Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"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.

"Then you are a fool," Rhys said, with a smile to soften the words.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Some knowledge or understanding seemed to pass between them, because Dr. Sang nodded, almost as if Rhys had spoken again. He hadn't, I would have sworn to that, but sometimes silence speaks between one man and another much louder than any words. One of the greatest differences between men and women is that certain silence that women do not understand, and men cannot explain.

Dr. Sang went for the door. Before he and Rhys had had their moment of understanding, I would have bet even money on whether the good doctor would call the woman in the flower shop. But something about what Rhys had said had tipped the scales somehow. Now all I wondered was whether he call first or simply go to her.

Rhys hugged me and kissed the top of my head. I turned my face up so I could look at him. His smile was casual, almost teasing, but that one clear blue eye held something that was not casual in the least. I remembered a moment when the queen's ring had first come back to life on my hand. I had seen a ghostly baby before one of the female guards. Every man in the hallway had stared at her as if she were the most beautiful thing in the world. Every man except for four: Doyle, Frost, Mistral, and Rhys. Even Galen had stared at her. Later I'd had it explained that only true love would make you not gaze upon a woman that the ring had chosen. I had used the ring to see who among my guards would be the father of that almost-child, and given the female guard and the male guard to each other. It had worked. She had missed her period, and the tests were positive. It was the first pregnancy among the Unseelie since I was conceived.

I truly loved Doyle, and Frost to a lesser extent. I couldn't imagine being without either of them. Mistral had been my consort in the moment when the ring had come back to life, so the magic had not worked on him. Instead, he was part of the working of the magic. But Rhys, he should have looked at that guard. But he had only looked at me, which meant that he loved me, and he knew that I did not love him.

The people of faerie are not supposed to be jealous or possessive of their lovers, but to love truly and not have it returned is a pain that has no cure.

I raised my face to him, inviting a kiss. His face lost all trace of humor. He was as solemn as the look in his eye. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. I let my body grow soft and cling to him as our lips found each other. I wanted him to know that I valued him. That I saw him. That I wanted him. I felt his body respond even through our clothes.