Their eyes went wide and I saw fear on their faces. “She meant nothing by it, Princess, please.”

“She meant everything by it, Trancer.” My voice was almost mine, just the faintest echo of the Goddess around the edges of my words.

“We will pack and we will go to the edge of the sea, and await your pleasure to bid us return to this new bit of faerie,” he said, pulling his wife backward toward the doorway.

“You do that,” I said. The petals were thick as a snowstorm, but spring warm, so that I watched their frightened faces leave through a pink snowfall.

“It is not our place to say so, but they do not deserve your blessing,” Clesek said.

Rhys hugged me. “I love you, our Merry, just as you are.” And just like that, I started to cry again; stupid baby hormones. The rose petals fell so fast it was like being inside some magical snow globe that had been shaken by a giant. What did the Christians say—if God be with me, then who can be against me? That was true, but it still hurt to know that no matter how many wonders I performed, I would always and forever be too short, too human, too Unseelie for the most of the Golden Court to ever accept me. But then hadn’t six out of sixteen of the Unseelie noble houses been against me the last time I stood in open court there, too? If the Goddess herself could not make them see their own bigotry, then there was no cure for it.

There was a soft kiss on my cheek. I looked up and found that Rhys’s face was pressed to the top of my hair, and no one else was close. The Goddess had kissed my tears like my own mother never had. I whispered my thanks, and the petals began to slow. I was almost ankle deep in petals now; that was enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

RHYS AND BIDDY both offered to escort me to the outdoor area where Doyle was conducting the hand-to-hand training, but I told Rhys to stay and supervise the weight training. Biddy wasn’t on full duty yet, and she helped run the household along with her husband, Nicca. I didn’t want to put her back on guard duty; it wasn’t where she was best used. Both of them were content when they realized Saraid and Dogmaela were just outside the door.

Rhys kissed me good-bye and gave me over to the two female guards. I’d already asked him my question, and he’d had no problem with Bryluen, and the two human nannies weren’t needed when he, Galen, and Kitto were on duty, so he hadn’t seen them with the littlest of our babes. It was interesting that Maeve and I both felt Bryluen’s magic, but Rhys didn’t. He was a death deity, and Maeve and I were both fertility, sex, and love. If that made us more susceptible to my daughter’s glamour, then Galen would also have an issue, but Doyle and Frost might not. Come to think of it, Galen was the only one of the fathers who was spring and fertility, though he wasn’t as close to Maeve’s and my magic as a couple of the other guards. Adair and Amatheon weren’t fathers, or my lovers anymore, but their magic was closest; I might see how they fared babysitting if Galen had more issues than the other fathers. If he didn’t, then I might ask one of the female sidhe and see if Bryluen had more power over women, though I couldn’t think why she should.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, Princess Meredith, you seem unusually solemn,” Saraid said.

I glanced at her and smiled. “I don’t mind, Saraid.”

“You have everything any woman could want, and more; what do you have to be so sad about?” Dogmaela said.

“Dogmaela,” Saraid said, making a caution of the other woman’s name.

“No, it’s all right, Saraid, truly. I may not answer the question, but you can all ask me anything.”

“That is a most democratic attitude, Princess,” Saraid said.

“I may be a faerie princess, but I’m also American. We tend to like democracy.”

“I’ve been following your politicians in the media,” Dogmaela said, “and I do not find all of them very democratic. In fact, many of them seem as if they would be happy to have a dictatorship if they could be in charge.”

I laughed. “Very accurate of some of them, I grant you that.”

“Well, you laughed, so that’s a good thing,” Dogmaela said, and she smiled. She was one of the guards who had gone to therapy with the same work ethic she’d applied to learning to shoot modern firearms.

Saraid had been one of the women who stopped going to therapy when she found out it wasn’t mandatory.

“Is Uther coming over this week for movie night?” I asked.

Saraid ducked her head and grinned, that special stupid-faced, almost drunkenly happy grin. I loved seeing it on that angelically beautiful face, because Uther had been my friend back in the days when I’d been hiding as just plain Merry Gentry, a human with some fey ancestry. He’d been one of my coworkers at the Grey Detective Agency for three lonely years while I hid in L. A. on the shores of the Western Sea to keep my cousin, Cel, and his friends from killing me. Uther Squarefoot was the legal name on his license, and he was thirteen feet tall, with magnificent curling tusks, and a face that was almost more wild boar than human. He was a Jack-in-Irons, one of the solitary faeries, but still of the Unseelie Court, because the Seelie Court wouldn’t touch any fey who was ugly. But Saraid had found in Uther the first gentleness she’d known in a man for centuries. He had found in her the wonderment of being loved by a truly beautiful woman. There were only two Jacks-in-Irons in the entire United States, and no one had ever seen a female one, so Uther had been lonely in a way that mere friendship couldn’t fix. When he’d found out I was sidhe, he’d very politely asked me to help him break his fast for female companionship, but I was mortal and not sure I could survive his attentions. I wasn’t sure what Saraid and he did together on their dates, but whatever it was satisfied them both, and they’d been a couple for almost six months.