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Chapter Fourty

Royal ht have been embarrassed about his Queen&039;s lack of manners, but he couldn&039;t hide the fact that he wanted to be with me Of course, in fey culture to hide the fact that you found so to be attractive, was an insult I wasn&039;t exactly trying to be attractive, but I wasn&039;t trying not to be either

I lay in the white robe against all the pale creas of red and black and gray They were a blur of color, and even though the wings were the wings of a onfly, or a bee, much faster than the moth he reses blew my hair across the pillow in a red wave He landed in the ht was not so h that I kneas there He knelt between thesoauzy loincloths that sorown-up real version of the clothes that the killer had put on the des behind his back, so that the darker and plainer outer coverings slipped over the startling brightness of the red-and-black stripes He gazed up atblack antennae he should have been cute or silly even, but Royal had always s, from the first moment I met him

"You look solemn, Princess Are you well? I heard you were ill earlier"

"And if I said I was ill, ould that change?" I asked

He lowered his head and sighed "I would still feed, but I would be sorry for it" Even as he said it one tiny hand traced the edge of e of the robe

"Your actions give lie to your words, Royal"

"I a, but I have never lied to you about the fact that I find you beautiful I would have to be blind and unable to touch the silk of your skin not to want you, Princess Meredith"

I told the truth "I feel well enough now, but I aood"

"If I could ht, but since I can only do what the Gli"

"Glimmer What does that mean?"

He looked uncomfortable "You will not like the answer"

"I still want to know"

"There are humans who have a fetish for the small folk such as me, and there are even de folk I have seen the ies on the computer and am told there are films"

"Buthow? I mean, the size difference"

"Not intercourse," he said, "but mutual masturbation, or the demi-fey rub theo That seee on the coued by it, as if it was just fact and not about sex at all

"And it&039;s called Gli a demi-fey"

"What&039;s it called if the de person?"

He lay down on his stomach between my breasts so that his head was just above the," he said

That h, which made my chest rise and fall and slid the robe a little to both sides so that he was suddenly lying with more of my bare breasts on either side of hi, but the mounds of my breasts fralaood at glamour, so we&039;d worked out a systelamour on me I wanted to know the h that I couldn&039;t always tell Some of the men had shared h at the glamour that it worked on them, too They didn&039;t like it, and he was the only deate who had , or thedisturbed Royal Doyle illing to stay, but the demi-fey didn&039;t like him, none of thelamour The deh to feed So, Royal and I had the feeding to ourselves with the knowledge that at a prescribed tiuards would knock on the door and interrupt

Niceven&039;s original plan had been to have one of her surrogates who could shift to nearlyof the Unseelie, but I was already pregnant and Royal didn&039;t have a bigger forla as ain it made him rise and fall on my breasts He caressed his hands on the soft ainst my chest and said, "I love the sound of your heart like this"

"Whatever fetish this is, I think you have it"

He raised his head and looked at ave him the suspicious look that comment deserved

"Must I take oath for you to believe larinned at me and there should have been no heat possible in a man his size He should have looked more like a cat curled between my breasts, sexless, and pretty, but a cat couldn&039;t look at you like that And then he dropped his shields much as I had in the lab, but where ic everywhere Royal&039;s shields kept hiic

One moment I was puzzled by how a man the size of a doll coulddown the side ofback my robe until he bared s, but tonight I&039;d forgotten to negotiate as firuely that there was a reason not to let him put that tiny rosebud of ato forht of why, he set his an to suck I couldn&039;t remember why he wasn&039;t supposed to do it, or rather, I no longer cared

I&039;d had deertips, and from such innocent kisses they couldonintimate and it was as if there was a line from there all the way to that most intimate of places where a man can suck on a woman But it wasthe edge of ive the illusion that he was bigger I could feel the weight of hiainst the side of my body, so warm, so real, as he sucked on my breast

I had to put s toand no ers and suddenly they, too, felt bigger, as if they rose above his back like sails on a ship, but sails that were brushed with velvet scales and flicked delicate and beautiful against h to make me cry out for him and suddenly the world smelled of roses Wild roses and summer heat filled the world I had to open my eyes to make certain ere still in the pale bedrooan to fall fro it up so he could get a better seal on, harsh line, but the pain was just right, just what I needed to cry out for hila down at lah to do all that I openedabove us both in a spill of color and le, but it was as big as my own, and he was still beautiful, but as I watched him lean in for a kiss I realized it wasn&039;t illusion

Rose petals fell on hi him in a rain of pink and white as he kissed ht One of my hands found the back of his neck and the curls of his hair while my other hand traced the line of his back until I found where his wings joined his body, and we kissed, gently and long, and his body settled closer tohad not He was nude against my body and I was nude under the robe as we kissed

He rose froh to say, "Please, Merry, please I ain"

"What did you wish?"

