A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THERE WERE SO many things that needed my attention, but I left Doyle to talk to the queen about how to keep Taranis out of our dreams, then left the other fathers with the babies, and I had the first hours of being just me, just Merry, in months. Being pregnant had been what I was for so long: unescapable, wonderful, terrifying, physically overwhelming. The fact that I was pregnant was the first thing people saw about me, thought about me, and during the second half of the pregnancy it was all I thought about myself. Trapped under the weight of triplets, I had been unable to even get out of bed if I was on my back, though lying on my back hadn’t really been an option at the very end; it was like being crushed. So I’d slept on pillows, sitting up, which meant I had slept badly, and been exhausted, and … I loved the babies, but I was so glad to have them in our arms instead of being forever pregnant.

Maeve Reed was back in her master suite, which I’d used for most of the last year. We’d moved to one of the larger guest rooms in anticipation of her return. It was still a large room, bigger than my apartment in Los Angeles had been. When I said we, I meant Doyle and Frost. None of us had spoken of it out loud, but gradually they had moved in and had no other room to call their own. Some of the other men slept with us occasionally, but most of them were as broad through the shoulders as Frost, and what had fit in the bigger bed upstairs was a tight fit here. Since I was planning sex and not sleep, the bed would have been fine, except that Frost was resting in it, because sleep would help him heal faster, so I went to the extra room.

It was one of the other guest rooms in the palatial mansion that Maeve Reed had owned since the 1950s. It was actually one of the smaller bedrooms, but one wall had a bank of windows that faced east, and two skylights, so the room was almost always light and airy and seemed bigger than it actually was. It also had a bathroom complete with shower, which was important for cleaning up afterward. If the room had been bigger I would have moved the three of us in here when we had to leave the master suite, but the shower was narrow enough that some of the men had trouble not bumping their shoulders against the walls. The bathroom in the bedroom that had become ours was much bigger, as was the entire room, but I liked the smaller bedroom better.

I sat on the edge of the bed in a forest-green silk robe, which had been one of the few pieces of clothing that had fit me until right at the end of the pregnancy, and then even the robe hadn’t tied over the babies and me. Now it was laced tight. One of the things hardest to explain is that pregnancy makes your body a stranger in a way. You’ve known it your whole life and yet at some point in pregnancy it’s like some stranger has moved in and your body isn’t yours anymore. It doesn’t react the same way, feel the same way, and there are movements inside you that you know are not your muscles, your fingers and toes wiggling, but other people with their own brains and wills and personalities growing like little strangers inside you. You hope that you’ll be friends and like each other, as well as love each other, but you can’t really know, not for certain. I’d seen too many people in my family hate each other, kill each other. When that is part of your family’s repeated history it destroys a lot of illusions that most women have about their babies and everyone being perfectly happy and loving. That was for Hallmark holiday commercials, not for any reality I’d ever experienced with my actual blood relatives.

I sat with my robe tied tight around a waist and a body that looked, almost, like me again, and wanted to be just me, just Merry, with someone, for an hour or two.

There was a knock on the door, not a soft one either. I said, “Come in.”

Rhys opened the door, smiling. Galen was behind him, sort of looming with his six inches of extra height. I didn’t normally think of Galen as that tall, because he seemed smaller compared to the other guards, but now I realized he was as tall as most; only Rhys was under six feet.

I smiled but fought not to frown. “I thought you were supposed to decide which of you it was going to be.”

They glanced at each other as Galen closed the door behind them. “We were,” Rhys said, “but we spent months sharing your bed, so we … tied.”

“Tied?” I asked.

“Rhys tried to pull rank, and I wouldn’t let him without a fight.”

I looked at Galen and didn’t try to keep the surprise off my face. “Really?”

“Really,” he said, and his usually good-natured face was set in serious lines.

“Really,” Rhys said.

I looked from one to the other of them. “How serious a fight were you willing to have?”

“I wasn’t backing down,” Galen said, and he said it as if it were simple fact and not a total shock.

“I think he might have requested a duel,” Rhys said.

Galen looked uncomfortable then, and more his normal self. “I don’t know if I would have taken it that far.”

“Now you tell me,” Rhys said, smiling.

Galen rolled his eyes, and then the kidding faded, and he turned that serious, handsome face to me. “But short of a duel, I wasn’t giving up the first chance to touch you in months.”

