I kissed the bow of his mouth. He had one of the most beautiful mouths of all the men. Pouting and full, it softened the boyish handsomeness of his face into something more sensual.

He pushed me away, toward the doctor. "The doctor doesn't understand, and we don't have time to talk it to death, Merry."

"Um," Officer Brewer said, "what are you planning to do, Princess Meredith? I mean…" He looked at his partner. It was obvious that they felt out of their depth. Truthfully, I was surprised that there weren't more police here already. There were uniforms at the door, but no detectives, no higher echelon. It was almost as if the top brass was afraid of us right now. Not afraid of the danger. They were police; it was what they did. But afraid of the politics.

By now the rumors had spread. Goddess knew that King Taranis attacking Princess Meredith was juicy enough. But stories have a tendency to grow in the telling. Who knew what the police had been told by now? This case wasn't just a hot one, it was a potential career killer. Think about it — letting Princess Meredith get killed or having King Taranis injured on your watch. Either way, you were screwed.

"Doctor Sang," I said.

He turned to me, still frowning angrily. "I don't care how many policemen back you on this, there are too many people in this room for effective treatment."

I closed my eyes and let out a breath. Most humans have to do something to conjure magic. I spent most of my life shielding so I didn't perform magic by accident. Before my hands of power had come to me, just months ago, I spent time trying not to be distracted by passing spirits, small everyday wonders. Now all the practice keeping things out helped me keep things in, because my natural talents — as maybe my genetic heritage — had been kicked up a notch along with everything else.

Rhys said, "Stand back, boys."

The men moved back, and moved the two police officers with them. They gave the doctor and me a small circle of space. He glanced at them, eyes puzzled. "What's going on?"

I raised a hand to touch his face, but he grabbed my wrist to keep me from doing it. The problem for him was that I didn't need to touch him. Him touching me was just fine.

His eyes widened. A look of near terror transfixed his face. He wasn't looking at me, but somewhere deep inside himself. I was trying to be gentle, to use just enough and no more of the Seelie side of my nature. But fertility magic is sometimes an unpredictable thing, and I was nervous.

Dr. Sang whispered, "Oh my God."

"Goddess," I whispered, and leaned in toward him. I drew him away from the beds, away from Halfwen, I never touched him, only drew my arm away. His own grip on my wrist drew him with me.

I touched his face with my free hand. I hadn't thought about what lay on that hand. Inside faerie the queen's ring, as it had come to be called, was magical. In the human world, it was an ancient piece of metal, so old that the metal was soft. The ring was worn into an odd shape from centuries of being on the hand of one woman or another. Andais had admitted that she had taken it from the hand of a Seelie whom she had killed in a duel, a fertility goddess. I think Andais had taken the ring because she hoped it would aid the fertility of her own court, but she was a power of war and destruction. She was carrion crow and raven. The ring was not at its best with her.

She had given it to me to show her favor. To prove that she had indeed chosen her hated niece as a potential heir. But my power was not the battlefield and death.

I touched the man's face with that old metal, and it flared to life. For a second I thought it would tell me if he was fertile the way it could with the men of our court, but that wasn't what the ring wanted from Dr. Sang.

I saw what he loved. He loved his job. He loved being a doctor. It consumed him. I also saw a woman, delicate, with shoulder-length black hair shining in the sunlight from large windows that looked out on the street. She was surrounded by flowers. She may have worked there. She smiled at a customer, but it was all silent as if the sound didn't matter. I saw her face brighten, like the sky after rain when the sun breaks through, as she looked up and saw Dr. Sang come through the door. The ring knew that the woman loved him. I saw two yards that bordered each other here in Los Angeles. I saw younger versions of the two of them. They'd grown up together. They'd even dated in high school, but he loved medicine more than any woman.

"She loves you," I said.

His voice came strangled. "How are you doing that?"

"You see it too, then," I said, voice soft.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Don't you want children, a family?"

I saw her, standing in the shop again. She was staring out at the passing tourists. She held a cup of tea with both hands. Two shadowy figures hovered around her, one boy, one girl.

"What is that?" he asked, voice so full of emotion that he sounded in pain.

"The children you would have with her."

"Are they real?" he whispered.

"They are, but they will only be flesh if you love her."

