I WAS READY TO LIE DOWN AND GET SOME REST AND RELAXATION. It promised to be a long night. But I wasn't allowed to be alone. Not even just to sleep. Between Taranis's treachery and Queen Andais being able to see in the mirror at will, Rhys and Frost were just not willing to risk me being alone. I couldn't argue with them, so I didn't even try. I just started undressing so I could climb between the covers.

If it had been Doyle and Frost they would both have stayed, and we might have slept or we might have done something more active. But Rhys and Frost had never shared me, not even for sleep. There had been a moment of awkwardness as I undressed and they looked at each other.

It was Rhys who finally said, "I want sex with you before the goblins tonight, but I've seen that look on Frost's face before."

"What look?" Frost asked, but I didn't ask because I could see it, and I'd seen it before. Frost's need and uncertainty were plain in his eyes, in the lines of his mouth.

"I want sex," Rhys said, "but you need reassurance, and that takes longer to get."

"I do not know what you mean," Frost said in a cold voice. His face was at its arrogant best again, that moment of uncertainty hidden behind years of courtly living.

Rhys smiled. "It's all right, Frost. I understand, really I do."

"There is nothing to understand," Frost said.

I slipped naked under the covers, almost too tired to care who won the conversation. I settled against the pillows and waited for one of them to climb into bed with me. I was so tired, so overwhelmed with all of the day's events that it didn't seem to matter who slept next to me, as long as someone did.

"Doyle isn't just your captain, Frost. You've been each other's right hands for centuries. You're feeling the lack of him."

"We are all feeling the lack of him healthy at our sides," Frost said.

Rhys nodded. "Yes, but only you and Merry feel his loss this deeply."

"I do not understand you," Frost said.

"That's okay," Rhys said. He looked at me. The look asked me, did I understand? I thought I did.

"Come to bed, Frost. Sleep with me." I patted the bed.

"Doyle told me to take care of you until he is able."

I smiled at the face that was trying for blankness and failing around the edges. "Then come to bed and take care of me, Frost."

"You promised me sex, and I am going to hold you to it," Rhys said.

Frost hesitated by the bed. "We have never shared the princess."

"And we aren't going to now," Rhys said. "I'll share sometimes with the newer men because Merry likes me better than she likes them." He smiled, and I returned the smile. Then his face sobered, and there was something far too serious in his face. "But I could not bear to share her with you and see how she feels about you. I know she loves you more, you and Doyle, but I do not wish the fact rubbed into my body like salt into a wound."

"Rhys," I said.

He shook his head, and pushed a hand toward me. "Don't try to save my ego. You'd have to lie to do it, and the sidhe don't lie."

It was Frost who said, "Rhys, I do not mean to cause you pain."

"You can't help being who you are, and she can't seem to help loving you. I tried to hate you for it, but I can't. If you get her pregnant, and I end up back with Andais, then I'll hate you, but until then, I'll try to share with some grace."

I wanted to say something to make it better, but what could I say? Rhys was right; any comforting words would have had to be lies.

"I do not slight you on purpose, my white knight," I said.

Rhys smiled. "We are both equally pale, my princess. We knew going into this that only one man can be king. Even I think that Doyle and Frost together make a good ruling pair for you. Too bad that even among the Darkness and the Killing Frost there will be a winner and a loser."

With that, Rhys left, closing the door behind us. I heard him speak to the dogs, who must have been waiting outside the door. We did not let the dogs in when we spoke to Andais because she had touched the black dogs and they had not transformed into special dogs for her. The magic had not known her, and she resented it. Frost feared that the lack of a dog meant he was not sidhe enough. Andais simply hated the fact that the returning power didn't seem to know her. She was queen, and all the power of her court should have been hers, but it didn't seem to be working that way.

I almost called to Rhys to let the dogs in but didn't, because it would be a reminder to Frost of what he lacked. The door closed softly, but firmly, and I was left looking up at the man who had stayed.

Frost took off his suit jacket, and the moment he did I could see all the weapons he was carrying. There were many guns and blades, but he was always armed for war. I counted four handguns and two blades in the front of the leather. There would be more, because there were always more weapons than met the eye with the Killing Frost.

"You smile. Why?" he asked softly. He began to undo the buckles that held the leather in place.

"I would ask what army you had planned to fight today with so many weapons, but I know what you feared."

