A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE BABIES WERE all asleep in their cribs. Once I calmed down from the dream, I had to see them. I knew in all reason that they were safe, but fear isn’t always about reason; maybe fear is never about reason, but some fears are reasonable. I feared my uncle, and my aunt, that was reasonable, but I also feared that my babies had somehow been left inside my nightmare—not reasonable.

Kitto stood beside the crib with me. We held hands as we gazed down at Bryluen. She was curled into a tiny ball, as if she were still asleep inside me, trying to find room between her bigger siblings. We walked to Gwenwyfar, to see her white curls almost gleaming in the glow of the night light. Alastair was flopped on his back, arms and legs akimbo, as if he’d played hard and just collapsed where he was the way Liam did sometimes. Were boys so different from the very beginning than girls? I honestly didn’t know; there’d been no babies around me growing up, so my learning was all books and classes, and on-the-job training.

Kitto wrapped his arm around my waist, and I slid my arm across his shoulders. They were broader than when he’d first come to me, from Doyle’s insistence that the smaller man hit the weight room and even weapons practice. Kitto wasn’t expected to take his place among my guards, but Doyle wanted all of us to be able to defend ourselves. I had even joined the practice until I got too big with babies to move well, and the doctors started worrying that some of the training might cause premature labor. As soon as I healed I’d be back to it, because defending myself sounded awesome after my dream about Taranis. But then I had defended myself, hadn’t I?

“I swear to you, Merry, the babes have slept peacefully for hours.”

I hugged him. “You need to sleep, too, you know?”

He smiled up at me and then gazed at the babies, our babies. “I never thought I’d belong anywhere. I was tolerated among the goblins as long as I served a stronger warrior or his lady as their submissive toy, but if they tired of me, or one got jealous of me with the other, then they could cast me out, and masterless I was anyone’s meat.”

I put both my arms around him and held him close, resting my head on the top of his black curls; they were soft in texture, not like pure goblin hair, which ran to coarseness. “You’re ours now, Kitto.”

He hugged me back. “I have a family like I read about in books.”

“The goblins aren’t much for reading,” I said.

“Most are not, but my first mistress taught me how to read, and after that being able to read was an asset to my other masters and mistresses—as much as the sex sometimes.”

“So you read them to sleep?” I asked.

“Or read contracts to them, or modern newspapers.”

“I didn’t know the goblins cared about what was happening in the outside world.”

“Some do.”

I held him close, rubbing my cheek in the softness of his hair. I thought about all the long centuries that he had managed to survive in a culture that valued brute strength and power on the battlefield, and sex. It sounded like a desperate and lonely existence.

I tried to lighten the mood, because I needed it, too. “Good that you are learned, and fabulous at sex.”

“Sometimes I was too good at the sex,” he said.

I moved back enough to look into his face. “What do you mean? It’s not possible to be too good at sex.” I smiled when I said it, but he didn’t smile back.

“Several masters and mistresses became jealous that their lovers preferred me to them, and cast me out because of it.”

I gave him wide eyes and tried to think my way through that. I finally said the truth. “I’m amazed the jealous lovers didn’t just kill you for it.”

“Some tried, but the lovers that valued me stopped them, or even fought them in my defense.”

“You are very good in bed,” I said.

He smiled up at me. “But not that good, you’re thinking, not by goblin standards.”

“They like it very rough,” I said.

“In public, but in private many of them prefer gentler sex.”

I’d experienced that difference myself with Holly and Ash, the other goblins in our lives. If anyone knew they enjoyed gentle sex, their reputation would be damaged, so I said nothing, not even to Kitto.

“And if their secret got out that they’d enjoyed that with you, they would be ruined.”

“It would be seen as weakness, and that is always challenged among my people.”

“Your mother was sidhe, Kitto; we are your people as much as the goblins.”

