Standing, the bird was almost as tall as I was. I’d never been that close to anything that large that was supposed to be a bird. It cocked a head at me, and I saw those black-on-black eyes, and strangely, the look was still Doyle.
Rhys had regained his feet. “An eagle, cool. I never knew you were a bird.”
The ebony beak opened, flashing paler colors. “I have never been this.” The words sounded even higher-pitched yet, as if it were a voice meant for eagle screams, not human speech.
No one tried to get closer this time. No one tried to touch him. He folded his wings in against his body for only a moment, then they spread wide again, and the thick breast opened, like a coat, and Doyle stepped out in a swirl of darkness that moved like smoke but smelled like mist.
He stood naked before us for a second, then collapsed slowly to the floor. I would have rushed forward, but Frost still held me tight. It was Rhys and Nicca who reached his side first. Doyle managed to catch himself on one hand.
“Are you hurt, Captain?” Nicca asked.
Rhys was grinning. “That was a hell of a show.”
I think Doyle tried to smile, but his arm began to tremble and slowly collapse, until he lay on the carpet on his side. Strangely, along with his clothes, the tie to his braid was gone, and that long plait of hair was starting to unwind across the floor.
“Let go of me, Frost, now!”
“You want to go to him,” he said, and there was such sorrow in his voice.
I looked up at him. “Yes, as I’d want to go to any of you who was hurt.”
He shook his head. “No, Doyle is special to you.”
I frowned up at him. “Yes, as you are.”
He shook his head again. He leaned over, whispered against my face. “Since he entered your bed, you have distanced yourself from me.” He drew back and let me go. I watched him pull himself upright until he was the tall, handsome Frost. Imposing, impersonal, arrogant of face and bearing. But the look in his grey eyes was hurt, angry.
I shook my head. “I do not have time for this.”
He just looked away as if I weren’t there.
I turned to the others. “Rhys, is he going to be all right?”
“Yeah, he’s just tired. I think from that first change. He fought like a son of a bitch.”
Doyle’s voice came tired but clear. “The less I fought, the easier it became.”
“Good. Get him into the bed, so he can rest,” I said, and turned back to Frost. I looked at him while I said, “Everybody out, except Doyle, Rhys, and Frost.”
They all looked at each other. “Just do it, guys. Now.” I was tired, too. A tired that went beyond the physical. And I’d had enough. Enough of my beautiful Frost. I’d decided to resort to brutal honesty, because I’d tried everything else.There must have been something in my voice, because no one argued with me. How refreshing.
When the door closed behind them and Rhys was helping Doyle into the bed, I gave my full attention to Frost. “Normally, I would do this in private, but none of you believes me, most of the time, without one of the other guards to back me up. I don’t want any misunderstandings, Frost.”
Frost gave me a very cold look. “I understand that Doyle will be in your bed tonight.”
I shook my head. “Frost, it is not Doyle being in my bed that’s made me pull back from you. It’s you who’s made me pull back.”
He looked away, as if he was at full attention but didn’t see anything.
I slapped his chest, hard, because I couldn’t reach his face. It startled him, made him look at me, and for a moment I saw something real in those eyes again, but only for a moment. Then he was all cold arrogance again.
“This pouting has got to stop.”
He gave me cold eyes. “I do not pout.”
“Yes, you do.” I turned to the two men at the bed.
Rhys was tucking Doyle under the covers. He nodded. “You do pout.”
Doyle lay heavily on the pillows, as if raising his head would have been an effort. “You do, my old friend, you do.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Frost said, “any of you.”
“Something hurts your feelings, you pout. You perceive that something threatens your place in my affections, you pout. Things don’t go your way in a debate, you pout.”
“I do not pout.”
“You’re pouting, right now, this very second.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and a moment of puzzlement showed through. “I do not see this as pouting. Children pout, warriors do not.”
“Then what do you call this?” I asked, hands on hips.
He seemed to think a moment, then said, “I merely react to what you do. If you prefer Doyle to me, then there is nothing I can do. I have given you the best of me, and it is not good enough.”
