"The Goddess is using Merry as a messenger," Rhys said. He frowned and shook his head. "No, Merry is like the flesh version of the chalice. It fills with grace and pours upon us."

"I had nothing to do with you coming back into your powers," I said, hands on hips.

Rhys smiled. "Maybe not."

"You were in the room," Doyle said.

I looked at him and shook my head. "No, Doyle, what happened with Maeve and Frost was different from what happened to Rhys."

Doyle stood up, brushing his hands down the front of his unbuttoned jeans, as if he were wiping the feel of something off his fingers. Wiping what away? Power, magic, the feel of the silk? I almost asked, then Sage spoke.

"Look at my eyes, Darkness. Look at my eyes, and see what our lovely Merry has done." Sage walked around the bed so Doyle could see the eyes up close.

"Rhys told me that your eyes are tricolored."

Sage's wings sagged a little, as if he were disappointed that his news had been spoiled. "I am sidhe now, Darkness, what do you think of that?"

A smile curled Doyle's lips, a smile I hadn't seen before. If it had been anyone else, I'd have said it was a cruel smile. "Have you tried to grow small since it happened?"

Sage frowned at him. "What does that matter?"

Doyle shrugged, and that smile deepened. "Have you tried to shift your form since your eyes changed? It is a simple question."

Sage went very still as he stood between Doyle and me, then I saw his wings shiver, like flowers caressed by a strong wind. He shivered once, twice, then he threw back his head and wailed. Wordless, speechless, a hopeless, wrenching sound.

It wasn't until the last echoes of that scream faded from the room that I could move. "What's wrong?" I reached around his wings to touch his shoulder.

He jerked away from me. "Do not touch me!" He was backing away, toward the door. Frost appeared in the door behind him, and Sage began to back away from him, too. It was as if he was afraid of all of us.

"What's wrong?" I asked again.

"Being sidhe comes with a price for those with wings," Doyle said, and there was a note of satisfaction in his voice. I'd always known there was some bitter history between the two of them, but I'd never realized just how bitter until that moment. I'd never seen Doyle be petty before.

Sage pointed at Nicca, who was still kneeling on the bed. "He knows nothing of wings. He has never flown above a spring meadow, or tasted how sweet and clean the wind can be." He pounded his fist into his bare chest. "But I know! I know!"

"I'm missing something," I said. "What difference does being sidhe mean for Sage?"

"You have stolen my wings from me, Merry," he said, and there was a look on his face, of such unbearable loss, that I moved toward him. I had to hold him. Had to touch him. Had to try to take that look from his eyes.

He held a pale yellow hand out toward me. "No, no more, Merry. I have had enough of the sidhe for one night."

Rhys cleared his throat, and the noise seemed to startle Sage. He turned to find Rhys almost behind him, having walked across the room to stand near the mirror. Sage looked wildly around the room as if we'd trapped him and he was seeking a way out. It was true that Frost was near the only door, but he wasn't trapped. Not in any way that I understood.

Sage pointed a finger at Nicca. "Do you know what we would call him if he had gotten his wings as a child?"

Everyone gave their version of blank face, though it looked like everything from humor to arrogance. It was Rhys who said, "I give up. What would you call Nicca if he'd gotten his wings as a kid?"

"Cursed." Sage spat the word as if it was the worst thing he could ever call anyone.

"Cursed, how?" I asked.

"He has wings but he cannot fly, Merry. He is too heavy for the wings of a moth to carry him aloft" —he smacked his fist into his chest—"as I am too heavy for mine now."

"What's happened?" Galen asked from the doorway. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes. His bedroom was the farthest away from this room.

Before any of us could answer, Sage marched to him, brushing past Frost. "Look, look at what has become of me!"

Galen gaped at Sage. "What... your eyes."

Sage pushed past him, snarling one last phrase over his winged shoulder. "Wicked, wicked sidhe." And he was gone.

CHAPTER 15

"Rhys, go with him," Doyle said. "See that he comes to no harm."

Rhys went without a word. He was still nude, as was Sage. I had a moment to hope that there wasn't anyone outside the wall with a night-vision camera. Then I realized that bad publicity was the least of our worries. The fact that I'd thought of it at all proved that I'd been too long away from faerie, too long out among the humans.

"What harm could Sage come to?" I asked.

"His own," Doyle said.

"You mean he'll harm himself because he can't fly."

Doyle nodded. "I have known other winged fey to let themselves fade and die when they lost their wings."

"I meant him no harm."

"The sidhe are at their most dangerous when they mean us no harm," Frost said, and his voice held a bitterness that I'd never heard before.

"It's my night," Nicca said. He hadn't taken part in the conversation until now, and when I looked into his brown eyes what I saw tightened things low in my body. His need was so raw, and it wasn't the gentle need that he usually held, but something far more fierce.

"Look at you," Doyle said. "You are still power-besotted. I think the chalice is not done with you yet, Nicca, and I fear what that would do to our Merry."

Nicca shook his head, eyes still on me, as if nothing else were truly real. "My night."

Galen had come into the room and was gazing at Nicca's wings. "Wow, that's new."

"There are many things new tonight," Doyle said, and he sounded wary.

Nicca ignored them all. "My night." He held his hand out to me.

"No," Doyle said, and he took my hand and led me back away from the bed.

"She's mine tonight," Nicca said, and for a moment I thought we'd see a fight, or at least an argument.

"Technically, it was Rhys's night," Doyle said, "and you have both had your pleasure."

"If Rhys has had his night," Frost said, "then it is your night, Doyle."

Nicca balled his hands into fists. "No, we aren't finished." And his voice was like something that should call you from deep within the ground. He might have had wings, but his energy was all earth.

Doyle moved me behind him so that he formed a barrier between me and Nicca where he still knelt on the bed, those wings draped behind him like some magical cloak. "Listen to yourself, Nicca. I do not know what the Goddess has planned for you, but until we are sure it will not harm Merry, we will be cautious. Your godhead, or whatever, is not worth our Merry's life."

I peeked around Doyle's smooth dark arm and watched Nicca fight for control. It was as if something else wanted this, and that something else didn't necessarily care what Nicca wanted, or did not want.

He ended up on all fours, those wings flowing back along his body. His hair spilled across his face and over the foot of the bed like thick brown water. He took a breath that trembled along his back, shivered the rainbows of his wings. He raised his face up to the light with a look almost of pain, but he nodded. "Doyle's right, Doyle's right," he muttered over and over, as if to convince not just himself but whatever was riding him.

Doyle stepped forward and laid a gentle hand against Nicca's face. "I am sorry, my brother, but Merry's safety must come first."

Nicca nodded, almost as if he was unaware that Doyle had touched him. His eyes weren't focused on anything in the room.

Doyle moved back from the bed, using his body to move me backward, as if he still didn't trust Nicca. "No one who has not become a god can sleep with Merry until we understand what the chalice and the Goddess want."