He smiled, and it was a happier one this time. “I was not raised sidhe, Merry, so I will always think of myself as goblin. The sidhe were these impossibly beautiful, magical beings, and the fact that I carried their skin and hair appealed to the goblins that had a fetish for the touch of sidhe flesh.”

“It is a serious fetish among the goblins,” I said.

“It’s what led to so many rapes in the wars between the two races. The sidhe will not voluntarily share themselves with a goblin.”

I leaned over and kissed him softly, gently, but thoroughly. “This is one part-sidhe princess who volunteers eagerly.”

His face lit up, filled with happiness. “And I will serve you in any way I can for as long as you will have me.”

“Kitto, I’m not planning on casting you out, you know that, don’t you?”

His happy looks slipped a little around the edges. “If my goblin king calls me home, Merry, there is nothing you can do but let me go.”

“You are sidhe now; I have brought you into your power, which means the goblins can’t call you from my side, Kitto.”

He cuddled tighter against me, rubbing his cheek against the crook of my neck like a cat cuddling closer. He shivered, and not in a happy way.

I hugged him tight. “What’s wrong, Kitto? What are you afraid of?”

“I am a goblin with a sidhe hand of power, but Holly and Ash have hands of power, too, and they have stayed in the goblin kingdom.”

“They would be insane to try to join the Unseelie kingdom with the queen so unstable,” I said.

“True, but the fact that they didn’t try to join the sidhe after coming into their magic means that magic alone may not be enough to keep me at your side.”

I buried my face in the softness of his curls. I breathed in the scent of him, felt the gentle strength of him, and thought about him not being here by my side. It was a painful thought.

“Has someone said something to you?”

“Have you asked what Holly and Ash are doing with the new hands of power that you helped give them?”

“No, should I?”

“Yes,” he said, with his lips soft against my neck.

“Tell me,” I said.

“If they find out that I told on them, they will not like it, and their hands of power are much stronger for combat than mine.”

He turned in my arms, so he could cuddle even closer to me. He shivered, and it wasn’t from happiness at being held. He was afraid of the twin warriors, and he should have been. It suddenly felt like Kitto wasn’t close enough to me; sometimes even a robe and pajamas kept the skin hunger and comfort from being fed.

I let go of him enough to open my robe and reach for his shirt. He helped me take it over his head with a smile I could see from the pale glow of the night light. We wrapped our naked upper bodies around each other, his arms wrapping around my waist inside the thin shelter of my robe. The front of him, still in shorts, pressed against my thigh. I could feel that just that much undressing had made his body start to react, but I knew I didn’t have to tell Kitto that there would be no sex tonight; he wouldn’t push, but be content that I wanted to touch him so closely.

“Now, tell me,” I whispered against his curls.

I felt his smile against my neck, and that made me smile in the dimness of the nursery where the babies lay content and safe, despite my dream.

“They are using their newfound magic to fight duels.”

“I thought Holly and Ash were so feared even among the goblins that no one would challenge them.”

“They are, but there are some insults that no goblin could allow to stand if he or she wanted to keep their reputation, and to lose your reputation is to sign your death sentence among us.”

“You mean they’re starting the fights,” I whispered.

“I mean, they are goading others into challenging them to duels, for they are not only fierce and ruthless warriors, but much craftier than most give them credit for.”

I held him in my arms, feeling the warmth and solidness of him, and was afraid for him. He felt so small, delicate as my own more mortal form, and I knew that I would have died quickly among the goblins if I’d had to defend myself from insults.

“They may be nearly as smart as they are strong,” I said.

Kitto’s breath was hot against my skin as he whispered, “Ash is; I’m not certain about Holly, but he follows where his brother leads and that is enough to save him from mistakes he would make otherwise.”

“Do you think they will challenge Kurag, Goblin King, and win the throne from him?”

“They could,” Kitto said.

“I have a treaty with Kurag, but not with the twins,” I said.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I moved back enough to look into his face. “You think they won’t honor the treaty agreement,” I said.

“I fear they might not.”

