THE BATH WAS STILL HOT WHEN I FINALLY SLID INTO IT, WHICH meant that Kitto had drawn it hotter than I liked. He had known that we would talk too long and had planned for it. He’d begun to anticipate my needs, not in the way of a lover or a friend, but in the way of a good servant. Unobtrusive, quiet, just there when needed. No friend or lover I’d ever had had been unobtrusive. Messy, joyous, heartbreaking, wonderful, but never unobtrusive.
I looked at him as Galen slid into the bath. Kitto was one of the oldest of my men, and the oldest among us don’t always liked being thanked, so I didn’t. “You drew the water too hot, so it would be just right by the time we got in the tub. You knew we’d talk too long.”
He ducked his head, not meeting my eyes. “There was much to talk of.”
I leaned against the edge of the marble tub, until I could touch his shoulder. “You always seem to know what I’m going to do before I do.”
He raised eyes that were unsullied by white, only a bright clear blue. I saw uncertainty there before he lowered them again. “What’s wrong, Kitto?” I asked, stroking my fingers up and down his bare shoulder. He’d stripped down to just a thong, as he often did when he did anything messy. To save his clothes, he said. I got the feeling that Kitto owned more clothes now, with me, than he’d ever owned in the goblin court.
He shook his head, sending the black curls of his newly grown hair brushing across his shoulders. A few inches longer and it would have been punishable by torture. Only the sidhe were allowed long hair. He was sidhe now, with his own hand of power. As with Nicca’s wings and Mistral’s reborn power, so Kitto’s sidhe magic had come after sex. With the new power should have come a new confidence, but it had not.
Galen leaned over the tub edge to touch Kitto’s other shoulder. “What’s up, Kitto, you can tell us.”
Kitto flashed him a rare smile. “You are both the kindest sidhe I’ve ever known.” He glanced behind at Nicca. “All of you.”
“You’re sidhe now, too, Kitto,” I said.
He shook his head. “I will never be truly sidhe, not to some.”
Nicca knelt behind him, his wings sweeping out along the floor. “Who has been saying such things to you?”
Kitto shook his head again, and Nicca’s arms came around from behind, hugging him. Kitto stiffened, as if afraid. I leaned up over the tub edge until I could lay a kiss upon his lips. When I drew back from the kiss, he raised frightened eyes to me.
“What did they say to you?” I asked. I was really worried now. I’d never seen him quite like this, and I didn’t like it.
He dropped his gaze again, and wouldn’t look at me as he said it. “They said that I would never be anything but a filthy goblin. That only a whore would share her bed with me.” He looked up then, and his face was so hurt, so confused. “I didn’t think any fey called another whore. It is not our way.”
“Oh, Kitto,” I said.
“I should not be here if it hurts your chances of being queen.” He started to bend down, as if he would make himself smaller, but Nicca’s arms wouldn’t let him do it. Nicca held him tightly but gently against his body.
“They are jealous,” Nicca said.
Kitto looked over his shoulder at the other man. “Jealous of what?”
“Of you,” Galen said.
Kitto blinked at him, and shook his head. “No, not of me.”
“You are the first non-sidhe to be brought into his power in centuries,” Galen said. “No matter how common it used to be, it isn’t now. They are jealous that Merry could do it, and you could become it. They’re afraid of you and what it might mean if more of the sidhe-sided goblins could be made sidhe.”
I looked at Galen.
“What?” he said. “It’s true.”
“Yes, but I…”
“Didn’t think I’d noticed,” he said.
I had the grace to look embarrassed. “Let’s say, I didn’t think you’d noticed so much, and so well.”
He smiled, a little sadly. “I’m learning just how stupid everyone thought I was.”
I touched his shoulder. “Not stupid, never that.”
“Foolish then, or oblivious.”
“Oblivious,” Nicca said. “Can’t truly argue that one.”
I had to smile. “You did seem oblivious to most of the politics.”
Galen nodded. “I was, maybe I still am, but we all have to keep our wits about us. We all have to see what there is to see, or we are going to die.” He gripped my arms, sloshing the water against our bodies. “When it was just my life and there was no chance that I would ever be in your bed, I didn’t care that much.” He hugged me against him. “There’s too much to lose now, and I don’t want to lose any of it.”
