He collapsed on top of me, suddenly heavier, his neck lying against my face so that I felt his pulse like a racing thing jumping against my skin. We lay there entwined as intimately as man can be with woman, holding each other until our hearts slowed.
Roane raised his head first, propping himself on his arms to look down at me. The look was one of wonderment, like a child who had learned a new joy that until that moment he hadn't known existed. He said nothing, just stared down at me, smiling.
I was smiling, too, but there was a vein of wistfulness to mine. I remembered now what I'd forgotten. I should have showered and fled the city. I should never have touched Roane with Branwyn's Tears on our bodies. But the damage was done.
My voice came soft, strange to my own ears, as if we hadn't spoken for a very long time. “Look at your skin.”
Roane glanced at his own body and hissed like a startled cat. He rolled off my body to sit staring at his hands, arms, everything. He was glowing, a soft, nearly amber light as if fire were being reflected through a golden jewel, and that jewel was his body.
“What is it?” he asked, voice low and almost frightened.
“You are sidhe, for tonight.”
He looked at me. “I don't understand,” he said.
I sighed. “I know.”
He put his hand just above my skin. I glowed with a white, cold light, like moonlight caught behind glass. The amber glow of his hand reflected off the white glow, turning it pale yellow as his hand moved just above my skin. “What can I do with it?”
I watched him move that glowing hand down my body, still careful not to touch my skin. “I don't know. Every sidhe is different. We all have different abilities. Different variations on a theme.”
He laid his hand against the scar on my ribs, just under my left breast. It hurt like the twinge of arthritis when it's cold, but it wasn't cold. I moved his hand away from the mark. It was the perfect imprint of a hand, bigger than Roane's, longer, more slender fingers. It was brown and raised slightly above my skin. The scar turned black when my skin glowed, as if the light could not touch it, a bad spot.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I was in a duel.”
He started to touch the scar again, and I grabbed his hand, pressing our flesh together, forcing that amber glow into my white. It felt as if our hands melded together, the flesh parting, swallowing. He jerked away, rubbing his hand against his chest, but that slid the oil over his hand, and that didn't help. Roane still didn't understand that he'd had only the first taste of what it could mean to be sidhe.
“Every sidhe has a hand of power. Some can heal by touch. Some can kill. The sidhe I fought placed her hand against my ribs. She broke my ribs, tore through muscle, and tried to crush my heart, all without ever breaking the skin.”
“You lost the duel,” he said.
“I lost the duel, but I survived, and that was always win enough for me.”
Roane frowned. “You seem saddened. I know you enjoyed it. Why such gloom?” He trailed a finger along my face, and the glow intensified where we touched. I turned my face from him.
“It's too late to save you, Roane, but it's not too late to save myself.”
I felt him lie down beside me, and I moved my body just enough to keep him from lying the length of himself along the length of me. I looked at him from inches away.
“Save you from what, Merry?”
“I can't tell you why, but I need to leave tonight, not just this apartment, but the city.”
He looked startled. “Why?”
I shook my head. “If I told you that, you'd be in more danger than you already are.”
He accepted that and didn't ask again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
I smiled, then laughed. “I can't go to my car, let alone the airport glowing like a rising moon, and I can't do glamour until the oil wears away.”
“How long?” he asked.
“I don't know.” I stared down the length of his body and found him limp, though he recovered quickly, as a rule. But I knew something he didn't. Tonight, like it or not, I was sidhe.
“What is your hand of power?” he asked, though it had taken him a long time to ask the question. He must have truly wanted to know, to ask that which was not offered.
I sat up. “I don't have one.”
He frowned. “You said all sidhe have one.”
I nodded. “It's one of many excuses the others have used over the years to deny me.”
“Deny you what?”
“Everything.” I ran my hand just above the line of his body, and the amber light intensified, following my touch like a fire when you breath on it to make it glow. “When our hands melded, it was one of the side effects of the power. Our entire bodies can do the same.”
He raised eyebrows at that.
I cupped him in my hand, and he responded, but I spilled power into him, and he was instantly hard, instantly ready. It made his stomach contract, made him sit up, moving my hand away from him. “It felt almost too good. It almost hurt.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He gave a nervous laugh. “I thought you didn't have a hand of power.”
“I don't, but I am descended from five different fertility deities. I can bring you back to strength all night, as quickly and as often as we want.” I leaned my face toward his. “You are like a child tonight, Roane. You can't control the power, but I can. I could bring you again and again until you rubbed yourself raw and begged me to stop.”
He'd lain down on the bed as I moved over him, until he was staring up at me, eyes wide, his auburn hair spilled around his face. Tonight, it was almost the same shade as mine . . . almost. He spoke in a breathy rush. “If you do that, it will be your flesh that gets rubbed raw, too.”
“Think if I was not the only sidhe in this room, Roane. Think what we could make you do, and you could not stop us.” I spoke the last into his half-parted lips. When I kissed him, he jumped as if it had hurt, and I knew it hadn't.
I pulled back enough to see his face. “You're afraid of me.”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Good. Now you begin to understand what you have called to life in this room. Power comes with a price, Roane, and so does pleasure. You have called both, and if I were a different sidhe, you would pay dearly for them.” I watched the fear slide across his face, fill his eyes. It pleased me. I liked the edge that fear could give sex. Not the big fear, where you truly weren't sure you'd both come out alive, but the lesser fear, where you risked blood, pain, but nothing that wouldn't heal, nothing you didn't want. There is a vast difference between a little game playing and cruelty. I wasn't into cruelty.