“Sex with me awakened their hands of power, gave them the blessing of the Goddess,” I said.

“Yes, and they are grateful, but I do not believe that Ash is ever so grateful that he would allow it to interfere with his own ambitions.”

I nodded. “I know they mean to seat one of them on the goblin throne.”

“Kurag knows it, too,” Kitto said.

“Why does he not challenge them and be done with it, then?” I asked.

Kitto studied my face. “You know the answer to that as well as I do.”

“He fears he will lose,” I said.

Kitto nodded.

I let that thought roll around in my head for a minute, and then said, “He’s right to be afraid.”

“I believe he will lose if he fights them fairly and openly,” Kitto said, voice still low so that we didn’t wake the sleeping babes.

“Goblin society allows only fair and open fighting. A king who lets someone else do his killing is soon a dead king,” I said.

“We must all fight our own battles, that is true; so a king could not hire an assassin, for to be found out would be a death sentence, and likely a long and painful death.”

“So what are you saying, Kitto?”

“I am saying that not all assassinations are paid killings.”

I frowned at him. “You’re being too obtuse for me, Kitto.”

He sighed and said, “Kurag is much smarter than he lets most see, and has used it to his advantage politically for years. I believe he might manipulate others into trying to kill the twins for him, and his hands would look clean of their blood.”

“But you say the twins are manipulating people into dueling them already; doesn’t that feed into what Kurag wishes?”

“No, for the twins are only finding fights with goblins they believe they can beat. They avoid the handful of warriors that they are unsure of on the battlefield.”

“You think Kurag might try to arrange a fight between the twins and someone who might be able to kill them,” I said.

Kitto nodded.

“Kurag is my ally only for another few weeks, and then the treaty with him ends,” I said.

“Unless you bring over more of the half-sidhe among the goblins, yes,” Kitto said.

“I am not allowed sex for six more weeks, according to my doctors,” I said.

“And by that time the treaty will be over and Kurag will not have to help you against your uncle, or your aunt, if they decide to attack you and yours.”

“Are you saying that I should support Kurag in his effort to get the twins killed, or the twins in killing him?”

“I am saying that Kurag fears your enemies and will escape the treaty as soon as he can, and that the twins may not honor a treaty with you. Two of those that insulted them so they had to stand challenge were also sidhe-sided goblins and had made it known that they wished to bed you and gain their own magic.”

“You’re saying that now that Ash and Holly have their hands of power, they may not want me to give such power to any other goblins,” I said.

He nodded. “They do not fear me, for my hand of power only allows me to bring someone through a mirror call against their will, and close the window at will. It is powerful, so I’m told, but it is mostly useless in a duel. Other sidhe-sided may gain other things that are more battle useful.”

I wrapped him closer in the circle of my arms, folding my silk robe over both of us. I think the robe would have tied around both of us, we were both so small.

“It is always a gamble which magic will come to a person,” I said.

“I’ve learned that some powers run in bloodlines, as you have the hand of flesh like your father before you.”

“True,” I said.

“If you had been able to keep fucking them, I think they would still be tied to you more, but when the doctor told you not to risk it with the babies …” I could feel him shrug in the circle of my arms.

“You think they want to be free of me?”

“Holly does,” Kitto said. “Ash will do whatever will give them the most power.”

“It will be six weeks before I can have sex with anyone, according to the doctors.”

“And longer before you would risk such roughness in bed as they or Mistral prefer,” Kitto said.

I petted Kitto and tried not to betray with even the stillness of my body the secret I’d been keeping. Holly and Ash were perverted by goblin standards. They actually liked gentle sex, and Ash enjoyed giving oral sex, which was a sign among the goblins that he considered himself subservient to me, or anyone he would go down on. It had taken me weeks to convince Kitto to allow me to go down on him, for he feared that it would hurt my reputation among the goblins, and we still needed their threat to keep our enemies in check, or at least to give them pause about attacking me. If the goblins learned the kind of sex that the brothers enjoyed, their reputations would be ruined. It could cost them their lives, because if you were perceived as weak, the challenges to combat could come so fast and often that eventually you would fail, and there was only one cure for failure in a duel among the goblins—death. I was lucky that the sidhe gave other options, or I would have died long before I escaped to Los Angeles.

