Divine Misdemeanors (17 page)

We felt it hit, and I half expected to hear the echo of some great explosion, but there was no sound. The impact of it shook us, and sent Rhys thrusting inside me one last time, as we both cried out at the release of our bodies and the release of the magic miles away.

Only when our skin began to fade, glowing around the edges, instead
of that white-hot light, only then did he let himself slide to his knees, still holding me, as I slid down the railing. The sea held our weight, and then tried to spill us down the steps. He moved us up in a kind of crawl until he had us safe on a drier step. He had fallen out of me somewhere in the climb but we were both ready to be done. It had been enough.

He gave a shaky laugh as he cradled me against him, and we leaned back against the steps.

“What was that magic?” I asked, my voice still breathless.

“It was the power of faerie creating a sithen.”

“A hollow hill here in Los Angeles,” I said.

He nodded, still trying to catch his own breath. “I caught a glimpse of it. It’s a building, a new building that wasn’t there before.”

“Wasn’t where before?” I asked.

“On a street.”

“What street?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but tomorrow I’ll be able to find it. It will call to me.”

“Rhys, how will you explain a new building appearing?”

“I won’t have to, just as the hollow hills would appear and the people would think the hill had been there forever. If the magic works as it always has, everyone will accept that it’s been there. I’ll be new moving in, but the building won’t look new, and people will remember it.”

I laid my head on his chest, and his heart was still thudding fast. “A sithen is like a new court of faerie, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So, in essence, faerie just made you a king.”

“Not the Ard-ri, but a lesser king, yes.”

“But I didn’t see the building. I didn’t feel it.”

“You are the high queen, Merry. You don’t have just one sithen; in a way they’re all yours.”

“Are you saying that the other men will get them, too?”

“I don’t know. Maybe only those of us who had one once upon a time.”

“Which would be you, and who?”

“Barinthus for one. I’ll have to think about the others. It’s been so long for most, so many centuries. You try to forget what you were before, because you don’t ever think you’ll get it back. You try to forget.”

“First my dream or vision and being able to save Brennan and his men when they have to be hundreds of miles away, and then them being able to heal with my blessing, or whatever you want to call it. Now this. What does it all mean?”

“The sidhe didn’t appreciate the Goddess coming back through you. I think she’s decided to find out if the humans are more grateful than the fey.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” I asked.

He laughed again. “I don’t know, but I can hardly wait to see this new modern sithen, or try to explain all this to Doyle and Frost.” He pushed to his feet, grabbing onto the railing to steady himself.

“I can’t walk yet,” I said.

He grinned. “High praise for me.”

I smiled at him. “Very.”

“I’m going to rescue my weapons before the tide rises any more. I’ll have to clean everything. Salt water rusts like nothing else.” He waded down into the water, and finally had to dive out of sight in the waves to find where he’d pierced the sand and left his weapons.

I had a moment of being alone with the sea and the wind and the moon full and glowing above me. I whispered, “Thank you, Mother.”

Then I heard Rhys surface, taking a deep breath, splashing toward the steps, his weapons dangling from his hand, his curls plastered to his face and shoulders. He walked up beside me, the water running down his skin in shining rivulets.

“Can you walk yet?”

“With help, I think so.”

He grinned again. “That was amazing.”

“The sex or the magic?” I asked as he helped me to my feet. My knees were still weak enough that I grabbed for the railing even with his arm on mine.

“Both,” he said. “Consort save us, but it was both.”

We walked a little shakily up the steps laughing. The wind from the water seemed much warmer than before we’d made love, as if the weather had changed its mind and decided that summer was a better idea than autumn.

SALT WATER IS ONE THING YOU HAVE TO RINSE OFF YOUR BODY BEFORE
you fall into bed. I was in the big shower doing just that when the door burst open and Ivi and Brii, short for Briac, were in the doorway, breathing hard, and weapons naked in their hands.

I froze in the middle of rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, blinking at them through the glass of the shower doors.

I caught movement from the corner of my eye, and Rhys was just suddenly sliding in low through the door they had left open behind them. He had his newly oiled sword at Brii’s throat, and his newly cleaned gun pointed at Ivi as the other man froze in mid-motion of bringing his own gun up.

