I looked at him, and he was still heart-stoppingly handsome. The question was, was beauty enough, and the answer, of course, was, no. “I don’t have to ask Nicca, Frost. If I send for him, he’ll come, and he’ll do what I tell him to do. Nicca won’t argue about it, he’ll just do what needs doing.”
“And I won’t,” Frost said, tilting his chin upward, looking like something carved of arrogance and defiance.
I sighed. “I love you, Frost.”
That softened his face, made the uncertainty rise to the surface for a moment.
“I love you in my bed, I love so much about you, but I will be queen. I will be absolute ruler of our court. You seem to keep forgetting what that means. No matter who is king, I will still rule. Do you understand that, Frost?”
“You would have a puppet as your king.”
“No, I would have a partner who knows that unpleasant things must be done, and doesn’t argue about things that cannot be changed.”
“I cannot be other than I am,” he said, and his voice didn’t match the steel calm of his face.
“I know that.” My voice was soft.
For a second he looked woebegone, then the icy arrogance slid back into place. The mask that he’d worn for centuries at the court. He stared down at me, and there was nothing in his face that I could reason with. He was Frost, the Killing Frost. You do not reason with the cold of winter. You either take shelter from it, or you die.
His voice was as cold as I’d ever heard it when he said, “I will send Nicca to you and I will tell him nothing but that you require him.”
“Do that,” I said, and couldn’t keep my own voice from growing colder. I was angry with him, angry and frustrated, and I didn’t know how to save the situation. I was a future queen, and I couldn’t even handle my own personal life. That seemed a bad sign. I added, “Thank you, Frost.”
“Don’t thank me, Princess, I’m just doing my duty.” He turned as if to go.
I called him back with my words. “Frost, don’t do this.”
He only half turned. “Do what?”
“Make this all about you and your hurt feelings. Some things aren’t about you. Some things aren’t personal at all, they are just necessary.”
“May I go?”
I said a short silent prayer for patience with this impossible man, then said, “Yes, go, send Nicca to us.”
He left without a backward glance, one hand rubbing the small of his back, which meant he’d had a weapon of some kind there. Frost seldom went completely unarmed. And when he felt insecure he touched his weapons, the way some women play with their jewelry.
“Well,” Rhys said, “that went badly.”
“Moody, even for the Killing Frost,” Sage said, “and angrier.”
“Fear,” Rhys said, softly.
“What?” I asked.
“Fear,” he repeated. “The haughtier Frost gets, the more nervous he is, and nerves is just another word for fear.”
“What’s he afraid of?” I asked.
“Me.” Sage sprang into the air, twirling as if to show off his wings and his skill.
Rhys grinned. “You can be fearsome, but I don’t think that’s it.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Rhys shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Nicca appeared in the doorway. His ankle-length hair was like a tousled cloak around his body, but he’d thrown on his robe of royal purple silk. The color suited him, bringing out the rich brown of his eyes, the reddish highlights in his nearly auburn hair. It made his skin seem darker, more chocolate. “Frost said you wanted me.”
I explained what we needed, and he simply said yes. No fight, no pouting, no disagreement of any kind. It was more than refreshing. It was exactly what the night needed, something simple instead of difficult. Frost in my bed was a thing of great hunger, huge demands, and fierce pleasure. Tonight a little agreeable pleasure, some lesser demands, and a gentle hunger seemed just what the doctor ordered.
Chapter 12
I lay back in the bend of Rhys’s arm, nestled against the curve of his shoulder, my head resting on the firm warmth of his chest. Nicca was propped up on his elbow, his body curved just behind mine. He kept a fraction of a distance between us, so that all I could feel against my skin was the humming vibration of his aura, his magic. I wanted to ask him to close the distance between us, to slide his body along the back of mine, but I didn’t. I hadn’t invited him here for sex. It was Rhys’s night, and he’d stopped sharing me with Nicca after we’d defeated the Nameless and some of his powers returned. I’d assumed that with even more of his old power returned, he’d be even more reluctant to share me, so I hadn’t asked. Feeling Nicca’s warmth at my back, made me want to ask.
