THE MIRROR FILLED WITH LIGHT. SHINING, GOLDEN SUNLIGHT, until we all had to turn our eyes away or be blinded by the brilliance, the brilliance of Taranis, King of Light and Illusion. A man's voice, I think it was Shelby's spoke from the dimness of my closed eyelids, "What the hell is this?"

"The king, boasting," I said. I shouldn't have said it, but I wasn't feeling well, and I was angry. Angry at having to be here at all. Angry and scared, because I knew Taranis well enough to be certain that the other shoe had not even begun to drop.

"Boasting," a joyous male voice said. "This is not boasting, Meredith, this is what I am." He'd used only my name, and none of my titles. It was an insult, and we were going to let him get away with it. But more surprising, he hadn't announced himself formally. He was being as informal as if we were talking privately. It was almost, as if to him, the human lawyers didn't really count.

Veducci's voice spoke out of the blinding light that had become the room. "King Taranis, I've spoken to you several times and never been so blinded by your light. If you could have pity on us mere humans and dim your glory, just a bit?"

"What think you of my glory, Meredith?" the joyous voice asked, and the sound alone made me smile even as I squinted to save my eyes.

Frost squeezed my hand, and that touch of skin on skin helped me think. Taranis was not a power of flesh and sex. To combat what he was so good at, you had to use the magic you were good at, just to be able to think in Taranis's presence. I reached for Rhys, until my hand found the bare skin of his neck and cheek. The touch of both of them helped me think. "I think your glory is wondrous, Uncle Taranis." He'd been familiar first, using only my first name, so I figured I'd try to remind him that I was his niece. That I wasn't just some Unseelie noblewoman to impress.

I wasn't too insulted; except by his use of my first name, he did the same kind of crap to Queen Andais. The two of them had been trying to outmagic each other for centuries. I had simply been dropped into the middle of a game that I had no hope of winning. If Andais herself could not shut down Taranis's magic in a mirror call, then my own much more humble abilities were outclassed. My men and I had known that coming into this call. I had hoped that with the lawyers present, Taranis might tone things down a bit. Apparently not.

"Uncle makes me sound old, Meredith. Taranis, you must call me Taranis." His voice made it sound like we were old friends, and he was so very happy to see me. The voice alone made me want to say yes to anything and everything. Any other sidhe being caught using his voice and magic on another sidhe like this would lead to a duel, or to being punished by their queen or king. But he was the king, and that meant that people didn't call him on it. But I'd been forced to call him on something similar the last time I'd spoken with him like this; could I afford to start out as rude as I'd ended the last time?

"Taranis, then, Uncle. Could you please tone down your wonder so that we may all look upon you?"

"Is the light hurting your eyes?"

"Yes," I said, and there were other affirmatives from behind me. The full-blooded humans must have been in real discomfort by now.

"Then I will dim my light for you, Meredith." He made my name sound like a piece of candy on his tongue. Something sweet, and thick, and suckable.

Frost drew my hand to his mouth, and kissed my knuckles. It helped me shake off the effect that Taranis was trying hard to get from me. He'd done this last time, a magical seduction so powerful it damn near hurt.

Rhys snuggled closer to my side, nuzzling along my neck. He whispered, "He's not just trying to impress us all, Merry, he's aiming straight at you."

I turned into his face, even with my eyes still closed against the light. "He did this last time."

Rhys's hand found the back of my hair, turning my face toward his. "Not exactly this, Merry. He's trying harder to win you over."

Rhys kissed me. It was a gentle kiss, I think more conscious of the red lipstick I was wearing than of any sense of decorum. Frost rubbed his thumb over my hand. Their touches kept me from sinking into Taranis's voice, and the pull of the light.

I felt Doyle standing in front of me before I actually opened my eyes. He kissed me on the forehead, adding his touch to the others as if he already knew what Taranis was doing. He moved to my left, and at first I didn't realize what he was doing, then Taranis's voice came, not nearly as happy as he'd sounded before. "Meredith, how dare you come before me with the monsters that attacked my lady, standing there as if they had done no wrong? Why are they not in shackles?" His voice was still a good, rich voice, but it was just a voice. Even Taranis couldn't make those words, that outrage, work with the warm, seductive tone.

The light had dimmed some. Doyle was blocking some of my view, and partially blocking Rhys from the king's view, but I'd seen this show before. Taranis was dimming the light so that it looked as if he were forming from the brilliance. Forming a face, a body, his clothes, out of light itself.

Biggs said, "My clients are innocent until proven guilty, King Taranis."

