I looked, and I knew better, but they’d have pictures of me with the three men wearing nothing but exercise shorts—well, pants for Aisling, but either way three mostly nude men and we were all holding hands. There’d be rumors about Galen and Aisling being more than friends soon, because no one in America could understand that men could hold hands and just be friends. I loved my country, but it was a weird culture when it came to touching.
AISLING SAT IN
the nursery rocking chair holding Bryluen. He’d gone back to his room to change, so that he wore his usual gauzy veil wrapped around his head; only his eyes showed bare to the world. The veil was layers of nearly transparent gold cloth so that you could see that all that hair was in multiple braids snugged tight to the back of his head. He wore a silk T-shirt that was only a few shades lighter gold than the veil, and then the dress slacks were a darker gold. Just seeing the outfit let me know that Maeve had picked it out. She liked layers of gold and cream. I’d have put him in blue to see if it would bring out the color in his eyes. In the gold his eyes looked grayer than I knew they were.
I knew that Maeve was helping a lot of the sidhe shop for modern clothes; one, because she enjoyed shopping, and two, because she would often use the shopping trip as a way of getting to know them and seeing if she wanted to sleep with them. That hadn’t been an option with Aisling for her, because Maeve was still grieving for her dead husband; that would not keep her safe from his magic.
She stood across the nursery watching him as he rocked Bryluen. The look on Maeve’s face was speculative, and the look was enough; she would have pursued him as a lover if she could have done it safely.
She caught me watching her, and smiled brilliantly at me. It was her public smile, beautiful, vibrantly sincere, and it was her version of a “blank cop face.” She could hide any emotion behind that shining smile. I knew it, and she knew I knew it, so either she didn’t care, or her emotions were so strong about Aisling that she couldn’t hide it any better from me. Or maybe I just knew Maeve that well now?
Little Liam was playing near her feet, rolling a ball along the floor for the dogs to chase. The terriers chased it in a happy, barking, snarling pack. No dogs were allowed in the exercise room, so when Rhys was there his terriers had started coming to the nursery, or following Liam around, or Galen, or me. Minnie and Mungo, my own pair of greyhounds, were pressed to my side, so I could play with their ears and stroke their heads. They usually didn’t press like this unless they sensed I was nervous. Why was I nervous? Because watching Aisling made me wonder if we were going to have to veil our daughter like Aisling. The thought of having to hide her sweet face from the world, so we could save the world from her, was somehow horribly sad.
Maeve came to me and touched my shoulder. “Your face, so sad; what did you just think to take the light from your eyes?”
I looked up at her and shook my head. How could I say in front of Aisling that the thought of Bryluen sharing his fate of having to hide his face for all his life seemed awful?
Maeve looked where I was looking and her eyes showed that maybe she knew me as well as I knew her now. She drew me into a hug and whispered, “We will not have to hide her cute little face.”
I didn’t so much return her hug as hold on to her. What was wrong with me today?
Aisling stood up with Bryluen in his arms and came to stand next to us. “Merry, why the tears? She is lovely and powerful, but no reason for such sorrow.”
I heard myself saying my fears out loud, while the crying grew. Aisling helped Maeve hold me while I cried. Bryluen stared up at me with those big, solemn eyes and I realized that there were distinct lines in her irises; they were still blue, but it was as if someone had drawn faint lines that were dividing the color up. Was this how a tricolored iris started to change? I realized that I’d never seen a baby with triple irises. I was the last baby born to the sidhe in America, so I didn’t know if Bryluen’s eyes were just going to be blue with pale circles like Aisling’s spirals of birds, or whether this was the beginning of her irises separating out into different colors. For some reason that made me cry harder, as if the fact that I didn’t know what it meant for her eye color was just another symptom of me not knowing about her magical powers, or Gwenwyfar’s for that matter. How was I supposed to raise them if I didn’t know the answers?