I stared down at Roane, that sweet flesh, those lovely eyes, and I wanted to scratch nails over that perfect body, sink teeth into his flesh, and draw just a little bit of blood in a lot of different places. The thought tightened my body in places where most people didn't respond to violence, no matter how mild. Bad wiring, maybe, but there comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself. I wanted to share a little pain, a little blood, a little fear, but Roane wasn't into any of that. Hurting him wouldn't bring him pleasure, and I wasn't into torture. I was not a sexual sadist, and Roane would never know how lucky he was that that particular miswiring was not part of my urges. Of course, there are always other urges.
I wanted him, wanted him so badly that I didn't trust myself to be careful. Roane would carry the desire for this experience to his grave, whenever that would be, but he could carry more than psychological scars away from this night. If I wasn't careful. Even now, even here with him sidhe for this one night, I couldn't drop all my control. I was still going to have to be the one in charge, the one that said what we would do and what we wouldn't. The one that said how far things would go. I was achingly tired of being the one who drew the line. It wasn't just the magic I missed. It was having someone else in charge or, at least, someone equal. I didn't want to have to worry about hurting my lover. I wanted my lover to be able to protect himself so that I could truly do what I wanted to do without fearing for his safety. Was that really too much to ask?
I glanced back at Roane. He lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other arm lying across his stomach, one leg drawn up so that he was displayed, in all his glory. The fear had faded from his face, leaving only desire behind. He had no idea how bad things could get in the next few hours if I wasn't ever so careful.
I hid my face in my hands. I didn't want to be careful. I wanted everything that the magic could give me tonight and to hell with the consequences. Maybe if I hurt him enough, Roane wouldn't look back on it as something wonderful. Maybe he wouldn't crave it like some golden dream. Maybe he'd fear it like a nightmare. A small voice in my head said it would be kinder in the long run. Make him fear us, our touch, our magic, so that he would never want the touch of sidhe hands on his body again. A little pain now to save him from an eternity of suffering later on.
I knew it was lies, and still I couldn't look at him.
His fingertips brushed my back, and I jumped like he'd hit me. I kept my hands over my face. I wasn't ready to look again.
“Those aren't burn scars on your shoulders, are they?”
I lowered my hands, but kept my eyes closed. “No.”
“What then?”
“It was another duel. He used magic to try and force me to shape-shift in the middle of the fight.” I heard, felt, Roane moving along the bed, closer to me, but he didn't try and touch me again. I was grateful.
“But changing shape doesn't hurt. It feels wonderful.”
“Maybe to a roane, but not to one of us. Changing shapes is painful, like all your bones breaking at once and re-forming. I can't change shape on my own at all, but I've seen it in others. You're helpless for the minutes it takes to change form.”
“The other sidhe was trying to distract you.”
“Yes.” I opened my eyes and stared into the blackness of the windows. They acted like a dark mirror, showing Roane sitting just behind me, body half-lost to sight, glowing like the sun behind the moon of my body. The three rings of color in my eyes glowed bright enough that even from that distance you could see the individual colors: emerald, jade, liquid gold. Even Roane's eyes had lightened to a dark honey brown like glowing bronze. Sidhe magic suited him.
He reached for me, and I tensed. He traced his hand over the rippled skin of the scars. “How did you stop him from changing you into something else?”
“I killed him.” I saw Roane's eyes widen in the windows, felt his body tense.
“You killed a sidhe royal?”
“Yes.”
“But they are immortal.”
“I am truly mortal, Roane. What is the one way for all the eternal fey to die?”
I watched the thoughts flicker across his face and finally saw the realization in his eyes. “To invoke mortal blood. The mortal shares our immortality, and we share the mortal's mortality.”
“Exactly.”
He sat close to me, going up on his knees, but he spoke to my reflection not directly to me. “But that is a very specific ritual. You can't invoke mortality by accident.”
“The ritual for a duel binds the two participants together in mortal combat. Among the Unseelie sidhe they share blood before they fight.”
His eyes went wider still, until they were like two huge pools of darkness. “When they drank your blood, they shared your mortality.”
“Yes.”
“Did they know that?”
I smiled then. I couldn't help it. “Not until Arzhul died with my dagger sticking out of him.”
“You must have put up a hard battle for him to try and change your form. It's a major spell for the sidhe. If he didn't fear death, then you must have hurt him badly.”
I shook my head. “He was showing off. It wasn't enough that he meant to kill me. He wanted to humiliate me first. For one sidhe to force a shape-shift on another is proof that they are the more powerful magician.”
“So he was showing off,” Roane said. It was the closest he would probably get to asking what happened next.
“I stabbed him, just hoping to distract him, but my father always taught me never to waste a strike. Even if you know you face an immortal, strike as if they could die because deathblows hurt more, even if they won't kill.”
“Did you kill the one who scarred you here?” His hand came from behind to trace my ribs.
I shuddered at his touch, and not because it hurt. “No, Rozenwyn is still alive.”
“Then why didn't she crush your heart?” His hands slid around my waist, holding me against his body, cradling me. I let myself rest in the curve of his arms, the solid warmth of his body.
“Because her duel was after Arzhul, and when I stabbed her, she panicked, I think. She called the duel won without making the kill.”
He rubbed his cheek along mine, and we both watched the colors mingle as our skins touched. “It was the last duel then,” he said.
“No,” I said.
He kissed my cheek, very softly. “No.”
“No, there was one more.” I turned my face to him. His lips brushed mine, not quite a kiss.
“What happened?” He spoke the words in a warm breath against my mouth.
“Bleddyn had been one of the Seelie Court once, before he did something so awful that no one will speak of it, and he was cast out. But he was so powerful that the Unseelie Court took him in. His true name was lost, and he became Bleddyn. It means wolf or outlaw, or did once very long ago. It meant he was an outlaw even among the dark court.”
Roane kissed the side of my neck where my pulse beat just under the skin. My pulse sped at that light touch. He raised his face enough to ask, “How was he an outlaw?” Then he began to kiss his way down my neck.