"There are those who can, but none that stood with us today," Doyle growled, his eyes still on the softly glowing Adair. "But someone powerful enough to send a spell from a distance and for none of us to notice it until too late."

"I don't believe you," Adair said.

"May the sluagh eat my bones if I lie," Doyle said, his voice still a threatening growl. It was like listening to a dog speak, too low for a human throat.

Adair's glow faded around the edges so that the center of his face glowed like a candle in the middle of him. "Even if I believe you, even if I agree that the princess should see the queen immediately, if I allow you to pass without a fight, I will be at the queen's mercy." He raised a hand as if to touch his hair, then stopped, as if he could not stand to touch the near-bare scalp. "I have been at her mercy, and I do not care for it."

"Let me pass, Frost."

He moved. Reluctantly, but he moved.

I touched Doyle's arm. "I will tell you this for a third and a last time, Doyle, stand down."

His dark eyes flicked to me, then he took a breath so deep that it ended with his body shuddering like a dog ruffling its fur after a nap. He took one small step back from Adair. "As my princess commands, so shall it be." His voice was still deeper than normal, and perhaps only I could hear the question in that growl. But he trusted me enough to do as I said. Trusted me enough to let me take his place in front of Adair.

I looked up at Adair, and I could not keep a moment of sorrow out of my eyes when I beheld his short hair up close.

Adair turned his face from me, mistaking my sorrow for pity, I think.

"I will let you taste the ring, Adair, as the queen wishes."

His gold-and-yellow eyes slid back to look at me, though his head was still turned away. "Has the ring not known Hawthorne and Ivi?"

I ignored the question, which was not a lie. I stared into his eyes, concentrated on their beauty. Their inner circles were gold, like metal melted down; the next circles were yellow, the yellow of pale sunlight; and the last and widest circles were almost an orange-yellow like the petals of a marigold. I gave to my eyes the wonder that I saw before me, so that Adair turned his face full to me, and his coldness thawed a moment before anger returned. "Do you think to win with seduction what Doyle could not win with magic?"

"I thought we were supposed to be seducing each other. Isn't that what the queen wants?"

Adair frowned at me, clearly puzzled. It wasn't that he was stupid, but more that he wasn't accustomed to people simply agreeing with his arguments. Most people weren't.

"I... yes... The queen wishes two of the four of us to bed you before you come before her."

"Then don't we need for the ring to recognize at least two of you?" I kept my voice very matter-of-fact, but I stepped in closer to him, so close that a hard thought would have closed the distance. I could feel his body now, not the flesh of it, but the vibrating energy of it, like a line of warmth just above my own. Even through my clothes, even through my shields, and his, I felt his magic like a trembling thing. It nearly took my breath, and it puzzled me. With most of the sidhe, they had to be manifesting power on purpose to feel like this against my skin. Then I realized that vegetative deities were often fertility deities as well. I could boast, or complain, of five different fertility deities in my lineage, but I'd never lain with anyone who had once been worshiped as one.

His body reacted to the power that shivered between us even as he closed his eyes and fought to not react. But it was like, well, a force of nature. There were precious few fertility deities, fallen or otherwise, among the Unseelie; that was a Seelie court power for the most part. My father, Essus, had been an exception, but even he was not a fertility of sex and love but more of sacrifice and crops.

I found enough air to speak, but it was on a whisper that I said, "When the time comes, make sure we do not bring down the walls."

Doyle's voice came from behind me like molasses, slow and dark: "What are you going to do?"

"What Adair wants me to do."

Adair looked at me then, and his eyes held pain, but it was a pain born of desire. He wanted to unleash the power that vibrated between us, to unleash it and let it spill between us, over us. Like me, he had not felt the rush of another's magic that so mirrored his own in a very long time.

I was not such a fool as to believe it was the sight of me that filled his eyes with such need. It was the power that trembled and beat like a third pulse between us. I'd been near Adair before and never felt so much as a twinge of such things. Only two things, perhaps three, had changed. One, he was nude, and he was one of the guards who did not participate in the casual nudity of the court or the casual teasing. He seemed to believe, as had Doyle and Frost once, that if there was no release then they did not wish to play. I stood there, wanting to close that last inch of distance between us and near afraid to. So much power already, what would it be like to touch his skin, to let my body sink in against that power, and the power that lay in the muscles and meat of him.

I put my hands out to either side of his waist, against the slick black stone of the door. Even that cold touch could not cool the rising power between us. His body was no longer ignoring me, but standing firm and solid, tight against his own stomach, though he lay a little to one side, a graceful, thick curve instead of the straightness I'd become accustomed to.

I raised my gaze back up until I found his eyes again. With every other tricolored iris each individual shade burned brighter, but as Adair's power spilled through his eyes, it was as if the colors became one, the golden yellow of sunshine. His eyes were simply yellow light, as if two tiny, perfect suns had come to rise in his face.

It took him two attempts to whisper, "Princess."

The power breathed and writhed between us, as if our two magicks were a line of air, one hot, one cold, so that as they mixed, storms would rise. I steadied myself, against the stones and slowly, slowly, began to lean into that warmth.

It was like bathing in power, and I mourned that I wore clothes and could not feel what this was like on my bare skin. But I would not have stopped now, not even to undress. I would not lose an inch of closeness to the trembling heat. A second before my body touched his, Adair said, "The ring..."

Our bodies touched, and the magic thrust through us both, tearing a cry from our throats, stripping us of our shields and most of our control. We filled the hallway with shadows. My skin glowed like the moon on the brightest of nights. Adair glowed as if the sun in his eyes had spilled over his skin. It wasn't that he was formed of light, but as if his skin lay just over the light, like a film of water over a fire.

But it wasn't hot, this fire, it was warm. A warmth to keep you safe on a winter's night. A warmth to bring your fields back to life after the long cold. A warmth to drive desire through your body, and all other thoughts from your mind. It was the only excuse I had for forgetting that I had not touched him with the ring. All that had gone before was without the touch of that magic.

I raised my hands to caress the sides of his body, and the ring brushed against him, the lightest of touches, and the world trembled around us, as if the air itself had drawn a breath. Adair began to fall backward. He put one arm around my waist, and the other had a sword naked in it, before his back hit something solid.

We were half standing, half leaning inside a stone alcove. Adair shoved me behind him, so that his tall body blocked most of the opening, and hid me from sight. I stumbled in a small hole and fell back against the limbs of a small dead tree that covered the back of the alcove. The light in our skins had not died away, so that it bounced shadows on the crumbling stone and the rock-strewn hole at my feet. I knew this alcove, but it was floors lower, and had never been near my aunt's rooms.