A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“It was great, but has it occurred to either of you that maybe the sex was that magical because it is the first time I have had sex inside faerie while wearing the ring?”

Doyle blinked and tried to focus. I watched him fighting off the despair that was trying to numb him. Frost spoke for them both. “You have had sex inside faerie with one of us, surely.”

I shook my head. “I do not believe so, and if I have, I wasn’t wearing the ring. Even in Los Angeles, I often didn’t wear the ring during sex.”

“Because the power was too unpredictable,” Doyle said. He looked up at me. “Were we fools to lock it away?”

The ring on my finger pulsed once, as if squeezing my hand. I swallowed hard and nodded. “The ring thinks so.”

Doyle rubbed at the tear tracks on his skin. “You truly do not love Mistral?”

“No.”

“You could still be pregnant,” he said.

“The ring does fertility, but it does more than that,” Frost said. “If Meredith does not love Mistral, then perhaps he is not the match for her.”

“Does he think he is?”

I watched Doyle collect himself, gathering all that dark reserve. “Most likely.”

“I know that Rhys does, for he said so,” Frost said.

“Does Galen?”

“He was much besotted with the ring’s power. The men that were besotted will most likely not be thinking that clearly.”

“Only you, Rhys, Doyle, and Mistral himself did not seem drunk with power.”

“Mistral was a part of the magic. Rhys did not appear in time.”

“But why the two of you?”

They looked at each other, and it was Frost who spoke, and Doyle who would not look at me. “The ring has no power over you if you are already in love.”

“If it is true love,” Doyle said, and then he did look at me, and I almost wished he had not. His eyes held the pain that he had let me glimpse. The pain that must have begun to grow when none of them had made me pregnant in Los Angeles.

I looked at the two of them, and for the first time I realized that if it was a choice between the throne or losing these two men, I wasn’t certain what I would choose. I wasn’t certain I was queen enough to sacrifice that much. But as long as Cel lived, he would see me dead. And I could not give the rest of faerie to him, even if he swore to leave me and the ones I loved alive. I could not give my people over to him. He made Andais look sane, and kindhearted. I could not give us over to Cel’s sadism. I was too much my father’s daughter to do it. But I stood there and felt the world sink down to nothing at the thought of losing Doyle and Frost.