Barinthus frowned, clearly puzzled. “Of course I love Meredith.”
“Then we’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”
Barinthus frowned harder, but finally gave a small nod. “Yes.” That one word was low, but clear.
Galen was almost to him, his hand almost touching his arm, and I knew that if his glamour was working this well from a distance, that one touch would calm the whole situation. There’d be no fight if that hand once touched that arm. Even knowing what was happening didn’t completely nullify the effects of Galen’s charm, and I was just getting the backwash of it. Most of it was concentrated on Barinthus. Galen was willing him to calm down. He was willing him to be friends.
A scream sounded from outside the room, but it was inside the house. The scream was high pitched and terror filled. Galen’s glamour was like most; it shattered with the scream and the adrenaline rush as everyone went for weapons. I owned guns, but hadn’t packed one for the beach. It wouldn’t have mattered, because Doyle pushed me to the floor on the far side of the bed, and ordered Galen to stay with me. He, of course, would go for the scream.
Galen knelt by me, gun out and ready, though not pointed, because there was nothing to point at yet.
Sholto had the door opened, staying to one side of the doorjamb so he didn’t make a target of himself. He was on the queen’s guard when he wasn’t king of his own kingdom, and he knew the possibilities of modern weapons, and a well-placed arrow. Barinthus was pressed to the other side of the flattened door, the fight forgotten, as they did what they had trained to do for longer than America had been a country.
Whatever they saw out there made Sholto move forward at a cautious crouch, gun in one hand, sword in the other. Barinthus spilled around the door with no visible weapon, but when you’re seven feet tall, more than humanly strong, nearly immortal, and a trained fighter, you don’t always need a weapon. You are the weapon.
Rhys went next, keeping low, gun in hand. Frost and Doyle glided through the door armed and ready, and just like that it was just Galen and me in the suddenly empty room. My pulse was thudding in my ears, pushing at my throat, not at the thought of what might have caused one of my female guards to scream, but at the thought of the men I loved, the fathers of my children, maybe never coming back through that door again. Death had touched me too early for me not to understand that nearly immortal is not the same thing as truly immortal. My father’s death had taught me that.
Maybe if I’d been queen enough to sacrifice Frost for the crown, I would have been more worried about the other women, but I was honest with myself. I’d only been trying to be friends with them for a few weeks, I loved the men, and for someone you love, you will sacrifice much. Anyone who says otherwise has either never truly loved or is lying to themselves.I heard voices, but they weren’t yelling, just talking. I whispered to Galen, “Can you understand what they’re saying?”
Most of the sidhe had better-than-human hearing, I did not. He cocked his head to one side, gun now pointed at the empty doorway, ready to shoot anything that came through it.
“Voices, women. I can’t understand what they’re saying, but I can tell that one is Hafwyn, one of them is crying, and Saraid is pissed. Now Doyle, and Ivi, he’s upset but not angry. He sounds panicked, as if whatever’s happened bothered him.”
Galen glanced down at me, frowning a little. “Ivi sounds contrite.”
I frowned, too. “Ivi is never contrite about anything.”
Galen nodded, and then was suddenly all attention at the door. I watched his finger begin to pull. I couldn’t see anything around the corner of the bed. Then he raised the gun toward the ceiling and let out a breath in a low whoosh, which let me know how close he’d come to pulling that trigger.
“Sholto,” he said, and got up, gun still in one hand, and held his other hand down for me. I took it and let him help me stand.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Did you know that Ivi and Dogmaela had sex last night?” he asked.
I nodded. “Not exactly, but I knew that Ivi and Brii took lovers among the women who were willing.”
Sholto smiled and shook his head, his face halfway between amused and thinking about something far too hard. “It seems that after last night Ivi assumed he could give her a little cuddle, and something he did seems to have terrified her.”
“What did he do to her?” I asked.
