I looked in his face. I tried to see past the almost shy anticipation there. He seemed afraid to be too eager. He was a good king, yet the promise of sex with another sidhe had chased all the cautions from his mind. I could not allow him to leap in, though, until I was sure he understood what might happen to his people. He had to understand or…or what?

“Sholto,” I said.

He reached out to me. I took his hand to keep him from touching my face. “I need you to hear me, Sholto, to truly hear me.”

“I will listen to anything you say.”

He was willing to follow my lead. I’d noticed that about him in L.A.  — that the dominant, frightening king of the sluagh became submissive in intimate situations. Had Black Agnes taught him that, or Segna? Or was he just wired that way?

I patted his hand, more friendly than sexual. “What I bring to sex magic is meadows and butterflies. Some of the corridors in the Unseelie mound are turning to white marble with veins of gold.”

His face became a little more serious, less amused. “Yes, the queen was most upset,” he said. “She accused you of remaking her sithen in the image of the Seelie Court.”

“Exactly,” I said.

His eyes widened.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “I don’t control what the energy does with the sithen. Sex magic isn’t like other magicks — it’s wilder, and has more a mind of its own.”

“The sluagh are wild magic, Meredith.”

“Yes, but wild sluagh and wild Seelie magic aren’t the same.”

He turned my hand palm-up. “You bear the hand of flesh and the hand of blood. Those are not Seelie powers.”

“No. In combat I seem to be all Unseelie, but in sex magic it is the Seelie in my blood that comes out. Do you understand what that might mean for your sluagh?”

All the light seemed to drain from his face, so somber now. “If we have sex, and the sluagh are reborn, you might remake the sluagh in your image.”

“Yes,” I said.

He stared at my hand as if he’d never seen it before. “If I had taken your life, then the sluagh would have remained what they are: a terrible darkness to sweep all before us. If we use sex to bring life back to my people, then they may become more like the sidhe, or even the Seelie sidhe.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes.” I was relieved that he finally understood.

“Would it be so terrible if we were more sidhe?” He almost whispered it, as if he spoke to himself.

“You are their king, Sholto. Only you can make this choice for your people.”

“They would hate me for making this choice.” He stared at me. “But what other choice is there? I will not spill your life away, not even to bring life back to all of my kingdom.” He closed his eyes and let go of my hand. He began to glow, soft, and white like the moon rising through his skin. He opened his eyes, and the triple gold of his irises gleamed. He traced a glowing fingertip across the palm of my hand, and it drew a line of cold white fire across my skin. I shuddered from that small touch.

He smiled. “I am sidhe, Meredith. I understand that now. I am sluagh, too, but I am also sidhe. I want to be sidhe, Meredith. I want to be fully sidhe. I want to know what it feels like to be what I am.”

I drew my hand back from him, so I could think without the press of his power against my skin. “You are king here. You must make this choice.” My voice was a little hoarse.

“It is no choice,” he said. “You dead, and lost to all of faerie — or you in my arms? It is no choice.” He laughed then, and his laughter, too, echoed across the lake. I heard chimes, or birds, or both. “Besides, Darkness and Frost would kill me if I took you as a sacrifice.”

“They would not slay the king of the sluagh and bring war to faerie,” I said.

“If you truly believe that their loyalties are still to faerie rather than to you alone, then you do not see their eyes when they look at you. Their vengeance would be terrible, Meredith. The fact that there are still assassination attempts against you only shows that some of the sidhe do not yet understand how short-leashed the queen has kept Darkness and Frost. Especially Darkness,” he said, his voice going low. His face looked haunted. He shook the thought away and looked back at me. “I have seen the Darkness hunt. If Hell Hounds, Yeth Hounds, still existed among us, they would belong to the sluagh, to the wild hunt, and the blood of that wild hunt still runs through Doyle’s veins, Meredith.”

“So you do not kill me for fear of Doyle and Frost?”

He looked at me, and for a moment let the veil drop from those glowing eyes. He let me see his need, such need, as if it should have been carved in letters across the air. “It is not fear that impels me to spare your life,” he whispered.

I gave him a smile, and the chalice still gripped in my hand pulsed once against my skin. The chalice would be part of what we did. “Let me wash some of this blood away. Then I will put my glow against yours.”

His own glow began to fade a little, his burning eyes cooling to as normal as they ever got. It was hard to call his triple-gold irises normal, even by sidhe standards, though. “I am hurt, Meredith. I would have had our first time together be perfect. I’m not certain how much good I’m going to be to you tonight.”

“I’m hurt, too,” I said, “but we’ll both do our best.” I stood up and found my body stiff with injuries I hadn’t even realized I’d suffered — small wounds that I must have received in the fight.

“I will not be able to make love the way you wish it,” he said.

“How do you know what I wish?” I asked as I made my way slowly across the rough and smooth of the rock.

“You had quite an audience for Mistral’s turn with you. The rumors have grown, but if even part of it is true, I will not be able to dominate you as he did.”

I slid into the water. It found every small cut and scrape. The water was cool and soothing, but at the same time it made the wounds burn. “I don’t want to be dominated right now, Sholto. Make love to me — let it be gentle between us, if that is what we want.”

He laughed again, and I heard bells. “I think gentle is all I’m capable of tonight.”

“I do not always want rough, Sholto. My tastes are more varied than that.” I was shoulder-deep in the water now, trying to get the blood off me. The blood began to dissolve in the water, washing away almost more easily than it should have.

“How varied are your tastes?” he asked.

I smiled at him. “Very.” I dunked under the water in a bid to get the blood off my face, out of my hair. I came up gasping, wiping the runnels of pinkish water from my face. I went under two more times until the water ran clear.

Sholto was at the edge of the island when I came up the last time. He was standing, using the spear like a crutch. The white knife was tucked carefully through the cloth of his pants, the way you’d stick a pin through: in, then out, so the point was exposed to the air. He offered me his hand. I took it, though I could have gotten out by myself, and I knew that bending over must hurt him.

He lifted me out of the water, but his eyes never got to my face. His gaze stayed on my body, my breasts, as the water ran down them. There are women who would have taken offense, but I wasn’t one of them. In that moment he wasn’t a king, he was a man — and that was just fine with me.