Nicca gazed back over his shoulder at me, then at Doyle. «We will speak of this later, Darkness.» Again, it didn't seem like Nicca's voice, and even the look in his eyes was something I'd never seen.

Doyle actually took a step back, holding me against him. «Gladly, but not tonight.»

Frost had moved up beside Doyle, his own problems forgotten in the wonder of seeing Nicca threaten Doyle. «Leave now, Nicca,» Frost said.

Nicca turned his gaze on the other man. «I will speak to you, too, Killing Frost, if you wish it.»

«Don't challenge them, Nicca, please don't,» I said.

He turned that look on me, and his gaze went up and down my body. There was something in his look that was almost frightening, as if he wasn't thinking just about sex, but something more permanent. It was a look that held ownership.

«You beg me not to challenge them while you stand like that pressed against Doyle's half-naked body.» His expression was one I'd never seen on him before, as if some stranger were inside Nicca's body using his face. He turned that stranger's face to Frost. «And you, who were never meant to be a god, would you now be king over us all? If you are the only man in her bed night after night, you will be.» His voice was thick with a jealousy so harsh it was near hatred.

Frost moved a little in front of us. «I have not seen that look for many a long year, but I remember your envy, and what it cost us all.»

It was Doyle who said, «Dian Cecht. Somehow you are in the power of Dian Cecht.»

I didn't understand what was happening, but it wasn't good, that much even I knew. «Dian Cecht was one of the original Tuatha De Danaan, the healing god, but why do you name this power him?»

«Do you know the rest of his story?» Doyle asked.

«He slew his own son out of jealousy, because the son had surpassed the father in his healing skills.»

Doyle nodded.

Nicca hissed at us, and his face, for a moment, was monstrous. Then he was handsome again, except for the hatred in his eyes.

«He's possessed,» I said, and my voice was soft with the awfulness of it.

«You stopped the process before it finished,» Frost said. «Has that caused this abomination?»

«I do not know,» Doyle said, again, but I could feel his heart pounding against my hair. I knew he was afraid, but only the speeding of his pulse showed it.

Nicca slumped, almost swooned, then raised his face upward, and I saw terror there. «I was angry that you stopped us. I was jealous. The chalice brings to you what you bring to it. My anger has done this.» He moaned. «I cannot fight this.»

I prayed a prayer I'd spoken a thousand times before: «Mother help him.» The moment the words left me, I felt the world tighten, as if the universe had caught its breath. There was a glow from across the room, as if the moon had risen beside our bed. We all turned and looked. The chalice sat against the wall where Doyle had dragged it, but there was light coming from it. I remembered my dream where the chalice had first appeared, remembered the taste of pure light, pure power, on my tongue.

«Let me go, Doyle,» I said. His hands fell away from me. I don't know if it was to obey me, or because of the moonlit glow coming from that silver cup.

Nicca's face was his own again, but I knew, somehow, that the reprieve was temporary. That when the glow died away, Dian Cecht would return. We needed to be finished before that.

I started to take his hand, to lean into his body, but a hint of ugliness crossed his face. Dian Cecht was still in there, and Nicca's body was strong enough to tear through walls. «Kneel,» I said, and because it was Nicca, he simply dropped to his knees without question. He had a moment where he had to settle the tips of his wings along the floor so they would not bend, then he gazed up at me, face patient, waiting.

«Someone hold his wrists.»

«Why?» Frost asked, but it was Doyle who simply came to my side. It was Doyle who took Nicca's wrists in his dark hands and held them out in front of the other man.

I moved behind Nicca, stepping carefully over the delicate grace of his wings as they lay across the floor. I pushed my bare feet between his legs, and he widened his knees, so that I could stand between his legs, my body pressed against his buttocks, his waist, his shoulders, his head resting against my breasts. He fanned his wings and for a moment I was lost between them, and that velvet brush left a dazzling spray of color on my skin. I slid my hand up the back of his neck into his hair, plunged my hand through the warmth of it, dug my fingers in against his skin, so I could feel the heat of his body. I drew his head backward with a handful of his own hair like a handle to pry his face back, and to stretch his neck in a long perfect line. I gazed into his brown eyes, his mouth already slack when I bent toward him.

There was a moment when that other person tried to use his face, tried to spread hate and envy through those gentle eyes, but I held him by the hair, his face trapped for kissing, and Doyle held his wrists, like black rope. Dian Cecht struggled, but it was too late. I kissed that mouth, and felt power go from my lips to his. It was as if my breath itself were magic, and I breathed it into his mouth in a long, shuddering sigh.

