“They are going to be very powerful,” Doyle said.

“I believe you are right,” Aisling said. He began to gather his hair back from us, and to braid it almost absentmindedly. “I will need a covering for my face before I go to the nursery.”

We finally used the remains of Doyle’s shirt to make a mask that went around his lower face and tied securely enough to make Aisling happy with it. He left his hair in two long, thick braids. It reminded me of the way Saraid had worn her hair, though his was longer and seemed thicker. I hadn’t petted her hair, so I wasn’t sure on the thickness. We walked toward the house with Doyle and Galen holding my hands. Galen held out his hand to Aisling. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought he was smiling under the white mask when he took the offered hand. We walked four abreast out of the practice circle, and as soon as we left the magical spell that kept the reporters from seeing inside it, we heard a yell of, “Hey, Princess!”

I looked, and I knew better, but they’d have pictures of me with the three men wearing nothing but exercise shorts—well, pants for Aisling, but either way three mostly nude men and we were all holding hands. There’d be rumors about Galen and Aisling being more than friends soon, because no one in America could understand that men could hold hands and just be friends. I loved my country, but it was a weird culture when it came to touching.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

AISLING SAT IN the nursery rocking chair holding Bryluen. He’d gone back to his room to change, so that he wore his usual gauzy veil wrapped around his head; only his eyes showed bare to the world. The veil was layers of nearly transparent gold cloth so that you could see that all that hair was in multiple braids snugged tight to the back of his head. He wore a silk T-shirt that was only a few shades lighter gold than the veil, and then the dress slacks were a darker gold. Just seeing the outfit let me know that Maeve had picked it out. She liked layers of gold and cream. I’d have put him in blue to see if it would bring out the color in his eyes. In the gold his eyes looked grayer than I knew they were.

I knew that Maeve was helping a lot of the sidhe shop for modern clothes; one, because she enjoyed shopping, and two, because she would often use the shopping trip as a way of getting to know them and seeing if she wanted to sleep with them. That hadn’t been an option with Aisling for her, because Maeve was still grieving for her dead husband; that would not keep her safe from his magic.

She stood across the nursery watching him as he rocked Bryluen. The look on Maeve’s face was speculative, and the look was enough; she would have pursued him as a lover if she could have done it safely.

She caught me watching her, and smiled brilliantly at me. It was her public smile, beautiful, vibrantly sincere, and it was her version of a “blank cop face.” She could hide any emotion behind that shining smile. I knew it, and she knew I knew it, so either she didn’t care, or her emotions were so strong about Aisling that she couldn’t hide it any better from me. Or maybe I just knew Maeve that well now?

Little Liam was playing near her feet, rolling a ball along the floor for the dogs to chase. The terriers chased it in a happy, barking, snarling pack. No dogs were allowed in the exercise room, so when Rhys was there his terriers had started coming to the nursery, or following Liam around, or Galen, or me. Minnie and Mungo, my own pair of greyhounds, were pressed to my side, so I could play with their ears and stroke their heads. They usually didn’t press like this unless they sensed I was nervous. Why was I nervous? Because watching Aisling made me wonder if we were going to have to veil our daughter like Aisling. The thought of having to hide her sweet face from the world, so we could save the world from her, was somehow horribly sad.

Maeve came to me and touched my shoulder. “Your face, so sad; what did you just think to take the light from your eyes?”

I looked up at her and shook my head. How could I say in front of Aisling that the thought of Bryluen sharing his fate of having to hide his face for all his life seemed awful?

Maeve looked where I was looking and her eyes showed that maybe she knew me as well as I knew her now. She drew me into a hug and whispered, “We will not have to hide her cute little face.”

I didn’t so much return her hug as hold on to her. What was wrong with me today?

Aisling stood up with Bryluen in his arms and came to stand next to us. “Merry, why the tears? She is lovely and powerful, but no reason for such sorrow.”

I heard myself saying my fears out loud, while the crying grew. Aisling helped Maeve hold me while I cried. Bryluen stared up at me with those big, solemn eyes and I realized that there were distinct lines in her irises; they were still blue, but it was as if someone had drawn faint lines that were dividing the color up. Was this how a tricolored iris started to change? I realized that I’d never seen a baby with triple irises. I was the last baby born to the sidhe in America, so I didn’t know if Bryluen’s eyes were just going to be blue with pale circles like Aisling’s spirals of birds, or whether this was the beginning of her irises separating out into different colors. For some reason that made me cry harder, as if the fact that I didn’t know what it meant for her eye color was just another symptom of me not knowing about her magical powers, or Gwenwyfar’s for that matter. How was I supposed to raise them if I didn’t know the answers?

Maeve took Bryluen and let Aisling hold me while I wept. It was close to the way he’d cried earlier in the garden, but there I’d had Doyle and Galen to help me comfort him; here a man who had never been my lover, or even a close friend, held me tight while I cried so hard my legs gave out and he was left holding all my weight as if I were fainting. Part of me knew it wasn’t logical, and stood aside in a sort of horror that I would show such weakness to someone who didn’t even love me, but the rest of me was consumed with a near-hysterical grief.

I just had no idea what I was grieving about.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE

THEN THERE WERE other arms holding me from behind, helping Aisling hold me, and it was Galen, dressed and showered from practice. “Merry, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

I shook my head, too lost in my hysterics to answer, and honestly I had no good answer.

Aisling was trying to explain when another set of arms reached in and took me from between both of them, lifting me so I could curl against his chest, as he held me. Doyle’s hair was damp from the shower, loose of its braid so it could dry faster. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face against his shoulder and neck. I breathed in the scent of his skin, the soap and shampoo and the fresh smell of the clean shirt, so that it all mingled together to make him smell so good and fresh and real, and … just the scent of him began to calm me, as if I could breathe easier when he held me close.

“Let us go visit our Killing Frost,” he said in that deep, rumbling voice of his, that seemed to vibrate through my body as if the deep, thick sound of it could fill me up and leave no room for anything else.

He walked out of the room and down the hallway, moving effortlessly toward the room where Frost was still resting, healing from the last time Taranis had tried to kill my Darkness, or force him to kill us. Taranis was mad, insane in a very real way; how do you keep yourself safe from someone who can enter your dreams and turn them into nightmares?