"You knohat I wished" His hand slid down between our bodies until his fingers found er insidemade me catch my breath and writhe for him He smiled down at me "You&039;re wet"

I nodded "Yes" I slidand big enough to please any woman I wrapped my hand around him until he shuddered above o of him and azed down at me "Yes?" he asked

"Yes," I said

He sh and used his hand to guide hi I liftedinside ht, but so wet" He rose on his arms so he could push a little ave me a clear vien the line of our bodies so I could see hi inside mine for the first time

I cried out, "Goddess!" The rain of petals thickened like soft, perfuainst our bare skin

Royal pushed his way inside me until our bodiesout to frame the pale beauty of his body He looked down atin a bed of rose petals" And then he began toin and out of htly deeper, slightly different angle and it was as if he&039;d known that would help hilide his flicking out to their widest as he buried hi sped up, and I felt that heavy sweet sensation growing insidemore frantic I breathed out, "Almost, almost there"

He nodded as if he&039;d understood or even heardto push himself in and out of me just a few more strokes, and between one and the next he spilledhis na on to hi underneath hied shadow against the ceiling He cried out above me, and thrust hiether and then he held his began to fold back behind him

I saw movement in the room and realized that Mistral and Frost had seen at least the end of our love Royal collapsed slowly on top of ainst me so warm, and his head touched the pillow beside my head that I realized that in this forht

I held his as we both waited for our heartbeats to slow I felt so cooler than the body fluid we&039;d just shared and it was on h to look at ainstI could think of to do I kissed hih to clean up in the bathroo with Mistral tonight I kneho had my vote, if the storm lord would allow it, and maybe if he wouldn&039;t Maybe as with Barinthus it was ti nice to everyone and ask for what I wanted, and in thatI wanted lamour, or maybe it was the Goddess with her fall of rose petals, but whatever the reason, he was one of the ht

Chapter Fourty-one

I had fallen asleep with Royal on one side, sleeping on his stos on your back Mistral wouldn&039;t share the bed with him, not even with the rose petals still on the sheets to prove that it was the Goddess who had decreed that Royal was supposed to be brought into a larger form It wasn&039;t really Mistral&039;s fault, but I&039;d had enough of trying to ood about thes There was no way to be fair about it Either I cast Royal out with the afterglow of the a of the Goddess still riding both of us, which made me sad to think about, or I told Mistral either he shared hom I wanted to share with, or he slept without me He wouldn&039;t relent, and I was left, as with Barinthus, to stand h so that Frost and Doyle slept on one side and Royal on the other They both saw Royal being brought into his larger for So did most of the men, but for Mistral it o days without ht was his right I&039;d inforh sex that night, and that hadn&039;t gone over well either

I&039;d woken to Frost besideacross the bed so that Royal&039;s wings flickered awake in a pool of silver as if his wings were a piece of exotic jewelry set in a base of melted silver Doyle was on the other side of Frost, propped up on one elboatching me when I opened ht before saying, "Rhys wasn&039;t touching your skin directly I&039; vision I will give up the chance to touch you this one night to guard your safety"

Frost had tried to protest that he wanted to help guard s, when the Darkness was insistent he got his ith the other men Mistral and Barinthus were the two exceptions to that rule and even they usually let him persuade them

I lay there covered in silver hair cradled between the warmth of Frost and Royal and watched over by lad I hadn&039;t vision-traveled to the desert again The neas already traveling about aour troops Thethat it was a new special forces Hus The black coach was doing what I&039;d asked it to do Maybe that&039;s why I didn&039;t have to rescue anyone else personally

I wrapped the happy waking around h the early Californiawasn&039;t actually cold, but rather chilly at best But what Lucy wanted ht and early arden in the back of an older home The rose bushes were all hybrid teas and were planted in a perfect circle, with only one s and ad, and a small musical fountain in the very center of it I would have been happy to sit on the bench and listen to the water&039;s song, letting the scent of roses wash over me, except that under the perfume of roses were other sain The ss of the Goddess, but this memory would pair it with blood and the siven up their last moments of life, so that there was about the rose-scenteda hint of charnel and outhouse

Lucy said, "If they were human sized it would be a massacre, but they&039;re so tiny that even twenty of thereed, but I let her stateer the killers wouldn&039;t have been able to hang them between the roses like soun to change color yet They were all pale and perfect like little dolls, except that what child would tie their dolls up by their wrists and string them up between rosebushes so that the bound bodies formed a circle with the roses? But the killers had left the archway open so that people could walk back and forth without stooping There was a deruesome ornament Their throats were pale and whole, untouched

"There&039;s not as much blood How did they die?" I asked

"Look at their chests," she said

I started to say that I didn&039;t want to, but I squared my shoulders and bent closer to one of the female victims She had a cloud of pale blond hair like spun sunshine Her tiny eyes were a blue as bright as the sky above us, but beginning to cloud a little I forcedand there was a pin through her chest It was one of those long slender pins like you&039;d use for pinning a butterfly to a ive you the fanned wings and perfect display you wanted

I stepped back fro victiauzy dresses or kilts, depending on the sex of the fey in question, but they were the children&039;s book versions of the gauzy clothes covering everything I knew, frorown-up, andhere in the cool s flared out behind their bodies it was hard not think about Royal and how he&039;d risen abovehirow bigger?