Kurag, Goblin King, and Niceven, Queen of the Unseelie Demi-fey, had both agreed to forgo their price of treaty until after the babies were born. The goblins would have to wait until I was cleared for sex and had had it successfully with some of the fathers of my children, but Niceven could ask for her blood price to continue sooner. It was but a bit of blood offered to their tiny mouths, but the wild magic that had returned with my own late-blooming hands of power had given wings to the wingless among them, and given extra powers to some among them who had shared my blood and then my bed. Legend had said that some among the demi-fey could change to human size, but we had thought that lost with so much other magic among the fey, until we’d met demi-fey who could do it. I still thought they would be the perfect assassins, though Niceven said that they had never acted as such. I wasn’t sure I believed her.

“You’ve thought of something that makes you sad, or worried,” Kitto said softly.

“The demi-fey can demand their bit of blood again sooner than the goblins can demand their bit of flesh,” I said.

He snuggled his face against my shoulder and stroked a hand down my back. “You fear the demi-fey, don’t you?”

“Remember the case we helped the police solve? That proved to me that the demi-fey can be just as insane and dangerous as any of us.” I shivered at the thought of what had almost happened, when our tiny murderer had tried to cut the babies from my body and destroy what she could not have, a regular life with the human she was in love with. They say lovers want the world to love with them, but love thwarted can turn as ugly and dangerous as any hatred I’d ever seen.

He kissed my shoulder. “I am sorry, our Merry, it was careless of me not to remember.”

I shook my head, my longer hair sliding over the silk, which meant I was moving more than I thought, as if I could shake the memory of that evil from my mind, but it was too recent a memory to fade. I had been in my first trimester with the babes then, and it had been the case that made the men veto any other cases for the Grey and Hart Detective Agency until after the babies were born. So many things had been waiting for the babies, and now we stood surrounded by all of them. Triplets, the first ones born to the sidhe in more centuries than anyone could remember.

Now, everything and everyone that had been waiting for the births would be wondering when to approach me, and how, and if they wanted to continue with treaties, alliances, or … There were those among Taranis’s court who had been waiting to see if my children were born deformed monsters, which was what the Golden Court had believed happened to all sidhe who joined the Unseelie Court. It wasn’t true, but like all truly ugly rumors it was strongly believed by many.

Now that the babies and their first pictures were disproving the rumor, we would see how serious the Seelie nobles had been about doing anything to have children of their own. If I could truly give them babies they would do much, including perhaps killing Taranis for me. I much preferred his death by his own nobles to risking the men I loved in battle against him, and me battling him … it was too ludicrous to think about. He’d kill me. He would just kill me. Of course, what he wanted to do to me was to force me to be his queen, because he thought his rape had gotten me with his child. That he thought that was reasonable was just one more example of his insanity.

I stood there wrapped in the warmth of my robe and Kitto’s arms, surrounded by our three children, and I wanted to feel content and happy, but there was still too much work to do, too many deaths to accomplish, because I finally owned that only the deaths of at least one of my relatives would bring safety to me and mine.

One of the babies shifted in their crib, making a small sound like the mewing of a kitten or the soft rustle of a bird. Kitto and I tensed, waiting to see if the noise grew and the baby woke, but the movement quieted and the room was full of that contented sleepiness that babies can give off, so you struggle to stay awake around them like being covered in dogs on the couch.

As if my thoughts had called them, I heard a snuffling at the door. The quiet voice of one of the guards came. “No, pups, you’ll wake the babies moving around in there.”

I looked toward the door. I could see the vague shapes of larger dogs, and the smaller ones; their eyes shone in the light in a way that those of normal dogs did not, but they were the dogs of faerie, and they did a lot of things that normal dogs didn’t do.