Rhys turned so that only I could see his face. He raised eyebrows at me, but there was something new in his face as he said, “It was the most angry I’ve ever seen him, outside of a fight to save your life, or ours.”

I looked up at him, and suddenly his face was uncertain. “The only one who could tell me no today is you, Merry. Do you want just Rhys? If you do, then I’ll leave.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s all right, I mean … stay, both of you stay, though with no intercourse allowed and not even being able to do oral sex on me, I’m not sure what both of you will be doing.” I laughed and held my hands out to them both. “It’s an embarrassment of riches to have you both.”

Galen grinned, and the two men exchanged a look. They’d had months of literally sharing my bed and my body. They worked almost as well together as Frost and Doyle, though since they didn’t love each other, the energy wasn’t the same. It was good, but not as good, but then more love makes everything better.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

THE CLOTHES CAME off in an eager rush of hands and kisses, and left them nude and me wearing only the forest-green panties that matched the robe. I wanted to be as naked as they were, wanted to rub as much of my skin on theirs as possible, but my body wasn’t healed enough from giving birth, not yet.

They laid me down between them and covered my body with kisses and caresses. Just that brought small eager sounds from me, making me writhe, body arching up against their hands like a cat, except I was lying on my back and arching things up toward them that cats didn’t offer their owners. Rhys’s hand slid down the front of my panties at last. I cried out just from that, arching my pelvis upward toward his hand.

Rhys put his other hand on my hip. “Easy, we need to be gentle, remember.”

I blinked up at him and had a moment of wanting to argue, but my body was already letting me know that I might have been a little overeager, writhing around. It didn’t hurt, but I ached.

“I’m sorry, I do remember, it’s just been so long.”

“It’s been a long time for us, too, Merry,” Rhys said, leaning in to kiss me. His hand wasn’t down my pants anymore; he’d moved to keep from hurting me while I moved too much.

“We need to be slow, not fast,” Galen said with a grin.

“Goddess help me, but I don’t feel slow, or gentle; I feel crazed with the need to have you touch me everywhere.”

“And we would like nothing better, but if we hurt you we’ll never forgive ourselves,” Rhys said.

“Not to mention that Doyle, Frost, and the rest will kick our asses,” Galen said, smiling.

“They’d try,” Rhys said.

“I’d put up a good fight,” Galen said, “but eventually they’d win.”

Rhys’s face closed down; it was beyond serious.

“What?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Liar,” I said.

He grinned. “Now we’re not allowed to actually lie.”

“But we’re allowed to exaggerate until you’d believe the moon was made out of green cheese,” I said.

“But we’re allowed to lie by omission,” Galen said.

Rhys frowned at him. “Don’t help me.”

I studied his face. “You think you could win against Doyle and Frost.”

“I know I could.”

I gave him a look.

He smiled, but it left that one tri-blue eye unhappy. “I could bring death with my touch to non-fey when I was just Rhys. You’ve seen me do it.”

“But you killed the goblin that tormented you and Kitto; that’s fey.”

“I couldn’t have done that before you and the Goddess brought me back into my power,” he said.

“I don’t think Doyle and Frost would let you get close enough to touch them,” Galen said.

“I wouldn’t have to touch them now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I was Cromm Cruach; I lived for blood and slaughter, and I was good at it. I have a sithen of my own again, Merry. It’s disguised as an abandoned Los Angeles apartment building, but it’s a piece of faerie that came into being, because you brought me back to what I was; I don’t have to get close enough to touch someone to cause their death.”

“How do you know that, for certain, I mean?”

He looked away then, and I had to reach up, touch his face, and turn him back to me. “Rhys?”

“Let’s just say that my sithen is in a bad section of L. A. and I’m blond and blue-eyed and don’t exactly look like I belong.”

“Someone attacked you,” I said.

“Someones,” he said.

“Who?”

“Let’s just say that the gang problem in that section of downtown isn’t an issue anymore.”

“You didn’t do it to defend yourself,” Galen said.

I looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”

“They hurt one of the people living near your sithen, didn’t they?” Galen asked.

Rhys shrugged. “Don’t make it sound all noble.”

“I wasn’t.”

Rhys looked at him. “Don’t disapprove either.”

“I wasn’t.”

“If you have a point to make, make it soon,” Rhys said, and he didn’t sound altogether happy.

“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.