A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Rhys and Galen put him on his back, and helped me tear his shirt open. There was a tattoo on his chest that glowed blue. It was a stag head with a crown in its antlers. It was a mark of kingship, but it was also a mark of the sacrificial king. The white stag was what he had made with his touch that night in the winter dark. The white stag is a thing to be hunted and to lead the hero to his destiny.

I stared at Rhys's face because he looked as horrified as I felt.

"What does it mean?" Galen asked.

"Once all new creation came with sacrifice," Doyle's voice intoned, but it wasn't his voice.

"No," I said. "No, I didn't agree to this."

"He did," the voice said. The look in Doyle's eyes was not him either.

"Why? Why him?"

"He is the stag."

" No !" I stood up, stumbling on the hem of my robe. I went toward the black dogs and this stranger in Doyle's body.

"Merry," Rhys said.

" No !" I screamed it again.

One of the black dogs growled at me. My power washed over me, burst across my skin. I glowed like I'd swallowed the moon. Shadows of crimson light fell around my face from my hair, I saw green and gold light, and knew my eyes glowed.

"Would you challenge me?" Doyle's mouth said, but it wasn't Doyle who I would challenge if I said yes.

"Merry, don't," Rhys said.

"Merry," Galen said. "Please, Frost wouldn't want this."

My hounds bumped my hand, and my thigh. I looked down at them, and they glowed. Minnie's red half of her face glowed like my hair, and her skin gave white light around my hand as I petted her. Our glows mingled. Mungo, with his red ear and white coat, looked as if he were carved of jewels.

The queen's ring pulsed on my hand. It, like so many things, had more power inside faerie, and that was where we stood now.

I saw phantom puppies dancing around my hounds. I knew in that moment that Minnie was already pregnant. The first faerie hounds to be born in five hundred years, maybe more?

Minnie bumped my hip, made me look down at myself. Two small phantoms of my own, hovering around me. But I knew they were real. No wonder I'd been tired today. Twins, like my mother and her sister. Twins. And faint, like a thought that wasn't quite real, was a third. It wasn't real yet, just a promise of possibilities; It meant that the twins would not be all. There would be at least a third child for me with someone.

I realized as soon as I thought it that the ring had other powers.