A Caress of Twilight (Merry Gentry #2)(51)

"I did not realize that I had woken you, Princess, I am most humbly sorry." She looked it. "I will make sure that you are given time to rise and do your morning... duties." She actually blushed a little, and I wondered what word she'd thought of before duties or exactly what she thought my morning duties were.
I realized suddenly that Rosmerta had thought we were having sex, not waking up. Andais did answer the Seelie in flagrante delicto more often than not, or nearly so. Maybe they expected the same of me.
"I thank you for the time, Dame Rosmerta. It is most unseemly to be roused from your early morning bed to speak with a king."
She smiled and gave me a very pretty curtsy, almost disappearing below the mirror's edge. Rosmerta was the picture of absolute propriety. A deep curtsy from her was high praise indeed, for it meant she understood I was but a step away from the throne. It was nice to know that someone in the Seelie Court understood that.She didn't rise, and I realized, a little late, why. "You may rise, Dame Rosmerta, and I thank you."
She came to her feet, a little unsteady, but I'd left her in a deep curtsy for too long. I hadn't meant to. I just had forgotten that the Seelie Court was a lot like the English court; once you curtsied you really couldn't rise until acknowledged by the royal before you. It had been a very long time since I was among the Seelie. I was going to be a little rusty on court protocol. The Unseelie Court was much less formal.
"I will speak with His Majesty on your behalf, Princess Meredith. Good day to you."
"And good day to you, as well, Dame Rosmerta."
The mirror went blank. I felt all three of us relax, let out a breath.
Rhys put both his hands behind his head, crossed his ankles, and said, "What do you think? Maybe a little jewelry so we'll be more formal?"
I gazed down the length of his body, remembering the feel of my tongue running over his firm stomach, sliding lower. I had to close my eyes and evict the thought before I could answer.
"No, Rhys, I think clothes first. We'll worry about accessorizing later."
He grinned up at me. "Oh, I don't know, Merry. Aren't you the least bit tempted to have all of us on the bed when he calls? You, draped in bodies."
I started to say no. Then realized it was a lie. "A little tempted, yes, but we're going to behave ourselves, Rhys."
His grin widened. "If you insist."
"You're the one that's always going on about, ooh, the King of Light and Illusion. Why the change of heart now?"
"He's still scary, Merry, but he's also a terrible stuffed shirt. He wasn't always like that, but somewhere over the centuries he became more... human, in the worst sense of the word." The grin faded around the edges.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Just thinking about what might have been. Taranis used to be good for a few laughs, and a drunken brawl or two."
I raised eyebrows. "Taranis? Having a boys' night out on the town? I can't picture it."
"You've known him for only thirty years. He hasn't been at his best." He sat up, got to his feet. "Dibs on the shower."
"If you get it first this morning, I get it first tomorrow," Nicca said.
"Only if you're fast enough," Rhys said, heading for the bathroom.
Nicca's arms slid around my waist, turned me to him. "Let him have his shower." He raised a slender brown hand to trace the waves near my face. He rolled over on his back, drawing me with his hands at my neck and waist. The sheet had rolled off of him, and I saw that he was firm and ripe again. 
I half laughed. "Don't you ever grow tired?"
"Of this, never." His face grew more serious, a little less tender. "This with you is the first time I have ever been with a woman and not been afraid."
"What do you mean?"
"The queen is a fearsome thing, Meredith, and she likes her men submissive. I'm not dominant, but I don't enjoy her idea of sex."
I leaned in and gave him a very gentle kiss. "We do some rough stuff."
He suddenly hugged me to him. "No, Meredith, no, you don't. You never scare me." He held me, and I relaxed against him, let him hold me. Almost too tight. It almost hurt.
I stroked his sides and what I could reach of his back, until he began to relax. His arms were not quite so crushing. I'd thought only days ago about sending Nicca back home, because I did not want him to be king. He wasn't able to be king, and it had nothing to do with whether or not he could breed.
I held him, stroked him gently, until the sudden panic in him eased. When he was calm, he reached for me again, and I went to his arms, his mouth, his body. I hoped King Taranis wouldn't call while we were in the midst of things, but the lovemaking took the last wounded look from his eyes. I needed to see those brown eyes turned to me with nothing but smiles in them.