He removed the weapons carefully and laid them across the bedside table. The armament on the wood was heavy with the potential for destruction.

"Where did you put your gun?" Frost asked.

"It's in the drawer of the bedside table."

"You took it off as soon as you entered this room, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said.

He went to the closet and hung the jacket on a hanger. He started unbuttoning his shirt with his back still to me. "I do not understand why you would do that."

"One, a gun is not truly comfortable. Two, if I had needed my gun in this bedroom, it would mean that all of you were dead. If that happened, Frost, one gun in my hands would not save me."

He turned with the shirt unbuttoned to his waist. He pulled it the rest of the way out of his pants. And tired as I was, seeing him tug the shirt out of his pants, watching him undo the last few buttons, made my pulse speed just a little.

His skin was a strip of whiteness against the lesser whiteness of the cloth. He slid the shirt over his shoulders, exposing his muscled strength in inches. He'd learned that sometimes watching him slowly undress helped whet my appetite for him.

He hung his shirt on an empty hanger, even buttoning the collar so it would hang right and not wrinkle. But in doing so, he let me see the long line of his back and shoulders. He'd even swung all that silver hair over one shoulder so that the muscled smoothness of his back was an unobstructed show.

There were times when watching him hang up his clothes drove me nearly mad and had me making small eager noises before he was ready to come to bed. Today would not be one of those days. The view was lovely as always, but I was tired, and did not feel completely well. Part of it was grief and shock, but also the nagging knowledge that I was coming down with a cold or a virus. Frost had never had cold. He had never had so much as the sniffles.

He turned to face me, his hands sliding around the top of his pants. He'd had to undo the belt earlier to take off the rig of weapons. I had to be more tired than I knew to have missed him unbuckling his belt.

He started with the button at the top of his pants, and I rolled over. I rolled so my face was buried in the pillow and I could not watch. He was too beautiful to be real. Too amazing to be mine.

I felt the bed move, and knew he was on the bed with me. "Merry, what is wrong? I thought you enjoyed watching me."

"I do," I said, still not looking at him. How did I explain that I was having one of those rare moments when my mortality seemed too real and his immortality too large a reminder.

"Am I not enough to please you without Doyle by my side?"

That made me turn and look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg bent at the knee toward me. His pants gapped where he'd undone the buttons but not the zipper, his belt framing the undone work. He was slumping a little so that the fine muscles and lines of his stomach bunched. I had a choice of looking down to his lap and what I knew was still covered by his pants, or up to the beauty of his chest and shoulders and that face. In a different mood I would have gone down, but sometimes a man needs you to pay attention to things above the waist before you move below.

I sat up, keeping the cover in front of my breasts, because with me nude sometimes Frost forgot to listen, and I wanted him to hear me.

He sat there with his hair pooling like silver fire around his bare skin. He would not look at me, even though I knew he could feel the bed move as I inched close enough to touch his arm.

"Frost, I love you."

His gray eyes rose once, then went back to staring at his big hands where they lay in his lap. "Do you love me alone without Doyle's body beside me?"

My hand tightened on his arm while I tried to think what to say. This was certainly a conversation I hadn't expected to be having. I did love Frost, but I did not always love his moods. "I find you as desirable now as I did that first night."

He rewarded me with a small smile. "That was a very good night, but you avoided answering my question." He gave me the full force of his eyes then. "Which is answer enough." He started to get up, and I pressed my hand on his arm, not to force him, but to try to keep him where he was. He let me keep him sitting on the bed though he was stronger than I would ever be. There, that note of regret again.

I sighed, and tried to cut through his mood and mine to get to something better. "Is it because I turned away and did not watch you undress?"

He nodded.

"I don't feel well. I think I am coming down with a cold."

He looked at me uncomprehendingly.

"Remember that some of you thought that what happened inside faerie had made me immortal like the rest of you?"

He nodded again.

"If I'm coming down with a cold then it is not so. I am still mortal."

He put his hand over mine where it lay against his arm. "Why would that make you look away from me?"

"I love you, Frost, but loving you means that I will have to watch you stay young and handsome and perfect while I age. This body that you love will not remain. I will grow old and I will know death, and I will be forced to look at you every day and know that you do not understand. When I am very old, you will still take off your clothes and be as beautiful as you are now."