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 our racial 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.

I had the most amazing lovers in the world, but there were things that they denied me, and themselves. We were trying to get me pregnant, which meant that all sex ended in one way, and one way only. If it couldn't get me with child, we didn't waste the seed. I had persuaded more than one of the men to let me take him in my mouth, but none of them would finish there, no matter how much I begged or how much they wanted to. It hadn't just been intercourse that they'd been forbidden for centuries, it had been any release, even by their own touch. There were so many things besides intercourse that they missed. They would talk about it, but not do it, because it was a wasted opportunity. A waste of seed to plant inside me. A waste of a chance to be king. I realized, suddenly, that I was beginning to feel like a brood mare. Something you mated only to beget a child, not because you wanted to be there. I knew they wanted me, but not truly that they would want me if there were anywhere else they could go. Would my handsome men still want me if there were no throne to win?

Galen would, and that was part of his appeal, but the others? I wasn't certain of the others. That made my chest tight, and not in a good way. Would the handsome sidhe want the short human-looking mortal if they could have chosen elsewhere? I didn't know, and they would never tell the truth. Of course they wanted me, what else could they say? But only Galen, and Rhys, had paid me any attention when I was just an unwanted thing, barely tolerated after my father's death.

The relentless pursuit of a baby had begun to make me feel as if that was all that held them to me. But of course, it was. Once I was pregnant and we knew who the father was, they'd evaporate, go back to that cold distance. I would not have them forever. I looked at Rhys, the shortest of the Queen's Ravens, but every inch of him was muscled, hard, firm, and so strong. I turned to Nicca, and he gazed at me through a tangle of his hair, his dark eyes seemed almost to burn out through the rich, rich chocolate of his hair. I had traced my mouth and hands down the winged pattern on his back, like the world's most vibrant tattoo. He was almost too gentle for me in bed, too submissive. But he was beautiful, and for this short time he was mine, mine to do with as I saw fit. Everyone else was worried about the fact that I wasn't pregnant. I was worried, too, but I also knew that it would close doors for me, shut me away from things I wanted. While I had them, I wanted to truly have them, not just play baby-making factory.