Galen said, “I take it Niceven wouldn’t change her mind.”
“She wants out of this alliance for a reason.” He made a visible effort to master his temper and came to me. “I have failed you, Merry. You have to feed that creature of hers tonight.”
“Let me try to talk to her,” Rhys said.
“You think you can do what I could not?”
“I can tell her that Merry got sick tonight. Niceven’s had children. Maybe she’ll cut Merry some slack for that.”Mistral sat down on the bed beside me, face all concern. “Are you well?”
“I seem to be now. I guess I couldn’t get by without a little morning sickness.”
He hugged me very gently, as if afraid I’d break. Mistral liked his sex pretty rough, so to feel him hold me like I was made of eggshells made me smile. I hugged him back a little more firmly. “Let me brush my teeth and then we’ll see how I feel.” And that’s what we did. I took the robe that had been laid on the bed into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and took off the hose, and my dress. I came back out with the robe belted in place and the room empty except for Rhys. He was sitting on the side of the bed looking less than pleased.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine,” I said.
He gave me a look.
“Really, I’m fine; whatever caused me to be sick seems to have passed.”
“I’ll have the cooks make a list of the food you ate tonight. Some women just can’t eat certain foods while pregnant.”
“Could your wife?” I asked.
He shook his head, smiling a little, and stood up. “No, I won’t talk about that. What I will talk about is that Royal is outside. He seems genuinely embarrassed that his queen is insisting on this, even knowing you were ill earlier this evening, but he’s worried that she’ll call him home if he refuses to be a good little surrogate for her.”
I came to him, putting my arms around his waist. He returned the favor, and with him only six inches taller than me the eye contact was comfortable. “Kitto made mention that Kurag is wanting out of our alliance, and Kitto is being careful not to give him any excuse for it. Is there something happening at the Unseelie Court that I should know about?”
“You didn’t want to rule the Unseelie Court, so it’s not your problem.”
“That would be a yes. Something is happening.”
“Not that you need to know about, though.”
I studied his face, trying to read something behind the smiling pleasantness of it. “Why are the goblins and the demi-fey both wanting to sever ties with me?”
“When they thought you were going to be queen they wanted to align themselves with you, but now they want to be able to align with whoever wins the race.”
“The Unseelie Court still has a queen,” I said.
“Who seems to have been driven mad by the death of her son.”
I hugged him, putting my face against his chest. “Cel was going to kill me. I had no choice.”
He rested his head against my hair. “He would have killed us all, Merry, and she would have let him. The fact that you had enough power to do it is amazing and wonderful, and let’s face it, she wasn’t the most stable cookie in the box to begin with.”
“I didn’t mean to leave our court in such disarray. I just wanted us safe.”
“No one blames you, Merry.”
“Barinthus does, and if he does so do others.”
He kissed my cheek and held me close, and again that was answer enough. I could have asked questions about how bad it was, and what we could do, but the only thing we could do was to go back and take the throne, but we’d rejected the crowns of faerie once. I hadn’t found that you got second chances at such offers. Even with the crowns on our heads, the chances that Doyle and I could hold the throne against all the factions that Andais had allowed to rise in her court was slim. I wanted to stay safe and have our babies. They and the men I loved meant more to me than crowns and even the Unseelie. So I let him hold me and I didn’t press for details because I was certain they would all be bad ones.
CHAPTER FORTY
ROYAL MIGHT HAVE BEEN EMBARRASSED ABOUT HIS QUEEN’S LACK of manners, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he wanted to be with me. Of course, in fey culture to hide the fact that you found someone attractive, especially if they were trying to be attractive, was an insult. I wasn’t exactly trying to be attractive, but I wasn’t trying not to be either.