"I can't…"

The phantom boy by her side turned and seemed to look directly at us. It was unnerving, even to me. The doctor trembled under my hand. "Stop it," he said. "Stop it."

I drew my hand away from him, but he still had his own hand on my wrist. "You must let me go," I said.

He looked at his hand as if he hadn't known that it was there. He released me. His eyes were almost panicked. He looked behind me at Doyle and said, "Get away from him!"

One of the female doctors said, "Dr. Sang, it's a miracle. He can use his eye again."

He went to join the other nurses and doctors hovering around Doyle's bed. He had to shine his own light in Doyle's now-opened eye. He shook his head. "This isn't possible."

"Will you allow me to do the impossible on Abeloec now?" Halfwen asked with a small smile.

I think he would have argued, but he just nodded. Halfwen went to the other bed, and I got to do what I'd wanted to do from the moment I stepped into the room, I touched Doyle's hair. He looked up at me. His face was still blistered and raw, but the black eye that stared up at me was whole. He smiled until the corner of his mouth met the burns, then he stopped. He didn't wince, he simply stopped the smile. He was the Darkness. The dark doesn't flinch.

My eyes were hot, and my throat was so tight I couldn't breathe. I tried not to cry, because I knew that if I did I would lose control.

He laid his hand on mine where it lay on the bed railing. Just his hand on mine, and the first tears squeezed out.

Dr. Sang was beside us again. He said, "What you showed me was a trick to get me to let your healer work on him."

I found my voice, thick with tears. "It was no trick but a true seeing. She loves you. There will be two children, a boy first, then a girl. She is in her flower shop. If you call now, you may get her while she is still drinking tea."

He looked at me as if I had said something frightening. "I don't think a man can be both a good doctor and a good husband."

"That is for you to decide, but she will miss you."

"How can she miss me if I have never been hers?"

The nurses were very quiet listening to all of this. Goddess knew what hospital gossip would make of it.

"I did not see another face in her heart. If you are not hers, I am not certain she will ever marry."

"She should marry someone. She should be happy."

"She thinks you would make her happy."

"She's wrong," he said, but more like he was trying to convince himself.

"Perhaps, or perhaps you are the one who has been wrong."

He shook his head. He gathered himself to himself like other people would pull a warm blanket around their shoulders. I watched him rebuild his doctor persona. "I'll have one of the nurses re-dress the wounds. Can your healer do this to human wounds?"

"Sadly, our healing magic has always worked better on faerie flesh," I said.

"Not always," Rhys said, "but in the last few thousand years, yeah.".

Dr. Sang shook his head again. "I would like to know how this healing works."

"Halfwen would be happy to try and explain it at a different time."

"I understand. You want to get your men home."

"Yes," I said. My tears had stopped under the doctor's questions. I realized that he wasn't the only one who had drawn himself to himself. In private I could fall apart, but not here in front of so many. Given the opportunity, the nurses and doctors could sell my emotional pain to the tabloids, and I didn't want that.

Dr. Sang went for the door, as if he needed to get away from us. He paused with the door partially open. "It wasn't a trick, or an illusion?"

"I swear to you that what we saw together was a true vision."

"Does that mean we'd live happily ever after?" he asked.

I shook my head. "It's not that kind of fairy tale. There will be children, and she does love you. Beyond that, I think you could love her, if you'd let yourself, but that may require work on your part. To love someone is to lose a certain amount of control over yourself and your life, and you don't like that. No one likes that," I added.

I smiled at him, as Doyle squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. "Some people are addicted to falling in love, Doctor. Some people love that rush of new emotions, and when that first rush of lust and fresh love is spent, they move on, to the next, thinking the love wasn't real. What I felt in her, and potentially in you, is the love of years. Love that knows that first rush of freshness isn't the real thing. It's the tip of the iceberg."

"You know what they say about icebergs, Princess Meredith?"

"No, what do they say?"

"Make sure the ship you're riding in isn't called Titanic ."

Several of the nurses laughed, but I didn't. He'd made a joke because he was scared, truly scared. Something made him believe that he couldn't love both medicine and a woman. That he couldn't do justice to both. Maybe he couldn't, but then again…

Rhys moved up beside me, beside us. He put his arm across my shoulders, not too tight. "Faint heart never won fair maiden," he said.

"What if I don't want to win the fair maiden?" Dr. Sang asked.