The three of us reclined onto the pillows, my head nestled in the curve of Rhys's shoulder; Nicca had scooted down low on the bed so he could rest his head on my stomach, his hair spilling out behind him like a cloak of brown silk.

Sage hovered above us like some tiny, lustful angel. «A bounty such as this is spread before few fey.»

«From the look on your face,» Rhys said, «I'm not sure whether you mean as food or sex.»

«Both, oh, definitely both.» He began to slowly float down to meet us.

Rhys put out a hand for him to land upon, but Sage glided to the side. I put a hand up automatically to keep him from landing on my bare breasts. I'd kept him far from such intimate parts.

«You're taking blood from us, not Merry,» Rhys said.

«Never fear, gwynfor, you will not be passed over, but since I am a lover of women and to my knowledge you are as well, it will work better if I begin with the fair princess.»

«I have not been called gwynfor in a very, very long time.»

«You were the gwynfor, the white lord, and you will be again,» Sage said.

«Maybe,» Rhys said, «but flattery doesn't explain why you're on Merry's hand and not mine, or Nicca's.»

Sage didn't weigh much, probably less than two pounds, but it was still awkward to hold him above my body. «It's his glamour, Rhys; let him work it the way he wants to. I want to actually get some sleep tonight. Unlike the immortal sidhe, I look tired when I've gone without.»

Rhys looked at me. «Why do I think this has less to do with sleep, and more to do with the fact that you've changed sides on this wager.»

«It was never my wager,» I said, «and the next time you make wagers with my body as prize, you should think long and hard before you do so without asking me first.»

«You were here,» Rhys said.

«But you never asked.»

He thought about that for a second or two, then gave a small nod. «Damn, I'm sorry, Merry, you're right. I apologize.»

«One day of being back to your godhead, and already you're falling into bad habits,» I said.

«I am sorry.»

«Don't apologize for that, Rhys, there are other things I'd rather have the apology for.»

«Such as?» he asked.

«If I kicked you both out right now, Sage would do whatever I wanted. He's more interested in pleasure than in being king.»

«What's that supposed to mean?» Rhys asked.

«It means that if any of you was here more for sex than for kingship, I'd have persuaded one of you to fall off the intercourse wagon by now.»

«Merry, Cel will kill you if he wins this race. If he becomes king, he won't tolerate you alive. We're your royal guard, we're supposed to protect your safety above everything else, even our own desires, or yours.»

Sage touched my finger with his hands, and that one small caress stopped my breath in my throat, sped my pulse in my neck. My hand floated downward almost of its own accord, until it rested between my breasts. Sage suddenly seemed heavier than I knew he was, and my arm was more tired than it should have been.

Rhys tried to stare down at us but seemed to be having trouble focusing. «What was that?»

«Sage,» I breathed.

Nicca slid his face along my stomach, and that sensation seemed as if his cheek were stroking things deep inside me. He gazed up my body at me and at Sage. «What did he do?» His voice was full of a soft wonderment.

«Touched my finger with his hands,» I said.

«Shit,» Rhys said, «shit.»

Sage laughed, a high, delighted sound. «Oh, this will be fun.»

Rhys started to say something, but Sage slid his arms around my three middle fingers, cupping the unbelievable softness of his skin against my whole hand. «Consort save us, I can feel the edge of what you're feeling. His skin is so soft, softer than anything I've ever felt.»

Sage rubbed his hair along the tips of my fingers. His hair was like downy feathers; as if spider silk could be woven into hair, too soft to be real. The brush of that hair on my skin made Nicca shudder against me and brought Rhys's body hard against my hip. Eager, ready.

«I didn't understand,» Rhys said in a voice gone both soft and deep.

«I tried to tell you,» I said. «You wouldn't hear me.»

«Why can we feel it when he touches you?» Nicca asked.

«I don't know.»

«I know,» Sage said, sliding his body down my hand until he sat straddling my wrist, «but I'm not telling.»

He wrapped his legs around my wrist and I was suddenly aware that he wore nothing under his gossamer skirt. He was tiny, but the touch of that bit of sex felt more intimate than it should have, more important than it should ever have been.

I was suddenly aware of the pulse between his legs. The throb and ebb of the blood on either side of his thighs beat against the pulse in my wrist like a second heartbeat, as if the very beat of my blood would answer to the beat of his small body.

«Your hand, gwynfor, now I will take it.»

It took Rhys a moment to focus, to understand. One of his hands was still half pinned under my body, and he held his free hand against his stomach, almost as if he was afraid of being hurt.

«A little blood, a little taste, nothing more, gwynfor, nothing more.»

«Stop calling me that,» Rhys said.

«But you are the white lord,» Sage said, «and the white lord, the hand of ecstasy and death, feared nothing and no one.»