“Hafwyn was witness and agrees with Ivi about what he did and did not do. Apparently, he merely came up behind Dogmaela, wrapped his arms around her waist, and picked her up off the floor, and she began to scream,” Sholto said. “Dogmaela is too hysterical to make much sense. Saraid is being physically restrained from attacking Ivi, and the man seems honestly puzzled by the turn of events.”
“Why would just being picked up make her scream?” I asked.
“Hafwyn says that it was something their old master, the prince, would do, but he would then fling them on the bed or hold them for someone else to do very bad things to them.”
“Oh,” I said, “it’s a trigger event.”
“A trigger what?” Sholto asked.
Galen said, “It’s something usually innocuous that reminds you of abuse or violence, and suddenly it brings it all back up.”
We both looked at him, both of us surprised, and unable to hide it. Galen gave me a sour look. “What, I couldn’t know that?”
“No, it’s just that”—I hugged him—“it was just unexpected.”
“That I was that insightful is that big a surprise?” he asked.
There was nothing polite I could say to that question, so I hugged him a little more tightly. He hugged me back, and kissed me on top of my head.
Sholto was standing beside us now, and his eyes were all for me. There was that look that men get when they see a woman who is their lover and more. It was partly possessive, partly excited, and partly puzzled, as if something out in the other room was still on his mind. He held his hand out to me, and I left Galen’s hand to go to him. Galen let me do it; we shared well most of the time, and even if we didn’t, Goddess had decreed that Sholto was one of the fathers of the babies I carried. The fathers all got privileges. I just think that none of us had expected the genetic miracle of six fathers for two babies.
Sholto drew me into his arms, and I went willingly. He was the newest to my bed of all the fathers. We’d actually only had sex once I got pregnant, but as the old saying goes, once is enough. The newness meant that I wasn’t in love with him. I didn’t actually love him at all. I was attracted to him, I cared for him, but we hadn’t had enough conversations to let me know if I loved him, or could love him. We liked each other, though; we liked each other a lot.
“I’ve seen the traditional King of the Sluagh’s greeting to his queen,” Galen said, “so I’ll leave you to it. Maybe I can be insightful for Dogmaela.” He sounded a little disgusted, but I let him go, because he had surprised me by being smarter than I’d given him credit for and that was my lack of insight.
Sholto didn’t wait for Galen to close the door behind him before he showed me just how much he liked me with his kiss, his hands, and his body held as tightly to me as it could be with clothes still on. I let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the satin of his tunic, and the glint of the embroidery and the small jewels sewn into it, so that I ran my hands over his clothes as much as the body underneath them. I thought about him making love to me the way Ivi had done last night with most of his clothes still on so that the satin caressed my skin as we made love. The thought made me respond even more to his kisses, and sent my hands lower to trace his ass underneath the tunic, though I couldn’t get as good a grip with one hand as the other because I had to reach around the sword at his waist.
Sholto responded to my eagerness, sliding his hands under my ass and picking me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he walked us back the few feet to the bed. He lowered me to the bed, with my arms and legs still wrapped around him. He kept one hand on my back and the other caught our weight against the bed.
He drew out of the kisses enough to say in a breathless voice, “If I’d known this was the greeting I’d get, I’d have come sooner.”
I smiled up at him. “I’ve missed you.”
He grinned. He had one of the most handsome faces in either court, and the grin ruined that beyond-model-perfect perfection, but I loved that grin, because I knew that it was for me. I knew that no one else had ever made him look at them in quite that way. No one had ever made him as happy as he was in the moments we were together. Maybe I didn’t love him yet, but I loved how he was when we were together. I loved that he let me see the great King of the Sluagh grin. I valued him letting down those years of arrogant shields so that I could see the man behind them.
“I love that you miss me.” As if he’d read my mind, he raised up, forcing me to let him go just enough so he could reach down and begin to undo his pants. He left his sword, belt, gun, and holster in place, undoing only enough of his soft trousers to spill himself out into the light, hard and firm and as fine as any man in court.Normally, I wanted more foreplay, but in that moment it worked for me. It was partly what Ivi and Brii had done with me last night, but it was also that Sholto had begun to condition me to the greeting.