In that moment I was so glad they were mine, so glad I could keep them safe. Once Queen Andais had said that any man who wasn’t father to my children would be forced back into her Raven guard, there to be celibate again except for servicing her. It showed how distracted her son’s death had left her, that she believed she could make that threat and still have me come home to accept the crown, to force all the guards I had come to consider mine back to be tortured by a madwoman for all eternity. Everyone wants to be immortal—even I did—but there were times when living forever and healing most injuries could have serious downsides, and being tortured forever was one of those.
That thought made me say out loud, “Once the genetic tests come back and prove conclusively who the fathers are and aren’t, do you think the queen will demand her Raven guards back?”
“She has stated that many times,” Doyle said.
“But most of them have taken oath to Merry now,” Frost said.
“Does one oath supersede the other?” Doyle asked.
“That’s why Cathbodua did it,” I said.
“You mean offered her oath?”
“Yes.”
We all thought about it for a few moments, and then Doyle said, “The queen has been too busy trying to die to think about living, but if she believes either that she will live and need her guards, or that by demanding that all her Ravens come home we will help her die, then she might call all those who are not father to your children back to the Unseelie Court.”
“What would we do?” Frost asked.
“I cannot send them back to death and torment,” I said.
“Cathbodua was free to give her oath anew, because all the princes were dead, but the male guards shouldn’t have been able to make such a vow to Merry while the queen still lived,” Doyle said.
“You mean literally, the words wouldn’t have come out their mouths, or that some curse for oathbreaking should have happened?” I asked.
“The latter.”
“How do we know it has not?” Frost asked.
“Because Sholto and Merry are the ones who brought the Wild Hunt back to life, and that is what hunts oathbreakers among us, but you felt no sense of wrongness as they made oath to you, did you?”
I thought about it, and then shook my head. “No, nothing felt wrong, and Sholto was with us when it happened.”
“How can the oath to the queen be mute?” Doyle asked.
“Did you take your oath willingly?” Frost asked.
Doyle nodded.
“I did not, but it was the only avenue left open to me, the only safety from the king’s mad pride.”
“You’re saying if the oath was coerced, then it’s not a true oath,” Doyle said.
“Perhaps,” Frost said.
“If they’re oathed to me for real, then they can’t be forced back to the queen.”
“The oath can’t force them back, but her rage and madness could.”
We had a moment of just sitting there thinking about it all. I finally said, “Being held sounds very good right now.”
“Then let us put away our weapons and huddle together,” Doyle said.
“The Darkness does not huddle,” Frost said.
“Nor does the Killing Frost,” Doyle said.
“I promise not to tell; just hold me, and tell me how to keep the king out of my dreams.”
I placed the relic, Aben-dul, on top of the headboard. We’d put it back in the weapons locker later. It was far too dangerous to leave lying about. Frost took back his knife, and we lay down with the two of them wrapped around me, and their long arms touching each other. The Darkness and the Killing Frost might not huddle, but I did, and unless there was a way to keep Taranis out of my dreams, I’d be doing more cuddling and less sleeping from now on. I’d never suffered from insomnia, but I was willing to learn.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE BABIES WERE all asleep in their cribs. Once I calmed down from the dream, I had to see them. I knew in all reason that they were safe, but fear isn’t always about reason; maybe fear is never about reason, but some fears are reasonable. I feared my uncle, and my aunt, that was reasonable, but I also feared that my babies had somehow been left inside my nightmare—not reasonable.
Kitto stood beside the crib with me. We held hands as we gazed down at Bryluen. She was curled into a tiny ball, as if she were still asleep inside me, trying to find room between her bigger siblings. We walked to Gwenwyfar, to see her white curls almost gleaming in the glow of the night light. Alastair was flopped on his back, arms and legs akimbo, as if he’d played hard and just collapsed where he was the way Liam did sometimes. Were boys so different from the very beginning than girls? I honestly didn’t know; there’d been no babies around me growing up, so my learning was all books and classes, and on-the-job training.
Kitto wrapped his arm around my waist, and I slid my arm across his shoulders. They were broader than when he’d first come to me, from Doyle’s insistence that the smaller man hit the weight room and even weapons practice. Kitto wasn’t expected to take his place among my guards, but Doyle wanted all of us to be able to defend ourselves. I had even joined the practice until I got too big with babies to move well, and the doctors started worrying that some of the training might cause premature labor. As soon as I healed I’d be back to it, because defending myself sounded awesome after my dream about Taranis. But then I had defended myself, hadn’t I?
“I swear to you, Merry, the babes have slept peacefully for hours.”
I hugged him. “You need to sleep, too, you know?”
He smiled up at me and then gazed at the babies, our babies. “I never thought I’d belong anywhere. I was tolerated among the goblins as long as I served a stronger warrior or his lady as their submissive toy, but if they tired of me, or one got jealous of me with the other, then they could cast me out, and masterless I was anyone’s meat.”
I put both my arms around him and held him close, resting my head on the top of his black curls; they were soft in texture, not like pure goblin hair, which ran to coarseness. “You’re ours now, Kitto.”
He hugged me back. “I have a family like I read about in books.”
“The goblins aren’t much for reading,” I said.
“Most are not, but my first mistress taught me how to read, and after that being able to read was an asset to my other masters and mistresses—as much as the sex sometimes.”
“So you read them to sleep?” I asked.
“Or read contracts to them, or modern newspapers.”
“I didn’t know the goblins cared about what was happening in the outside world.”
“Some do.”
I held him close, rubbing my cheek in the softness of his hair. I thought about all the long centuries that he had managed to survive in a culture that valued brute strength and power on the battlefield, and sex. It sounded like a desperate and lonely existence.
I tried to lighten the mood, because I needed it, too. “Good that you are learned, and fabulous at sex.”
“Sometimes I was too good at the sex,” he said.
I moved back enough to look into his face. “What do you mean? It’s not possible to be too good at sex.” I smiled when I said it, but he didn’t smile back.
“Several masters and mistresses became jealous that their lovers preferred me to them, and cast me out because of it.”
I gave him wide eyes and tried to think my way through that. I finally said the truth. “I’m amazed the jealous lovers didn’t just kill you for it.”
“Some tried, but the lovers that valued me stopped them, or even fought them in my defense.”
“You are very good in bed,” I said.
He smiled up at me. “But not that good, you’re thinking, not by goblin standards.”
“They like it very rough,” I said.
“In public, but in private many of them prefer gentler sex.”
I’d experienced that difference myself with Holly and Ash, the other goblins in our lives. If anyone knew they enjoyed gentle sex, their reputation would be damaged, so I said nothing, not even to Kitto.
“And if their secret got out that they’d enjoyed that with you, they would be ruined.”
“It would be seen as weakness, and that is always challenged among my people.”