He shook his head, and his hair caught the light more than the small diamonds he wore. No jewel could truly compete with his hair. “Uar the Cruel wed your grandmother to avoid a curse. Besaba went to your father as part of a treaty. Trust me, Merry, the shining ones do not come willingly to our beds.”
“As you should know, Jackie Frost.”
He winced but didn’t back down. He turned to her and moved forward enough to invade her personal space by American standards. When she didn’t move back, he invaded her space even by fey standards. They were almost touching, the entire lengths of their bodies. It managed to be threatening, not erotic. Frost was taller, but only by a few inches. They met each other’s eyes, opponents, evenly matched.
She looked at him, but her words were meant for me. “He was not always sidhe. Did you know that?” Her voice was calm, but held malice the way the air can hold the beginnings of a storm.
“Yes,” I said, “I know Frost’s origins.”
She glanced at me then, and surprise showed on her face. “He would not have told you willingly.”
I shook my head. “He showed me willingly with his magic. I’ve seen him dancing over the snow. I know what he is, and what he was, and it changes nothing for me.”
Her lovely face went from surprise to astonishment. She stepped away from him and took my arm. “Of course it changes how you feel. You thought you were bedding a sidhe, and you find he is merely the hoarfrost brought to life.”
I looked down at her hand, and my face must have been as unfriendly as I was beginning to feel, because she dropped away from me.
“You mean it. You truly mean it. It makes no difference to you.”
I shook my head. “None.”
She looked puzzled then. “I don’t understand that.”
“You came back into your powers as Conchenn just last night. You slept with your first sidhe in a century. You wake up this morning, and you don’t sound like Maeve Reed. You sound like just another Seelie noble. I’ve never understood why the Seelie embraced such a Victorian view of sex. It’s so un-fey-like.”
“You don’t understand, Merry, how could you? Sleeping with a human would be forgiven, but not fucking a demi-fey. My need outrode my common sense last night. I was power-drunk. This morning, I’m sober.”
“But you’re exiled from the Seelie Court, Maeve, and the Unseelie Court doesn’t care about origins, only about results. It’s not where you come from, but what you can do for us.”
She shook her head. “I can’t shield my eyes. I can’t make my glamour cover them this morning, and I don’t know why. I’ve worn this glamour for decades. It feels almost more real than my true form, but I haven’t been able to cover my eyes again. You gave me power, Merry, but you stripped me of things, too.”
“So it’s my fault that you fucked Sage?”“Maybe,” she said, but even in that one word there was doubt. She didn’t really believe it.
“It doesn’t really matter what the Seelie Court thinks of your actions, Maeve. If you ever go back there, the King of Light and Illusion will see you dead. You’re welcome to join the Unseelie Court and come with us. You can be in the heart of faerie tonight.” I watched her while I said it, and saw the hunger in her face before she hid it.
She gave me her publicity smile. “I am Seelie sidhe, Merry, not Unseelie.”
“I was once a member of the golden court,” Frost said.
“You were never a member of the court, Jackie Frost. Never!”
He gave her a cold smile. “Allow me to rephrase. I was once barely tolerated at the court of beauty and illusion. Tolerated because as others faded in power, I grew. Not through some other sidhe’s powers, but through the minds of the humans. They remembered me when they’d forgotten all of you beautiful, shining deities. Little Jakual Frosti, Jackie Frost, Jack Frost.” He stepped in close to her again, and this time she shrank back from him, just a little. “But who still speaks of Conchenn? Where are your poems, your songs? Why did they remember me, and not you?”
Her voice was small. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either, but they did.” He leaned in even closer, close enough almost, to kiss. “Me they remembered, when so many they forgot. ’Tis a mystery.”
He began to glow then as if the moon were trapped inside his body, and the light spilled out of his eyes, making them nearly as silver as his hair. The wind of his power filled the air around his body with a glowing halo of his own hair. He stood before her like some metallic vision, forged of liquid silver.
