my father if you could be my fiance?"

"I asked him to consider me."

"You, or he, never told me that."

"It seemed clear from the beginning of all this that I wasn't a front-runner for your heart. You loved Galen more than me even when you were sixteen. Then your father gave you to Griffin, and if you had gotten pregnant that would have been that."

My face clouded over at the mention of my ex-fiance. He'd dumped me after years. Said I was too human, not sidhe enough for him. What he hadn't realized was that once he dumped me Andais would force him back into celibacy with the rest of the guard. He tried to join my little harem and I turned him down. The only reason he wanted to join was to have sex with someone, anyone. He didn't love me. I knew that.

What I hadn't expected was him selling some rather intimate photos of the two of us to the tabloids. I had loved him once. I wasn't certain he had ever loved me. He had sold the pictures and fled faerie. To my knowledge the long arm of faerie had never caught up with him. To my knowledge. I hadn't asked. I had loved him once. I did not want to know how he'd died, or be presented his head in a basket. Aunt Andais was capable of both, or worse.

Rhys touched my cheek, made me look up at him. "I shouldn't have mentioned his name."

"I'm sorry, but I hadn't thought about him in a while."

"Until I brought him up," Rhys said.

Kitto moved minutely on the other side of me. Until that moment he'd been so still I had almost forgotten that he was there. He was very good at that, but naked in a bed with me and Rhys, and still able to be nearly unnoticed... I was beginning to wonder if it was a sort of magic. If it was, then it wasn't sidhe. Snake goblins were used mostly for scouts, spying the lay of the land. Maybe they all possessed a natural talent for going unnoticed if they wished.

I looked at him, but didn't ask out loud if it was magic. Kitto would not believe it was magic even if it was. He saw himself as powerless, and that was that.

"Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone," he said.

"It's your room and your bed," Rhys said.

"Yes, but I will share it with my friend, even if I'm not included."

Rhys reached across me and patted the other man's shoulder. "That is a generous offer, Kitto, but I think there will be no sex this afternoon."

"What?" I asked.

He smiled down at me. "Your mind is full of all that has happened today, as a queen's mind should be. It makes for a good ruler, but bad sex."

I started to protest, but he cradled my chin in his hand. "It's okay, Merry. Maybe what we all need right now is to hold each other. Maybe it's about closeness."

"Rhys..."

His hand moved so that he covered my mouth, lightly, with his hand. "It's all right, really."

I kissed the palm of his hand, then moved it away from my mouth. "I understand now why not Galen. He's a political disaster. But you, you do politics just fine."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"So why?" I asked.

"Why did your father not choose me?" he asked.

I nodded.

Kitto slipped out of the bed. "This is sidhe business."

"Stay," Rhys said.

Kitto hesitated.

"Prince Essus told me that there was enough death in your life. He wanted you paired with someone whose magic was about life."

"Griffin's magic was beauty and sex."

"It complemented what your father hoped you would grow into magically." Rhys played with the edge of my hair. "He was right."

"If you were goblin," Kitto said, "beauty and sex would be useless. It would condemn you to be a slave to someone stronger and more able to fight. Your powers, Rhys, they would be valued above such soft things."

"Essus wanted something softer for his daughter," Rhys said.

"He would never have chosen Doyle, would he?" I asked.

"It would never have occurred to him that the queen's Darkness could ever be parted from her side. But no, I think if I was too harsh for his daughter to marry, then Doyle would have been out too."

"I hadn't thought about who my father might have chosen for me among my guards."

"Hadn't you?" he asked.

"No."

Kitto had picked his jeans up off the floor where he'd let them fall. "I will leave you two to talk."

"Stay," Rhys said. "Help me understand why it's you Merry comes to when she wants to relax. I'm not her heart's desire. I'm not even the one who makes her heart beat fast by a feather's touch. I need to find a place in her life, too. Help teach me how to be something new."

"I will not teach you my place, for you will replace me."

"I will never be as undemanding of Merry as you are. I have neither the personality nor the patience. But teach me to be a little less pressure so that she might turn to me for something."

"Oh, Rhys," I said.

He shook his head, sending all that curly white hair sliding around his shoulders. "You like me. You've always liked me. You enjoy sex with me, but you do not burn for me. Strangely, you burn for colder things even than my powers."

"I am Unseelie sidhe."

"You are also Seelie sidhe."

"I am part that, yes, but I am also part human, and part brownie. But if you pushed me to name myself, what I am, I am Unseelie."

He smiled, a sad sort of smile. "I know that."

"Andais accused me of remaking the Unseelie court into a mirror of the Seelie. I am not doing it on purpose."

"Remember what I said about you when you were sixteen? That I wanted to see which side of your family you took after?" Rhys asked.

"Yes."

"I wanted you to take after the Seelie side of your family."

"My grandfather is an abusive bastard. My uncle is mad. My mother is a cold, envious social climber. Why would you want that in your life?"

"I don't mean their personalities, and I don't even mean the ones you referred to. Remember, I knew your ancestors before they were lost in the great wars in Europe. I knew some of the women of your mother's line. They were goddesses of fertility, love, lust. They were a warm lot, Merry, in that good earthy way."

"So, what, you wondered if I had taken after my great-great aunt?"

"Aunts," Rhys said, "and a great-grandmother or two. You reminded me of them. The hair, the eyes. I saw them in you."

"No one else did," I said.

"No one else was looking."

I rose and gave him a kiss. The kiss grew until I felt his body grow hard again, where all the talk had made it soft. He broke from my lips with a sound that was almost pain. "I can't keep being the gentleman if you keep kissing me like that."

"Then don't be the gentleman, be my lover."

Kitto finished fastening his jeans. "I will leave you to what the sidhe do best, other than magic. You are my friend, Rhys, I believe that, but you are not comfortable with me in the bed with you and the princess."

Rhys started to protest. It was my turn to put my fingers on his lips. "He's right."

He moved my hand. "I know. Dammit, I know. I thought if I could have sex with Kitto and you, I could guard you tonight with the goblins, but I can't."

"You have come a long way on the subject of goblins, Rhys. It's all right."

"Who will guard you tonight if Doyle is injured and my sensibilities are too delicate?"

"I don't know," I said, "and right this second I don't care. Make love to me, Rhys, now, just you. Be with me, help chase my thoughts to stillness." I rose and kissed him again and drew him down to me with arms and hands and eagerness.

I did not hear the door close quietly behind Kitto, but when next I opened my eyes, we were alone.