I touched her shoulder, and she cried harder. "Did Sage hurt you?" I asked, and thought it was stupid even as I said it.

She raised her head enough to give me a tearful version of her how-dare-you face. She said in a snuffly voice, "He could not hurt a princess of the Seelie Court."

I patted her shoulder. "Of course not, I apologize for saying it. But if he didn't hurt you, then why are you crying about it? The sex couldn't have been that bad."

She sobbed harder, covering her face with her hands. I think she said, "It was wonderful," but it was too muffled for me to be certain.

I still didn't understand why she was so upset, but the pain was real. I hugged her shoulders, laid my cheek against her hair. "If it was wonderful, then why are you crying?"

She said something, but it was lost in all the crying. "I'm sorry, Maeve, I couldn't understand you."

"It shouldn't have been wonderful."

I was glad she couldn't see my face because I probably looked as puzzled as I felt. "It was your first taste of sidhe flesh in a century. Of course it was wonderful."

She lowered her hands and turned to look at me, so that I had to stand back to give her room. "You don't understand," she said. "He isn't sidhe. It's a lie, an illusion, like the apple tree in my house. It was gone this morning."

"The tree?"

She nodded.

I frowned; I couldn't help it. "But I touched it, the leaves, the bark, the blossoms. I smelled the scent. It was real. Illusions can hide things, or make one thing look like another, but illusion can't bring something out of nothing. There has to be something real for the illusion to attach to."

"Normally, yes, but the sidhe once could build an illusion so solid that you could walk across it. Do you think that stories of castles in the air are fairy tales, Merry? Once the sidhe could do that. We could create something out of nothing. Things made of pure magic that were as real as anything in existence."

"So it was a real tree," I said, slowly.

"Real while the magic lasted, yes. If there had been apples on the tree, you could have eaten them and they would have filled your belly. It was the way we had of making our few fey animals feed us again and again. They were magic, and that could be renewed."

"I know there is such a thing as illusion that is real, but my father said that such talents were lost long ago."

She nodded. "They were."

"So that is beginning to return to us, along with other magicks?"

"Yes." She smiled then, a watery version of the smile that had launched a thousand blockbuster movies, years before the term blockbuster meant anything. She took my hand in hers. "And you have brought that back to us, Merry, you and your magic."

I shook my head. "No, not me, the Goddess. I couldn't do any of this without divine help."

"You are too modest," she said.

"Maybe," I said, and I couldn't help myself, "though of course when you have such bad taste in clothes, it's hard not to be humble."

She wouldn't meet my eyes for a moment. "I am sorry, but I wanted to hurt you."

I squeezed her hand then took my hand out of hers. "Why?"

"Because I blamed you for Sage seducing me last night."

"Rhys made it sound like you were doing more of the seducing," I said.

She actually blushed. "Truth. Hard, but the truth. I saw him shining in the dark. He glowed like a golden moon. I..." She turned so I couldn't see her face, put her back to me. "I knew that he was not one of your men. I thought he would not refuse me, and he didn't."

"You seduced him. It was wonderful. And now you're having morning-after regrets?" I said.

"Silly, isn't it."

"The fey don't regret sex, Maeve."

"You've never truly been Seelie Court, Merry. You don't know what the rules are there."

"I know that anyone who isn't pure-blooded is less, no matter her talents or magicks."

She turned in the chair enough to look at me again. "Yes, yes."

"I didn't think you held with that anymore."

"Neither did I."

I tried to reason it out. "You're upset because you enjoyed being with someone who wasn't pure sidhe?"

"I'm upset because Sage is not a prince of either court. He's a demi-fey whom your magic has brought into something more, but he is not sidhe, Merry. He will never be truly sidhe. A hundred years from now, even with his tricolored eyes, he will not be sidhe."

"You see how they are." It was Frost from the doorway. Neither of us had heard him come up, and we both jumped.

He wore a standard white dress shirt, tie, and dress slacks, but the tie was silver and only a shade less bright than the hair that shimmered around his shoulders. His slacks were dark grey, thick material, cut well so the pants managed to be roomy in the front and over the thighs but form-fitting from behind. I'd admired the view earlier. A silver-and-diamond tie bar and matching cufflinks glittered as he moved into the room. His usual loafers had given way to dark grey boots, mostly hidden by the generous cut of pant cuffs.

"How who are?" I asked.

"The Seelie." He said Seelie as if it was a dirty word. The way most Seelie said Unseelie.

Maeve stood up from the table. "How dare you."

"How dare I what?" he asked as he moved toward us.

"How dare you insult the Seelie."

"They would say the same of us," Frost said, and there was a level of anger in him that I wasn't sure of. I hoped this new anger wasn't his answer to the pouting. Trading one problem for another was not what I'd had in mind.

Maeve opened her shapely mouth, then closed it. She couldn't call him a liar, because it was true. She finally settled for, "I don't know what to say," in a much more subdued voice.

Frost turned to me. "She'd never have touched Sage if she was still part of the golden court."

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "I'm proof that more than one Seelie will sully her body with those not of her court."

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."