She couldn’t stand so close to his power and not respond. She’d been without the touch of sidhe for too long for that. The need would not be quenched in one night’s embrace, a few washes of power. Such hunger goes deeper than that.
His power brought hers in a golden rush, drained her hair to white-blond, and filled the air around her with the swaying of it. They were so close that their powers intermingled, yellow and silver merged in a line between them. This was not godhead, this was merely the power of the sidhe.
I watched them, and understood why my human ancestors had thought they were gods. Now they’d probably be mistaken for angels, or big men from Mars. I watched them glow at each other, and even through the light I could see the raw need on Maeve’s face. Frost didn’t look hungry, he looked satisfied.
He leaned in and pressed his shining lips to hers. The physicality of the kiss was chaste, but his power thrust into her like a spear of silver light. I saw that long shaft of power nearly bisect her golden-yellow light. For an instant her light darkened at its core, a flash of orange and red, like true flame. Then he drew back, stepped back until she glowed alone. “You would not turn me from your body, not even now with the memory of Sage’s flesh like a raw wound in your mind.”
His power folded away, leaving him pale, and still beautiful, but not a shining thing.
Maeve’s power faded a little at a time as she spoke. “I could have taken lesser fey to my bed over the last hundred years. Other exiles like me. But I did not do it, because I hoped that someday the court would see Taranis’s treachery, and when he was dead, I would be welcome back. They would forgive my human lovers, for the Seelie always did love human flesh in the dark. But you do not sully yourself with the lesser fey. You do not do that, and ever regain prominence in the high court of faerie.”
“There is more than one high court of faerie,” Frost said.
She shook her head. “No, there isn’t. Not for me.”
He shook his head. “This attitude will grow tiresome before we finish our visit to the Seelie.”
“Frost, you just don’t remember what they’re like. You have not begun to see tiresome.”
He sighed. “I remember all too well, Maeve.” He looked sad for a moment. “I do not wish to return there and watch them treat us as lesser beings.”
“Then stay here, with me.” She turned to me. “Don’t go back, Merry. Taranis wants you to visit him for a reason. He does nothing without a reason, and it will not be a reason that you will like.”
“I know,” I said.
She balled her hands into fists. “Then why go?”
“Because she will be queen of the Unseelie Court, and she cannot begin her reign by showing fear to Taranis,” Doyle said from the doorway.
“But you are afraid of Taranis,” Maeve said. “We all are.”
Doyle shrugged. He was wearing black jeans tucked into knee-high black boots, a black T-shirt, black leather jacket. Even his belt buckle was black. The only color showing was the silver earrings that graced the pointed curve of his ears. There was even a diamond stud in one earlobe. “Afraid or not, we must show a brave face.”
“Is it worth dying for? Is it worth getting Merry killed?” She pointed at me, rather dramatically, but she was an actress. Besides, the sidhe could be a dramatic lot, even without training.
“If he kills Merry, Queen Andais will kill him.”
“He released the Nameless to try to kill me so that I wouldn’t reveal his secret. Do you really think he’d hesitate at full-out war between the courts?”
“I didn’t say war, Maeve.”
“You said the queen would kill Taranis; that means war.”
Doyle shook his head. “For slaying the heir to her throne, I think Andais would do one of two things. Either challenge him to a personal duel, which Taranis will not want; or have him assassinated, discreetly.”
“You mean you would kill Taranis,” Maeve said.
“I am no longer the Queen’s Darkness.” He came to stand next to me. “I have heard that she has a new captain of her guard now.”
“Who?” Frost asked.
“Mistral,” Doyle said.
“The Bringer of Storms. But he has been long out of favor.”
Doyle nodded. “Nonetheless, that is her new champion.”
“He is no assassin, and he is never discreet. He comes like his namesake with much wind and noise.” Frost was openly disdainful.
“But Whisper is quiet enough to make up for it,” Doyle said.
Frost looked startled. Maeve was frowning. “I don’t know these names.”“They have all but faded into their names,” Doyle said. “What you once knew them by is no more.”