I wrapped my arms around him, held him as tight as I could. My hands traced the patches of dried blood, covering all of him that hadn’t gone in the water. I trailed my hands down and found that even in the water, the blood still clung. So much blood, so terribly much.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t pay attention before,” he said, his cheek against my hair. “I didn’t see a point to it, if I couldn’t have you. I don’t see everything, not the way Doyle does, or Frost, or even Rhys, but I do see some things, and I’m trying to see more.”
There was a lump in my throat so big I couldn’t swallow past it. My chest felt tight, and it was hard to breathe. My eyes were suddenly hot, and I knew I was about to cry only a second before it started. I didn’t want to cry. He was safe. We were safe. But feeling the dried blood made me remember the moment I’d seen him lying on his back in a lake of his own blood. That heart-stopping moment when I’d thought he was gone. Thought I’d never hold him warm against me again. Thought his arms would never press our bodies together again. That I’d never see his smile or hear his voice or gaze into his living eyes.
Galen stroked my hair and raised my face up to his. “Merry, are you crying?”
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.
“Why?” he asked.
Nicca said it for me. “She thought she’d lost you today, Galen.”
Galen stared down into my face. “Is that why you’re crying?”
I nodded again, and buried my face against his chest. He leaned back into the water, cradling me against his body. He stroked my skin, petted my hair, and whispered, “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
“But what about next time?” I asked.
“The queen made it clear that I might be the key to bringing babies back to the sidhe. I don’t think they’ll want to hurt me now.”
“Cel’s people will,” Kitto said.
We looked at him.
“I hear things because no one notices me.”
I felt a twinge at that because I’d done it, too. He’d accused me once of talking over him like he was a dog or a chair. That was before he had become my lover, but even now it was easier not to notice him than the rest. He had survived in the goblin mound by being unobtrusive, as invisible as he could make himself. He still had the habit of it.
“I heard some sidhe saying that they did not believe that anyone of Andais’s line would be able to bring life back to the Unseelie.”
“Who said this?”
“They saw me, after they had spoken. I think they would have tried to hurt me, but King Sholto came down the hallway. He had some of his sluagh with him.”
“Was this today?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“If he was here, I wonder why he didn’t come to the throne room.”
“I do not know, but he was wounded,” Kitto said.
“Wounded?” Galen said.
“How badly?” Nicca asked.
“He had an arm in a sling, and a bandage on the side of his face and head.”
“Who could harm a warrior of the Unseelie, and the King of Sluagh, that badly?” Nicca said as if he was simply thinking aloud.
“Goblins could,” Kitto said, “if they caught him unaware and unable to use his magic. There are warriors among my people who could best any you have, except for your sidhe magic.”
“Or another sluagh,” I said softly.
They all looked at me. “There are some among his people who think that by coming to my bed he will become full sidhe, and they will lose him as their king.”
“I heard it was mostly his harem of night hags,” Nicca said.
“Did everyone but me know that his hags were his harem?” I asked.
Nicca and Galen exchanged glances. “We envied him as the only guard who had an outlet for his desires,” Nicca said.
“They’re afraid that the touch of sidhe flesh will steal him away,” Galen said.
“No one but Merry would sleep with him,” Nicca said. “No other sidhe would risk bearing his child, for fear it would be a monster.”
I shook my head. “Once the Unseelie welcomed any child. It was the way of our court. When did we become an anthropomorphic club? When did two arms, two legs, and human beauty become the ideal?”
“Long before either of you were born,” Kitto said.
Nicca nodded. He was cuddling Kitto now more than just holding him. Kitto’s eyes still looked fragile, as if he believed whatever the sidhe had said to him. No name calling truly bites deep unless, in some dark part of us, we believe it. If we are confident enough then it’s just noise, but Kitto wasn’t confident, not in the least.
He spoke in a small, low voice. “I looked almost sidhe as a baby. My mother must have kept me for a few months, then the scales appeared around my spine, and when the teeth came in, so did the fangs. That was enough for her to leave me by the goblin mound, to either be taken in or killed. She left me there knowing that the goblins liked to eat a bit of sidhe flesh.” He huddled in on himself, wrapping Nicca’s arms closer around him. I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or accidental that the movement wrapped the other’s arm tighter. Most fey like to be touched, it comforts them, but the goblins are a different race than most. They like sex, but touch can as easily lead to violence as sex among them, and there is very little touching that is only comfort and not sex.
