A Lick of Frost (Merry Gentry #6)(29)

She waved me to silence. “I no longer know how to save my people and our culture. I thought you were the solution, but though you may save faerie, you seem to be destroying the Unseelie way of life. Did the Goddess offer you a choice for how to bring life back to faerie?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“She offered you blood sacrifice or sex, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t keep the look of astonishment off my face.
“Don’t look so shocked, Meredith. I was not always queen. Once no one ruled here who was not chosen by the Goddess. I chose death and blood to cement my tie to the land. I chose the Unseelie way. What did you choose, child of my brother?”
There was a look in her eyes that made me afraid to tell the truth, but I could not lie, not about this. “Life. I chose life.”
“You chose the way of the Seelie.”
“If there is a way to bring power that does not kill, why is it wrong to choose it?”
“Whose life did you spare?”
I licked suddenly dry lips. “Do not ask.”
“Doyle?”
“No,” I said.
“Then who!” She screamed it at me.
“Amatheon,” I said.
“Amatheon. He is one of your newest lovers. He helped Cel torment you as a child. Why?”
“I don’t understand, Aunt.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I asked.
“Why save him? Why not kill him to bring life back to the land? He was a willing sacrifice.”
“Why kill him if I didn’t have to?” I asked.
She shook her head sadly. “That is not an Unseelie answer, Meredith.”
“My father, your brother, would have said the same thing.”
“No, my brother was Unseelie.”
“My father taught me that all in faerie from lowest to highest have value.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I thought of you while I cut Crystall up, Meredith. The only hesitation I have about giving you to the Seelies is that if I do, I cannot kill you without starting a war. I don’t want to lose the option of torturing you to death, Meredith. I think once you are dead your magic will fade and the traitorous Goddess that comes to you will fade with it.”
“Would you condemn all of faerie to death because it is not the faerie you wish it to be?” Frost asked it, his face astonished.“No and yes.” With that the mirror went blank again. We were left staring at our own reflections. We all looked pale and shocked. Today no good news seemed to go unpunished.
CHAPTER 15
I WAS READY TO LIE DOWN AND GET SOME REST AND RELAXATION. It promised to be a long night. But I wasn’t allowed to be alone. Not even just to sleep. Between Taranis’s treachery and Queen Andais being able to see in the mirror at will, Rhys and Frost were just not willing to risk me being alone. I couldn’t argue with them, so I didn’t even try. I just started undressing so I could climb between the covers.
If it had been Doyle and Frost, they would both have stayed and we might have slept or we might have done something more active. But Rhys and Frost had never shared me, not even for sleep. There had been a moment of awkwardness as I undressed and they looked at each other.
It was Rhys who finally said, “I want sex with you before the goblins tonight, but I’ve seen that look on Frost’s face before.”
“What look?” Frost asked, but I didn’t ask because I could see it, and I’d seen it before. Frost’s need and uncertainty were plain in his eyes, in the lines of his mouth.
“I want sex,” Rhys said, “but you need reassurance, and that takes longer to get.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Frost said in a cold voice. His face was at its arrogant best again, that moment of uncertainty hidden behind years of courtly living.
Rhys smiled. “It’s all right, Frost. I understand, really I do.”
“There is nothing to understand,” Frost said.
I slipped naked under the covers, almost too tired to care who won the conversation. I settled against the pillows and waited for one of them to climb into bed with me. I was so tired, so overwhelmed with all of the day’s events that it didn’t seem to matter who slept next to me, as long as someone did.
“Doyle isn’t just your captain, Frost. You’ve been each other’s right hands for centuries. You’re feeling the lack of him.”
“We are all feeling the lack of him healthy at our sides,” Frost said.
Rhys nodded. “Yes, but only you and Merry feel his loss this deeply.”
“I do not understand you,” Frost said.
“That’s okay,” Rhys said. He looked at me. The look asked me, did I understand? I thought I did.
“Come to bed, Frost. Sleep with me.” I patted the bed.
“Doyle told me to take care of you until he is able.”
