A Lick of Frost

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He nodded and looked down, as if gathering his thoughts. “Unless you object, either of you, I’d like to join you for afternoon cuddling.” He raised his face and displayed one of the most neutral expressions I’d ever seen from him. He usually hid his emotions behind a wry humor. Today he was serious. It wasn’t like him.

  “My opinion doesn’t count,” Kitto said, but he scooted down beside me, pulling the sheet up to cover most of himself.

  Rhys put his jacket over one arm. “We’ve been over this, Kitto. You’re sidhe now, which means you get to be as opinionated as the rest of us.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Not as opinionated as all that. Kitto’s sort of refreshingly undemanding.”

  Rhys smiled at me. “Are we that bad?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “You’re not as bad as some.”

  “Like Doyle,” he said.

  “Frost,” said Kitto, then seemed shocked at his insult of the other man. He actually covered his face with the sheet, snuggling tightly against the side of my body. But there was a tension to him now that had nothing to do with sex. He was frightened.

  Was he frightened of Rhys? He had tried to hurt, if not kill, Kitto on at least one occasion when I first brought him to Los Angeles. Apparently, a few movies and shopping trips couldn’t make up for earlier hostility. Sort of like parents trying to win over kids in a divorce. If you’re mean, all the treats in the world don’t make up for it later.

  Rhys had been mean, and Kitto had been hiding that he was still afraid of the other man. I had missed it completely. I had thought we were as much a big happy family as we were going to get. How could I rule these people if I couldn’t even keep peace and safety among my own lovers?

  “I don’t think Kitto’s comfortable with you being here, Rhys,” I said. I stroked Kitto’s back under the covers. He snuggled harder against me as if afraid of what I would ask him. I didn’t understand why “servicing” Holly and Ash didn’t bother him, but Rhys did. Maybe it was a cultural thing that I didn’t understand because I wasn’t goblin enough. I would be their high queen, but I would never truly be goblin. They were our foot soldiers, our strong arm, and most likely to be cannon fodder. The Red Caps were our shock troops. But I was missing something, right this minute, about the goblin in my bed. He was truly sidhe by birth of his magic, but in his heart he was, and always would be, goblin, just as there was more human to me because I’d gone to human schools and had human friends. That more than genetics made me more human than I would have been, more American than I would have been in the way I thought. Sometimes I wondered if my father would have found another excuse to raise me outside of faerie if Andais hadn’t tried to kill me. Father had felt that it was very important that I understand our new country.

  “Kitto,” Rhys said. “I know I was awful to you once, but I’ve tried to make up for it.”

  Kitto’s voice came out muffled. “Did you do all of it just to make up?”

  Rhys seemed to think about it. “At the beginning, but you’re the only one who will watch more than two gangster movies in a row with me and actually enjoy them. The others tolerate it. Or were you just being polite?”

  Kitto spoke, still under the covers. “I like James Cagney. He’s short.”

  “Yeah, I like that about him, too,” Rhys said.

  “You are not small,” Kitto said.

  “For a sidhe I am.”

  Kitto pulled an edge of cover down so he could see the other man. I lay there unneeded. This was a guy moment that had strangely turned into a girl moment. I’d noticed with Kitto that the guy silence didn’t quite work. He had an almost feminine need to talk, to express his thoughts and feelings, or they weren’t real to him.

  “Edward G. Robinson is short, too,” Kitto said softly.

  Rhys smiled. “Bogart wasn’t all that tall either.”

  “Really? They make him look tall.”

  “Apple crates and camera angles,” Rhys said.

  Kitto didn’t ask what he meant by apple crates, which meant that they’d already had a talk about shorter actors standing on things to look taller for the camera. It was also a cheap way to make your villain or hero look like he was strong enough to lift someone one-handed. Ah, B-movie magic.

  Kitto came a little farther out of the covers. “What do you want, Rhys?”

  “I want to apologize that I ever thought you were like Holly and Ash and the rest.”

  “I am not strong like they are,” Kitto said.

  Rhys shook his head. “You are kind and you crave kindness. That isn’t a sin.”

  “You have explained this concept of sin, and if I understand it, then yes, Rhys, it is a sin to be weak among the goblins. A sin that most often ends in death.”

  Rhys sat on the corner of the bed. Kitto didn’t flinch, which was a big improvement. “I heard that you’re going to help Merry with the goblins tonight,” said Rhys.

  “Yes,” Kitto said.

  “We took another call from the goblins since Merry came in here.”

  Ah, here it comes, I thought.

  Kitto sat up, drawing his knees tight in a hug, sliding the covers around him and a little off of me. “What has happened?”

  “Kurag, Goblin King, was surprised that you would be willing to help with the brothers tonight. He said that Holly used you as a trollop when he couldn’t find a female he liked.”

  “A lot of them used me when I was between masters.” Kitto said it as if it were just ordinary.

  “He said one of your masters was a favorite of the brothers, and that you helped with that, too.” I knew Kurag hadn’t used the word “helped.” Goblins were blunt about sex, except for ones like Kitto, who had spent their lives having to be servile. Strangely, the weaker goblins were the ones who were best at diplomacy among their kind. When a misspoken word can get you killed or maimed, I guess you learn to mind your tongue. I know it had helped make me cautious.

  “My last master enjoyed their company.”

  “What happened to your last master?” Rhys asked.

  “She grew tired of me and set me free to find a new master.” He touched my arm.

  “You see Merry as your new master,” Rhys said.

  “Yes.”

  That was news to me. “Kitto,” I said, and he looked at me. “Do you feel you have no choice when I ask you to do something?”

  “What you ask of me is pleasant. You are the best master I have ever had.”

