"No, no, but it's time to embrace my own strengths. I was raised human, Doyle. I realize now that my father took me out of faerie as a child for the same reason I'm going now, because it was safer."

"You are exiling all of us, including our children, from faerie."

I went to him, wrapping my arms around him so that we were pressed together. "Only you lost to me would be exile."

He searched my face. "Meredith, do not give up a throne for me."

"I admit that the fact that they keep trying to kill you hardest of all affects my decisions, but it's not just that, Doyle. The magic around me grows wilder, and I cannot control it. I no longer know how much and what is returning. There are things that were driven from faerie long ago, not at the humans' request, but at our own. What if I bring back things that could truly destroy us all, human and fey alike? I am too dangerous to be this close to the faerie mounds."

"Faerie has come to Los Angeles, Merry, or had you forgotten?"

"That new bit of faerie cost us Frost, so no, I hadn't forgotten. If I had not been in the new part of faerie Taranis could not have taken me. We will put guards on the doors and I at least will stay in the human world, until the Goddess or God tell me otherwise."

"What dream did the Goddess give you, to make you so resolved?" he asked.

"It is the dream and the Seelie outside the sluagh's home. I bring danger to all who would shelter me inside faerie. It is time to go home."

"Faerie is home," he said.

I shook my head. "I saw Los Angeles as a punishment, but no longer. I will treat it as a refuge, and I will make it our home."

"I have never been to the city before," Mistral said. "I am not sure I will thrive there."

I held my hand out to the other man. "You will be by my side, Mistral. You will watch my body grow ripe, and you will hold our children in your hands. What more is home than that?"

He came to me then, to us, and they wrapped me in the strength of their arms. I buried my face in the scent of Doyle's chest, and hid against his body. My resolve would have been firmer if the other arms holding me had been Frost's. By returning to the human world and cutting myself off from faerie, I was cutting myself off from the last piece of him. The white stag was a fey creature, and it would not come to a metal city. I pushed the thought away. I was right in this choice. I felt it, like a firm yes in my mind. It was time to embrace the other part of my culture. It was time to go to Los Angeles and make it my home.