Chapter Fifteen

The dream began as many dreams inside Faerie began for me, on a hill. I knew it wasn't a real hill. It was more the idea of a green gently sloping hill. I was never certain whether the hill had never existed outside of dream and vision, or whether it was the first hill from which all others were copied. The plain that stretched below the hill was green and full of cultivated fields. I'd stood on this hill and watched war come to faerie, and seen the plain dry and dead. Now it was so alive. Its wheat was golden, as if autumn harvest was just about to begin. But there were other fields with vegetables, where the plants were small, just breaking above the surface of the rich earth. The plain, like the hill, represented an ideal. The fact that it was solid underfoot  -  and I knew that if I walked down I'd be able to touch the plants, rub the grain between my hands, and see the kernels free of the dry husks, all of it real  -  didn't change the fact that it was both real and not.

There was a tree beside me on top of the hill, a huge spreading oak. Part of the tree had the first green leaves of spring, another had bigger leaves with the tiny green beginnings of acorns, then the leaves of late summer with the acorns green but much larger, then the brilliance of autumn and the brown acorns ready to be picked, all the way to a section that was winter-bare with only a few acorns and a few dried brown leaves clinging to the branches. I stared up at the dark lace of branches and knew they were not dead, but only resting. When I'd first seen the tree it had been dead and lifeless; now it was what it was meant to be.

I touched the bark of the tree, and it had that deep, thrumming energy that old trees have. It was as if if you listened hard enough you could hear it, but not with your ears. You heard it with your hands, or your face where you pressed it against the cool roughness of the bark. You felt the life of the tree beating against your body as you pressed yourself to its hard sides. It was like a slow, deep heartbeat that started as the tree, then you realized that it was the earth itself, as if the planet had a heartbeat of its own.

For a moment I felt the turn of the planet, and held on to the tree as if it were my anchor to so much reality. Then I was back on the hilltop, and I could no longer feel the pulse of the earth. It had been an amazing gift to sense the hum and flow of the planet itself, but I was mortal, and we are not meant to hear planets' heartbeats. We can have glimpses of the divine, but to live with such knowledge every moment takes holy men or mad men, or both.

I smelled roses before I turned to find the cloaked figure of the Goddess. She hid her face from me always, so that I got only glimpses of her hands, or a line of mouth, and every glimpse was different, as if she went back and forth in age, color, everything. She was the Goddess, she was every woman, the ideal of what it is to be female. Looking at that tall cloaked figure, I realized that she was like the heartbeat of the planet. You couldn't see her too clearly, or hold her too starkly in your mind, not without becoming too holy to live, or too mad to function. The touch of Deity is a wondrous thing, but it carries weight.

"If this place had died it would not have been just faerie that died, Meredith." Her voice was like the glimpses of her body, many voices melding into one another so you would never be able to tell what Her voice was, not exactly.

"You mean reality is tied to this place too?" I asked.

"And is this not real?" She asked.

"Yes, it is real, but it is not reality. It is neither faerie nor the mortal world."

She nodded, and I got a glimpse of a smile, as if I'd said something smart. It made me smile to see Her smile. It was as if your mother had smiled at you when you were very small, and you smile back because her smile is everything to you, and all is right with the world when she smiles at you. For me as a child, it had been my father's smile and Gran's.

The sorrow hit me like a blow through my heart. Revenge and the wild hunt had put the grief aside, but it was there, waiting for me. You cannot hide from grief, only postpone when it will find you.

"I cannot stop my people from choosing to do harm."

"You helped me save Doyle and Mistral. Why couldn't we save Gran?"

"That is a child's question, Meredith."

"No, Goddess, it is a human question. Once I wanted to be sidhe more than anything else, but it is my human blood, my brownie blood, that gives me strength."

"Do you believe that I would be able to come to you like this if you were not the daughter of Essus?"

"No, but if I was not also the granddaughter of Hettie, and the great-granddaughter of Donald, then I could not walk through the human hospital to save Doyle. It is not just my sidhe blood that makes me the tool you need."

She stood there, Her hands drawn back into Her cloak, so that all of Her was in shadow. "You are angry with me."

I started to deny it, then realized She was right. "So much death, Goddess, so many plots. Doyle has nearly been killed twice in just a few days. Frost is lost to me. I would protect my people and myself." I touched my stomach, but it was flat, and I did not feel that first swelling of pregnancy. I had a moment of fear.

"No fear, Meredith. You do not see yourself as pregnant yet, so your dream image is how you see yourself."

I tried to quiet the sudden racing of my pulse. "Thank you."

"Yes, there is death and danger, but there are also children. You will know joy."

"I have too many enemies, Mother."

"Your allies grow in number with each magic you perform."

"Are you certain that I will survive to sit the dark throne?"

Her silence was like the wind, howling across the plain. It had an edge of coldness to it that made me shiver in the light of that sun.

"You are not certain."

"I can see many paths, and many choices being made. Some of those choices lead you to the throne. Some do not. Your own heart has debated whether the throne is even what you want."