Maeve took Bryluen and let Aisling hold me while I wept. It was close to the way he’d cried earlier in the garden, but there I’d had Doyle and Galen to help me comfort him; here a man who had never been my lover, or even a close friend, held me tight while I cried so hard my legs gave out and he was left holding all my weight as if I were fainting. Part of me knew it wasn’t logical, and stood aside in a sort of horror that I would show such weakness to someone who didn’t even love me, but the rest of me was consumed with a near-hysterical grief.
I just had no idea what I was grieving about.
THEN THERE WERE
other arms holding me from behind, helping Aisling hold me, and it was Galen, dressed and showered from practice. “Merry, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
I shook my head, too lost in my hysterics to answer, and honestly I had no good answer.
Aisling was trying to explain when another set of arms reached in and took me from between both of them, lifting me so I could curl against his chest, as he held me. Doyle’s hair was damp from the shower, loose of its braid so it could dry faster. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face against his shoulder and neck. I breathed in the scent of his skin, the soap and shampoo and the fresh smell of the clean shirt, so that it all mingled together to make him smell so good and fresh and real, and … just the scent of him began to calm me, as if I could breathe easier when he held me close.
“Let us go visit our Killing Frost,” he said in that deep, rumbling voice of his, that seemed to vibrate through my body as if the deep, thick sound of it could fill me up and leave no room for anything else.
He walked out of the room and down the hallway, moving effortlessly toward the room where Frost was still resting, healing from the last time Taranis had tried to kill my Darkness, or force him to kill us. Taranis was mad, insane in a very real way; how do you keep yourself safe from someone who can enter your dreams and turn them into nightmares?
Doyle was so strong, and I felt so safe as he carried me down the hallway, but it was an illusion, because no matter how good you were with a sword or gun, or how much magic you had, death could still come, could still carry you away. I could not protect anyone, not really, and by that same thought, they couldn’t protect me. Eventually, we all lost.
I kept my face buried against Doyle. I breathed in the scent of him, and didn’t look up as he adjusted his hold on me and opened the door to our bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind us, and I heard Frost say, “What has happened now?”
What
had
happened now? It wasn’t just me. We were all getting … battle fatigue, hadn’t they called it once? Doyle started to explain what little he knew, and I just let their voices wash over me. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, because no matter how hard I tried, or what I did, I couldn’t defeat all our enemies, I couldn’t find us a safe haven in the midst of it all. Even here in the Western Lands, as far from my family as I could travel, they would not leave us in peace.
Doyle laid me on the bed between the two of them, my favoritest place in the world to be, and for once I felt nothing but a dim numbness, like trying to sense the world while wrapped carefully in cotton and put away somewhere so I wouldn’t break.
Frost was above me, propped up on one arm. He touched my face, traced the still-wet track of my tears, and said, “Merry, our Merry, what has happened to make you weep so?”
I stared up into that heartbreakingly handsome face, those gray eyes, and I saw again that image that sometimes showed in them, like the inside of some magical miniature snow globe. It was a winter-barren tree on a hillside with snow all around it, but for the first time there was a mist of pink buds, the promise of blossoms to come. For no reason that I could name, the sight of that promising pink blush of life made me start to cry again.
I wept as if my heart would break and spill out of my eyes in shattered pieces on the sheets, and their hands tried to comfort me and save the pieces I was crying away. The light and the dark hands touching me, caressing, their voices saying all the things you say when the people you love are in pain. I started to yell at them, tell them that they were wrong, that it wouldn’t be all right, that it would never be all right. I told them they were lying to themselves if they believed it would be all right. I screamed and cried and fought, and it wasn’t them I was fighting, it was everything else, but as so often happens it’s your nearest and dearest who take the brunt of your rage.
Arms found me that wouldn’t let go, that held me so tight that I couldn’t push them away or struggle free. I was pressed against a chest, held in arms so strong that it felt as if nothing could move them or tear them from me. Strength like that could have made me panic, but when Taranis had done what he did, he hadn’t held me tight; the injury had done that for him. He was a man who didn’t know how to hold on to anything, or anyone, but himself. The man who held me now knew how to hold and keep and protect, and I gave myself over to that strength. I collapsed into the dark solidity of his arms, my head pressed against his chest, arms limp at my sides as I let myself cry in a way I hadn’t allowed myself yet. I cried until there were no more tears, and I felt empty like a seashell that held only echoes of what it had once been.