I spoke softly. “It’s all right, let them in.”

“As you will, my lady.” And the door was opened so the mass of dogs could spill inside. There were so many of them that their wagging tails made a sound, like wind, or the softest of clapping. I’d never had so many dogs in so quiet a room to understand that wagging tails actually make noise. It made me smile.

My two faerie greyhounds, Mungo and Minnie, pressed close like silk over muscle; the pack of terriers and small lapdogs that seemed to always roam the house and grounds milled around our ankles and calves. The smaller dogs started yipping, and one terrier gave a full bark.

“Hush,” I said.

“You’ll wake the babies,” Kitto said.

The door pushed further open, and two more dogs entered. Two large black shapes, like all black Rottweilers, but they weren’t Rotties, they were hellhounds, the black, raw stuff of faerie’s wild magic made flesh and blood. Most of the dogs had begun as them, like black placeholders that would shift to a different variety of dog once they were needed, though Doyle said that if they remained in this form for long enough they would simply be hellhounds. They actually had nothing to do with hell and everything to do with being wild magic, powerful guardians, and hunting down those who had betrayed or threatened faerie. If you had a pack of them behind you, you might think Christian demons were chasing you. Doyle’s father had been a phouka, a shapeshifting faerie, but his mother had been a hellhound, so he could actually turn into a shape very similar to the pair that strode into the room. The other dogs went silent and gave way as the two came to bump against Kitto and me, only Mungo and Minnie stayed on either side of me, hunched, but touching me from behind. They acknowledged the bigger dogs’ dominance, but not their place at my side, which was a fine line to walk in dog politics, but so far they’d managed it without fights. I had no illusions who would win a fight between my two slender sight hounds and the more massive guard dogs. Kitto and I both touched the great black heads.

“Big fellas,” Kitto said, affectionately.

But then an even bigger shape pushed his way through the door, and the hellhounds gave way to him, as everyone else had given way before them.

“No,” I whispered, “that’s the big fella.”

Spike was one of the biggest dogs I’d ever seen; he could nearly look me in the eye just standing, as tall as a modern Irish wolfhound with the same wiry coat, but broader, beefier. He was the true figure of the dogs that the Romans said could bring down the horses that pulled their chariots and then, if their masters didn’t call them off, could slay the charioteer, too. They’d been so fierce that ransoms had been paid in an exchange of dogs. The great dogs had been pitted against lions in the arena, and the dogs had won enough matches to make it a good sport.

Spike strode into the room with an attitude that wasn’t sight hound at all; they tend to be more uncertain, nervous, whereas he carried himself more like a German shepherd, and the way he sized up a room was more Doberman. He just had working guard dog in every purposeful pad of those great feet. In good light his coat was a wonderful mix of pale brindle stripes. He had a “sibling” that was short-haired to his wire coat, so that his brother looked like a pale tiger, which was what we’d named him, so it was Tiger and Spike.

“Aye,” Kitto said, “he is.”

The great dog came to me and I put both my hands on the big head and ruffled him. He gave a big tongue-lolling grin, as goofy and happy to be petted as any of the smallest terriers. I put my forehead against his rough, warm fur and whispered, “Did you hear us up, Spike?”

He snuffled me, as if to say yes, or maybe he was just taking a bigger hit of my scent.

Kitto had moved out of the circle of my arms so I could greet Spike. He wasn’t afraid of the smaller dogs, but the wolfhounds seemed to give him and all the goblins pause. I’d learned that the wardogs hadn’t just killed Romans, but had actually been used in the great wars between the sidhe and goblins, and they had been one of the few things that could bring true death to the immortals. They looked like dogs, but in effect they were living, breathing manifestations of the wild magic of faerie itself, so in effect they were magic made flesh, and that meant they could kill goblins, sidhe, all of us. I put my face over those gigantic jaws and trusted he wouldn’t crush my throat with one bite.

