"Is it just Frost?" Galen managed to sound neutral and worried at the same time.
Rhys grinned and climbed over the seats to wedge himself between the seats and my legs. "I don't think Frost can stand yet."
"Help him up," Doyle said.
Nicca came forward, but his wings got in the way so badly that he gave it up and stepped back. Galen helped Frost into one of the nearby seats, clearing the aisle and giving Rhys room to drop to one knee beside me.
"Not so far to fall," he said, grinning.
"You never have far to fall," Galen said.
Rhys gave him a look but didn't rise to the bait. "You're just jealous because I get to go next."
Galen tried to make another joke, but finally just stepped back and said, "Yeah, I am."
Rhys touched my shoulder, bringing my attention from Galen's somber face back to him. "I like to know a girl's at least looking at me during sex."
I gave him a look. "You know how it is, Rhys, a man gets as much attention during sex as his skills deserve."
"Oooh," he said, holding a hand over his heart, "that one hurt." But his tri-blue eye sparkled with more than humor. "If I didn't think I'd knock out a tooth, I'd kiss your hand instead of just holding it."
It made me laugh, and I was still laughing when his hand closed over mine, where it lay in my lap. All laughter ceased, all breathing ceased, and for one frozen moment there was nothing but a wash of sensations, as if one sensual pulse built into the next, and the next. It wasn't until someone's voice said, "Breathe, Merry, breathe," that I realized I hadn't been.
My breath came back in a harsh gasp, and my eyes flew open. Only when I opened them did I realize I'd closed them.
Rhys was half collapsed against the seat in front of me, with a near-drunken grin upon his face. "Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun."
"It's not just Frost," Nicca said.
"No." Doyle didn't look entirely happy about that, though I wasn't sure why. "Galen, next," he said.
There were some protests, but Doyle waved them away. "No, we must know if this reaction is only to those who have godhead, or if it's going to be everyone. If everyone, then Merry cannot touch the guards on the ground in St. Louis, not in front of the reporters or the police."
"Tell me again why we have human policemen waiting for us in St. Louis," Rhys said. His eyes were still unfocused, but his voice was almost normal.
"One of the tabloids ran a picture of all of us rushing into the main house last night, with guns drawn and very few clothes. The ambassador to the courts did not believe the queen's assurances that it was not an assassination attempt on the princess, but simply a misunderstanding. I believe, and the queen believes, that the rulers of St. Louis do not wish to be seen as being careless of the princess's safety. If something goes wrong, they want to be able to say they did their best."
Rulers of St. Louis, Sometimes I forgot for days at a time how old Doyle and the rest were. Then they'd say something like that, and you knew their thoughts and vocabulary were formed in a time before mayors, or Congress, or anything remotely modern.
"The humans are no longer content with some of the queen's stories," Doyle continued. "The ambassador to the courts is most unhappy that they will not show him Prince Cel. He doesn't believe that Cel is merely away."
The tabloids had been the first to speculate why Prince Cel, who had been fairly visible in St. Louis and Chicago attending hot nightspots, had suddenly decided to stay home. Where was the prince? Why had he vanished now that Princess Meredith was back in the land of faerie? That last headline had been a little too close to the truth, but there was nothing we could do about it. Because the truth - that Prince Cel was being tortured for six months as an alternative to a death sentence - could not be shared with the human press, or even the politicians.
Among other crimes, Cel had set himself up as a deity to a human cult in California. I think he'd thought it was far enough from home that he wouldn't get caught. Unfortunately for him, I was in Los Angeles and working as a private detective. If Cel had known that, he would have put his scheme somewhere else, and he'd have tried to kill me sooner. One of the rules that President Thomas Jefferson's government insisted on was that if the sidhe ever set themselves up as gods in the United States, we would all be expelled from American soil. For that reason alone, any other sidhe would have been executed. But Cel also gave the human wizards the ability to magically ensnare, magically rape fey women. Mostly to humans with fey blood in their ancestry, but you do not give the power of faerie to humans to be used expressly to harm the fey. It isn't done. He was also sucking the magical energy of the women in question. He shared some of the power with his human followers, but he ate most of it. Magical vampirism is a crime among us. A crime punishable by death, and a nasty death at that. The only exception to the law is a duel. During a duel, or a war, you can do whatever you can get away with, as long as it doesn't breach your honor. Though some of the fey have an interesting view of honor. Cel should have died for all that, but he was the queen's only child, coheir to the throne. Most of the court had no clue as to the extent of Cel's treachery. They thought he was being punished for trying to kill me. Nope. The queen didn't like me that much.
So instead of death, he'd had the magic he'd given to the humans turned against him. A magic that made your skin crawl with desire and drove you nearly mad to be touched, to be f**ked. I'd had it turned on me, so I could speak with some authority. He had been covered with Branwyn's Tears, one of our last great magicks, and chained in the dark with his need and no way to relieve it. It was a horrible thing to do to anyone. But he wasn't enduring anything he hadn't allowed to happen to others, except for the length of the punishment. Six months is a very long time in the dark. He'd endured three months of his punishment, and still had three to go. People were taking bets at the court that his sanity would not survive. They were also taking bets that he'd kill me before I could kill him.