I lay in the white robe against all the pale creams and gold of the bed. Royal floated above me on his wings of red and black and gray. They were a blur of color, and even though the wings were the wings of a moth, they moved more like those of a dragonfly, or a bee, much faster than the moth he resembled. He lowered himself slowly toward me until his wings blew my hair across the pillow in a red wave. He landed in the middle of my chest. His weight was not so much that I minded, but solid enough that I knew he was there. He knelt between the mounds of my breasts, his knees touching some of that soft flesh. He was wearing one of the gauzy loincloths that some of the demi-fey were fond of. It was the grown-up real version of the clothes that the killer had put on the demi-fey at the first crime scene.
He folded his wings behind his back, so that the darker and plainer outer coverings slipped over the startling brightness of the red-and-black stripes. He gazed up at me, and with a face that small with bobbing black antennae he should have been cute or silly even, but Royal had always managed to be neither of those things, from the first moment I met him.
“You look solemn, Princess. Are you well? I heard you were ill earlier.”
“And if I said I was ill, what would that change?” I asked.
He lowered his head and sighed. “I would still feed, but I would be sorry for it.” Even as he said it one tiny hand traced the edge of my breast where it touched the edge of the robe.
“Your actions give lie to your words, Royal.”
“I am not lying, but I have never lied to you about the fact that I find you beautiful. I would have to be blind and unable to touch the silk of your skin not to want you, Princess Meredith.”
I told the truth. “I feel well enough now, but I am tired, and I think sleep would do me good.”
“If I could make love to you for real I would make it last all night, but since I can only do what the Glimmer does, I will make it enjoyable but not take so long.”
“Glimmer. What does that mean?”
He looked uncomfortable. “You will not like the answer.”
“I still want to know.”
“There are humans who have a fetish for the small folk such as me, and there are even demi-fey who have the same interest for the big folk. I have seen the images on the computer and am told there are films.”
“But … how? I mean, the size difference.”“Not intercourse,” he said, “but mutual masturbation, or the demi-fey rub themselves on the man’s penis until they both go. That seems to be the most popular image on the computer.” He seemed very serious as he told it, and not intrigued by it, as if it was just fact and not about sex at all.
“And it’s called Glimmer?”
“A Glimmer Fetish if it’s a big person liking a demi-fey.”
“What’s it called if the demi-fey likes the big person?”
He lay down on his stomach between my breasts so that his head was just above them and his feet just below them. “Wishful thinking,” he said.
That made me laugh, which made my chest rise and fall and slid the robe a little to both sides so that he was suddenly lying with more of my bare breasts on either side of him, not quite to nipples showing, but the mounds of my breasts framed him. He put a hand out to either side. “May I use glamour now?”
Royal was one of the demi-fey who was very good at glamour, so we’d worked out a system between us. He had to ask before he could pull his glamour on me. I wanted to know the moment my mind was clouded, because he was good enough that I couldn’t always tell. Some of the men had shared my bed when Royal fed for his queen, and he was good enough at the glamour that it worked on them, too. They didn’t like it, and he was the only demi-fey to act as Niceven’s surrogate who had me to himself, because the men found him disturbing, or the men who didn’t find Royal disturbing disturbed Royal. Doyle was willing to stay, but the demi-fey didn’t like him, none of them. It was the same for all the men who could throw off the glamour. The demi-fey found it hard to concentrate around them enough to feed. So, Royal and I had the feeding to ourselves with the knowledge that at a prescribed time one of the guards would knock on the door and interrupt.
Niceven’s original plan had been to have one of her surrogates who could shift to nearly my own height make a bid to get me pregnant and try to be king of the Unseelie, but I was already pregnant and Royal didn’t have a bigger form.
“May I use my glamour now so that we will enjoy the feeding as much as we can?”
I sighed and again it made him rise and fall on my breasts. He caressed his hands on the soft mounds of them almost like a swimmer. He laid his head against my chest and said, “I love the sound of your heart like this.”
“Whatever fetish this is, I think you have it.”
He raised his head and looked at me. “Only for you.”
I gave him the suspicious look that comment deserved.