Kitto moved away, and some of the smaller dogs followed him, so that he knelt in a swirl of them, petting them, and the sounds of their happy panting, snuffles, snorts, and quiet dog noises filled the room.

The two big, black dogs walked to the cribs and began to sniff them. Kitto got up and went to them. “Hush, you’ll wake the babies.”

The big black dog put its nose resolutely against the crib bars and looked back at me. It wasn’t a dog look in those dark eyes, and as I gazed into them there was a spark of red and green like Yule fires banked and ready to come to life and fill a room with everything the holiday was meant to be, and so seldom was. I smelled roses, and then I smelled pine, like Christmas trees, and I wasn’t surprised when I looked back to find Frost coming through the door. When the wild magic had first come here in L. A. he had sacrificed himself, become a great white stag; for a time we thought we’d lost him forever to that form, not dead, but not human enough to know that I was pregnant with his child, not human enough to hold me or love me.

He came to hold my hand now, and I smiled up at him, so happy that he stood beside me now. He bent and kissed me, whispering, “The God called me to your side.”

I nodded.

Kitto came to stand on my other side but didn’t try to take my hand. I reached out to him, and the smile that flashed joyful across his face was so worth that small gesture. “What’s happening?” he whispered.

“Magic,” I said.

The black dog snuffled Bryluen’s onesie-covered body. She stared at him, eyes intent, not afraid, and then the big nose touched her bare face. The rush of magic washed over us in a skin-tingling, hair-raising wash of warmth that filled the world with the scent of pine and roses, and the scent of spring like a wash of fresh rain that brings the first flowers.

The black fur ran as if it were water moved by wind, and where that wind touched it the fur turned the green of grass and leaves, fur growing slightly longer, thicker, more wiry-looking. The shaggy green head was bigger than the baby it lay beside, but it raised that head and looked at us. Its tongue lolled out happily, and the overly wide eyes held both happy dog and something else, something more.

“Cu Sith,” Frost whispered, and it was, the great watchdogs that used to guard our faerie mounds, our sithens. One had appeared in Illinois and attached itself to the Seelie Court, and a second had appeared here in L.A. when the wild magic created new lands of faerie inside the walled estate. The first one had run away to take up its post among the Seelie and spent a lot of time protecting the servants from King Taranis’s rage. Taranis was afraid of their Cu Sith, partly because of what it was, and partly, I thought, because it didn’t like him, and a Cu Sith was the heart of any sithen it guarded. It was a way of saying that his faerie mound didn’t like him much.

Spike raised his head skyward and gave one long, deep baying howl. The other dogs joined him, one, two at a time, so that it was like a choir, each voice rising and blending with the next, so that we stood in the center of that beautiful, mournful, joyful noise. It reminded me more of the sound of wolves than dogs.

Gwenwyfar began to cry, and the other black dog went to her crib and looked back at us whining, as the howls reverberated and faded in the small room. We lowered the crib and the big black dog sniffed her. She cried harder, striking out with tiny legs and waving small fists. The dog snuffled her harder, rolling her a little with its muzzle; one of her tiny fists must have touched the fur, because white began to spread from its nose backward like a white snow covered the bare earth, except that this snow was shaggy fur, and the dog turned huge saucerlike eyes upward. Its great jaws were full of razor-sharp teeth, and though it looked like a big, white dog, there was just enough different about its eyes and mouth to make you think, Not quite a dog. It was one, and it wasn’t.

“Galleytrot,” Kitto said. He was right, it was known as a ghost dog, something that chased travelers on lonely roads and haunted lonely places. As the Cu Sith was the bright, high court of faerie, so the galleytrot was the scary story told around the winter fire, and a warning to stay in groups, because alone, things that weren’t human could find you and steal you away. When the wild magic had come, the only other galleytrot had come to the hands of the goblin twins, Holly and Ash. There was no way for them to be Gwenwyfar’s fathers; they had come to my bed too late. Galleytrots weren’t exclusive to the goblins, but they were certainly more Unseelie than Seelie Court. Gwenwyfar might look perfectly Seelie, but her true heritage showed in the white dog at her side, as Bryluen’s showed in her green dog. If theGalleytrot had come to Bryluen, I’d have wondered more if her possible goblin heritage might come from the twins.

