“No,” Sholto said, holding his hands up as if to keep the baby at bay.
“Yes,” Rhys said, and put the baby in the other man’s arms so that he had to hold her, or risk having her fall. Sholto held her as if she were made of glass and would break, but he did hold her.
“Hold the bottle like this,” Rhys said.
Bryluen and Alastair were content, feeding deeply, and that near-magical endorphin rush came over me so that it was comforting to me to feed them and make them feel comfortable. I wondered if cows felt that way around milking machines, or just around their calves.
Gwenwyfar started to cry, and it was high and told some part of my brain I hadn’t even known was there that she was little, but that part of me also knew instinctively that she wasn’t as little as Bryluen. How did just the sound of their cries tell me that?
“You’re too tense,” Rhys said. “She’s picking it up.”
“See, she doesn’t like me.”
Galen sighed and came beside my bed. “May I take our boy? He’s more easygoing than Gwenwyfar.”
“You can tell that already?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, and there was something about the expression on his face that made me wonder.
“What did I miss while I slept, besides my aunt wanting to visit?”
“We all got to know the babies,” Galen said with a smile.
I had a little trouble getting Alastair to let go of his nice, warm meal—me—and he fussed as Galen picked him up, but he didn’t cry.
Gwenwyfar was crying full-out. Rhys picked her up and he and Galen passed each other as Gwenwyfar came to feed beside her sister, and Alastair got to be bottle-fed by Sholto.
Gwenwyfar settled onto my other breast across from her sister with a little sigh of contentment. Did babies really come into the world knowing that much of who they were and what they wanted? Gwenwyfar already had a strong preference for Mommy, as opposed to the bottle.
I realized that the room was quiet, full of contented noises, which meant Alastair was taking his bottle. I looked across the room to where Rhys and Galen had both been working with Sholto to help him bottle-feed. Sholto had a little smile on his face, and he had relaxed, so that Alastair fit in the crook of his arm and the bottle was at a good angle. The baby was drinking hard and steady, his tiny curled fist on one side of the bottle as if he were already trying to help hold it. I knew that part was accidental, but it was still amazing to me. I guess everyone thinks their babies are wonderful and precocious.
“Alastair takes the bottle easier,” Galen said.
Sholto glanced up. “You had trouble feeding the girl, too?”
“I got her to take the bottle, but she doesn’t like it as well, and she let me know that.” He turned and grinned back at the bed and his reluctant daughter.
Rhys said, “She has strong preferences, our Gwenwyfar.”
“Already?” I asked.
“Some babies come like that,” Rhys said with a smile.
I stared down at my two daughters, and I just liked the phrase my two daughters, and smiled. I could feel that the smile was silly and almost an “in love” type of smile. I had expected to love the babies, but I hadn’t expected to feel like this. I was still sore and aching in places that had never hurt before, but it was okay, and long moments like this made me forget that anything hurt. There is power and magic in love, all kinds of love.Royal came to the other side of the bed by Bryluen. He was wearing an oversized hospital gown turned so the open back let his wings be free, and a pair of surgical scrub pants. It made him look even daintier than he was, and somehow less like he belonged.
“May I feed one of the babies?”
“Of course,” I said.
Rhys was already moving across the room, with the last bottle that the nurses had brought. He didn’t apologize but let Royal settle onto the edge of the chair that Galen had used. Royal couldn’t sit back too far, because of his wings. I wondered if people with wings got backaches from always having to sit without a back support.
Bryluen didn’t look so small in Royal’s arms. There was a fit there; was it just that the sizes matched better, or was it the happy smile as he gazed down at the baby?
“She’s looking right at me,” Royal said in a voice that held wonder.
“She keeps her eyes open more than the other two,” Rhys said.
I wasn’t sure about the other men, but Rhys and Galen had spent my nap learning the ins and outs of our children. I liked that a lot.
I fitted my bra back over one breast and looked down at Gwenwyfar. “So, you’re already demanding what you want?”
