"That means only Frost and Rhys," Galen said. He didn't sound happy.

"Only Frost until we know for certain how much power Rhys has recaptured," Doyle clarified.

"Not as much power as I'd hoped," Rhys said from the doorway. "Sage rolled me like a wino on Saturday night."

"Where is Sage?" I asked.

"It seems Conchenn was attracted by all the power. She's comforting our newest sidhe."

"I thought he'd had enough sidhe for one night," Galen said.

Rhys shrugged. "Conchenn can be very persuasive."

"How desperate she must be to take him into herself," Frost said.

"I don't know," I said. "She's made it pretty plain over the last two weeks that she'd love to have any of us in her bed."

"She's had us in her bed," Doyle said.

I looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Only to hold her while she cried herself to sleep, Doyle. That's not the kind of bed I mean."

Doyle gave a ghost of a smile. "When Maeve's grief began to abate she did make it... plain that she would have taken more active comfort."

I wondered at that smile! Perhaps Maeve had been more "active" in her attempts to seduce my Darkness than I'd known.

Rhys snorted. "Well, she's getting very active comfort right now."

"You don't understand," Frost said, "none of you."

"What don't we understand?" I asked, looking up into that coldly handsome face.

"How great her need must be to take Sage."

"He's sidhe now. Whether it's permanent, I don't know, but for tonight he's sidhe."

"It will be permanent," Frost said.

I frowned up at him. "No," I said, "you can be made sidhe for a night through magic, like Branwyn's Tears, but you're either born sidhe or you're not."

"That is not true," Frost said.

I had a sudden image of him as the beautiful child dancing across the snow. I had no problem with someone who had begun "life" as something other than flesh becoming sidhe. It seemed somehow right. But lesser fey, or humans, did not suddenly become sidhe. They just didn't.

"Once we brought sidhe to us like harvesting the fruits of the forest," Frost said. "They simply came to us."

"My father never spoke of such a thing." I didn't mean to imply that I didn't believe him, but doubt was in my voice.

"It was two thousand years, or more, ago," Doyle said. "We lost such abilities with the first weirding. Many of us refuse to speak of things that are truly lost."

"I think it is not so lost as we've been led to believe," Frost said.

"No one has deceived us," Doyle said.

Frost gave him a long look. "It was the Seelie Court that lost us the chalice, Doyle. They who stripped us of much of what we were."

Doyle shook his head. "I will not have this argument with you, or any of you," he said, looking at Rhys and Galen.

Galen held his hands out wide. "I've never had this argument with anyone."

"You're too young," Doyle said.

"Then can you explain it for those of us under five hundred?"

Doyle gave a small smile. "Most of the great relics that simply vanished were Seelie relics. The Unseelie relics remained, though lessened in power. Some believed that the Seelie court angered the Goddess, or the God, to lose such favor."

"We believed that they had done something so terrible that the face of deity turned from them," Frost said.

I looked at him. "I assume you believe that."

He nodded, and his face was like some beautiful sculpture, too handsome to be real, too arrogant to touch. He had retreated behind the cold mask he'd used for centuries in the Unseelie Court. I understood now that it was a form of protection, camouflage, if you will, to keep his pain hidden. I'd peeled back some of those layers and found what he'd hidden. Unfortunately, we seemed stuck at the moody, pain-exploration stage. I was looking forward to drilling through to another layer. There had to be more to him than mood. There had to be, didn't there?

"Many believe that," he said.

Doyle shrugged. "I know only that we diminished, and we came to the Western Lands. Beyond that, I know nothing for certain." He gave Frost a fierce look. "And neither do you."

Frost opened his mouth to speak, but Doyle cut him off with a gesture. "No, Frost, we will not reopen this wound. Not tonight. Is it not enough that you will share her body until we are sure the rest of us are safe?"

"I'm going back to bed," Rhys said, and it was abrupt enough that we all looked at him. "I want no part of this old argument, and after Sage's glamour took me so easily, I don't trust that I am truly Cromm Cruach. If I am not a god, then I'm too dangerous to be around Merry." He blew me a kiss. "Good night, sweet princess, we have to pack in the morning and catch a plane to St. Louis. So don't all of you stay up talking all night." He wagged a finger at us and left.

Galen looked at all of us. "I might as well go, too." He gave me a look of such pain. "Whatever is happening, I hope we clear it up soon."

I called after him, "Check on Kitto. This much noise should have woken him."

He nodded and left, carefully not looking back, as if he didn't want to see.

"To your room as well, Nicca," Doyle said.

"I am not a child to be sent to my room, Doyle."

We all blinked at him, because Nicca never spoke back to Doyle— really, to anyone. "It seems you have gained nerve with your wings," Doyle said.

Nicca gave him a very unfriendly look. "If you leave with me, then I will go."

"Are you implying that Doyle is trying to get rid of you so he can have me to himself?" I asked.

Nicca just kept that unfriendly look on Doyle.

Frost came out of his deep funk long enough to look at Nicca. "Nicca, it is I who ask Doyle to stay."

Nicca sent that dark look to Frost. "Why?"

"Because I trust him to keep Meredith safe."

Nicca crawled off the bed and stood before us, very straight, a slender, muscled brown vision framed with a fall of thick wild hair, and those wings. The wings seemed to fascinate me more than they should. It wasn't that they weren't lovely, but they drew my eye, my attention. Something wanted me to touch them, to roll myself along the brilliance of them, and cover my body in the brush of multicolored dust.

Doyle touched my arm, and it made me jump. My pulse was suddenly in my throat, and I didn't remember why. "You must leave tonight, Nicca. You fascinate her the way snakes fascinate small birds. I do not know what the cost would be to end this hold you seem to have on her, but I will not risk her life to find out."

Nicca closed his eyes, shoulders slumping, but that brushed the ends of his wings against the floor and he had to straighten his shoulders again. He used one slender hand to brush the fall of hair from his face, so that it fell like a deep auburn waterfall down one side of his body. "You are right, my captain." Something close to pain crossed his face. "I will see if there is another bed open for the night. If we keep ruining bedrooms, we're going to run out." When he was even with me, I reached out to brush his wings, and Doyle grabbed my hand, holding me back against his body, a hand on either of my wrists.

Nicca gazed back over his shoulder at me, then at Doyle. "We will speak of this later, Darkness." Again, it didn't seem like Nicca's voice, and even the look in his eyes was something I'd never seen.

Doyle actually took a step back, holding me against him. "Gladly, but not tonight."

Frost had moved up beside Doyle, his own problems forgotten in the wonder of seeing Nicca threaten Doyle. "Leave now, Nicca," Frost said.

Nicca turned his gaze on the other man. "I will speak to you, too, Killing Frost, if you wish it."

"Don't challenge them, Nicca, please don't," I said.

He turned that look on me, and his gaze went up and down my body. There was something in his look that was almost frightening, as if he wasn't thinking just about sex, but something more permanent. It was a look that held ownership.