A Lick of Frost(67)

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 fiancé?"

"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-fiancé. 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."