I nuzzled along Rhys’s chest, making a caress of moving my head enough to look at his face. “I want Nicca to stay with us tonight.”
“I’ll just bet you do,” Rhys said, but the smile was starting to be replaced with that serious look in a man’s eyes.
I stroked my hand up his stomach, gliding to his nipple and tracing lazy circles around the aureole until his nipple came to attention, and his breath came a little faster. He grabbed my wrist. “Stop that or I won’t be able to think.”
“That’s the idea,” I said, and smiled at him, but knew there was something more urgent than humor in my eyes.
“I notice you don’t ask me to stay the night,” Sage said. He landed on the hard, sculpted plain of Rhys’s stomach.
“You are welcome to spend the night,” I said, “but not in my bed, not in my body.”
Sage stamped his foot on Rhys’s solid flesh. “It is most unfair that I will use my glamour to make you feel such wondrous sensations, but I am denied the fruits of my labor. Especially since others will partake of that bounty.”“You’re the one who wanted two sidhe men, Sage. You know the effect your glamour has on me, and on others.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, yes, only myself to blame.” His face went instantly from a pout to a smile that was half lust and half joy. “I’ll make you a wager.”
I raised myself from Rhys’s chest enough to shake my head. “No.”
“What kind of wager?” Rhys asked.
“Don’t do it, Rhys.”
He looked down at me. “Why not?”
“You haven’t felt Sage’s glamour. I have.”
A touch of sidhe arrogance mingled with Rhys’s humor. It was ourracial Achilles’ heel, no mythological mixing intended. Our arrogance had been our undoing more than once.
“I think three sidhe should be proof against demi-fey magic.”
I touched his face. “Rhys, you should know by now not to underestimate the fey just because they aren’t sidhe.”
He jerked away from my hand. I hadn’t meant to touch his scars, hadn’t meant to imply what his face said he’d taken as my meaning. He was angry now, as he always was when he was reminded of what the goblins had done to him. “I think it is you who forget what we are.” The blue rings in his eye began to glow with a soft, pulsing color, robin egg blue, winter sky, all throbbing in time to his anger, and his power.
“If I am Cromm Cruach again, Merry, then Sage can’t touch me.”
I wanted to say, What if you aren’t? but something in his face stopped me. What do you say to a man’s pride? “I’ve never been a god, Rhys. I don’t know what it means to be that untouchable.”
“I do,” he said, and there was a fierceness to him, almost a franticness that I’d never seen. I recognized fear when I saw it, though. Fear that he wouldn’t be what he had been. Fear that he might never again regain what he’d lost. I’d seen the fear too many times, in too many other sidhe faces, not to know it. It was the fear of my people—that we were failing as a race, that we had already failed, and would all fade and die. It was a fear that we’d carried so long, it was almost a national phobia.
If I said no to his wager with Sage, then it was as much as saying he wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t what I meant, but he was male, and no matter what their flavor, males all have some of the same failings; and I was female, and no matter what flavor we are, we share some of the same failings. His failing was the fragility of his ego; mine, that I was about to stroke his ego at the expense of nearly everything else. I knew it was a mistake when I opened my mouth and said, “Do what you want to do, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“So, white knight, do we have a wager?” Sage asked. “I use my glamour to bespell you all, and if I can work magic on three sidhe at once, then I gain my heart’s desire.”
“Rhys,” Nicca said, “have a care.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Rhys said. “What is your heart’s desire? I need to know that before I can agree to it.”
“To fuck the princess,” he said.
Rhys shook his head. “I can’t bargain what I do not own, and it’s her body, not mine.”
“No intercourse,” I said. “I will not let you have a bid for the throne, Sage.”
He shrugged tiny shoulders. “Fine. If not the act itself, then what?”
I had to admit that weeks of feeling Sage’s glamour pour over my mind, my body, had made me curious. His personal glamour for seduction was the best I’d ever felt. Just from a small bite on my hand, and his magic, he could bring me to the point of orgasm. It would be a lie to say I hadn’t wondered if it would be even better if I allowed him to touch me. But it wasn’t that alone that suddenly made my body go still and quiet.