I remembered moments when I would have traded all of faerie for a lifetime with Doyle and Frost. But that dream was already gone. "If I was willing to leave all of faerie behind and go with Doyle and my men, Cel would hunt me down and slaughter us. I have no choice but to take the throne or die."

She stood with aged hands on a cane now. "I am sorry, Meredith. I thought better of my sidhe. I thought they would rally around you when they saw my grace return. They are more lost than even I could have imagined." Sorrow was thick in Her voice so that it made me want to cry with Her.

She continued. "Perhaps it is time to take my blessings to the humans."

"What do you mean?"

"When you wake, you will all be healed, but there are too many in faerie who would do you and yours harm. Go back to the Western lands, Meredith. Go back to your other people, for you are right, you are not just sidhe. Perhaps if they see that my blessings can pass them by and be given to others, it will make them more careful of them."

"Are you saying you would use me to give magic to mortals?"

"I am saying that if the sidhe turn away from me and mine, then we should see if there are other more grateful hearts and minds."

"The sidhe are magic, Mother; humans are not."

"The very workings of their bodies are magic, Meredith. It is all miracles. Now sleep, and wake rested, and know that I will do what I can for you. I will speak loudly to those who still listen. To those who have shut their hearts and minds to me, I can only put obstacles in their paths." She gestured toward me, and Her hand was young again. "Rest now, and when you wake you will go back to the mortal world."

The vision began to fade, and I was once more aware that I was in bed with my men. My hand no longer ached from the thorns, and I could move it so Sholto and I were free of our hand-binding. The thought was solid enough to wake me, but the blanket of flower petals tucked itself under my chin, like a mother tucking you in when you are very small, and again I had that feeling that nothing could harm me. Mother was there, and all was right with the world. I had a moment to find it strange that this abstract feeling of the Goddess was more comforting than she herself had been on the hillside. I felt the brush of a kiss on my forehead, and heard her voice, Gran's voice. "Sleep, Merry-girl. I will keep watch." And as I had when I was small, I believed, and slept.

Chapter Sixteen

I woke to the brush of flowers, and the spill of hair as warm as fur across my face. Doyle's face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, and I couldn't have thought of anything better to wake up to. I reached up to touch his face. His smile widened, a flash of white in his dark face. His eyes filled with a look that was only for me. A look that once, not so long ago, I hadn't believed would ever be in those black eyes for anyone, let alone for me. Had he ever looked at anyone like that before? He was more than a thousand years old, so the answer had to be yes, didn't it? But for this moment, in my bed, the look was only for me, and that was enough.

"Doyle... " But whatever I was going to say was lost to a kiss. His lips on mine made me press into his body for more of a kiss. It grew into hands and arms, as if our bodies had been starving for each other.

I began to kiss my way down the smooth muscles of his chest, while he stayed above me and finally went to all fours. I wanted to celebrate that the burns on his torso were healed by touching every inch of him. I found his nipple ring and played with it, using my lips and teeth, and finally setting my mouth past the ring, and into the nipple beneath, to suck and play and tease, until he cried out "Enough" in a strangled voice.

That voice made me smile, because I had worked long and hard to get my Darkness to tell me when he'd had enough of anything. The queen had taught him, and the rest, to simply take what she gave them, for any touch was a blessing. I wanted to know what my men wanted, and to give it to them.

I laid down underneath him. His body was like a roof above me, so that I could gaze down the line of him and see all that he had to offer. His hair was a black richness that he'd thrown to one side of his body, like a living cloak. I was sheltered and content under the covering of his body.

I caressed my fingers down his body, wiggling lower so that I could cup the hard, swelling richness of his body in my hands. I wrapped one hand around that hardness, and put my other hand on the softness below so that I could cup him gently as I began to stroke him with my first hand.

"Meredith... " he said.

"I thought I'd lost you," I said, and wiggled down between his legs while he still held himself above me on his hands and knees. With my hand wrapped around him, there was still much of him bare, and I lowered that nakedness to my mouth. I licked the tip of him, peeking out from the circle of his foreskin, then slipped my mouth over him, tongue playing with the extra bit, rolling it, and sucking on it seperately from the rest of him, until I felt his body spasm above me. Only then did I take the meat of him more firmly in the center of my mouth, and suck him down, until I met my hand where it gripped the base of him. With this much of him in my mouth, I could no longer trust myself to be gentle enough to play on those softer bits, so I put my other hand on the smoothness of his hip to steady myself as I rose off the bed to take more of him inside me.

He moved one hand to touch my shoulder. "Meredith, if you do not stop, I will go."

I drew myself off him so I could talk, but kept my hands playing with him, and began to gently work that soft extra bit downward, so that when I put him back in my mouth, there would be only naked shaft to suck. I liked the sensation of the foreskin to play with, but I was sometimes too enthusiastic not to move something so delicate away from my teeth. I had wanted to do this with Doyle for so long, and been denied. He would not waste his seed in any way that would not gain him a child with me, but now...

