"They'll dredge it all up, Doyle. They'll dredge it all up to explain Jenkins."

Frost touched his shoulder. "She may be right."

Doyle shook his head. "Your safety comes before anything else."

"There are different kinds of safety," Frost said. There was no trace of the petulant child I'd come to dread. Frost was acting like a grownup, and I was so happy to see it that I hugged him around the waist. It felt incredibly good to hold him that close. I hadn't realized until that moment how anxious I was.

"What do you want us to do?" Doyle said, and his voice was gentler.

Magic prickled across my skin. The three of us looked up, and all the other sidhe were searching the room. It was a spell, but from where, and for what?

One of the policemen in front of the dais stumbled, as if he'd tripped over nothing. I saw the man turn toward us, saw the wide surprise in his eyes.

Frost turned, giving his back to the man, and beginning to move me away. I'd see the pictures later, but when it was actually happening I saw nothing but Frost's shirt, felt nothing but him picking me up, starting to run. A gunshot exploded behind us, and another so close behind that it was almost one shot. Frost threw himself on the floor. I felt his body pushing us down, but could see nothing but the white of his shirt, the flare of his grey jacket. I could smell the shots like a burning in the air.

There was no sound. The roar of the guns so close in such a small place with such good acoustics had robbed me of my hearing, temporarily, I hoped. I saw feet I thought were Galen's before I felt the heavier weight as he threw himself on top of Frost, and formed a living shield around me. More weight, but I couldn't see who, not even to guess.

The first thing that let me know I wasn't deaf was the thick beat of Frost's heart against my ear. After that my hearing came back in stages, like a broken video, bits of shouting. So much shouting. Screams.

I only know what happened because of the video later, and the pictures. The video that we would see over and over again on every newscast. The officer with his gun pointed at Frost's back, trying to kill me, as if he couldn't see that Doyle had a gun pointed at his chest from less than two feet away. The police officers on either side with their guns out, looking around, not understanding that one of their own was the problem. One had his gun pointed at Doyle. The bespelled officer fired, as another officer finally understood that something had gone terribly wrong and smashed into the first one's shoulder. But Doyle had fired before the first bullet had gone wide and pierced the wall behind us. The police officers rode the bespelled cop to the ground, where he was already wounded by Doyle's shot. There would be pictures of Rhys and Nicca behind Doyle with guns in one hand and swords in the other, and Barinthus and the others forming a wall around us.

While it was happening, I was crushed under the white and grey of Frost's body while my hearing returned—and what I heard mostly was screams. Something warm dropped onto my forehead, something liquid and heavier than sweat. I couldn't move my head enough to look up, but another drop joined the first to trickle down my skin, and I caught that whiff of metallic sweetness that was blood.

I tried to push him off me, tried to ask how badly he was hurt, but it was like trying to move a mountain. I managed to say, "Frost, Frost, you're hurt."

If he heard me, he ignored me. Everyone ignored me. It was as if I were strangely nonessential to the events. The man had tried to kill me, but now it was the police and the bodyguards who were on stage, not me.

I heard Major Walters bellow, "Get her out of here." The cry was taken up, like a battle cry. "Get her out of here, get her out of here," so many voices yelling, so many male voices yelling it.

The weight above me lifted, and I saw the lights of the room again. More voices, "My God, she's hurt!" The cry was taken up again, "She's hurt, she's hurt, the princess is hurt." There would be a picture of me later with blood running down my face, but it wasn't my blood. I think I was the only one who knew that at first.

Kitto was still kneeling close to me, and I knew that he had been one of the bodies in my living shield. Barinthus held down his hand to me. "Merry-girl." He hadn't called me that in years. I took his hand while Galen tried to look at Frost's shoulder and the bigger man shrugged him off. It never occurred to me that Barinthus hadn't touched the ring in the other room.

His hand met the ring as he pulled me up, and he froze in midmotion, a look of startlement on his face. The guards who were new looked around for another threat, because they felt the magic. My guards felt it, but they knew it wasn't another attempt on my life. I heard Frost say, "Consort save us," and Rhys say, "Shit." Then the room was gone, swallowed in a blink of magic. The water was warm as a bath, warm as blood. Barinthus was beside me, helping me tread water. The nearly invisible webbing between his fingers had flared to life, one strong arm stroking the water, while the other held me against his body. We were both nude, and it had been the warmth of the water that had kept me from noticing. Which meant the water was the exact temperature of my body. I could feel his legs moving, keeping us afloat, keeping us in the middle of a vastness of water that was as blue as his hair, as green as his hair, as grey as his hair. His hair streamed down his shoulders into the water, and where it touched, it was as if each strand became a current, like a melting of color that swam away from us, until I couldn't tell what was hair and what was water, and still his body was solid against mine. Part of his body grew more solid as our bodies bumped against one another in the warm, warm water.

"Merry," he said, "what have you done?"

I opened my mouth but it wasn't my words that came out: "I bring you back your ocean, Manannan Mac Lir, come take it from me."

He touched my mouth with his hands, and for a moment only his strong legs kept us afloat. "Do not say that name, for I am not he. I have not been that for long years." He looked stricken, as if hearing the name had hurt him somehow.

I realized in a distant way that I wasn't entirely alone in my body, nor entirely in control of it. The thought should have frightened me, but it didn't. The power was so so soothing, so safe. It was like being wrapped in peace.

"Come, drink of me, and hold me to your lips." My body entwined around his, wrapping us together in the warm water. It was as if I'd known that he would try to push me away, but there was no way to break free now. My small, rounded arms were like gentle chains, my legs around his waist solid as the mountain's root. Strangely, I knew that he could not free himself of me. He could deny me, but he could not cast me aside. My body's weight forced him to glide onto his back, his head only barely above the quiet waves.

His eyes flashed white. "You are not Merry."

"I am Merry," and I knew it was true.

"But not Merry alone." His arms and legs fanned the water, pressing parts of him against me in a way that we had never been.

"No, not Merry, alone."

"Danu," he said, and his voice was the rushing whisper of waves on some distant shore.

I slid my hands behind his neck and raised my body along his, until my mouth hovered over his, and the tip of him caressed against the opening of my body. The feel of him touching the edge of me brought me back into myself, chased her soothing presence back, just enough. I said, "Barinthus."

"Merry, do you agree to this? The Goddess and God mean well, but I have seen them use people, and I no longer believe that the end justifies the means."

I raised back enough to gaze down at him. He floated underneath me, his hair flowing out in a halo of blue, green, grey, navy, turquoise, and his face caught like a flower in the center of all that color, all that movement. Everything around us was water, moving, flowing, slapping in tiny waves. His body was the only solid thing in all that moving vastness. But I did not cling to him, I rode him, and he held me, but there was no fear. I felt in him the same sense of peace that I held within myself. They say the ocean is a treacherous place, but sitting there staring into his blue eyes as the sea rocked us, feeling the press of him against my body, long and solid, where only the flexing of his hips or mine would close that last distance, I saw nothing but gentleness in his eyes. He would pass this by, all this, give it up, yet again, if I but said no.