He frowned. "She's not elf-struck."

"She's not addicted to us, no, but her reaction tells me that she doesn't want to lose her special place among us. She doesn't want to lose the chance of touching sidhe flesh even if it's only in passing."

"Why does knowing that matter?" he asked.

"It means that we have leverage with Madeline that we didn't before, simple as that."

"That's not simple," he said.

I looked into his so-honest face, and the near pain it caused him to watch me outthink him, outmaneuver him. I might never need the knowledge that Madeline valued her job enough to be nice to me; but then again, I might. Every bit of knowledge, every bit of weakness and strength, pettiness, cruelty, or kindness, of everyone, could be the very piece of information you needed to survive. I had learned not to undervalue anyone's allegiance, even if it was allegiance simply from the need to cover all bets. It wasn't that Madeline would be cruel to Cel when he was freed, but she'd be nice to both of us now, and that was a start.

CHAPTER 21

"Well handled," Barinthus said, with a smile, "but the publicist is right about one thing. Time grows short." He motioned another guard forward.

He was tall, slender, and looked tanned to a lovely brown, but it wasn't a tan. Carrow always looked like a summer-browned hunter with his brown hair streaked with summer gold like any human who'd been outdoors day after day. His hair was cut short and simply. He looked very human until you reached his eyes. They were both brown and green, but not hazel, no. They were green like a forest stirred by the wind, so that one breeze turned the world to sparkling green and another deep and dark.

With most of the sidhe I'd had to ask what kind of deity they'd been, but like Barinthus, Carrow screamed what he had been. I looked up into the face of one of the great hunters.

Carrow's smile brought one of my own. He had been the guard whom my father entrusted to teach me the ways of bird and beast. When I'd entered college for my biology degree, Carrow had actually visited me and sat in on some of my classes. He'd wanted to know if they'd learned anything new since last he checked. In most classes, no, but he'd been fascinated by microbiology, parasitology, and Introduction to Genetics. He was also the only sidhe to ask me what I'd do with my degree if I hadn't been Princess Meredith.

No one else had cared, or rather they couldn't conceive of anything but court politics. When you can be a princess, why would you want to do anything else?

Carrow started to drop to one knee, but I caught his arm and drew him into a hug.

He gave his easy laugh and hugged me tight.

"I was surprised to hear you were a detective in a big city." He drew back enough to see my face. "I thought you'd run away to the wilderness and play with the animals, or at the very least a zoo."

"I'd need at least a master's degree for wildlife biology, and most zoos, too."

"But a detective?"

I shrugged. "I thought the queen would check anyplace I could use my degree. I didn't even tell anyone I had a biology degree at the detective agency."

"I hate to interrupt old home week," a new voice said, "but has the ring reacted to Carrow, or not?"

I turned and found a guard I was not pleased to see. "Amatheon," I said and I couldn't hide, even in that one word, how unhappy I was to see him.

"Don't worry, Princess, I'm just as unhappy to see you as you are to see me." He turned his head, and the winter sunlight drew copper and gold highlights from his red hair. The shoulder-length waves bounced as he strode toward me.

"Then why are you here?" I asked.

"The queen ordered it," he said, as if that explained everything.

"Why?" I asked, because it explained nothing.

He moved gracefully in the tailored leather coat. It fit his upper body like a glove but flared out around his hips and legs so it was like a leather robe. The black leather made his hair richer, brighter, like copper flame. When he was close enough for me to see his eyes, I had that moment of dizziness that his eyes always gave me. His pupils were petaled layers of red, blue, yellow, and green, like a multicolored flower.

"You're lovely to look at, Amatheon. To say anything else would be lying."

His handsome face smirked at me.

"But pretty is as pretty does, and you are Cel's friend, last I knew. I don't think he'd take kindly to you protecting me, let alone anything else."

Doyle had moved in front of me, just enough to keep Amatheon from closing the distance between us. Frost had moved up on the other side of me, as if there were any question of Amatheon getting past Doyle. Amatheon ignored them both, all his attention meant for me. "Prince Cel does not rule the Unseelie Court, not yet. Queen Andais has made that clear to me." The smirk was gone when he said that, and the arrogance slipped a bit. I wondered how Andais had chosen to make her point so terribly clear to him. I trusted Aunt Andais to choose a painful method, and for once I was glad at the thought of one of the guards suffering. Petty, but then Amatheon had been one of the sidhe who'd made my childhood unpleasant.

"Good of you to remember that," Doyle said.

Amatheon's eyes flicked to him, but came back to rest on me. "Trust me, Princess, I wouldn't be here if I had a choice."

"Then go," I said.

He shook his head, sending his hair sliding over the leather of his shoulders. The last time I'd seen him, the hair had been to his knees. Most sidhe took it as a point of pride to have hair that had never known a blade. In fact, fey who were not sidhe were forbidden from having hair to their ankles.

I gazed up at him. "You've cut your hair since last I saw you."

"As you've cut yours," he said, but his face was sullen.

"I sacrificed my hair to hide the fact that I was sidhe. Why did you cut yours?"

"You know why," he said, and he fought to keep his face behind its arrogant mask.

"No, I don't."

Anger broke through his mask, tore it away, and I watched something close to rage in his flower-petal eyes. He balled his hands into his shoulder-length hair. "I refused to come here today. I refused to be one of your men. The queen reminded me that refusing her anything is not wise." He forced himself to relax, and the effort was visible and near painful to behold.

"Why is it that important that you get a chance in my bed?" I asked.

He shook his head, and the movement of his newly shortened hair seemed to bother him. He ran his hands through the thick waves, shook his head again, and said, "I don't know. That is the truth of it. I asked, and she told me I didn't need to know. I just needed to do what I was told." The anger was mere sullenness now, showing the edge of fear that had been there all along.

He looked at me, and he wasn't angry with me; he just seemed tired and beaten. "So here I am, and the queen wishes me to touch the ring. If it does not react to my skin, then after we deliver you safely to the court, I am free to leave this guard detail, but if it sings to my touch..." He looked down at the floor, and his hair spilled around his face. He looked up abruptly, combing his fingers through the hair to keep it back. "I must touch the ring. I must see what happens. I have no choice, and neither do you." He sounded so unhappy that it made me like him better than I ever had before. Not like him enough to take him to my bed, but I always had trouble hating people if they showed me something that wasn't hateable inside them. Andais had seen that as a weakness; my father had seen it as a strength. I still hadn't decided.

Without taking his gaze from Amatheon, Doyle asked, "Do you wish to allow it?"

Frost moved closer to me so that his coat enveloped me like a cloud.