Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(42)

Frost leaned in to add, “It is the queen’s ring, Merry, given to you from her. It is one of the symbols that you are her heir. You must wear it.”
“I don’t mind the ring,” I said, “but with the chalice on the plane, I’m a little worried that it might up the magic on the ring as it’s done on other things.”
The two men looked at each other, and I could tell it was the first time they’d thought of it.
“Damn,” Rhys said, “that could be a problem.”
Frost looked very serious. “A problem, or a salvation. Once the ring was a great relic of power, not merely a chooser of the queen’s fertile lovers.”
“Funny,” I said, “I keep hearing that the ring is a great relic, but no one, not even my father, would tell me what it did once upon a time.” I looked from one to the other of them, and they exchanged one of those glances that said neither wanted to tell me.
“What?” I demanded.
They sighed in unison. Rhys sat back on his knees, the ring box still unopened in his hands. “Once, the ring made the Andais irresistible to any man whom the ring reacted to.”
“That doesn’t sound bad enough for the looks on your faces. What else?”
They exchanged another glance.
“Drop the other shoe, okay.”
“Shoe?” Frost asked.
“She means, just tell her,” Rhys explained. He was one of the few guards who hadn’t spent the last fifty years hiding in the hollow hills. Rhys owned a house outside the faerie mounds. A house with electricity, a television, and everything. He was probably one of the only sidhe who knew who Humphrey Bogart had been, or who Madonna was.
“You know that moment in all the Cinderella movies where she’s at the top of the stairs, and the prince looks up, stunned?” Rhys asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then he walks toward her like he has no choice.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“That irresistible,” he said.
“You mean once the ring’s reacted to you, you’re like some besotted schoolboy.”
He sighed. “Not exactly.”
“It isn’t just the men,” Frost said.
I looked from one to the other. “What do you mean?”
Sage tromped up the aisle to us. He was wearing a pair of Kitto’s dress slacks and a T-shirt that had had to be ripped up the back to accommodate his wings. His waist was tinier than Kitto’s, so he had a belt cinched tight. He wore a pair of Kitto’s jogging shoes laced as tight as they would go, because his foot was narrower than the goblin’s. He had a blanket wrapped around his upper body, because the jacket ripped up the back wouldn’t keep him warm. He needed one of the heavy woolen cloaks that the courts had designed centuries ago for the human-size, or bigger, winged fey. Nicca was also going to be a very cold boy once we landed. But we’d alerted the guards who would meet us at the airport, and they’d have cloaks. Until then, Sage huddled in his blanket as if he could already feel the cold. At his new size he had no clothes that fit him.
“What they are so delicately trying to tell you, Princess, is that once that ring was a matchmaker.”
I frowned up at him from my seat.
He sighed. “Oh, to be young again,” but he made it sound like a bad thing. “The ring can tell a fertile match, not just from touching bare skin, but from across a room, at first sight. Both the man and woman fell hopelessly in love and lived happily ever after.”“Queen Andais has never struck me as the happily-ever-after type.”
“She had control of the ring, Merry, like any good weapon, or tool. She would throw a great ball and invite all the eligible sidhe, and a few of us lesser beings to serve at table or entertain. Then she’d stand near the door, and as each woman came through, she’d touch her with the ring, and almost always someone would step forward. They would fall upon each other like lustful rams, be huge with child within a few months, marry, and be a perfect match. Once upon a time, the ring didn’t just pick out which sidhe were fertile. Oh, no, it was the happy-ever-after ring. That’s what we used to call it. Where do you think the humans got all that crap from?”
I raised eyebrows at him. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I know for a fact that most fairy tales are just that, stories.”
“But the elements of them”—he drew a pale yellow hand out of his blanket far enough to shake a finger at me—“the essentials, they got from us, from true stories.” He frowned. “Not all of us are Irish, Scottish, or anything that is part of what they call the British Isles. We hold survivors from nearly every part of Europe.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said.
“Then act like you know. Surely Prince Essus told you that some fairy tales were passed-on true stories.”
