The dog was as large as the Cu Sith, maybe even a little larger. The fur wasn't so much long like a sled dogs as just unkempt. It turned eyes the size of saucers to me, huge and out of proportion to its doggie face. But then the look in its eyes wasn't exactly the look a dog gives you either. It was a look somewhere between a wild animal and a person. There was too much wisdom in those eyes.
Rhys said softly, "It's a Gally-trot."
"A ghost dog," I said. It was supposed to be a phantom that haunted lonely roads and scared travelers.
"Not exactly," he said. "Remember, some humans believe that all the fey are the spirits of the dead."
The Gally-trot leaned its huge white head over the twins, and licked them with a tongue that was as black as the fur it had started with.
Holly stirred, blinking bloodred eyes at the room. Ash made a sound that was almost pain as the Gally-trot licked him back to life.
I waited for the Cu Sith to come to Frost, or even the Gally-trot, but they didn't. The Cu Sith moved among my guards, receiving pets and strokes. It smiled in that way that dogs do, with its tongue out.
The twins seemed unsure what to make of the white dog's attention. It was Holly who reached up and touched it first. The dog bumped him so hard he almost fell over. It made Holly laugh, a pleased masculine sound. Ash touched the dog, too, and they communed with the huge beast.
The demi-fey were beginning to leave the Red Caps. The faces revealed were gentler, as if the clay of their bodies had been remade into something more sidhe, more human. Jonty's words came back to me, "You are remaking us."
I hadn't meant to.
But there were a lot of things I hadn't meant to do.
I stared down at Frost, and saw a gleam of blue at his neck. His tie had already been loosened by someone. I snapped off buttons in my haste to see, and found blue glowing on his skin.
Rhys and Galen put him on his back, and helped me tear his shirt open. There was a tattoo on his chest that glowed blue. It was a stag head with a crown in its antlers. It was a mark of kingship, but it was also a mark of the sacrificial king. The white stag was what he had made with his touch that night in the winter dark. The white stag is a thing to be hunted and to lead the hero to his destiny.
I stared at Rhys's face because he looked as horrified as I felt.
"What does it mean?" Galen asked.
"Once all new creation came with sacrifice," Doyle's voice intoned, but it wasn't his voice.
"No," I said. "No, I didn't agree to this."
"He did," the voice said. The look in Doyle's eyes was not him either.
"Why? Why him?"
"He is the stag."
"No!" I stood up, stumbling on the hem of my robe. I went toward the black dogs and this stranger in Doyle's body.
"Merry," Rhys said.
"No!" I screamed it again.
One of the black dogs growled at me. My power washed over me, burst across my skin. I glowed like I'd swallowed the moon. Shadows of crimson light fell around my face from my hair, I saw green and gold light, and knew my eyes glowed.
"Would you challenge me?" Doyle's mouth said, but it wasn't Doyle who I would challenge if I said yes.
"Merry, don't," Rhys said.
"Merry," Galen said. "Please, Frost wouldn't want this."
My hounds bumped my hand, and my thigh. I looked down at them, and they glowed. Minnie's red half of her face glowed like my hair, and her skin gave white light around my hand as I petted her. Our glows mingled. Mungo, with his red ear and white coat, looked as if he were carved of jewels.
The queen's ring pulsed on my hand. It, like so many things, had more power inside faerie, and that was where we stood now.
I saw phantom puppies dancing around my hounds. I knew in that moment that Minnie was already pregnant. The first faerie hounds to be born in five hundred years, maybe more?
Minnie bumped my hip, made me look down at myself. Two small phantoms of my own, hovering around me. But I knew they were real. No wonder I'd been tired today. Twins, like my mother and her sister. Twins. And faint, like a thought that wasn't quite real, was a third. It wasn't real yet, just a promise of possibilities; It meant that the twins would not be all. There would be at least a third child for me with someone.
I realized as soon as I thought it that the ring had other powers. I wanted to know who the father was, and I could know here with the ring, inside faerie. I turned and looked at Doyle, and found the answer I most wanted. The ring pulsed, and the scent of roses rode the air.
I turned toward Frost. A child sat beside him, quiet, and too solemn. No, Goddess, no, not like this. Even the wonder of a child, of twins, could not make Frost's loss a fair trade. I did not know these phantom children yet. I had not held them. I did not know their smiles. I did not know how soft their hair was, or how sweet their skin smelled. They were not real yet. Frost was real. Frost was mine, and we had made a child.