  It wasn’t quite the answer I’d wanted. I looked at Rhys, trying to convey with my eyes “help me figure out how to ask this question.”

  Rhys answered it himself. “You aren’t going to break a lifetime of habit with a few months of safety, Merry.”

  He was right, but I didn’t like the fact that Kitto felt that he had little choice in his new life. “You are sidhe, Kitto,” I said.

  “But I am also goblin,” he said, as if that settled it. Maybe it did.

  “Why would you volunteer to be with Merry tonight with Ash and Holly?” Rhys asked.

  “No one else here truly understands what they are capable of. I must be there to see that if harm happens it is not Merry that it happens to.”

  “You mean you’ll take the abuse so she doesn’t have to,” Rhys said.

  Kitto nodded.

  I sat up and hugged him. “I don’t want you to be hurt either.”

  He leaned into the hug. “And that is why I would take the hurt willingly. Besides, I am harder to hurt than you are.”

  “If you will allow me, I will join you and Merry this afternoon,” Rhys said.

  “Tonight, you mean,” I said.

  “No, I don’t know if I’m that strong yet.” He looked down, then up, but it was not me he looked at. “I don’t know if I am as strong as my friend.”

  “Friend?” Kitto made it a question.

  Rhys nodded.

  “How can you say you are not as strong as me?” Kitto asked.

  “I was the victim of the goblins who hurt m
e for a single night. Yet I have feared and hated all goblins for years. You have taught me that that was wrong. But I still don’t know if I am strong enough to be in the room when Merry goes to the goblins tonight. I don’t know if I can stand to be in the room and watch and guard her. You had years of…hurt, by the very goblins who will be here tonight. Yet you will give yourself to them to protect Merry. I say to you, Kitto, that that is a kind of bravery I do not have.” His single beautiful eye shimmered in the dimness.

  Kitto reached out and touched his arm. “You are brave. I have seen it.”

  Rhys shook his head and closed his eye. One lone tear trailed down his face, shining more than any human tear would have in the twilight of the room.

  Kitto touched that single tear with one fingertip. He offered the trembling drop to me, but I shook my head. He raised it to his lips, and Rhys watched him lick his tear off of his finger. Tears were not as precious as blood and other fluids, but they were still gifts. I knew that sometimes the goblins tortured simply to gather tears.

  The sidhe would make you cry, but they didn’t value the tears.

  “Can I join you?” Rhys asked, and I knew it wasn’t me he was asking.

  Kitto gazed into his face and finally nodded yes.

  CHAPTER 18

  RHYS’S CLOTHES AND WEAPONS ENDED IN A HEAP BY THE BED. Stripped, he was as amazing as ever. There were guards who had longer waists, or broader shoulders, but no one had the sculpted muscles in stomach, chest, arms, and legs that Rhys did. All of him was smooth and hard and strong.

  The bed wouldn’t have been big enough for me and two of most of the other men, but Kitto and Rhys both took up less room than most. There was room for the three of us.

  I lay between the smooth, muscled weight of the two of them, and it felt so good. The sensation of it made me close my eyes and simply concentrate on the feel of their bodies against mine. I had needed this, to be comforted by people who cared for me, to be held, and not to have to worry. Had Doyle understood that I would have lain there tense, listening for his pain sounds, and not truly rested? Perhaps he had.

  Only now, as Rhys and Kitto ran their hands over me, laid a kiss on first one shoulder, then the other, did I realize that it wasn’t about sex today. It was about needing to be held, needing to be cared for. Was I so weak that I needed this, even when the man I said I loved was injured? Would I ever be truly content with the touch of just one man, no matter who it was?

  I didn’t love Doyle any less as I lay between the two men, but they gave me something he could not. They gave me uncomplicated touch. I did not love either of them in that way. I loved them, but…but their tears did not cut my heart. Their sorrows made me sorrow, but I did not bleed as they bled. Love makes you weak and strong. There had been that moment earlier today when I’d thought my Darkness was no more. It had been like losing a piece of myself. It had frozen me, made me lose focus. Dangerous, it was. But hadn’t I done the same thing when Galen had nearly died by assassination in faerie? Yes, I had. I’d loved Galen since I was a child. A part of me would always love him. But it was the love of a child, and I was no longer a child.

  “You’re not paying attention,” Rhys said.

  I blinked up at him where he lay beside me. I must have looked surprised, because he laughed. “Your body was enjoying being touched, but your mind was a thousand miles from this bed.” The humor died, leaving his face a little sad. “Has it happened already? Do Doyle and Frost get all of you now?”

  It took me a moment to understand what he meant. “No, it’s not that.”

  “She’s thinking of politics and power,” Kitto said from where his head lay on my hip and thigh.

  Rhys looked at the other man. “In the middle of foreplay she’s thinking about politics? Oh, that’s even worse.”

  “She often touches me and thinks at the same time. It seems to clear her mind.”

  Rhys looked down at me from where he was propped up on his elbow. “Did all that touching simply clear your head?”

  It was an insult to have not been paying attention. “I was enjoying it, Rhys, honestly. But my mind is racing a thousand miles an hour. I can’t seem to make it still.” I looked down my body to Kitto. “Do I truly use you simply to clear my mind?”

  “I cannot be king for you, we all know that. I am content to have a place in your life, Merry. I wait upon you, and do tasks that most of your noble-born lords deem beneath them. I can be your lady-in-waiting, and no one else could do that for you.”

  “We have several sidhe women now,” Rhys said. “If Merry wanted more ladies-in-waiting, she could have them.”

  “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 in 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 show his face. He kissed a little lower on my thigh, which meant Rhys was probably right.

  “If any of the dogs turn up miss
ing, 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 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.