"I want you to go into my mouth," I said.

"Meredith," he said, and he had to swallow hard, and finally put his hand on mine. "I cannot think with you doing that."

"I don't want you to think."

He held my hands still, coming to his knees so he could hold both my hands, which were still around his body. "We have had this talk."

"But I'm pregnant," I said. "We can make love just for pleasure, and my pleasure is you in my mouth for the first time."

He stared down at me, then a strange look came over his face. I couldn't decipher it at first, then he smiled. He smiled down at me, shaking his head.

"Where in faerie are we?" he asked.

"We are safe. You are healed. I am with your child. I want to drown in your body. Let all the questions wait, Doyle, please."

He gazed down the line of his body to where I lay back against the bed, my hands still wrapped around him. My hands were hidden where his much larger one had closed around them, from hand to past my wrists, so that my pale skin was very white against all his darkness.

He glanced to both sides. "I'm not sure the others wish to wait."

I glanced to one side, then the other. Sholto lay on his side of the bed, on his stomach, which meant he'd turned his tentacles back to the tattoo, or he couldn't have lain that flat. He was watching us, with careful, hungry eyes. "I'll wait, for my turn."

"I will leave," Mistral said, and stood beside the bed. The wounds on his body had vanished, as if the arrows had never touched all that muscled beauty. His gray hair covered his body, almost as if he hid from me with it.

Doyle was going a little softer in the nest our hands had made, but I had to concentrate on Mistral's mood for a moment. One of the hardest things about all the men was tending everyone's emotions. I knew Mistral less well than any of the other fathers, so here was my first moment to quiet that hurt look in the way he held his body, as if something had hurt him that had nothing to do with iron arrows.

"I want to celebrate that Doyle is alive and with me, Mistral."

He shook his head, not looking at us, and moved toward the path leading out. "I understand."

It was Doyle who helped. "But once we have," and he smiled at me, "celebrated, then you are one of us, and not to be exiled from the bed."

Mistral looked out through that veil of gray. His eyes had gone the green of a sky before a serious storm hits. I knew just enough of him to know that it showed great anxiety. I wasn't sure why, but our Storm Lord was worried.

"We are safe, Mistral, I swear," I said.

"You would truly let me join you?"

"If Merry wills it, then we share," Sholto said, not like he was entirely happy, but as if it were true.

Mistral moved back toward the bed, sweeping his hair back so more of his face showed, and his body was revealed in all its lovely potential. "I am not to be exiled?"

"You are my Storm Lord, Mistral. We risked much to save you. Why would we cast you out?" I asked.

Doyle squeezed my hands gently, and I released him so he could talk to the other man without being distracted. "You think Meredith is like the queen, but she is not." He held his hand out to the other man. "None of us have to leave. None of us have to watch while others satisfy their lust and know that we will go wanting. Meredith does not play such games."

Sholto spoke from the other side of the bed, on his knees now. "He speaks truly, Mistral. She is not Andais. She is not the other sidhe bitches who tease and torment. She is Merry, and she would not invite you to join her unless she meant it."

I looked at Sholto then, because it was a speech that I wouldn't have thought he knew me well enough to make. He answered the unasked question in my eyes. "You are honorable, Meredith, and just, and beautiful, and a goddess of lust and love." He looked past me to Mistral. "She is a warmer thing than we have had in any court of faerie in a very long time."

"I didn't know I still had hope," Mistral said. "To find it gone was more than I could bear."

I didn't completely understand his mood or his words, but I wanted to chase them all away. I held my hand out to him. "Come to me," I said.

"Come to us," Doyle said. "There is no cruelty here, no hidden tricks, I swear."

He came at last and took my hand, as Doyle touched his shoulder in that very male greeting when you would not dream of hugging. I'd noticed that when nude, the men were less open to hugs from one another.

Mistral looked down at me with eyes that were still anxious green. "Why would you want me now?"

"Why would I not?" I asked.

"I thought you would have no use for me."

I went to my knees and drew him down into a kiss that started soft and ended fierce and nearly bruising. His body was already happier than it had been just moments ago. I caressed him gently, and his face showed a pleasure so intense it was almost pain. He had truly thought I would not let him touch me again. I might have asked why or what, or even who had lied to him, but Doyle's hands came at my back, pulling me a little back from the other man.

"I would finish what we started."

"You are our Captain," Mistral said. "It is your right."

"It's not because of rank," I said. "It's because I thought I lost him, and I want the taste of him in my mouth to remind me that I have not lost everything I love."

Mistral kissed me more gently, then let Doyle pull me away. "To be third in your bed is more than I had hoped for, Princess. I am content."

"Meredith. I am simply Meredith here and like this," I said.

He smiled. "Meredith in the bedroom, then."

Doyle pulled me back to the center of the bed, and into his arms and his body. Sholto went back to lying on his side of the bed. Mistral climbed on it, but stayed sitting in one corner, his legs drawn up. Neither of them turned away, but I didn't mind an audience of my choosing, and neither did Doyle.