A Lick of Frost

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Rhys said softly, “It’s a Gally-trot.”

  “A ghost dog,” I said. It was supposed to be a phantom that haunted lonely roads and scared travelers.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Remember, some humans believe that all the fey are the spirits of the dead.”

  The Gally-trot leaned its huge white head over the twins, and licked them with a tongue that was as black as the fur it had started with.

  Holly stirred, blinking bloodred eyes at the room. Ash made a sound that was almost pain as the Gally-trot licked him back to life.

  I waited for the Cu Sith to come to Frost, or even the Gally-trot, but they didn’t. The Cu Sith moved among my guards, receiving pets and strokes. It smiled in that way that dogs do, with its tongue out.

  The twins seemed unsure what to make of the white dog’s attention. It was Holly who reached up and touched it first. The dog bumped him so hard he almost fell over. It made Holly laugh, a pleased masculine sound. Ash touched the dog, too, and they communed with the huge beast.

  The demi-fey were beginning to leave the Red Caps. The faces revealed were gentler, as if the clay of their bodies had been remade into something more sidhe, more human. Jonty’s words came back to me, “You are remaking us.”

  I hadn’t meant to.

  But there were a lot of things I hadn’t meant to do.

  I stared down at Frost, and saw a gleam of blue at his neck. His tie had already been loosened by someone. I snapped off buttons in my haste to see, and found blue glowing on his skin.

  Rhys and Galen put him on his back, and helped me tear his shirt open. There was a tattoo on his chest that glowed blue. It was a stag head with a crown in its antlers. It was a mark of kingship, but it was also a mark of the sacrificial king. The white stag was what he had made with his touch that night in the winter dark. The white stag is a thing to be hunted and to lead the hero to his destiny.

  I stared at Rhys’s face because he looked as horrified as I felt.

  “What does it mean?” Galen asked.

  “Once all new creation came with sacrifice,” Doyle’s voice intoned, but it wasn’t his voice.

  “No,” I said. “No, I didn’t agree to this.”

  “He did,” the voice said. The look in Doyle’s eyes was not him either.

  “Why? Why him?”

  “He is the stag.”

  “No!” I stood up, stumbling on the hem of my robe. I went toward the black dogs and this stranger in Doyle’s body.

  “Merry,” Rhys said.

  “No!” I screamed it again.

  One of the black dogs growled at me. My power washed over me, burst across my skin. I glowed like I’d swallowed the moon. Shadows of crimson light fell around my face from my hair. I saw green and gold light, and knew my eyes glowed.

  “Would you challenge me?” Doyle’s mouth said, but it wasn’t Doyle who I would challenge if I said yes.

  “Merry, don’t,” Rhys said.

  “Merry,” Galen said. “Please, Frost wouldn’t want this.”

  My hounds bumped my hand, and my thigh. I looked down at them, and they glowed. Minnie’s red half of her face glowed like my hair, and her skin gave white light around my hand as I petted her. Our glows mingled. Mungo, with his red ear and white coat, looked as if he were carved of jewels.

  The queen’s ring pulsed on my hand. It, like so many things, had more power inside faerie, and that was where we stood now.

  I saw phantom puppies dancing around my hounds. I knew in that moment that Minnie was already pregnant. The first faerie hounds to be born in five hundred years, maybe more?

  Minnie bumped my hip, made me look down at myself. Two small phantoms of my own, hovering around me. But I knew they were real. No wonder I’d been tired today. Twins, like my mother and her sister. Twins. And faint, like a thought that wasn’t quite real, was a third. It wasn’t real yet, just a promise of possibilities. It meant that the twins would not be all. There would be at least a third child for me with someone.

  I realized as soon as I thought it that the ring had other powers. I wanted to know who the father was, and I could know here with the ring, inside faerie. I turned and looked at Doyle, and found the answer I most wanted. The ring pulsed, and the scent of roses rode the air.

  I turned toward Frost. A child sat beside him, quiet, and too solemn. No, Goddess, no, not like this. Even the wonder of a child, of twins, could not make Frost’s loss a fair trade. I did not know these phantom children yet. I had not held them. I did not know their smiles. I did not know how soft their hair was, or how sweet their skin smelled. They were not real yet. Frost was real. Frost was mine, and we had made a child.

  “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.

  CHAPTER 24

  “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.

  “That is a bargain that the Queen of Air and Darkness made. I am not my aunt. I have made no such agreement to limit my powers.”

  “Your guards are great warriors, but they cannot prevail against the combined might of the goblins,” Ash said.

  “As I am not bound by my aunt’s agreement, I am not bound by goblin rules.”