Nicca's wings closed around me like a velvet shroud, soft and restricting, because I was afraid to fight against them, afraid I'd tear them to bits. His body trembled under my mouth, and his wings shuddered around me until I felt the tiny soft pieces of color fall like dry rain against my skin. The power began to end, and when it faded Nicca's mouth fed at mine. His wings squeezed around me, squeezed and released, squeezed and released, like being hugged by something more delicate than thought, and with every movement of the wings more and more of the color cascaded around me, glittering.

I fell into that kiss, those trembling wings, the velvet caress of the powder falling along my body, and I saw Nicca standing in a meadow, bright with summer flowers. It was night, but Nicca shone so bright that the flowers had opened before him as if he were the sun. The air was suddenly full of demi-fey, not the mere dozens that I knew, but hundreds. It was as if the very ground had opened up and spewed them into the sky. Then I realized that it was the flowers; the flowers had grown wings and filled the sky.

Nicca rose into the air as if he were walking on the tops of the grass, and I realized he was flying, flying upward through a cloud of demi-fey.

Then I was falling, almost as if I fell back into my body. I was still standing pressed against Nicca's body, one hand still entwined in his hair, but it was Doyle's face that I gazed into. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but it was too late. He wasn't touching me, but he was touching Nicca, and so was I.

It was night in a forest that I had never seen before. A huge oak spread like a roof above my head, its great gnarled trunk big as a house. The branches were bare with late fall. Somehow I knew it wasn't dead, but only resting, preparing for winter's cold. As I watched, a thin line of light crossed the bark of the tree. The light widened, and I realized it was a door, a door in the trunk of the tree, swinging open. Music spilled out into the darkness in a wash of golden light. A black-cloaked figure appeared in the door, stepped out into the autumn night, and the door closed behind him. It seemed darker than it had before, as if my eyes had been dazzled by the light. He threw back his cloak, and I saw Doyle's face looking up through the branches, looking up at the cold light of the stars. The shadows under the trees on every side began to grow thicker, more solid, until things moved, and formed, and turned and looked at me with eyes that burned with red and green fire. They opened mouths full of dagger-like teeth, and one by one they set their great dark heads toward the sky and bayed. Doyle stood in the dark listening to that fearful music, and smiled.

I heard Frost's voice, distant as a dream. «Meredith, Meredith, can you hear me?»

I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't remember how to speak. Couldn't remember where I was. Was I in the summer meadow brushed by a thousand wings, or was I in the dark with the music of hounds belling around me? Was I still standing pressed to Nicca's body, still staring into Doyle's startled face? Where was I? Where did I want to be?

That was an easier question. I wanted to be in the bedroom. I wanted to answer Frost's frantic voice. The moment I thought it, I was there. I stepped back from Nicca, who was still kneeling on the floor. Doyle staggered back against the wall. Nicca fell forward onto all fours, as if he'd barely caught himself from falling.

Doyle gasped, «Merry,» but it was as if what had happened had drained them both. With Maeve and Frost, I had been drained and weak, but not this time. I turned toward Frost, and he was staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder.

«I don't feel tired this time,» I told him. I moved toward him, leaving the other two men gasping on the floor behind me.

Frost backed away from me, and he must not have been thinking clearly, because he backed between the bed and the dresser, trapping himself. He was shaking his head over and over again. «Look at yourself, Meredith. Look at yourself.» He pointed toward the mirror.

The first thing I saw was color. My skin was brushed with swaths of tan, pink, violet-red, purple, and a white that was almost lost against the shining white of my skin. Reddish brown like shining ribbons of dried blood traced down the sides of my body. A crush of vibrant blue-green touched each shoulder, and lower down along my legs. Black and yellow smeared around that iridescent blue-green, and a stroke of blue so bright it looked as if it should move glowed at shoulder and calf. With magic upon me, my skin shone like a pearl with a candle trapped inside it, but the color acted like prisms, so that my magic burned up through every drop of color, so that I was left a gleaming rainbow, as if Nicca's wings had exploded along my skin. My eyes burned with tricolored fire, molten gold, jade green, and an emerald to shame the brightest gem. But my eyes weren't just glowing. Each individual line of color looked as if it were on fire, as if flame licked around my eyes. I remembered the gold and green shadows that my eyes had cast when I was making love with Sage and Nicca, and realized this must have been what my eyes looked like: The colored flames bled into one another so it was more like a true fire, first one color, then the next, ever moving. I peered into the mirror, stretching up on tiptoe to look closer, and realized I was standing as Sage had stood earlier. My hair was like rubies, but tonight it was as if every strand held ruby fire, so that my hair burned around my face, caressing my shoulders.