I didn’t know what to say that, because I’d been thinking it as the soldiers that I’d healed had come back here on their leave, or when their tour of duty was up. They had come to me like a kind of pilgrimage, and those who had natural psychic abilities were growing in power, just as priests and priestesses did of old when the sidhe had been worshipped. We were ignoring it if we could, but eventually someone in the government would come to speak to us. I didn’t think they’d kick us out of the country, but they would have to do something—but what? How do you forbid people from worshipping in a country where freedom of religion is one of the rights that people believe helped found the country?

I decided to change the subject back to something more pleasant and less confusing. I kissed Frost’s hand. “I can pleasure you again, our Frost.”

“I am too injured to do you even that much good, our Merry,” Frost said, his voice holding some of the pain.

I squeezed his hand. “And I am sorry for that.”

“I am more sorry, and will wait until our Frost can join us,” Doyle said.

“No, Doyle, you do not have to wait for me.”

“I will wait for you, Frost.” Doyle made it sound very final.

“Very noble, Darkness, but will you be happy in your nobility as others take their turns first?” Mistral asked.

“Happy, no, but content to wait until Frost is healed so the three of us can be together, yes.”

“You are certain?” Mistral asked, and I was almost sure what he would ask next.

“I am,” Doyle said.

“I think Merry should begin with someone gentler than myself,” he said.

I turned around so I could see him more clearly, and let him see the surprise on my face.

He smiled. “I want you, but I want rough even with just oral and I would prefer you be with others who are less demanding first. I would not want to be accused of souring you on the whole thing by my violence.”

“You know how much I enjoy having sex with you, Mistral.”

“I do,” and his smile widened, filling his eyes with the unclouded blue of a spring sky. “But I also know that birth is a trauma to a woman’s body, and would prefer you healed a bit more before we test if our idea of rough sex is pleasant to you.”

I nodded. “It is logical.”

“And noble of you, Mistral,” Doyle said.

“Perhaps, but it will bother me to see other men have pleasure when I could have put myself first.”

“Then it is truly noble,” Doyle said.

Mistral gave a nod that was almost a bow.

“There was a time when I would have tried to jump the queue, but Cathbodua is in my bed and that is enough for me,” Usna said.

“Then who?” Doyle asked.

“Are you not limiting your affections to the fathers of your babies now?” Hafwyn asked.

I looked at Doyle and said the truth. “Yes, for this, the fathers.”

“You won’t know for certain who the fathers are until the tests come back,” she said.

“The Goddess has shown me for Alastair and Gwenwyfar, and I think I know for Bryluen.”

“But the Goddess did not show you for certain,” Hafwyn said.

“No,” I said.

She nodded and said, “I will be able to heal much of this, but not all today.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Three to four days,” she said.

“In four days, Merry,” Doyle said.

“Four days,” Frost said.

The looks on both their faces tightened things low in my body that hadn’t been getting used for a while. It felt good, but my body let me know that Frost wasn’t the only one who was hurt. The doctors said I was healing remarkably fast, but giving birth was a trauma to the body as much as any wound, so I’d want to be careful.

“In four days, my Darkness, and my Killing Frost.”

“In four days,” Doyle said, and the heat in his eyes made me shiver happily.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

THERE WERE SO many things that needed my attention, but I left Doyle to talk to the queen about how to keep Taranis out of our dreams, then left the other fathers with the babies, and I had the first hours of being just me, just Merry, in months. Being pregnant had been what I was for so long: unescapable, wonderful, terrifying, physically overwhelming. The fact that I was pregnant was the first thing people saw about me, thought about me, and during the second half of the pregnancy it was all I thought about myself. Trapped under the weight of triplets, I had been unable to even get out of bed if I was on my back, though lying on my back hadn’t really been an option at the very end; it was like being crushed. So I’d slept on pillows, sitting up, which meant I had slept badly, and been exhausted, and … I loved the babies, but I was so glad to have them in our arms instead of being forever pregnant.

Maeve Reed was back in her master suite, which I’d used for most of the last year. We’d moved to one of the larger guest rooms in anticipation of her return. It was still a large room, bigger than my apartment in Los Angeles had been. When I said we, I meant Doyle and Frost. None of us had spoken of it out loud, but gradually they had moved in and had no other room to call their own. Some of the other men slept with us occasionally, but most of them were as broad through the shoulders as Frost, and what had fit in the bigger bed upstairs was a tight fit here. Since I was planning sex and not sleep, the bed would have been fine, except that Frost was resting in it, because sleep would help him heal faster, so I went to the extra room.

It was one of the other guest rooms in the palatial mansion that Maeve Reed had owned since the 1950s. It was actually one of the smaller bedrooms, but one wall had a bank of windows that faced east, and two skylights, so the room was almost always light and airy and seemed bigger than it actually was. It also had a bathroom complete with shower, which was important for cleaning up afterward. If the room had been bigger I would have moved the three of us in here when we had to leave the master suite, but the shower was narrow enough that some of the men had trouble not bumping their shoulders against the walls. The bathroom in the bedroom that had become ours was much bigger, as was the entire room, but I liked the smaller bedroom better.

I sat on the edge of the bed in a forest-green silk robe, which had been one of the few pieces of clothing that had fit me until right at the end of the pregnancy, and then even the robe hadn’t tied over the babies and me. Now it was laced tight. One of the things hardest to explain is that pregnancy makes your body a stranger in a way. You’ve known it your whole life and yet at some point in pregnancy it’s like some stranger has moved in and your body isn’t yours anymore. It doesn’t react the same way, feel the same way, and there are movements inside you that you know are not your muscles, your fingers and toes wiggling, but other people with their own brains and wills and personalities growing like little strangers inside you. You hope that you’ll be friends and like each other, as well as love each other, but you can’t really know, not for certain. I’d seen too many people in my family hate each other, kill each other. When that is part of your family’s repeated history it destroys a lot of illusions that most women have about their babies and everyone being perfectly happy and loving. That was for Hallmark holiday commercials, not for any reality I’d ever experienced with my actual blood relatives.