Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"We do not trust them alone with our princess after only a few weeks out of Cel's service," Kitto said.

Rhys's face darkened. "No, we don't. Not yet."

"I love that no one can do these things for Merry but me," Kitto said.

I stroked his curls. "Really?" I asked.

He smiled at me and it filled his eyes with something more than just happiness. He had a place in my life. He belonged. It is not merely happiness we all seek. We seek some place where we belong. For the lucky few, we find it in childhood with our own families. But for most of us we spend our adult lives seeking that place or person or organization that makes us feel that we are important, that we matter, and that without us something would go undone and undoable. We all need to feel that we are irreplaceable.

"You do not touch anyone else but me to simply clear your head. You come to my room when you need to hide from the demands that the others put upon you. You come to me when you want to think. You touch me, I touch you. Sometimes there is sex, but often there is just the holding." He snuggled his cheek against my thigh. "No one has ever held me for comfort before. I find that I like it, very much."

I thought about everything he'd just said and couldn't argue with it.

"I thought you hid in Kitto's room because it was the only one without a mirror," Rhys said.

"That, too," I said.

"She does not just come to me in my room. She pets me when I am sitting under her desk. She has gone from seeing me always at her feet as a burden to counting on me being there to touch and be touched."

"Do the dogs ever crowd you under the desk?" Rhys asked.

"The dogs don't seem to stay under the desk when Kitto is there." I looked at him, my fingers playing in his hair. "Did you do something to the dogs?"

"My place is at your feet, Merry. They cannot have my place."

"They are dogs, Kitto, no matter how special and magical they may be. They are dogs. You are not."

He smiled, and it was a little sad around the edges. "But dogs fill many of the needs I fill for you. I have seen you stroking them, watched it calm you."

"Are you more jealous of the dogs than of the rest of us?" Rhys asked.

"Yes," Kitto said.

That made me sad, that he would see himself as so unimportant to me. "Kitto, you are important to me. Touching you is not like petting the dogs."

He moved his face so I could not see his eyes. He hid it by kissing my thigh, but he didn't want me to see his expression. "You are my princess."

I'd learned that the phrase "you are my princess" meant various things. That I was being stubborn, and I was wrong, but since he couldn't change my mind, he'd stop trying. It could also mean that he'd thought of something frightening and didn't want to share. Or that I'd done something to hurt his feelings, but he didn't feel that he had a right to complain.

So much one small phrase.

"The goblins don't keep dogs. They never have," Rhys said.

I looked at him. "But faerie dogs are precious to all of faerie."

"The goblins used to eat them."

I looked at Kitto, who still wouldn't give show his face. He kissed a little lower on my thigh, which meant Rhys was probably right.

"If any of the dogs turn up missing, I won't be happy."

" See ," Kitto said. "They are important enough for you to threaten me over them."

"They are our pets and a gift of the Goddess and the wild magic."

"I know what they mean to all of you, but it is not me who you should caution. Holly and Ash will likely be too busy to worry over fresh meat, but they are bringing the Red Caps to guard them. The Red Caps will be wandering about while you have sex with the brothers. The Red Caps like their meat fresh and wriggling."

"Crap," Rhys said. "I knew that, but it's been so many years since I've had any dealings with the Red Caps, I forgot."

"They didn't help torture you?" I asked, before I could catch the thought.

"No. They remembered me before as Cromm Cruach, when I shed much blood for them to play in. They still feel that they owe me from back then."

"That must have been some bloodbath for them to feel they owe you anything after so many centuries," I said.

It was Rhys's turn to look away so I couldn't see his expression. "One of my names translated to red claw. It was a true name."

I understood that "true name" meant it was accurate in its description. I gazed at him, so pale and handsome beside me. His face was that boyishly handsome with that full, kissable mouth. The scars were the only thing that made you see past the artifice of youth and humor. Without them to remind you that serious things had happened to this unaged man, you might mistake him for someone casual. Someone to be dismissed. He had certainly played that part for years at the court.

I traced the edge of the scarred area. Once he would have pulled away, but he knew now that, to me, the scars were just another texture on his body, just more things to touch and kiss.

He smiled down at me, and it made his face even more beautiful, in that way that a lover's face can suddenly shine down at you.

Not with magic, but simply with pleasure in something you said or did.

"What?" I asked, voice soft.

"In all the long years since they took my eye, you are the only person who ever touched me like this."

I frowned up at him, and laid my hand against his face, the edge of the scar just another area under my hand. "Like what?"

He gave me a look, as if I knew exactly what.

"We are Unseelie. Things that others consider imperfections are marks of beauty among us," I said.

"Only if you are not sidhe," Rhys said. "To be truly scarred and sidhe is to be a living reminder that their perfect beauty could be forever marred. I am the ghost in the mirror, Merry. I remind them that we are only long-lived mortals, not truly immortal."

"Me, too," I said.

He smiled down at me again, pressing his face harder against my hand. "It's one of the reasons I always thought we'd make a good couple."

I frowned at him. "What?"

"Don't you remember, I took you on a date when you were sixteen."

"I remember." I let my hand fall back to the sheet. "I remember that you tried to persuade me to have sex with you, which would have gotten us both executed."

"I didn't actually try for intercourse. I just wanted to see which flavor of your family you took after."

I was frowning harder. "What does that mean?"

He smiled, gently this time. "Depending on how you responded to my overtures — " He waggled his eyebrows at the last word, and made me laugh. " — I would decide whether to approach your father."

I had an inkling of where this was going. "You asked my father if you could be my fiancé?"

"I asked him to consider me."

"You, or he, never told me that."

"It seemed clear from the beginning of all this that I wasn't a front-runner for your heart. You loved Galen more than me even when you were sixteen. Then your father gave you to Griffin, and if you had gotten pregnant that would have been that."

My face clouded over at the mention of my ex-fiancé. He'd dumped me after years. Said I was too human, not sidhe enough for him. What he hadn't realized was that once he dumped me Andais would force him back into celibacy with the rest of the guard. He tried to join my little harem and I turned him down. The only reason he wanted to join was to have sex with someone, anyone. He didn't love me. I knew that.

What I hadn't expected was him selling some rather intimate photos of the two of us to the tabloids. I had loved him once. I wasn't certain he had ever loved me. He had sold the pictures and fled faerie. To my knowledge the long arm of faerie had never caught up with him. To my knowledge. I hadn't asked. I had loved him once. I did not want to know how he'd died, or be presented his head in a basket. Aunt Andais was capable of both, or worse.