I gazed up at him, Galen still in my lap. “Aisling, do you think of me as human?”
He lowered his eyes and would not look at me, which was answer enough. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“I mean no disrespect, Princess Meredith. If you are sidhe enough to look upon me, that would be a fine thing, but what if I did bespell you? There is only one remedy for the enchantment.”
“And that would be?”
“True love. You must be in love with someone else before you can look upon me.”
“Not entirely true,” Hawthorne said from his place at Melangell’s side. “Aisling’s magic can overcome even true love if he wishes it and tries hard enough. Once he could make anyone fall hopelessly in love with him.”
“Lust, not love,” Adair said. “There is a difference, you know, Hawthorne.”
“It has been so long since I had either that I’m not sure I do remember the difference,” Hawthorne said.
Adair leaned against the wall in the torn remnants of his padding and undershirt. He smiled, tiredly, with an edge of pain to it. “Aye, I hear you.”
I had this horrible urge to kiss Adair, to take that edge of sorrow from his smile and see if I could get a real one.
“Can you sit up?” I asked Galen.
“Yes, but I’m enjoying the attention.” He grinned up at me.
I bent over him, hugging him with all my body while he lay in my lap. I whispered against his skin, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
He rubbed his face against my breasts, since they were so conveniently placed. “Me, too.”
Galen sat up and I waited to make certain he was steady. Just seeing the blood painted on the back of his body tightened my chest all over again. I had to swallow past something hard and crushing in my throat.
I turned to Adair, still bleeding, still hurting, because I gave an order. I didn’t strike the blow, but I’d put him in harm’s way. I knelt in front of him, reached out to touch his face. He actually flinched, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched, or wasn’t sure if it would hurt. Knowing my aunt, I could understand that.
“You look sad,” I said. “I don’t want you to be sad.”
“I’m too hurt to do much, Princess.” His eyes were wide, showing too much white.
I shook my head. “Would she really offer you intercourse when you were this injured?”
He understood who “she” was. “She has before, not to me, but… others.”
Offer them sex after years of nothing, when they were too hurt to enjoy it, or too hurt to perform. Auntie Andais was a true sadist.
“A kiss, Adair, nothing more. Just a kiss, because you seem to need it.”
He gave me a puzzled look out of his triple yellow eyes. “Just because I need it. I don’t understand.”
“Are you lesser fey now, to give a kiss because someone needed it,” Kieran said. “It is not a sidhe custom.”
“No, it isn’t, because we’ve forgotten who we are,” I said, “what we are.”
“And what are we?” Kieran asked, his voice sneering.
I leaned in toward Adair. His eyes were still too wide. “The amount of power we raised earlier would hurt me now, Princess.” His voice was breathy, but he was against the wall, and there was nowhere else for him to go.
“No power, just touch.” I laid a soft, chaste press of lips against Adair’s mouth. He stopped breathing for a moment, and I tasted more fear than desire in him. I drew back from him to watch his face and saw the fear turn to puzzled wonderment.
“I don’t understand you, Princess.”
“Because she is not sidhe.”
“You asked what we are, Kieran.” I turned and looked at the kneeling man. “We are deities of nature. We are, in a way, nature personified. We are not humans, no matter how our form may ape them. We are something else, and too many of us have forgotten that.”
“How dare you lecture us on what the sidhe are, when you stand as the most human of us all, the most lesser of us all.”
I stood up, stretching my legs, which were a little stiff from holding the weight of Galen’s upper body. “When I was a child I would have given anything to be one of the tall slender sidhe, but as I have grown into adulthood I value more and more my mixed heritage. I value my brownie blood, my human blood, not just the sidhe blood that runs in my veins.
“Aisling, take off your shirt. If I am too mortal to look upon your chest, then I am too mortal to be your queen. Let Hafwyn see which of you is the more injured so one of you may be healed.”
He began to argue.
“I am Princess of Flesh and Blood, daughter of Essus, and I will be queen. You will do as I order. Adair loses blood while you act like some bashful maiden.”
Even through the veil I could tell that I’d pricked his pride, and all males are alike when it comes to that. He threw his cloak to the ground and jerked his tunic over his head in one quick motion. He didn’t wait for me to tell him to take off his underthings. He simply stripped them over his head, hesitating only at his face, so he could be sure of keeping his veil in place. I didn’t argue the veil; his face had once bespelled goddesses and sidhe alike.
It wasn’t his chest that made me stare, though it was a very nice chest, with wide shoulders and a lovely stomach except for the cut that traced blood from his waist to his ribs. What made me stare was his skin, which looked as if it had been sprinkled with gold dust, shining and sparkling in the light. In sunlight he would dazzle the eye. I’d seen his nude back in the midst of all the other guards when the queen had been driven mad by a magical poisoning. She had ordered them all to strip and they’d done it for fear of her.
“It is as I have feared,” he said.
I shook my head. “I have seen you nude, Aisling, unless there is someone else with gold dust on their skin.”
“When she saved us,” Adair said, “you were on the floor.”
Aisling shivered, though whether from Hafwyn’s hands on his wound or the memory of what the queen had almost done I wasn’t sure. “I had forgotten.”
“Not so mortal, after all,” Galen said from where he’d moved to sit against the wall.
“Or perhaps the great Aisling has lost his power,” Melangell said, “and he hides behind his veil not because he can bespell us all, but because he cannot.”
He stiffened, and this time I was almost certain it wasn’t from anything Hafwyn was doing. “His wound is shallow. Adair needs the healing more.”
“Then do it. I’m needed with the police.”
Aisling hugged his bare upper body, as if something hurt him. Melangell laughed.
Hawthorne put his blade a little closer to her skin, and the laughter quieted, but still chuckled out from between her lips.
“Why did you attack Galen? Why him?”
Hafwyn answered, “He was chosen because he is the only one of your guards who is a green man.”
Melangell hissed, “You don’t know enough to help them.”
“She’s right,” Hafwyn said as she had Adair lift the cloth around his wound. “I know why they chose him, but not why him being a green man marked him.”
“Does Melangell know?”
Hafwyn nodded. “She knows almost everything that the guard plans. Perhaps not everything that the prince did before he was imprisoned, but most.”
I nodded. “Good.” I went to her, staying well out of reach because even with her hands bound I did not want to risk her touching me. She’d once been able to love a man to death. It wasn’t the sex, but the touch of her skin. She had lost the power, or so I’d been told, but caution was better.
“I give you one last chance, Melangell. Tell us why you targeted Galen, not once but twice, for we know that Cel paid the demi-fey to try to ruin him. Why is it so important to Cel that I not bed Galen?” I motioned Hawthorne back enough so she could talk if she wanted to.
“I will not betray my master, for I did take oath to Cel. I never served your weak-willed father.”
I smiled at her sweetly. “My father is great enough to withstand petty insults. You refuse to answer my questions.”