Kitto said, “There’s no dog for Alastair.”

The door opened, and it was Doyle with another black dog at his side. The dog went to Alastair’s crib, and Frost lowered it for him. I took his hand in mine again, and Doyle took his other one, so that Frost stood in the middle of us as the black dog sniffed the baby. Alastair stared into the big face like Bryluen had, and then the dog touched his face, gently. Alastair made a soft sound and then the fur ran with colors, but something was different with this one, because it wasn’t just the fur that changed, but the dog began to shrink, as if the big black body were being erased, or condensing down.

“What is it?” Kitto asked.

Doyle bent down and picked it up, ruffling its long ears. “A puppy,” he said.

“But a puppy what?” Kitto asked.

I touched the long, trailing ears; they were silky. “Hound of some kind,” I said.

The puppy began to whine and wriggle. Doyle put it on the floor, but it began to whimper and cry. Alastair started to cry, too.

Doyle frowned for a moment, then picked the puppy up and set it in the crib. It licked Alastair’s face, and the crying stopped. It walked around him and settled on the other side, its white and red puppy body stretched the length of his, Alastair’s hand touching its back.

“He’s too little to have reached out for the puppy,” I said.

“Perhaps,” Doyle said.

“We can’t leave the puppy in with him, it’s not housebroken,” I said.

“It’s his puppy, Merry.”

“Do you know what kind of dog it is?”

“As you said, a hound.”

“The other two dogs are guard dogs; what can a puppy do?” Frost asked.

The puppy gave a contented sigh, and Alastair made a similar happy sound. “Maybe every boy needs a dog,” Doyle said.

“Did you have one when you were little?” I asked.

He smiled. “I did.”

I frowned at him. “What kind of dog?”

He shook his head. “Let’s say it was a present from one of my aunts.”

Since two of his aunts had been hellhounds, with no human form, I had to ask, “Are you saying that one of your cousins was your puppy?”

He smiled. “Dog was my other form; think of it as more a best friend than a boy’s dog.”

I looked down at our son and the “puppy.” “Are you saying that Alastair will be able to shapeshift?”

“I do not know, but let him keep the puppy, and we’ll see. It was once one of my symbols.” I knew he was referring to the fact that once he had been the god Nodens, a healing deity known for having dogs at his sanctuary that could lick a wound and heal it, among other things.

“Magical dogs; I assumed the dog was you, but you’re saying …”

“I was not the only dog in my temples,” he said.

We looked back down at our son and the puppy. The Cu Sith had lain down in front of Bryluen’s crib, and the galleytrot had done the same to Gwenwyfar’s.

My hounds bumped me and I stroked their silky heads. Spike put his head into the crib and sniffed both the baby and the puppy. It opened sleepy eyes and licked his nose. Spike rose back up and “smiled” at us, tongue out, so that he lost all his dignity and looked like the big, goofy hound he could be at times.

“Spike approves,” I said.

“He does,” Doyle said, smiling.

“He’s your son,” Frost said, sounding pleased.

Doyle took his hand in his and said, “Our son.”

Frost’s whole face lit up with the happiness of that shared phrase. “Our son,” he said.

I moved so that I could wrap my arms around both their waists, and we hugged my two men and me. There were other men in my life, and I loved them, but these were the two who made my heart sing the most. If I’d been human enough, I might have felt guilty about that, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t; it was just the truth of my heart.

Kitto petted the puppy and kissed the baby, then put the side of the crib back up. “Good night, little prince.”

We left the babies to sleep content with their new protectors, and new best friends, because Doyle was right; every child needs a dog.