"We have some hints that one of the killers is a demi-fey, but how could another demi-fey do this to their own kind?" Lucy asked

"Whoever it is hates being a deh the heart like they were really the butterflies they resemble and not people shows a real hatred, or disdain," I said

She nodded and handed me the plastic-wrapped illustration It was a scene fro up It was not exact, not even close "This one&039;s different," I said

"It&039;s not a close copy," Lucy said

"It&039;s almost as if the killers wanted to do this e that would justify it, but the murders came first in the plan, not the picture"

"Maybe," she said

I nodded She was right; I was guessing "If you don&039;t want uesses then why am I here, Lucy?"

"You have soe of hostility to it

"I know you&039;re tired," I said, "but you called me, re us, saying we aren&039;t working hard enough because the victims aren&039;t human"

"I know that&039;s not true," I said

"You know it, but the fey community is scared They want soive them a killer then they&039;ll blame us It didn&039;t help that we had to arrest Gilda on charges of ," I said

She nodded "The worst"

"Did she give up the name of the person who made her wand?"

Lucy shook her head "We offered to drop the charges if she&039;d give up the name but she seems to think that if we can&039;t find the manufacturer, on&039;t be able to prove what the wand did"

"It is hard to prove ic in a court Your wizards will only be able to explain the ic is easier to prove when you can de to see when soic, or at least that&039;s what the wizards tell me," Lucy said

Rhys joined us in the circle "Not the way I wanted to start the day," he said

"None of us wanted this," Lucy snapped at him

He held up his hands as if to say "ease up" "Sorry, Detective, justconversation"

"Don&039;t justthat will help catch this bastard"

"Well, from Jordan we know it&039;s bastards, plural," he said

"Tellwe don&039;t know," she said

"The elderly lady who lives here lets the demi-fey come and dance in her rose circle at least once a ht it was against the rules for them to let humans watch," Lucy said

"Apparently her husband was part fey so technically they counted as fey"

"What kind of fey was he?" I asked

"I&039;m not sure he was, but the woman believes it, and who a a little bit fey as in artistic or crazy and being descended from the fey?"

"Is she senile?" I asked

"A touch, but not badly She believes what her beloved husband told her, that he was the product of a fey lover whom his mother had for a brief tiave her a look "I&039;ve just spent the last hour looking at pictures of him If he was part fey it ay back in the fa?" she asked

He nodded

"It leaves a mark," I said

"So it&039;s another circle where people would know the deularly"

"Jordan said that there was sos at the ht whatever was flying was beautiful"

"A lot of pretty things fly," Lucy said

"Yes, but look at them When they were alive they were beautiful"

"You keep saying that uys hated theet twenty of them to hold still while they did all this" She didn&039;t try to keep the disbelief out of her voice

"Don&039;t underestila for their size, ?" she asked

Rhys answered, "They could toss you around"

"I don&039;t believe that"

"It&039;s true," he said

"One of them could knock you on your ass," I said

"But could a pair of them do this?"

"I think they&039;d need at least one half of the pair to be regular size," I said

"And they could control this h to do this to thehed, and then tried to breathe less deeply "I don&039;t know Honestly, Lucy, I don&039;t know anyone powerful enough to make this many fey of any kind allow themselves to be tied up and murdered like this, but if they were dead before the pins went in, dead by h to kill this many at once"

I leaned in and spoke quietly to Rhys "Could a Fear Dearg do this?"

He shook his head "They never had enough glamour to work the demi-fey like this It&039;s one of the reasons they liked humans so much It made them feel powerful"

"Don&039;t whisper Share with the class," Lucy said

I moved closer to her, just in case one of the arden overheard andto do another part of her job "Have you found Bittersweet yet?"

"No"

"I&039;m sorry you lost her because of what happened with the reporters"

"It&039;s not your fault Merry"

"I&039;o so far from the illustration this ti up and there are twenty of them here"

"Maybe they wanted to kill more of them," Rhys said

"Why?"

He shook his head "I have no idea"

"Neither do I, da I could add was "Me either" It wasn&039;t helpful, and until we found Bittersweet to help give us an eyewitness account ere stuck

Chapter Fourty-two

I was back at the offices taking clients later that day as if nothing unusual had happened It see bodies I shouldn&039;t have had to do anything else for the day, but life doesn&039;t work like that Just because you start the day off with nighto to work Sorown-up sucked a lot