A Lick of Frost (Merry Gentry #6)(42)

“You heard what She said.”
He touched my stomach through the silk of the robe. A smile spread across his face. He glowed with joy, but I could not join him.
“Frost is a father, too,” I said.
Galen’s joy dimmed like a candle put behind dark glass. “Oh, Merry, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, and drew away from him. I went to kneel beside Frost. Rhys was on the other side of him. “Did I hear you right? Frost would have been your king?”
“One of them,” I said. I didn’t feel like explaining that Rhys had also, somehow, hit the jackpot. It was too confusing. Too overwhelming.
Rhys put his fingers against the side of Frost’s neck. He pressed against his skin. His head dropped, so his hair was a curtain to hide his face. One shining tear fell onto Frost’s chest.The blue of the stag mark blinked brighter, as if the tear had made the magic flare more brightly. I touched the mark, and that made it brighter, too. I laid my hand on his chest. His skin was still warm. The mark of the stag flared into blue flame around my hand.
I prayed. “Please, Goddess, don’t take him from me, not now. Let him know his child, please. If I have ever held your grace, bring him back to me.”
The blue flames flared bright and brighter. They did not burn, but felt more like electricity, stinging and biting, but just short of pain. The glow was so bright I could no longer see his body. I could feel the smooth muscles of his chest, but I could not see anything but the blue of the flames.
I felt fur under my hand. Fur? Then I was not touching Frost. Something else was inside that blue glow. Something with fur and not man-shaped.
The shape stood, and moved high enough that I could not touch it. Doyle was behind me, folding me in his arms, picking me up off the ground. The blue fire died down, and a huge white stag stood in front of us. It looked at me with gray and silver eyes.
“Frost,” I said, and reached out, but it ran. It ran for the far windows over the acre of marble. It ran as if the surface wasn’t slick for hooves. It ran as if it weighed nothing. I thought it would crash into the glass, but French doors that had never been there before opened so that the great stag could run out into the new land beyond.
The doors closed behind him, but the doors did not go away. Apparently, the room was flexible still.
I turned in Doyle’s arms so I could see his face. It was him looking out of his eyes now, not the consort. “Is Frost….”
“He is the stag,” Doyle said.
“But does that mean he’s gone as our Frost?”
The look on his dark face was enough.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“He is not gone, but he is changed. Whether he will change back to the man we knew, only Deity knows.”
He wasn’t dead, exactly. But he was lost to me. Lost to us. He would not be a father to the child we had made. He would never be in my bed again.
What had I prayed? That he would come back to me. If I had worded it differently would he still have transformed into an animal? Had my words been the wrong ones?
“Do not blame yourself,” Doyle said. “Where there is life of any kind there is always hope.”
Hope. It was an important word. A good word. But in that moment, it didn’t seem enough.
CHAPTER 24
“I DON’T CARE HOW MANY GALLY-TROTS YOUR MAGIC CALLS back,” Ash said. “You swore you would lay with us, and you have not done so.” He paced the room, hands pulling at his short blond hair as if he would pull it out. 
Holly sat on the large white couch with the Gally-trot lying on its back in his lap, or in as much of his lap as it would fit, which meant it filled up a large portion of the large couch. Holly ruffled the dog’s chest and stomach. Holly of the hot temper seemed more relaxed than I’d ever seen him.
“The sex was so she’d bring us into our powers. She’s brought us power.”
“Not sidhe-sided power,” Ash said, coming to stand in front of his brother.
“I would rather be goblin,” Holly said.
“I would rather be king of the sidhe,” Ash said.
“The princess has told you that she is with child,” Doyle said.
“You’ve come too late to the party,” Rhys said.
“And whose fault is that?” Ash asked. He came to stand in front of me now. “If you had only bedded us a month ago, then we would have had our chance.”
I stared up at him, too numb to react to his anger and disappointment. Someone had put a blanket around me. I huddled in it, cold. Colder than I knew how to cure. So funny, Frost was gone, and I mourned him by being cold.
There were diplomatic answers I could have given. There were many things I could have said, but I simply didn’t care. I didn’t care enough to mind my tongue.