“My father told me most were simply made up.”
“Most,” Sage conceded, “but not all.” He waved his finger at me again. “If the chalice has brought back the complete power to that ring”—he pointed at the box—“then if you have your perfect match on this plane, you’ll know it, and if you don’t, you’ll know that, too.”
I looked at the little box, and suddenly it seemed more important than it had even a moment ago.
“That’s not how the queen used it,” Rhys said, “not for herself.”
“No,” Nicca said, softly, from behind us. “Once her own true love was killed in battle, she used the power of the ring to fill her bed. She was able with its help to make another sidhe elf-struck.”
I turned and looked at him. He wore slacks that were so dark brown, they were nearly black, and boots that matched underneath. His hair spilled over his naked upper body, because his wings were even larger than Sage’s, and though we’d tried to get a silk-and-spandex tee over them, in the end we’d been defeated. They were too huge, and too oddly shaped, all swirls and tail.
“I thought she would go mad when Owain died.” Doyle’s eyes were still tight shut, his hands gripping the chair arms, but his voice sounded normal enough.
“What no one had realized was that the ring had an added power,” he continued in his calm voice. “Apparently, it acted as a kind of protective magic around the couples of its choosing. It guaranteed a happy ending, by making sure no tragedy befell them.” 
Rhys nodded. “The ring had begun to fade in power—we knew that because the great matchmaking ball had failed some decades before. A sidhe would come to the door of the ballroom, and no one would step forward. But we didn’t understand that the ring had kept us safe, not just happy and fertile.”
“Until the battle of Rhodan,” Frost said, “where we lost two hundred sidhe warriors. Most of them had been wed to their love matches.”
“It was the first time in our history that a single couple that the ring had brought together had not had a happy ending,” Doyle said.
“It wasn’t just one couple,” Rhys said, “it was dozens.” He shook his head. “I’d never heard such keening.”
“Some of those left behind chose to fade,” Doyle said.
“Suicide, you mean,” Rhys said.
Doyle opened his eyes enough to glance at Rhys, then closed them again. “If you prefer.”
“I don’t prefer, it’s just the truth,” Rhys said.
Doyle shrugged. “Fine.”
Galen had drifted up behind everyone. “Did the ring ever pick more than one person for anyone?” He was dressed all in pale spring green.
“You mean once someone was widowed, did the ring ever find them someone else?” Doyle asked.
“That, or literally pick more than one person for someone. I mean, you may get a child from every match the ring made, but to be truly happy, not just magically in love, did the ring ever have trouble choosing just one person for someone?”
Doyle opened his eyes again and actually turned to look full at Galen. “Do you not believe in soul mates, one perfect love for each person?” It would have seemed an almost silly question from anyone else.
Galen glanced at me, then forced himself to look away to meet Doyle’s dark gaze. “I don’t believe in love at first sight. I believe true love takes time to build, like friendship. I believe in instant lust.”
He moved directly behind my seat. I could feel him like some warming fire. I wanted him to put his hands on the back of the seat, to be closer to that warmth. As if he’d heard me, he put his hands where I wanted them, and it was all I could do not to touch my head against his fingers. But somehow with the ring box sitting there, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be touching him when I put it on. I was pretty certain that touching no one was the best idea, until we knew if the ring had been affected by the chalice.
“Could we get the queen’s permission not to wear it until we’re at the faerie mound?” I asked.
“No,” Doyle said, “she was most insistent.”
I sighed. We did not want Andais angry with us. We so didn’t want that. “Fine, give me the box, and everybody stand back.”
“It’s not a bomb,” Rhys said, “just a ring.”
I frowned at him. “After what I’ve just heard, I’d almost prefer a bomb.” Almost, I added in my head.
I didn’t want my choices limited here and now. I was afraid of whom the ring would pick, and why. I didn’t trust magic in matters of the heart. Hell’s bells, I didn’t trust matters of the heart at all. Love was an unreliable sort of thing, sometimes.