The baby didn’t even open her eyes, just continued to feed happily. I held her closer and leaned over so I could lay a kiss on her white curls. The top of her head smelled amazing, clean and like baby lotion, even though I was almost certain no one had put lotion on her. Did baby lotion smell like newborn babies, or was that just my imagination?
“They smell so good,” Royal said; he’d bent over Bryluen’s hair just as I had over Gwenwyfar.
“They do,” I said.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw that Sholto had bent over Alastair. “The smell is clean and somehow calming.” He sounded surprised.
“Have you never held a baby before?” Rhys asked.
“Not one that was this … human,” he said.
“You know these aren’t antenna buds,” Royal said; he was rubbing his cheek against Bryluen’s hair, apparently, over the little black beginnings of her antennae.
“What are they then?” I asked.
“Something harder. I think they’re tiny horns,” he said.
“Did you say horns?” Sholto asked.
“I think they are,” Royal said, “but I’m certain they aren’t antennae.”
Sholto looked down at the baby in his arms. He smiled down and said, half to the baby and half to Galen, “I hate to disturb you, but can someone else finish feeding him?”
“Happy to,” Galen said. He took Alastair out of Sholto’s arms like he’d done it forever. I wondered if he’d sit in Sholto’s chair, but he didn’t. Galen moved to the couch to finish giving Alastair his bottle. Would the nightflyers have cared if Galen had sat where their king had sat, or would it have made Galen uncomfortable to be surrounded by them? Most of the sidhe, of both courts, were afraid of the sluagh. We were meant to be, otherwise they weren’t a threat, and they so were that.
Sholto walked over to Royal. He offered, “Do you want to feed her?”
“No,” Sholto said, and knelt beside them. His hair pooled around his legs so that he was lost in a cloak of it, except for the black of his boots. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but Rhys was watching him closely.
“I think they are horns,” Sholto said.
I could see his shoulders moving even through the mask of his hair. He exclaimed, “Blood and fire, it can’t be!”
I hugged Gwenwyfar tighter and asked, “It can’t be what?”
Sholto turned, still on his knees, so that I got a just a glimpse of that handsome face framed by all that hair. “The wings do not feel like butterfly scales, or moth.”
“They’re like butterfly wings fresh out of a chrysalis, before blood pumps them into full shape,” I said.
“They may look like pink and crystal gossamer, but they feel leathery, more like bat, or reptile,” Sholto said.
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled, and it was that rare one that made his face look younger, as if it were a glimpse of what he might have been like if his life had not made him so hard.
“Horns and leathery wings are sluagh, Merry.”
In my head I thought, Goblins have horns, but I didn’t say it out loud. The horns and wings could be his genetics; we really didn’t know. If his throne hadn’t been potentially on the line, it wouldn’t have mattered, but to rule the sluagh you had to be part sluagh, just as to rule the Unseelie and Seelie courts you had to be descended from their bloodline. Every court in faerie was like that; you had to be the type of fey to rule that type of fey. Since I’d thought we’d given up all plans for any of our children to be on any throne, I hadn’t worried about it.
Sholto’s throne was not normally an inherited one. You were elected to it, chosen by the people. It was the only rulership in all of our lands that was democratic. I hadn’t known he would look down at our babies and begin to dream of a royal bloodline for his people. Funny, what fatherhood means to different men.
“If it’s sluagh, then it can’t be demi-fey,” Royal said, and he looked sad.
“We have a geneticist who’s going to be testing the babies. We won’t really know without that,” I said.
The men all did another of those looks, almost looking at each other, and avoiding my eyes.
I hugged Gwenwyfar to me, for my comfort this time. “What were those looks about? You told me my aunt wants to see the babies and we’re guarding them and the hospital, because she’s still insane and too dangerous to come, but that look just now says there’s more you haven’t told me.”
“Have you always been able to read us this easily, or have you grown more observant?” Sholto asked.
“I love you all in my way; a woman pays attention to the men she loves.”
“You love us,” Rhys said, “but you’re not in love with all of us.”