I knew that the slender hips, and everything else that was held inside his jeans, was lovely, and that he knew what to do with it.

He lifted my hand, and his face wasn't soft now. It was thoughtful. "You look like you are weighing and measuring me, Princess."

"And well she should be," Gran said.

Without looking at her, I said, "He spoke to me, not to you, Gran."

"So you would take his side over mine already?"

I did look at her then. I saw the anger in her eyes, and a covetousness that wasn't her, but might be my cousin. It was as if Cair had put her desire to possess into the spell, her jealousy given magical form. Subtle, and nasty. Not unlike my cousin, come to think of it. Magic was often like that, colored by the personality of the maker.

"He is my lover, the father of my child, my future husband, my future king. I will do what all women do. I will go to his bed, and his arms, and we will be a couple. It is the way of the world."

A look of deep hatred came over her face, and it was almost as if the expression were not hers. I clung more tightly to Sholto's hand, and had to fight the urge to wiggle a little farther away in the bed from this woman, because though it was Gran, there was something in her that wasn't.

Galen moved up beside us. "The expression on your face, Gran, it doesn't look much like you."

She looked at him, and her face softened. Then that other looked out of her true-brown eyes for a moment. She looked down, as if she knew she couldn't hide it.

"And how do ya feel, Galen, that you share her with so many?"

He smiled, and true happiness was shining in his face. "I've wanted to be Merry's husband since she was a teenager. Now I will be, and we'll have a child together." He shrugged, spread his hands. "It's so much more than I ever thought I'd have. How can I be anything but happy?"

"Do ya not wanne be king in yer own right?"

"No," he said.

She looked up then, and the other was in her eyes, sharp and pure, and uncomprehending. "All of you want to be king."

"As her only king, I would be a disaster," Galen said simply. "I am not a general to lead armies, or a strategist for politics. The others are better at all that than I am."

"You mean that," she said, and the voice didn't sound very much like Gran at all.

I didn't fight the urge to wiggle closer to Sholto and Galen then, and farther away from Gran and the stranger's eyes. Something was wrong with her, in her.

That strange voice said, "We could let her keep you, let her be queen of the Unseelie. You would be no threat to us."

"No threat to whom?" Doyle asked. There was no sight of the thread now. I didn't know if they'd destroyed it, or just hidden it. I'd been too caught up in Gran's strange state to notice. It wasn't good that I hadn't noticed, but the world had narrowed to the stranger in my grandmother's eyes.

"But you, Darkness, you are a threat." There was no accent now. There were simply well-spoken words, and because it was Gran's throat saying it, the words still sounded vaguely like her, but a person's voice is made up of more than just their larynx and mouth. There is a piece of yourself in your voice, and the words she spoke now belonged in someone else's mouth.

She glanced across the bed at Sholto. "Shadowspawn and his sluagh are a threat." Shadowspawn was a nickname that even the queen rarely said to his face. A lesser fey, even my grandmother, would not have risked such an insult to the King of the sluagh.

"What have they done to her?" I asked. My voice was soft, almost a whisper, as if I were afraid that if I spoke too loudly, it would tip the tension building in the room. Tip it over, and spill it into something bloody and awful and irrevocable.

Gran turned to Doyle, one hand spread wide. It was one of those moments that seem frozen in time. It is the illusion that you have all the time in the world, when in fact you have milliseconds or less to react, to survive, to watch your life be destroyed.

He reacted in a blur of movement that I couldn't follow. He was simply a dark blur, as the power burst from Gran's hand — a power that she had never possessed. White-hot light burst forth, and for a moment the room was illuminated in eye-searing brightness. I could see Doyle caught against that light, moving her arm, her body, away from the bed, away from me. I had an almost slow-motion view of the white light cutting across the front of his body.

There was a shuddering scream from near the window as the white light hit the giant tentacles still in the opening. The bed moved. It was Galen throwing himself on top of me, as a living shield. I had time to see Sholto leap over the bed, and go to join the fight, then all I could see was Galen's shirt. All I could feel was his body above mine, tensed for a blow.