When Rhys stepped out of the bathroom with his towels, we were just finishing. He cursed under his breath. "Is it too late to join in?"
"Yes," I said, and gave Nicca a last parting kiss. "Besides, I get the shower next." I scrambled out of bed and went for the bathroom before Nicca could protest. I left them laughing, and I left the room laughing myself. What better way is there to begin a day?
Chapter 34
That afternoon, Maeve and Gordon Reed showed up at our door. It had been only days, but Gordon looked like it had been years. His skin had gone from sallow to grey. He seemed to have lost weight, so that the strong bones that had once made him a tall, commanding figure now made him look like a large-boned skeleton, covered in paper-thin greyness. His eyes looked larger in his face, and the pain in them looked constant. It was as if the cancer were sucking him dry, eating him from the inside out.
Maeve had said on the phone that Gordon was worse, much worse, but she hadn't prepared us for this. No mere words could prepare you for watching a man die.
Frost and Rhys had met their car on the street so they could help her husband up the short flight of steps to our apartment. Maeve had followed them up with huge sunglasses hiding most of her face, and a silk scarf around all that blond hair. She held an ankle-length fur coat tight at her throat as if it were cold. She looked like a Hollywood imitation of a great movie star. Of course, who had a better right to the look?
The men helped Gordon into the bedroom so he could rest while we did the first part of the fertility rite. Maeve was apparently going to pace the living room while she waited. She'd almost lit up a cigarette before I could tell her no smoking in my home.
"Meredith, please, I need it."
"Then you can do it outside."
She lowered her sunglasses enough to show me those famous blue eyes. She was wearing her human glamour again, trying to look as un-sidhe as possible. She kept that blue stare on me as she flung open the coat to frame that long golden body. She was nude except for her boots.
"Do I look dressed for your neighbors' viewing?"
I shook my head. "Your glamour is good enough to hide you buck naked in the middle of a highway, so close the coat, and take your nerves and your cigarettes outside."
She let the coat fall closed, leaving a thin line of her body showing between the soft mounds of fur. "How can you be so cruel?""This isn't cruel, Maeve, and well you know it. You spent too many centuries around the courts to think I'm being cruel just because I don't want your cigarettes stinking up my apartment."
She actually pouted at me. I'd had enough. "When I come back inside heavy with magic, I want to find Conchenn, goddess of beauty and spring, not some spoiled star. No glamour either. I want to see those lightning-kissed eyes."
She opened her mouth -- to protest, I think. I stopped it with a wave of my hand. "Save it, Maeve, and do what you need to do to help this work."
She pushed her sunglasses back over her eyes and said in a much smaller voice, "You've changed, Meredith. There's a hardness in you that wasn't there before."
"Not hardness," Doyle said, "command. She will be queen and she understands that now."
Maeve glanced from him to me. "Fine, what's with the bikini? I thought you were going to fuck, not go to the beach."
"I know you're angry and scared about your husband, and that cuts you some slack, but there's a limit to that slack, Maeve. Don't push it."
She lowered her head, still fingering the unlit cigarette and unused lighter. "I don't mean to be such a fucking prima donna, but I am desperately worried about Gordon. Can't you understand that?"
"I understand, but if I wasn't having to sit here and argue with you, I could already be at the ritual site preparing myself."
I turned my back very deliberately on her, hoping she'd take the hint. "Doyle, you've extended the wards to include the little garden area in the house behind us, as I requested?"
"Yes, Princess, I have."
I took a deep breath. Here was the moment that I had been dreading. I had to choose one of the men to act as my consort for the ritual, but who? I don't know what I would have decided, because Galen said, voice clear but uncertain, "I'm whole again, Merry."
Everyone but Maeve turned to stare at him. He looked a little uncomfortable under the scrutiny, but there was also a pleased smile on his face, and a look in his eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time.
"I don't mean to dampen the mood," Rhys said, "but how do we know he's cured? Maeve and Gordon may not get another shot at this."
Doyle interrupted. "If Galen says that he is healed enough for this ritual, I for one believe him."