I smiled at the face that was trying for blankness and failing around the edges. “Then come to bed and take care of me, Frost.” 
“You promised me sex, and I am going to hold you to it,” Rhys said.
Frost hesitated by the bed. “We have never shared the princess.”
“And we aren’t going to now,” Rhys said. “I’ll share sometimes with the newer men because Merry likes me better than she likes them.” He smiled, and I returned the smile. Then his face sobered, and there was something far too serious in his face. “But I could not bear to share her with you and see how she feels about you. I know she loves you more, you and Doyle, but I do not wish the fact rubbed into my body like salt into a wound.”
“Rhys,” I said.
He shook his head, and pushed a hand toward me. “Don’t try to save my ego. You’d have to lie to do it, and the sidhe don’t lie.”
It was Frost who said, “Rhys, I do not mean to cause you pain.”
“You can’t help being who you are, and she can’t seem to help loving you. I tried to hate you for it, but I can’t. If you get her pregnant, and I end up back with Andais, then I’ll hate you, but until then, I’ll try to share with some grace.”
I wanted to say something to make it better, but what could I say? Rhys was right; any comforting words would have had to be lies.
“I do not slight you on purpose, my white knight,” I said.
Rhys smiled. “We are both equally pale, my princess. We knew going into this that only one man can be king. Even I think that Doyle and Frost together make a good ruling pair for you. Too bad that even among the Darkness and the Killing Frost there will be a winner and a loser.”
With that, Rhys left, closing the door behind us. I heard him speak to the dogs, who must have been waiting outside the door. We did not let the dogs in when we spoke to Andais because she had touched the black dogs and they had not transformed into special dogs for her. The magic had not known her, and she resented it. Frost feared that the lack of a dog meant he was not sidhe enough. Andais simply hated the fact that the returning power didn’t seem to know her. She was queen, and all the power of her court should have been hers, but it didn’t seem to be working that way.
I almost called to Rhys to let the dogs in but didn’t, because it would be a reminder to Frost of what he lacked. The door closed softly, but firmly, and I was left looking up at the man who had stayed.
Frost took off his suit jacket, and the moment he did I could see all the weapons he was carrying. There were many guns and blades, but he was always armed for war. I counted four handguns and two blades in the front of the leather. There would be more, because there were always more weapons than met the eye with the Killing Frost.
“You smile. Why?” he asked softly. He began to undo the buckles that held the leather in place.
“I would ask what army you had planned to fight today with so many weapons, but I know what you feared.”
He removed the weapons carefully and laid them across the bedside table. The armament on the wood was heavy with the potential for destruction.
“Where did you put your gun?” Frost asked.
“It’s in the drawer of the bedside table.”
“You took it off as soon as you entered this room, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
He went to the closet and hung the jacket on a hanger. He started unbuttoning his shirt with his back still to me. “I do not understand why you would do that.”
“One, a gun is not truly comfortable. Two, if I had needed my gun in this bedroom, it would mean that all of you were dead. If that happened, Frost, one gun in my hands would not save me.”
He turned with the shirt unbuttoned to his waist. He pulled it the rest of the way out of his pants. And tired as I was, seeing him tug the shirt out of his pants, watching him undo the last few buttons, made my pulse speed just a little.His skin was a strip of whiteness against the lesser whiteness of the cloth. He slid the shirt over his shoulders, exposing his muscled strength in inches. He’d learned that sometimes watching him slowly undress helped whet my appetite for him.
He hung his shirt on an empty hanger, even buttoning the collar so it would hang right and not wrinkle. But in doing so, he let me see the long line of his back and shoulders. He’d even swung all that silver hair over one shoulder so that the muscled smoothness of his back was an unobstructed show.
There were times when watching him hang up his clothes drove me nearly mad and had me making small eager noises before he was ready to come to bed. Today would not be one of those days. The view was lovely as always, but I was tired, and did not feel completely well. Part of it was grief and shock, but also the nagging knowledge that I was coming down with a cold or a virus. Frost had never had a cold. He had never had so much as the sniffles.