Before any of us could answer, Sage marched to him, brushing past Frost. «Look, look at what has become of me!»
Galen gaped at Sage. «What. your eyes.»
Sage pushed past him, snarling one last phrase over his winged shoulder. «Wicked, wicked sidhe.» And he was gone.
CHAPTER 15
«Rhys, go with him,» Doyle said. «See that he comes to no harm.»
Rhys went without a word. He was still nude, as was Sage. I had a moment to hope that there wasn't anyone outside the wall with a night-vision camera. Then I realized that bad publicity was the least of our worries. The fact that I'd thought of it at all proved that I'd been too long away from faerie, too long out among the humans.
«What harm could Sage come to?» I asked.
«His own,» Doyle said.
«You mean he'll harm himself because he can't fly.»
Doyle nodded. «I have known other winged fey to let themselves fade and die when they lost their wings.»
«I meant him no harm.»
«The sidhe are at their most dangerous when they mean us no harm,» Frost said, and his voice held a bitterness that I'd never heard before.
«It's my night,» Nicca said. He hadn't taken part in the conversation until now, and when I looked into his brown eyes what I saw tightened things low in my body. His need was so raw, and it wasn't the gentle need that he usually held, but something far more fierce.
«Look at you,» Doyle said. «You are still power-besotted. I think the chalice is not done with you yet, Nicca, and I fear what that would do to our Merry.»
Nicca shook his head, eyes still on me, as if nothing else were truly real. «My night.»
Galen had come into the room and was gazing at Nicca's wings. «Wow, that's new.»
«There are many things new tonight,» Doyle said, and he sounded wary.
Nicca ignored them all. «My night.» He held his hand out to me.
«No,» Doyle said, and he took my hand and led me back away from the bed.
«She's mine tonight,» Nicca said, and for a moment I thought we'd see a fight, or at least an argument.
«Technically, it was Rhys's night,» Doyle said, «and you have both had your pleasure.»
«If Rhys has had his night,» Frost said, «then it is your night, Doyle.»
Nicca balled his hands into fists. «No, we aren't finished.» And his voice was like something that should call you from deep within the ground. He might have had wings, but his energy was all earth.
Doyle moved me behind him so that he formed a barrier between me and Nicca where he still knelt on the bed, those wings draped behind him like some magical cloak. «Listen to yourself, Nicca. I do not know what the Goddess has planned for you, but until we are sure it will not harm Merry, we will be cautious. Your godhead, or whatever, is not worth our Merry's life.»
I peeked around Doyle's smooth dark arm and watched Nicca fight for control. It was as if something else wanted this, and that something else didn't necessarily care what Nicca wanted, or did not want.
He ended up on all fours, those wings flowing back along his body. His hair spilled across his face and over the foot of the bed like thick brown water. He took a breath that trembled along his back, shivered the rainbows of his wings. He raised his face up to the light with a look almost of pain, but he nodded. «Doyle's right, Doyle's right,» he muttered over and over, as if to convince not just himself but whatever was riding him.
Doyle stepped forward and laid a gentle hand against Nicca's face. «I am sorry, my brother, but Merry's safety must come first.»
Nicca nodded, almost as if he was unaware that Doyle had touched him. His eyes weren't focused on anything in the room.
Doyle moved back from the bed, using his body to move me backward, as if he still didn't trust Nicca. «No one who has not become a god can sleep with Merry until we understand what the chalice and the Goddess want.»
«That means only Frost and Rhys,» Galen said. He didn't sound happy.
«Only Frost until we know for certain how much power Rhys has recaptured,» Doyle clarified.
«Not as much power as I'd hoped,» Rhys said from the doorway. «Sage rolled me like a wino on Saturday night.»
«Where is Sage?» I asked.
«It seems Conchenn was attracted by all the power. She's comforting our newest sidhe.»
«I thought he'd had enough sidhe for one night,» Galen said.
Rhys shrugged. «Conchenn can be very persuasive.»
«How desperate she must be to take him into herself,» Frost said.
«I don't know,» I said. «She's made it pretty plain over the last two weeks that she'd love to have any of us in her bed.»
«She's had us in her bed,» Doyle said.
I looked at him with raised eyebrows. «Only to hold her while she cried herself to sleep, Doyle. That's not the kind of bed I mean.»
Doyle gave a ghost of a smile. «When Maeve's grief began to abate she did make it. plain that she would have taken more active comfort.»
I wondered at that smile! Perhaps Maeve had been more «active» in her attempts to seduce my Darkness than I'd known.
Rhys snorted. «Well, she's getting very active comfort right now.»
«You don't understand,» Frost said, «none of you.»
«What don't we understand?» I asked, looking up into that coldly handsome face.
«How great her need must be to take Sage.»
«He's sidhe now. Whether it's permanent, I don't know, but for tonight he's sidhe.»
«It will be permanent,» Frost said.
I frowned up at him. «No,» I said, «you can be made sidhe for a night through magic, like Branwyn's Tears, but you're either born sidhe or you're not.»
«That is not true,» Frost said.
I had a sudden image of him as the beautiful child dancing across the snow. I had no problem with someone who had begun «life» as something other than flesh becoming sidhe. It seemed somehow right. But lesser fey, or humans, did not suddenly become sidhe. They just didn't.
«Once we brought sidhe to us like harvesting the fruits of the forest,» Frost said. «They simply came to us.»
«My father never spoke of such a thing.» I didn't mean to imply that I didn't believe him, but doubt was in my voice.
«It was two thousand years, or more, ago,» Doyle said. «We lost such abilities with the first weirding. Many of us refuse to speak of things that are truly lost.»
«I think it is not so lost as we've been led to believe,» Frost said.
«No one has deceived us,» Doyle said.
Frost gave him a long look. «It was the Seelie Court that lost us the chalice, Doyle. They who stripped us of much of what we were.»
Doyle shook his head. «I will not have this argument with you, or any of you,» he said, looking at Rhys and Galen.
Galen held his hands out wide. «I've never had this argument with anyone.»
«You're too young,» Doyle said.
«Then can you explain it for those of us under five hundred?»
Doyle gave a small smile. «Most of the great relics that simply vanished were Seelie relics. The Unseelie relics remained, though lessened in power. Some believed that the Seelie court angered the Goddess, or the God, to lose such favor.»
«We believed that they had done something so terrible that the face of deity turned from them,» Frost said.
I looked at him. «I assume you believe that.»
He nodded, and his face was like some beautiful sculpture, too handsome to be real, too arrogant to touch. He had retreated behind the cold mask he'd used for centuries in the Unseelie Court. I understood now that it was a form of protection, camouflage, if you will, to keep his pain hidden. I'd peeled back some of those layers and found what he'd hidden. Unfortunately, we seemed stuck at the moody, pain-exploration stage. I was looking forward to drilling through to another layer. There had to be more to him than mood. There had to be, didn't there?
«Many believe that,» he said.
Doyle shrugged. «I know only that we diminished, and we came to the Western Lands. Beyond that, I know nothing for certain.» He gave Frost a fierce look. «And neither do you.»
Frost opened his mouth to speak, but Doyle cut him off with a gesture. «No, Frost, we will not reopen this wound. Not tonight. Is it not enough that you will share her body until we are sure the rest of us are safe?»