I ended up lying on top of him, my head on his chest so I could hear the sure beat of his heart, while one arm held me close and the other stroked my hair. Doyle’s deep voice rumbled up through his chest as he whispered, “Merry, Merry, Merry.”
The bed moved and I knew it was Frost; then his hand stroked my back, and he said, “I would do anything to take this pain from you.”
I turned my head so that my other cheek lay on Doyle’s chest while I looked at Frost. He lay on his side beside us, his hand still laid gently on me. Tears shone on his face, his eyes looking darker gray than usual like clouds before it rains, heavy and dark, or maybe that was just how I felt.
“I know that,” I said, and my voice was still thick with tears.
He lay down beside Doyle, who moved his arm from holding me to let Frost slip into the circle of his arm, and put his arm across me and hold me against Doyle’s body. Frost’s head lay on Doyle’s shoulder, one long leg going over Doyle’s legs, so we lay entwined, the three of us. I loved seeing two such big, physical men hold each other, and hold me like this. It made me feel safer and more complete than anything ever had.
Yet even here with them, the fear wasn’t gone. It was pushed back, but it was like a battle; being here with them meant I was safe and happy for now, but the next wave of invaders was coming. Maybe that was always true of life? I’d had a professor in college who said we were all temporarily able-bodied; at the time I hadn’t understood, but I did now. Were we all just temporarily happy? Or were we all just temporarily sad? I guess it depended on how you looked at things.
I reached out and traced the tracks of tears on Frost’s cheek. “Why are you crying?” I asked.
“Because you are, and I love you,” he said.
I laid my hand against his cheek, and my hand was so small that I couldn’t cover the whole side of his face even with my fingertips spread.
“I do not love you less because I do not cry,” Doyle said.
I moved my head enough so I could see his face. “I know that,” I said.
“We both know that,” Frost said, and moved his head just enough so he could meet the other man’s eyes, so that we were both gazing up at Doyle.
He looked down at both of us, from inches away, and suddenly he smiled bright and glorious in the darkness of his face. “I had given up such dreams as this.”
“As what?” I asked.
He hugged both of us with the arm he had around each of us. “This, the two of you in my arms, gazing at me like that. It is more than I ever hoped to have again, one person to love and be loved by, but to have both of you is such riches as no man would ever expect in one lifetime.”
I smiled at him, and I knew that Frost was, too, but I glanced to see that smile, those gray eyes gazing up at our tall, dark, and handsome man.
“I, too, had no thought of ever being this happy again,” Frost said.
“I’ve never been this happy,” I said.
They both looked at me. “Not even when you were in love with Griffin?” Frost asked.
“I wasn’t in love with Griffin when my father made him my fiancé, but he was handsome and sidhe, and my father’s choice.”
“So it was a political coupling, not a love match?” Doyle asked.
I nodded, my chin resting on his chest.
“We all envied him,” Frost said.
I turned to look at him. “You and the other guards talked about it?”
“No,” he said, and seemed to think about it, and finally said, “I can only say, I envied him.”
“I didn’t think you even liked me,” I said.
He smiled. “I will admit that it wasn’t you, our Merry, but more any woman at that point, but when I saw you look at him with your face shining with love, then I envied him you.”
I sighed. “I did grow to love him, but looking back at all of it I don’t think he ever loved me. If he’d gotten me pregnant we would have married, and I’m not sure when I would have figured out how little he valued me.”
Doyle raised his hand from my body to touch my hair, and Frost laid a kiss on my shoulder. “We love you,” Frost said.
“I know that, and I love you, but it is true love, not some infatuation made up of sex and magic. It is loving you that’s let me look back at his behavior and realize that he must never have truly loved me.”