“But you’re wrong, Meredith. The sidhe, even the Unseelie, never took in every child. Goblin-sided babies that looked less than pure sidhe were left to die outside the goblin mounds.”
“The goblins took in their sidhe-sided children,” I said.
Kitto shook his head, and only Nicca’s arms kept him from curling into a little ball. Only Nicca’s strength kept the smaller man upright. “Not always,” Kitto whispered.
I reached out to touch his face. Galen, with his longer arms, could touch more of him. He found a hand to hold on to, and Kitto gripped the hand he offered. If I hadn’t been almost touching his face with mine, I might not have heard what he whispered next. “Sometimes they raise them until they’re big enough to eat. Not enough meat on a baby.” He looked up at me, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “When I got big enough, the woman who wet-nursed me wouldn’t let them have me. Because I was smaller than normal, it had taken me longer to get big enough, so long that I was talking, and she had grown fond of me. She fought for me. She bled for me. She saved me, but when she needed me, I was too small, too weak, to save her.” A look of rage crossed his face, and he closed his eyes as if he didn’t want me to see it. “One of the sidhe today said something, like he knew. He said I’d always been small, too small to be a real goblin, too small to be sidhe, too small to be anything but a burden and a danger to those around me.” Kitto looked up at me. “I didn’t think any sidhe visited the goblin mounds except for your father, and you. How did he know?”
I wanted to say that the sidhe in question had guessed. Had simply looked at Kitto’s small size and used it to be cruel. That he hadn’t known Kitto’s background, but only made an educated guess. But would it be more cruel to tell Kitto that his past was so obvious that a stranger could see it written on his body, or to let him believe that his history was known for certain by sidhe who dealt with the goblins more than they should?
Galen decided for me. “They didn’t know, Kitto, they just guessed. They were being mean. That’s all. They didn’t know that what they said would hit so close to the truth.”
“Guess?” Kitto said, looking at him. “Guess? They guessed? How? How could they know? How?” He gripped Galen’s hand with his smaller ones. “Is my shame written across my body? Is it that easy to see that I am weak? That I am a burden to those around me? I am a danger to you even.” He reached out to me then, gripping my hand so tight it almost hurt. “If I got you with child, they would never accept me as king, or you as queen. The two sidhe lords said they’d see you dead before they’d let a goblin-sided sidhe sit on the Unseelie throne.”
I wanted to ask who “they” were, but he might not know their names, and to ask it now seemed cruel. The two lords hadn’t been talking of conspiracies. They had simply been giving voice to their prejudices. They had said the cruelest truths they could find. But if they had truly planned on killing him, and me, then they wouldn’t have told him. They wouldn’t have taunted him with it. Or they wouldn’t have let him go unscathed after overhearing them. His clean, unbloodied flesh meant they didn’t really mean it. They were bullies, nothing more. I could get him to describe them for me later. Tonight, I didn’t want to make him dwell upon it. I wanted him to forget about it, at least for a little while.
I wanted to caress him, to hold him until that look left his eyes. But there was no room tonight on my dance card, not unless I could figure out a way to combine people again. Galen would sleep in big puppy piles, but he didn’t like sharing sex. Nicca shared just fine, and I think he would have agreed to almost anything just so he could get to Biddy in the next room. I didn’t mind being the one he rushed through. I enjoyed Nicca, but he did not speak to my heart and body the way Galen did, or Doyle, or Frost.
It was Galen who reached for Kitto. Galen who pulled him closer to the tub. “I’m sorry, Kitto, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say…” He didn’t finish it, but he’d said enough to let me know that he knew he’d said too much. That he’d said aloud what I’d been thinking, and he understood that his comments had hurt Kitto. He understood it, and was willing to try to undo the hurt he’d inadvertently done.
Many humans watched the casual touching among us and mistook it for sex, but it isn’t always. Sometimes you just need to be touched. Sometimes you see such hurt, such loneliness in another fey’s eyes that you must do something, anything, to chase that look away. Sometimes sex isn’t even about sex among us. Sometimes it’s just the last resort for making someone smile.