  Ash looked uncertain, as if he was thinking on what I had said but hadn’t figured it out yet.

  It was Holly who said it. “What will you do, Princess, send your Darkness to assassinate us?” He was still ruffling the huge dog, but his face was no longer simply happy. His red eyes stared at me with a weight and intelligence that I hadn’t seen before in him. It was a look more often seen on his brother’s face.

  “He is no longer merely my Darkness. He will be king.” But that had been what I was thinking.

  “That is another thing that makes no sense,” Ash said. He pointed at Doyle. “How can he be king and father of your child, and he,” he pointed at Rhys, “and he?” and at Galen last. “Unless you are having a litter, Princess Meredith, you can’t have three fathers.”

  “Four,” I said.

  “Who….” Then a look crossed his face and the first bit of caution.

  “Killing Frost,” Holly said.

  “Yes,” I said, and my voice was back to sounding empty. My chest actually hurt. I’d heard the phrase brokenhearted, but I hadn’t actually felt it before. I’d come close, but never truly. My father’s death had destroyed me. My fiancé’s betrayal had crushed me. When I thought I’d lost Doyle a month ago in the battle, I had felt like my world would end. But until now, I had not truly been heartbroken.

  “You can’t have four fathers for two children,” Ash insisted, but he had calmed a little. It was almost as if he saw my pain for the first time. I didn’t think he cared that I was in pain, but it made him more cautious.

  “You’re too young to remember Clothra,” Rhys said.

  “I’ve heard the story, we’ve all heard the story, but that was just a story,” Ash said.

  “No,” Rhys said, “it was not. She had a single child by all of her brothers. He was marked by each of them. The boy became high king. He was called Lugaid Riab nDerg, of the red stripes.”

  “I always thought the stripes referred to some kind of birth-mark,” Galen said.

  Doyle’s deep voice filled the room, and held an echo of godhead. “I saw that the princess will have two children. They will have three fathers each, as Clothra’s son did.”

  “Don’t try your sidhe magic on me,” Ash said.

  “It is not sidhe magic, it is god magic, and the same Deities serve and are served by all of feykind,” Doyle said.

  I was running slow, but I finally heard what he’d said enough to say, “Three fathers apiece? You, Rhys, Galen, Frost, and who?”

  “Mistral and Sholto.”

  I stared at him.

  “But that was a month ago,” Galen said.

  “A month ago,” Doyle said, “and do you remember what we did when we arrived back in Los Angeles that night?”

  Galen seemed to think about it, then he said, “Oh.” He kissed me on the top of my head. “But I didn’t even have intercourse with Merry. We’d all agreed I’d make a lousy king. Oral sex doesn’t get you pregnant.”

 
; “Kiddies,” Rhys said, “the raw magic of faerie was out that night. I was still Cromm Cruach, with the ability to heal and kill with a touch. Merry had given life to the dead gardens with Mistral and Abe. She had raised the wild hunt with Sholto. Wild magic was out that night. We were all touched by it. The rules are different when that kind of magic is out and about.”

  “You were the one who started the sex when we got home, Rhys. Did you know this could happen?” Galen asked.

  “I was Cromm Cruach again, a god again. I wanted to feel Merry under me while I was still….” Rhys put his hands out as if he couldn’t quite put it into words.

  “I was just happy that everyone was alive,” I said, and my heart squeezed harder, as if it would truly break. The first hot, hard tear crept out of my eye.

  “He is not dead, Merry,” Galen said. “Not really.”

  “He is a stag, and no matter how magical and wonderful that is, he is not my Frost. He cannot hold me. He cannot talk to me. He is not….”

  I stood up, letting the blanket fall to the floor. “I need some air.” I started for the far hallway that would lead farther into the house and eventually to the backyard. Galen got up to follow me.

  “No,” I said. “No. Just no.” I kept walking.

  Doyle stopped me at the doorway. “I must finish this talk with our goblin allies.”

  I nodded, fighting not to break down completely. I couldn’t afford to appear that weak in front of the goblins. But I felt like I was suffocating. I had to get somewhere where I could breathe. Somewhere where I could break down.

  I started down the corridor at a fast walk. My hounds were suddenly beside me. I started to run and they leaped with me. I needed air. I needed light. I needed….

  I heard voices behind me, my guard, calling, “Princess, you shouldn’t be alone….”

  The hallway changed to a different hallway. I was suddenly outside the dining room. Only the faerie sithen itself was capable of moving with my wish.

  I stood there for a moment outside the big double doors, wondering what had we done to Maeve’s house. Was the house now a sithen? Was the whole house now part of faerie? No answers, but just through these doors, and through the French doors that had never been there before was outside, and air, and light, and I wanted it.