"Do you doubt the word of the nobles of the Seelie Court?" I didn't think the outrage was feigned this time.

"I'm a lawyer, your highness. I doubt everything."

I think Biggs meant it as humor, but if he had, he didn't know his audience. Taranis had no sense of humor that I was aware of. Oh, he thought he was funny, but no one else was allowed to be funnier than the king. The last rumor from the Seelie Court was that even Taranis's court jester had been imprisoned for impertinence.

I'd have complained more if Andais hadn't slain her last court jester some four or five hundred years before.

"Was that meant to be humor?" The king's voice reverberated through the room, like a roll of quiet thunder. It was one of his names, Taranis Thunderer. Once he'd been a sky and storm god. The Romans had equated him with their own Jupiter, though his powers had never been as far reaching as Jupiter.

"Apparently not," Biggs said, trying to put a pleasant face on it.

Taranis was finally revealed in the mirror. He was edged with glow, as if the colors of everything about him wavered. His hair and beard were at least his true color, the reds and orange of a spectacular sunset. The locks of his curling hair were painted with the glory of the sky when the sun sinks to the west. His eyes were truly multi-petals of green: jade, grass, shades of leaves. It was as if a green flower had been substituted for the iris of his eyes. As a small child, before I knew that he disdained me, I'd truly thought him handsome.

"Oh, my God," Nelson said in a breathy voice.

I looked behind myself at her, the wide eyes, the almost slack face. "You've only seen the pictures of him pretending to be human, haven't you?"

"He had red hair and green eyes, not this, not this," she said. Cortez, her boss, took her elbow and got her to a chair. Cortez was angry and was having trouble hiding it. Interesting reaction on his part.

Taranis turned those green-petaled eyes toward the woman. "Few human women have seen me in all my glory in many years. What do you think of me in my true form, pretty girl?"

I was pretty sure that you didn't get to be assistant district attorney in Los Angeles by letting men call you pretty girl. But if Nelson had a problem with it, she didn't say so. She looked besotted with him, drunk with his attention.

Abe came to join us in our huddled group. Galen trailed behind him, looking puzzled. It was Abe who leaned in and whispered, "There is some magic here that is not merely light and illusion. If it were almost anyone else, I would say that he has added love magic to his bag of tricks."

Doyle drew Abe closer to us all, and whispered, "A spell powerful enough that it is affecting Ms. Nelson."

They all agreed.

We hadn't meant to ignore Taranis, but he was so terribly busy flirting with Nelson that it was easy to forget that just because a king is ignoring you doesn't mean that you are allowed to ignore the king.

"I did not come here to be insulted," he said in that thundery voice. Once it would have impressed me, but I'd been intimate with Mistral. He was a storm god, too, but one who could make lightning pour down a hallway inside the faerie mound. Taranis's rumbly voice just couldn't compare to Mistral. In fact, as the men parted so that I could see my uncle more clearly, he looked a little overdone, like a man who's overdressed for a date.

I looked at the men clustered around me, and realized that all of them had touched me, Rhys wrapped around my waist and side; Frost on the other side, arm a little higher; Doyle with his strong dark hands on my face; Abe with his hand on my shoulder so he could lean in and not fall (even sober his balance seemed shaky sometimes). Galen had touched me because he always touched me when he could. It was as if I'd reached a critical mass of touch. I could think. I was no longer besotted like the good Miss Nelson. Once I'd thought that Andais appearing on the mirror calls draped in men had a been a way to taunt and shock Taranis and his court. In only two mirror calls of my very own, I'd learned that there was a method to her madness. For me, either five was the magic number or the mix of these five men's powers was what works. Either way, it was going to be a different phone call than it would have been if Taranis's spell had worked on me. Interesting.

"Meredith," Taranis called. "Meredith, look upon me."

I knew that there was power to that voice. I felt it as one would sense the ocean. Whispering and close. But I was no longer standing in the water. I was no longer in danger of drowning in that voice.

"I see you, Uncle Taranis. I see you very well," I said, and my voice was strong and firm, and caused the arch of a perfect sunset-colored eyebrow to raise.

"I can barely see you through the crowd of your men," he said. There was a tone to his voice that I couldn't discern. Anxiety, anger; something unpleasant.

Doyle, Galen, and Abe began to move away from me. Even Frost started to pull away. Only Rhys stayed wedded to my side. The moment their hands fell away, Taranis was edged with light.

"Stay where you are, my men," I said. "I am your princess. He is not your king."