Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"Goddess, please," I whispered.

Rhys moved through my edge of vision, and the child reached up for him. It passed a phantom hand through his. He reacted to it, trying to see what had touched him. That wasn't right. I held two children inside me, not three. I was one father over the line.

But not for long, unless… I went to Frost. Galen caught me in his arms, and the ring pulsed hard enough to make me stagger. Four fathers for two babies. It made no sense. I hadn't had intercourse with Galen for more than a month, because we all agreed he'd make a bad king. He and Kitto had been the only ones who had let me indulge my penchant for oral sex to my heart's content. But you couldn't get pregnant from that.

The scent of roses was stronger. That usually meant a yes. Not possible, I thought.

"I am Goddess, and you are forgetting your history."

"What history are you forgetting?" Galen asked.

I looked up at him. "You heard that?"

He nodded.

"The story of Ceridwen."

He frowned at me. "I don't understand…" Then comprehension slipped across his face. My Galen with his thoughts so easy to follow on his handsome face. "You mean…"

I nodded.

He frowned. "I thought Ceridwen getting pregnant from eating a grain of wheat and Etain being born because someone swallowed her as a butterfly were both myths. You can't get pregnant from swallowing anything."

"You heard what She said."

He touched my stomach through the silk of the robe. A smile spread across his face. He glowed with joy, but I could not join him.

"Frost is a father, too," I said.

Galen's joy dimmed like a candle put behind dark glass. "Oh, Merry, I'm sorry."

I shook my head, and drew away from him. I went to kneel beside Frost. Rhys was on the other side of him. "Did I hear you right? Frost would have been your king?"

"One of them," I said. I didn't feel like explaining that Rhys had also, somehow, hit the jackpot. It was too confusing. Too overwhelming.

Rhys put his fingers against the side of Frost's neck. He pressed against his skin. His head dropped, so his hair was a curtain to hide his face. One shining tear fell onto Frost's chest.

The blue of the stag mark blinked brighter, as if the tear had made the magic flare more brightly. I touched the mark, and that made it brighter, too. I laid my hand on his chest. His skin was still warm. The mark of the stag flared into blue flame around my hand.

I prayed. "Please, Goddess, don't take him from me, not now. Let him know his child, please. If I have ever held your grace, bring him back to me."

The blue flames flared bright and brighter. They did not burn, but felt more like electricity, stinging and biting, but just short of pain. The glow was so bright I could no longer see his body. I could feel the smooth muscles of his chest, but I could not see anything but the blue of the flames.

I felt fur under my hand. Fur? Then I was not touching Frost. Something else was inside that blue glow. Something with fur and not man-shaped.

The shape stood, and moved high enough that I could not touch it. Doyle was behind me, folding me in his arms, picking me up off the ground. The blue fire died down, and a huge white stag stood in front of us. It looked at me with gray and silver eyes.

"Frost," I said, and reached out, but it ran. It ran for the far windows over the acre of marble. It ran as if the surface wasn't slick for hooves. It ran as if it weighed nothing. I thought it would crash into the glass, but French doors that had never been there before opened so that the great stag could run out into the new land beyond.

The doors closed behind him, but the doors did not go away. Apparently, the room was flexible still.

I turned in Doyle's arms so I could see his face. It was him looking out of his eyes now, not the Consort. "Is Frost…"

"He is the stag," Doyle said.

"But does that mean he's gone as our Frost?"

The look on his dark face was enough.

"He's gone," I said.

"He is not gone, but he is changed. Whether he will change back to the man we knew, only Deity knows."

He wasn't dead, exactly. But he was lost to me. Lost to us. He would not be a father to the child we had made. He would never be in my bed again.

What had I prayed? That he would come back to me. If I had worded it differently would he still have transformed into an animal? Had my words been the wrong ones?

"Do not blame yourself," Doyle said. "Where there is life of any kind there is always hope."

Hope. It was an important word. A good word. But in that moment, it didn't seem enough.

"I DON'T CARE HOW MANY GALLY-TROTS YOUR MAGIC CALLS back," Ash said. "You swore you would lay with us, and you have not done so." He paced the room, hands pulling at his short blond hair as if he would pull it out.

Holly sat on the large white couch with the Gally-trot lying on its back in his lap, or in as much of his lap as it would fit, which meant it filled up a large portion of the large couch. Holly ruffled the dog's chest and stomach. Holly of the hot temper seemed more relaxed than I'd ever seen him.

"The sex was so she'd bring us into our powers. She's brought us power."

"Not sidhe-sided power," Ash said, coming to stand in front of his brother.

"I would rather be goblin," Holly said.

"I would rather be king of the sidhe," Ash said.

"The princess has told you that she is with child," Doyle said.

"You've come too late to the party," Rhys said.

"And whose fault is that?" Ash asked. He came to stand in front of me now. "If you had only bedded us a month ago, then we would have had our chance."

I stared up at him, too numb to react to his anger and disappointment. Someone had put a blanket around me. I huddled in it, cold. Colder than I knew how to cure. So funny, Frost was gone, and I mourned him by being cold.

There were diplomatic answers I could have given. There were many things I could have said, but I simply didn't care. I didn't care enough to mind my tongue.

I stared up at him. Galen slipped onto the couch beside me. He curled his arm around my shoulders. I snuggled in against him. I let him hold me. He had been standing with the others whom Doyle had called into the living room. Standing in case Ash's anger got the better of his sense. The goblin's anger had been so great that Doyle and Rhys were still standing. They wanted to be up and ready. In case this oh so reasonable brother lost his head.

Galen held me, closer now, but it wasn't for fear of Ash. I think he was afraid of what I might do. He was right to be afraid, because I was so unafraid. I felt nothing.

"Your king, Kurag, is happy with the new strength that has returned to the Red Caps," I said. "He is overjoyed at the Galley-trot. When your king is happy, warrior, you are supposed to be happy in his joy." My voice sounded cold but not empty. There was an edge of anger in my voice like a crimson thread in a field of white.

"If we were sidhe, but we are goblin, and kings are fragile things."

Galen moved a little forward beside me. I read his mind, and knew the goblin did, too. He would shield me with his body. But it wasn't that kind of fight.

"Kurag is our ally. If he dies the treaty between us dies with him."

"Yes," Ash said. "Yes, it does."

I laughed, and it was an unpleasant laugh. The kind of laugh you make because you can't cry yet.

The sound startled Ash. It made him take a step backward from me. No anger would have gotten such a reaction, but laughter, he didn't understand it.

"Think before you threaten, goblin. If Kurag dies then we are honor bound to avenge him," I said.

"The Unseelie Court is forbidden to interfere directly in the line of succession of its subsidiary courts," Ash said.