“Sloppy,” Rhys said, “both of you. Why did you leave your posts?”

They were both breathing so hard I could see their chests fighting for air, so much so that they couldn’t get enough air to talk. Brii might have been having trouble talking around the sword point that never wavered from his skin, and the short bow in his hand with its half-cocked arrow and a hand full of arrows fanned in his fingers were completely useless.

Brii blinked brilliant green eyes, his hair the yellow of cherry leaves in the fall, tied back in a long braid. His clothing was leather
and could have looked like club wear, but was actually pieces of armor older than most people’s history books.

Rhys’s sword point seemed to be shoved up against the thudding pulse in his throat.

He looked at the other man, who was still frozen, unmoving under the point of his gun; only the frantic rise and fall of his chest betrayed him. His green and white hair was loose and swirled around his legs, but like Doyle and Frost, it never seemed to tangle. Unlike them, Ivi had a pattern of vines and leaves like a print upon his hair. His namesake on his hair was like a work of art, and his eyes were starbursts of green and white, so that people would ask him if it was fancy contacts, but it was just Ivi. He wore modern clothes, and the vest on his chest was modern body armor.

Rhys said, “Ivi, explain, and it better be good.” He never took his gun off the other man.

Ivi fought his own breath and pounding heart rate to speak. “We woke … on guard duty. Enchanted sleep … thought enemies.” He coughed, sharply trying to clear his throat, or take a deeper breath. He was being very careful about keeping the naked gun unmoving in his hand. “Thought we’d find Princess dead, or taken.”

“I could kill you both for falling asleep on duty,” Rhys said.

Ivi gave a small nod. “You’re third in command, you have that right.”

Brii finally managed to talk around the sword point and his pulse. “We failed the princess.”

Rhys moved in one motion, taking the sword from Brii’s throat, lowering his gun to the floor, and standing in the doorway as if he’d just walked through. With Frost and Doyle around me, I sometimes forgot that there was more than one reason that Rhys had been third in command of the Queen’s Ravens. When everyone is this good, it’s hard to remember just how good that is.

“It was the Goddess herself who did the enchanted sleep,” Rhys said. “None of us can fight that, so I guess I won’t kill you tonight.”

Ivi said, “Shit.” He went to his knees outside the shower doors, laying
his head on his arm that held the gun. Brii leaned his back against the half wall by the shower. He had to adjust the long bow at his back so it didn’t get damaged against the tile. He was one of the guards who hadn’t embraced guns yet, but when you were as good with a bow as he was, it wasn’t as big a problem as it might have been, according to Doyle.

I leaned my hair back into the water enough to finish rinsing off. It was Rhys’s turn in the shower anyway. He’d cleaned his weapons first.

“What do you mean, the Goddess herself?” Brii asked.

Rhys started to explain, a much edited version of things. I turned off the shower, and opened the door to get the towels that always seemed to be hanging where we needed them. I had a moment to wonder if Barinthus put out the towels, but I doubted it. He didn’t strike me as that domestic.

Brii handed me the first towel, but his eyes were all for Rhys and the story. I bent over to wrap my hair, and it was Ivi’s hand that traced my back and slid lower. It made me look at him, because I would have thought that talk of the Goddess would have distracted him from such things. But, unlike Brii, his eyes were on me. There was a heat in his eyes that shouldn’t have been there after a month of freedom—a month when we had almost an even number of male and female sidhe guards.

“Ivi,” Rhys said, “you aren’t listening to me.” He didn’t sound angry, but rather puzzled.

Ivi blinked and shook himself like a bird settling its feathers. “I would say apologies, but we’re both so old that that’s an insult, so what do I say, that the sight of the princess naked distracted me from anything you could say?” He smiled at the end but it wasn’t a completely happy smile.

“You and the others were supposed to talk to Merry at dinner about this.”

“The Fear Dearg are back,” Ivi said. “I remember them, oh Lord of Death. It was they I first thought of when we woke and found that
both of us were asleep on duty.” Ivi made a face; it was anger, disgust, and other things I couldn’t read.