“Love isn’t just about sex, Frost. I need you not to do this.”
“Not to do what?” he asked.
“This”—I poked a finger against his chest—“this cold distant facade. I need you to be real, yourself.”
“You do not like me when I am myself.”
“That’s not true. I love you when you are yourself, but you have to stop letting everything hurt your feelings. You have to stop pouting.” I stepped back enough so I could look up into his face without straining my neck. “I spend so much energy worrying how you’re going to take something. I don’t have the energy to spare to tiptoe around your feelings, Frost.”
He moved away from the wall. “I understand.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Leaving. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
I turned to the two men. “Help me out here, please?”
“She doesn’t want you to leave,” Rhys said. “She loves you. She loves you more than she loves me.” He didn’t sound hurt; it was more a statement of fact. Since it was the truth, I didn’t try to argue. “But every time you pull the cold, arrogant act, Merry pulls away. When you pout, she pulls away.”
“The cold arrogant act, as you put it, is what saved my sanity with the queen.”
“I am not the queen, Frost,” I said. “I don’t want a toy in my bed. I want a king at my side. I need you to be a grownup.” It should have been silly to tell someone hundreds of years my senior to grow up, but it was necessary. Sadly.
Doyle spoke from against the pillows, and his voice held the effort that speech cost him. “If you could curb your emotions, she would love you and no other. If you could but understand, there would be no contest.”
I wasn’t entirely sure of that, but saying so out loud would not help. So I let it go.
“And what matters who she loves, if there is no child,” Frost said.
“It seems to matter to you a great deal.” Doyle closed his eyes and seemed asleep.
Frost frowned. “I do not know how not to do this. It is a habit of centuries.”
“Let’s do this,” I said. “Every time you start to pout, I just tell you to stop. You try to stop when it’s brought to your attention.”
“I don’t know.”
“Just try,” I said, “that’s all I’m asking. Just try.”
A very solemn look passed over his face, then he nodded. “I will try. I still do not agree that I pout, but I will try not to do it.”
I hugged him. When I pulled away, he was smiling. “For that look in your eyes, I would slay armies. What is a little emotion, to that?”
Anyone who thought that slaying armies was easier than fixing your own internal emotional mess hadn’t had enough therapy. But I didn’t say that out loud, either.
Chapter 17
In the morning the golden goddess of hollywood was crying at our kitchen table. It might have been baby hormones, but then again, it might not. Maeve liked to pretend that it was Gordon who’d been the brains of the two, but the truth was that when she wanted to, she had a very good mind. A logical mind, a dangerous mind. She was trickier to deal with when she was thinking than when she was seducing. Crying meant either real emotion, or she was about to try to manipulate me. I didn’t want her sad, but I sort of hoped she was, because I didn’t want all her skills directed at me. She was the goddess Conchenn again, and there had been men and women greater than me over the centuries who hadn’t been able to tell her no.
I stood in the doorway, debating a retreat, but I hesitated too long. She raised her head, and showed me tear-streaked, lightning-kissed eyes. Her hair was the yellow-blond of the glamour she usually wore, but her eyes were real. Of course, being Seelie sidhe, her skin was still flawless. She didn’t have the decency to get blotchy or hollow-eyed. Though she was dabbing at her nose with a Kleenex, her nose wasn’t the least bit red. If I sobbed my nose got red, and eventually my eyes would get red. Maeve could probably have cried for a hundred years and still have looked this perfect.
She dabbed at her eyes. “I see you’re dressed to go.” Her voice showed the tears that her skin did not. She sounded thick and snuffling, as if she had been crying for hours. Somehow the voice sounding less than perfect made me feel better. Probably shallow of me, or maybe even insecure, but true.She’d said I was dressed to go, not that I looked good. Which was a roundabout insult among us. If a fey has taken time with her wardrobe, then it was an insult not to compliment her, unless of course you thought she’d failed in her choices. I had taken care with my wardrobe today. I knew that not only would I be seeing my aunt, the queen, in the outfit, but there would be reporters as well. Every time we left Maeve’s house there seemed to be reporters.