Rhys reached out toward the tiny fey, slowly, reluctantly, his face already half-lost to the sensual call of the other's magic. The wager was lost before Sage ever touched him.

Sage stayed pressed to my wrist, like one of those old wooden carvings of the tiny fairies riding broomstraw, except my wrist was the whisk of a plant and his power did ride me, rode me like the wingless fey were supposed to ride the small flowering plants. Were the flowers as joyful to be ridden? Did it feel good to them to be torn away from their roots and plunged through the night sky?

Sage wrapped his tiny hands around Rhys's finger. He laid his small red mouth against the tip of his finger, like a tiny swollen rosebud. I felt Rhys's pulse like a distant line of music, a bass rhythm that you heard only through the walls at night, as you lay in your bed, and wondered where it was coming from. Sage opened his mouth, his lips still pressed against Rhys's skin.

Rhys actually said, «No, no.»

Sage drew back enough to roll the glittering black of his eyes up to the much larger man. «Will you be forsworn, white lord? Will your courage fail you in the face of a mere demi-fey?»

I could see Rhys's pulse thundering against the skin of his throat, and his voice came rough around it. «I'd forgotten what you were.»

«Forgotten what?» Sage asked, his mouth still hovering over Rhys's fingertip.

Rhys had to swallow to speak again. «Once, you were a court of your own, and size mattered not in power.»

Sage gave a small laugh. «Do you remember what else we could do?»

«Your glamour could roll us, like a drunk on a Saturday night.»

«Yes, white lord, it's what saved us from being destroyed by both courts.» His mouth moved slowly back toward Rhys's finger, and the next words were spoken with his lips so close that they shivered along Rhys's skin: «The Nameless has given back a great deal, to all of us.» He sank his teeth into Rhys's flesh.

Rhys's spine bowed, his head thrown back, eye closed. I felt that quick pain only lightly, a distant stab of pleasure.

Nicca writhed, climbing my body until his face almost touched Sage's leg. His arm convulsed around my waist, holding on as if he was afraid, or eager. I knew just from the press of his body that he was getting the hints of pleasure and pain, just as I was.

Sage began to suck at the wound, and distantly, I felt the pull. I'd had it often enough for myself to know that it felt as if that tiny mouth had a long, thin line directly from the tip of a finger to the groin. With every suck Sage pulled on things that shouldn't have been touchable from a small wound in a finger.

Sage's pulse between his legs beat against the pulse in my wrist, fast, faster, hard, harder, and I felt a third pulse. It was as if Sage had pulled Rhys's heart into his hand, and Sage was swallowing around the thick, meaty, pulse of Rhys's heartbeat. I felt Rhys's heart beating down Sage's body, as if the smaller man were a tuning fork, a vibrating, trembling path from one throbbing heartbeat to another.

Rhys's body pressed tighter against the side of me. His groin was pressed against the curve of my hip, and almost against his will, it seemed, his body began to move against mine. I could feel him large and hard, rubbing against my hip. A rhythm began between the two of them. I felt Sage suck on Rhys, and with every suck Rhys pressed himself into my hip, buried the hard shaft of himself along my skin as if he were seeking another way inside me.

Rhys began to glow with that white light he held inside. His tricolored eye glowed like blue neon as he gazed down at me. His lips were half parted and he bent down to lay his mouth across mine, and the moment he kissed me, my power spilled upward, so that as he pulled back from my lips, magic trailed between us like the glow of stars. My body pulsed white as if I'd swallowed the moon, and it was spilling out through my skin.

Sage sat between us like a small golden doll, the veins in his wings shining like stained glass in a fall of sunlight. He wasn't sidhe, but power is power. For a moment I saw his red mouth pulse, as if he truly did hold Rhys's heartbeat in his mouth.

Nicca had begun to glow softly, the wing tattoo on his back pulsing faint traces of pink and blue and cream, and black. It was only the beginnings of his power, the first promise.

Rhys's hand under my shoulders convulsed, his fingers digging into my skin, and I felt him fight to close his other fist on Sage's fragile body. Rhys's breathing came fast, faster, until he threw his head back, his body arching against me. Something luminous and nearly liquid moved underneath his skin, like watching glowing clouds across the sky break apart, spilling like burning phosphorus. His white curls swirled around his face in the wind of his own power, and his hair ran shining with power, as if someone had traced a glowing wand in streaks through his curls. He opened his eye, and I had a moment to see its neon blue circles begin to swirl like a storm about to break over me, over all of us. Then he ground himself into my flesh, so hard that it hurt, and that brought me back to his body and chased back the power, just enough. He screamed, a second before he spilled over me in a scalding wave that flowed and dripped down my hip.