I stared up at him. Galen slipped onto the couch beside me. He curled his arm around my shoulders. I snuggled in against him. I let him hold me. He had been standing with the others whom Doyle had called into the living room. Standing in case Ash’s anger got the better of his sense. The goblin’s anger had been so great that Doyle and Rhys were still standing. They wanted to be up and ready. In case this oh so reasonable brother lost his head.
Galen held me, closer now, but it wasn’t for fear of Ash. I think he was afraid of what I might do. He was right to be afraid, because I was so unafraid. I felt nothing.
“Your king, Kurag, is happy with the new strength that has returned to the Red Caps,” I said. “He is overjoyed at the Galley-trot. When your king is happy, warrior, you are supposed to be happy in his joy.” My voice sounded cold but not empty. There was an edge of anger in my voice like a crimson thread in a field of white.
“If we were sidhe, but we are goblin, and kings are fragile things.”
Galen moved a little forward beside me. I read his mind, and knew the goblin did, too. He would shield me with his body. But it wasn’t that kind of fight.
“Kurag is our ally. If he dies, the treaty between us dies with him.”
“Yes,” Ash said. “Yes, it does.”
I laughed, and it was an unpleasant laugh. The kind of laugh you make because you can’t cry yet.
The sound startled Ash. It made him take a step backward from me. No anger would have gotten such a reaction, but laughter, he didn’t understand it.
“Think before you threaten, goblin. If Kurag dies, then we are honor bound to avenge him,” I said.
“The Unseelie Court is forbidden to interfere directly in the line of succession of its subsidiary courts,” Ash said.
“That is a bargain that the Queen of Air and Darkness made. I am not my aunt. I have made no such agreement to limit my powers.”
“Your guards are great warriors, but they cannot prevail against the combined might of the goblins,” Ash said.
“As I am not bound by my aunt’s agreement, I am not bound by goblin rules.”
Ash looked uncertain, as if he was thinking on what I had said but hadn’t figured it out yet.
It was Holly who said it. “What will you do, Princess, send your Darkness to assassinate us?” He was still ruffling the huge dog, but his face was no longer simply happy. His red eyes stared at me with a weight and intelligence that I hadn’t seen before in him. It was a look more often seen on his brother’s face.“He is no longer merely my Darkness. He will be king.” But that had been what I was thinking.
“That is another thing that makes no sense,” Ash said. He pointed at Doyle. “How can he be king and father of your child, and he,” he pointed at Rhys, “and he?” and at Galen last. “Unless you are having a litter, Princess Meredith, you can’t have three fathers.”
“Four,” I said.
“Who….” Then a look crossed his face and the first bit of caution.
“Killing Frost,” Holly said.
“Yes,” I said, and my voice was back to sounding empty. My chest actually hurt. I’d heard the phrase brokenhearted, but I hadn’t actually felt it before. I’d come close, but never truly. My father’s death had destroyed me. My fiancé’s betrayal had crushed me. When I thought I’d lost Doyle a month ago in the battle, I had felt like my world would end. But until now, I had not truly been heartbroken.
“You can’t have four fathers for two children,” Ash insisted, but he had calmed a little. It was almost as if he saw my pain for the first time. I didn’t think he cared that I was in pain, but it made him more cautious.
“You’re too young to remember Clothra,” Rhys said.
“I’ve heard the story, we’ve all heard the story, but that was just a story,” Ash said.
“No,” Rhys said, “it was not. She had a single child by all of her brothers. He was marked by each of them. The boy became high king. He was called Lugaid Riab nDerg, of the red stripes.”
“I always thought the stripes referred to some kind of birth-mark,” Galen said.
Doyle’s deep voice filled the room, and held an echo of godhead. “I saw that the princess will have two children. They will have three fathers each, as Clothra’s son did.”
“Don’t try your sidhe magic on me,” Ash said.
“It is not sidhe magic, it is god magic, and the same Deities serve and are served by all of feykind,” Doyle said.
I was running slow, but I finally heard what he’d said enough to say, “Three fathers apiece? You, Rhys, Galen, Frost, and who?”