“I saw the flowers and gifts they leave by your building,” Galen said.

“I would have known if any of you were close to my sithen.”

“Apparently not,” Galen said.

“You scouted me,” Rhys said, and again he wasn’t happy.

It was Galen’s turn to shrug and give a little smile. He was pleased with himself.

“I’d believe that Darkness visited me, but not you.”

“The only one of us better at personal glamour than me is Merry.”

“True, you never need a disguise to do undercover work back when we are all working at the Grey Detective Agency. Sholto’s pretty good at it, too.”

“Good enough that both of you, and Sholto, went inside the Seelie sithen to rescue me with only your glamour to hide you from the king and his nobles.” I grabbed Galen’s hand and then took Rhys’s. “And you in your fake beard and hat. You could have gotten all of you killed.”

“But we didn’t,” Rhys said.

“But now you’re telling me that you killed an entire gang. You risked yourself to do it, Rhys; don’t tell me you didn’t.”

“I wasn’t in much danger; that whole immortal thing, remember.”

“Bullets can hurt you, Rhys, all of you, it’s lead; cold iron can kill us, and steel hurts—no, don’t give me that immortal crap. You could have died.” I sat up. “Did you at least take some of the other guards with you as backup?”

The moment he looked away I knew he hadn’t. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t ever risk yourself like that again, not alone. We’re a court, a court of faerie, Rhys; that means we fight our battles together.”

“I was willing to risk my own life, Merry, but no one else’s. Let’s be honest: If you lost me you’d survive, but if I got Doyle or Frost killed, you’d never forgive me.”

“Yes, I love Frost and Doyle the most, I’m more in love with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Don’t you ever think that I could lose you and it wouldn’t hurt. How dare you think so little of me, Rhys. How dare you believe that my heart isn’t big enough to love more than just two men.” I was yelling at him.

He held his hands up in front of him. “I’m sorry, truly, but I did what I thought was best.”

“If I’m the royal here, the would-be queen, then you don’t get to make decisions like that without consulting me, is that clear?” I was yelling again.

“It’s clear, I’m clear, checking with the queen before I clean up any more neighborhoods.”

“You could have died!” And I burst into tears like some hysterical pregnant woman. Stupid hormones.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

I FORGAVE HIM when he made me yell for a much more fun reason, and the first orgasm in months filled my body, flowed over my skin, and brought me screaming. I screamed his name while his fingers brought me, and my nails carved my pleasure in red scratches down his arm, and across Galen’s back, because that was what was under my fingers when Rhys’s hand pushed me over that delicious edge.

My skin had not glowed until that last push of pleasure; only then had my pale skin filled with moonlight glow like the clouds had finally been blown away and the light of a full moon could bathe the world in its luminescence. My skin ran with power and I could see swirls of greens and golds from the corners of my vision and knew it was the colors of my own eyes alight with magic.

My magic brought theirs, and Rhys’s skin was an answering shine to mine, so that it was two moons entwined, filling the world with a light so bright it would make mortals shield their eyes for fear of losing sight, or mind, from the beauty of it. His one eye glittered like three jewels, carved sapphires in a range of blues from palest blue, as if the sky could burn with its own color, a blue so rich, as if cornflowers could explode with their own beauty, and then the color of the ocean where it runs shallow and warm, as if the sun truly did rise from the water in a burst of glory.

He leaned over and kissed me with lips that were the soft pink of sunrise to the ruby glow of my own. I saw his hand held above us; there was red shining on his fingers as if the color of my lips had been spread like slick fire across his hand. It was my blood from bringing life into the world, and it glowed like every other part of us, thick with magic and the grace of Goddess.

He lifted away from the kiss and there were afterimages of the colors of our lips like a Doppler effect that you could see with your naked eyes. My hands fell back to the bed, all of me limp; my eyes fluttered back into my head with the pleasure of it, and I could see the light of my own irises inside my nearly closed eyes, so that when I tried to open them the world was edged with emerald and molten gold fire. The term afterglow had a whole new meaning for the sidhe.

The bed moved, but I couldn’t see past my fluttering eyelids and the radiance of my own eyes and skin, as if my own magic blinded me.

Someone kissed me, and I knew from that first touch that it was Galen, because the sky didn’t glow the pale green of spring leaves, but that was the color that joined mine, so that the greens of my eyes and the green of his seemed to blend and flow together as we kissed. Where his hands touched me the light flared. I couldn’t see it, I could feel it, so that a thrumming warmth followed at his touch, and when he slid his body cuddling close to mine, that warmth pulsed between us, until I couldn’t breathe for a minute, and when I did it was a gasp, as if I were already putting my mouth around things much deeper than his kiss could ever be.

He whispered against my lips, “I want to feel your mouth around me.”

I breathed out, “Yes … please.”

He got up on his knees beside me. The fire was beginning to fade so that he looked less magical and more just Galen, but that had been magical enough to me since I was fourteen. My own glow was fading so that I could see him without the shine of my own eyes clouding my vision. He smiled down at me, and I gazed up the long length of him. The one thin braid spilled down the side of his body, the tip of it curling around his groin, so that I reached for the braid first.

“I miss when all your hair was this long,” I said.

“I’d grow it long again for you.”

I smiled up at him. “I would like to make love to you just once with all that wavy green hair surrounding us.”

He grinned. “Did you have a crush on me, or my hair, when you were young?”

“You, but the hair was beautiful. Why did you keep just the one tiny braid?”

“Because the queen’s commandment was worded in such a way that I could cut all the rest, so long as I kept some of it this long.”

“It was still a horrible risk, Galen. She could have found a reason to punish you for cutting that long hair that she’s so fond of.”

“And that proves we are high court sidhe; that’s really why we grow our hair out, Merry, and why anyone not of the court is forbidden long hair. It’s just another way to say we’re better than everyone else.”

“The custom didn’t even start until after the Unseelie began to lose their powers,” Rhys said, as he walked toward the bed, a towel folded in his hand.

“I thought it was older than that,” I said, still running Galen’s braid through my fingers.