Doyle let go of my arm, taking a half step in front of me. “Do not blame Merry for your lack of prowess on the battlefield,” he said in a voice that held an edge of growl to it. It wasn’t his dog form coming out, just that first rush of testosterone, before the real fight began.

Talan started forward, but another figure was already there, moving between Doyle and the Red Cap. Jonty’s skin had been the color of dust when I met him; now it was a nearly silver gray, shining almost metallic in the sunlight. He was shorter than Talan, but broader through shoulders and back. His biceps were as round as medium tree trunks; the weight lifting that Doyle had insisted on for all of them had made Jonty lean and filled him out at the same time, so that he was even bigger than he’d started, but now you could see the muscles with no extra flesh to hide them, and he was simply massive. The cap on his head was fresh scarlet and bleeding. His cap bled whether I was around or not, which was one of the reasons he was the leader of the Red Caps.

“Apologize to Merry,” Jonty growled.

“I will not apologize for the truth.”

“Merry didn’t make you a whining bitch, Talan; you were always that.” I saw Jonty plant his back foot.

Doyle motioned and Galen was moving me back. I didn’t argue; if the two Red Caps were going to actually fight I didn’t want to be standing less than ten feet behind them. Twenty feet would be about minimum safe distance. Galen seemed to agree with me, because he kept moving me back until we were near where the fight had started at the practice circle.

Only Aisling was left kneeling in the center of the circle. His hands were held up to his face as he rocked forward, those glittering shoulders hunched as if he huddled around some great pain. He was hurt, badly hurt, because the warriors of faerie do not show pain unless it is too great to bear.

Galen and I went hand in hand to him. There was blood in a spatter of glittering crimson on the grass in front of him. He must have heard us, because he folded in upon himself, burying his face against his knees.

“Aisling, how badly hurt are you?” Galen asked.

“Don’t look at me!” He yelled it, voice high with fear and pain.

Galen dropped my hand and moved toward the other man. “Talan couldn’t have done anything to mar your beauty, Aisling, not without a weapon. Even a Red Cap can’t hit one of the sidhe that hard,” Galen said, and he put a note of joking in his voice.

Aisling’s voice came muffled. “You’re half right, Galen. He didn’t mar my beauty, but he hit me hard enough to do harm.”

“Aisling, how hurt are you?” Galen touched one of those bare shoulders.

Aisling screamed, and scuttled away on knees and one hand. “Don’t touch me! Goddess help me, don’t touch my bare skin.”

“True love is proof against your magic, Aisling. Let me see how hurt you are; you will not bespell me.”

Aisling thrust one hand back as if to ward off a blow, and the other hand stayed at his face. I realized that he was covering his face, and that I could see the complicated braids that held all that yellow and gold hair tight to the back of his head. The mask that had been covering his hair and his face was gone. A thrill of something close to fear went through me from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head. Galen might have been sure that true love would protect him, but he was immortal, and I wasn’t. I knew that the immortal sidhe were not proof against Aisling’s power, but he wasn’t allowed to show his face to any human, no matter how in love they might be. Mortal blood just didn’t protect against magic as well as immortal.

Galen reached out and grabbed Aisling’s outflung hand. “Let me help you, Aisling.” Galen’s voice held pain; he could never stand to see someone so distressed without wanting to make it better.

Aisling’s hand made a fist, and he went very still. “You are a good man, Galen; do not let me hurt you by accident.”

“Let me see what is bleeding on you.” Galen knelt beside the other man, his hand still holding his arm.

Aisling cried out and jerked free of him, crawling away from Galen, using both hands to scramble faster, and looked directly at me. He hadn’t realized I was standing just behind them.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

WE HAD A long, frozen moment of staring at each other. I waited to be bespelled, but though his skin was what the sidhe called sun-kissed as mine was moonlit, and though his face, like the rest of him, seemed to be sprinkled with gold dust, still there were others in faerie whose skin was more beautiful to me. The blue of his eyes was the color of a late-spring sky, but then part of Rhys’s eyes were a similar color. Aisling did have spirals in his eyes, as if someone had tattooed them on his irises, so that the spirals took attention away from the sky blue, but again there were others in faerie with more unusual eyes. I don’t think I would have been so critical if I hadn’t grown up being told he was so beautiful that to gaze upon his bare face was to fall in instant, irresistable lust, if not actual love. I tried to see the lines of his face and found him beautiful, but I thought Frost was fairer of face. Maybe I was prejudiced, but though Aisling was amazing, his was not the most amazing face I had ever seen. I had my father to compare him to, as well, and I still thought my father was one of the most handsome men I’d ever known. Maybe I was prejudiced, but then isn’t that what love, all kinds of love, is supposed to do?

I smiled, and Aisling let out a wail of despair and hid his face behind both of his hands.

Galen said, “Merry.”

I smiled at him, that face that I had loved since I was fourteen. “I’m fine.”

Doyle called out, “Merry!”

I turned and watched that tall, dark body stride toward us. He was moving so fast that his long braid bounced and I could see the flash of it as he stepped. The torn white shirt looked like some prop in a strip club, artfully ripped to give glimpses of his chest and stomach. The sunlight glittered off the silver earrings in the high, graceful points of his ears and caught the glint of the nipple ring on the left side. I just watched him and enjoyed the view, and the fact that he was mine, and I was his.

I turned back to Aisling, who still had one hand held up in front of his lower face like some movie harem girl, so that only those blue eyes with their spiral shapes showed. I smiled at him, and he closed his eyes as if in pain. He raised his other hand and hid even his eyes from view.

I realized he was saying, “No, no, no,” over and over again.

Doyle grabbed me and whirled me round to face him. He searched my face with nearly frantic eyes, and whatever he saw there calmed him, because he smiled. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed. We kissed long and thoroughly, until I could wrap the sun-warmed feel of his body around me like a perfume made of flesh and warmth and love.

We broke the kiss and came away from each other’s lips smiling. “I love you, my Merry.”

“And I love you, my Darkness.”

His smile widened, and he ran his hand along the edge of my hair. “Let us comfort our fallen man.”

I nodded.

We went to him still holding hands. “Aisling,” Doyle said, “Merry is not bespelled by you.”

He just shook his head, hands still covering almost every bit of his face.