“I don’t think you kissing Mistral would have had the same effect,” Usna said.
Doyle frowned at him, but Frost collapsing to the carpet made us all move toward him. He said, “I am all right, I just need to lie down,” which meant he didn’t feel well at all.
Hafwyn came through the door, and I realized that until she appeared I hadn’t known if Usna had called a doctor or called someone who could heal with magic. Healer could mean either in this house.
Doyle knelt with Frost’s head in his lap, smoothing the other man’s hair and saying, “I am so sorry, Frost.”
I held Frost’s hand and felt it tighten as Hafwyn began to explore the wounds.
“You were not in your right mind, Darkness; I know you would never hurt me.”
“Not deliberately,” Doyle said, touching Frost’s face gently.
“This is two attacks in our dreams in almost as many nights; what can we do to protect ourselves?” I asked.
Frost’s hand tightened enough that I could feel that crushing strength, and I said, “Easy, my Killing Frost, easy.” I touched his face as I said it.
He loosened his grip. “I am sorry, Merry.”
“It’s all right, it must hurt a great deal for you to react so.”
“Nay, it does not.” I realized that despite the strength in his hands in my and Doyle’s grip his face was stoic, and only the cording in his arms showed the muscles he was using to hold on and not react to the pain. I cursed myself for revealing his pain when he was covering it so well, my brave man.
I leaned down and kissed him. He gave me startled eyes as I leaned back. I couldn’t explain why I’d kissed him without compounding the mistake, so I just smiled at him and let him see how much I loved him. That made him smile even as Hafwyn’s slender fingers finished exploring the claw marks.
His body reacted to the kiss, and nude he could not hide it. He was not one of my men who enjoyed pain. Everyone’s need had grown over the months of enforced celibacy. I’d even been forbidden oral, or really any sexual contact, once the doctors told me that any orgasm might bring on premature labor. It hadn’t been worth the risk, but now that the babies were on the outside, we wouldn’t endanger them.
“I can’t have intercourse for weeks yet, but I could do oral and hand on some of you,” I said. If I’d been human it would have been too bold in the situation, but no one in that room was human.
“That is very generous of you, Princess,” Hafwyn said, “but it is not our way to offer sex without hope of pleasure in return.” She wasn’t chiding me, just stating cultural norms, as people do.
“I can orgasm from touching a man, especially oral.”
Hafwyn looked at me, head to one side like a curious bird. Both her graceful eyebrows arched at me in surprise. “Truly?”
I smiled. “Truly.”
“I’d forgotten what it meant to be a goddess of fertility.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Sex is a much broader pleasure for certain goddesses.”
“I am no goddess,” I said.
She made a small gesture with her head, almost a shrug. “As my princess wills, so shall it be, but there are some humans who live because a bit of metal that once pierced your flesh touched them, and now they use those objects to heal others.”
“It is magic, yes, but it is not deity,” I said.
She averted her eyes, laying out fresh bandages. “If you say so, then of course it is true.”
“Hafwyn, seriously, there can be no talk of gods and goddesses for any of us.”
“I know that if we are worshipped in this country it is grounds for our exile as a people,” she said, still not looking at me, “but to not speak of a thing does not make it less true.”
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.