“I am too young to remember, for I was not yet aware,” Brii said, “but I came to true life not long after the end of it and I remember the stories. I saw the wounds and the damage done. When such enemies are about, what good soldier complains about anything else?”

I stood there with my hair in its towel, but the other towel loose in my hands. “I’m missing something here,” I said.

“Tell her,” Rhys said, making a little go-ahead motion with his gun.

Brii looked embarrassed, and that was a rare emotion for the sidhe. Ivi lowered his bold eyes, but said, “I have failed at my post this night. How can I ask for more after that?”

“Galen and Wyn were still deep asleep when I came in here. This should have woken them?” I asked.

The three men looked at each other, and then Brii and Rhys both moved out through the door enough to see the big bed. They came back into the bathroom, with Rhys shaking his head. “They haven’t moved.” He seemed to think about that. “In fact, Doyle and Frost should be in here. All the rest of the guards should be in here with weapons drawn. These two”—and he motioned with his sword at them—“made a hell of a lot of noise rushing to save you.”

“But no one else woke up,” I said.

Rhys smiled. “The Goddess has kept everyone but the two of you asleep. I think that means you get to have your talk with Merry. My weapons are clean. Now it’s my turn in the shower.”

“Wait,” I said, “what talk?”

Rhys kissed me on the forehead. “Your guards are afraid of you, Merry. They’re afraid you’ll be like your aunt, and your cousin, or uncle, or grandfather.” He looked up as if thinking over the list.

“There’s a lot of bad crazy in my family tree,” I said.

“Most of the new guard who followed you out of faerie have stayed celibate.”

I stared at him, and then turned slowly to stare from Brii to Ivi.
“Why, in the name of the Danu? I told you my aunt’s celibacy rule didn’t hold anymore.”

“She said that in the past,” Brii said slowly, “and she was fine if it was casual lusts, but if we found someone we cared for …” He stopped and looked to Ivi.

“I never fell in love with anyone,” Ivi said, “and after seeing what she did to some of the lady loves, I had never been so happy that I was a cad and a bounder in my existence.”

“I have six fathers and six consorts. I’m okay that the rest of you have sex, make friends, fall in love. It would be wonderful if more of you fell in love.”

“You seem to mean that,” Ivi said, “but your relatives have seemed sane over the centuries, but they weren’t.”

I realized what he was saying. “You think I’m going to go crazy like my aunt, and cousin, and uncle, and …” I thought about it, and could only nod. “I guess I see your point.”

“None of them but your grandfather was always cruel and horrible,” Ivi said.

“There’s a reason his name is Uar the Cruel,” I said, and I didn’t try to keep the look of disgust off my face. He’d never had any use for me, nor I for him.

“It always seemed that jealousy was what undid your relatives—jealousy of affection, of power, of possessions even,” Brii said. “You have a relative on both thrones of faerie, and they are both vain and hate anyone who even hints that they may not be the most beautiful, the most handsome, the most powerful.”

“You believe that if you go to other lovers I will see it as a rejection of my beauty?”

“Something like that, yes,” he said.

I looked from one to the other of them, frowning. “I don’t know how to reassure you, because you’re right about my blood relatives. My father and grandmother were sane, but even my own mother isn’t quite right. So I don’t know how to reassure you.”

“It’s the fact that you haven’t touched any of them that’s creeping them out,” Rhys said.

“What?”

“The queen would only let the guards she hadn’t slept with find other lovers. If she’d had sex with you then you were hers forever even if she never touched you again.”

I stared at him. “You mean before the celibacy nonsense that was her rule?”

“Her law,” Ivi said.

“She was always a very possessive woman,” Rhys said.

“She was always crazy, you mean,” I said.

“No, not always,” Rhys said.

The other men agreed.

“And the very fact that once the queen wasn’t mad, but just ruthless, is what frightens us about you, Princess Meredith,” Ivi said.

“You see,” Brii said, “if she had always been mad then we would trust that your reasonableness would last, but once the queen was reasonable. Once she was a good ruler or faerie and the Goddess wouldn’t have chosen her.”