"Bloody, not so bloody, brown in the middle, gray in the middle," Galen said, wisely not even trying to explain rare, medium, and well done for the men. The last time either of them had been out of fairyland one of the Henrys was king of England. And that had been a brief outing into the human world, then back they'd gone to the only life they'd ever known. They'd had one month of modern kitchens and not having servants to do all the grunt work. They were actually doing better than some of the others who were new to the human world. Mistral was, unfortunately, not taking well at all to modern America. Since he was one of the fathers of my babies, that was a problem, but he wasn't here tonight. He didn't like traveling outside the walled estate in Holmby Hills that we called home. Amatheon, Adair, and many of the other guards were cuter about it, and not so frustrating to the rest of us, which was nice.
Hafwyn joined Galen in the kitchen. Her long yellow braid moved in rhythm against the back of her body as she walked. She began to take things from him and hand things to him as if they'd done this before. Was Hafwyn helping in the kitchen more? As a healer, she didn't have guard duty, and as a healer we didn't feel that her having a job outside of that was a good idea, but she could heal with her hands, so no hospital or doctor would take her. Magic healing was still considered fraud in the United States. There had been too many charlatans over the centuries, so the law didn't leave much room for the genuine article.
Rhys was still beside me in the dimness of the huge living room, but Doyle and Frost had moved across the room past the huge dining room table that was all pale wood gleaming in the moonlight. They were silhouetted against the huge glass wall that looked directly out onto the ocean. There was a third silhouette that stood a foot taller than them. Barinthus was seven feet tall, the tallest sidhe I'd ever met. He was bending that height over the shorter men, and without hearing a word, I knew they were reporting the day's events. Barinthus had been my father's closest friend and advisor. The queen had feared him as both a kingmaker and a rival for the throne. He'd only been allowed to join the Unseelie Court on the promise that he would never try to rule there. But we weren't in the Unseelie Court anymore, and for the first time I was seeing what my aunt Andais might have seen. The men reported to him and asked his advice; even Doyle and Frost did. It was as if he had an aura of leadership wrapped around him that no crown, title, or bloodline could truly bestow. He was simply a point that people rallied around. I wasn't even sure how aware the other sidhe were that they were doing it.
Barinthus's ankle-length hair was unbound and spilled around his body like a cloak made of water, for his hair was every shade that ocean can be, from darkest blue to tropical turquoise to the gray of storm and everything in between. You couldn't see the extraordinary play of colors in the low light from the moonlit windows, but there was something of movement and flow to his hair even in the dark that made it ripple in the glow of what little light was available as if it were indeed water. His hair actually hid his body so I couldn't tell anything of his clothes.
He lived at the beach house to be near the ocean, and it was as if the longer he was near it, the stronger he grew, the more confident. He had once been Mannan Mac Lir, and there was still a sea god in there trying to get out. It was as if fairyland had drained him of his powers, but being near the ocean gave him back what most of the sidhe had lost when they had left faerie.
Rhys put an arm around my shoulders, and whispered, "Even Doyle treats him as a superior."
I nodded. "Does Doyle realize that yet?"
Rhys kissed me on the cheek, and he'd gotten his power under control enough that it was just a kiss, nice, but not so overwhelming. "I don't think so."
I turned and looked at him; he was only six inches taller than I, so it was almost direct eye contact. "But you noticed," I said.
He smiled and traced the edge of my face with one finger, like a child drawing in the sand. I leaned into that touch and he gave me more of his hand so that he cupped part of the side of my face in his hand. There were other men in my bed who could cup the entire side of my face in one hand, but Rhys was like me, not so big, and sometimes that was nice, too. Variety was not a bad thing.
Amatheon and Adair followed Hafwyn out the sliding-glass doors that led to the huge deck and the huge grill. The ocean rolled underneath that deck. Even without being able to see clearly, you could somehow feel all that power pulsing and moving against the pilings of the house.
Rhys put his forehead against mine and whispered, "How do you feel about the big guy taking over?"
"I don't know. There are so many other problems to solve."
His hand moved to the back of my neck and he moved our faces apart so he could move in for a kiss, but he spoke as he did it. "If you want to stop the power he is building you must do it soon, Merry." He kissed me as he said my name, and I let myself sink into that kiss. I let the warmth of his lips, the tenderness of his touch, hold me in a way that nothing else had today. Maybe it was finally being inside, away from the prying eyes that seemed to be everywhere, but something hard and unhappy loosened inside me as he kissed me.
He hugged me to him, and our bodies touched from shoulder to thigh as close as we could. I could feel his body growing hard and happy to see me against the front of my own. I don't know if we would have tried for a little predinner privacy in the bedrooms, because Caswyn came down the hallway from the bedrooms, and suddenly a lot of the happy seeped away from me.
It wasn't that he was not lovely, for he was, handsome, tall, slender, and muscular as most sidhe warriors were, but the air of sorrow that clung to him made my heart ache. He'd been a minor noble at the Unseelie Court His hair was straight and raven black like Cathbodua's or even Queen Andais herself. His skin as pale as mine, or Frost's. His eyes were still circles of red, red-orange, and finally true orange, like a fire banked down in his eyes. Andais had quieted that fire in him by the torture she'd done to him, the night her son died and we fled faerie. Caswyn had been brought to us by a cloaked woman who told us only that Caswyn's mind would not survive any more of the Queen's Mercy. I wasn't entirely certain his mind wasn't already broken beyond repair. But since Caswyn had been the whipping boy for Andais's anger at us we took him in. His body had healed because he was sidhe, but his mind and heart were more fragile things.