He regained his height, then added more so he was close to the ceiling, out of reach. "But you were so tasty."
Galen looked at me. "Why don't we just bespell him for twenty-four hours?"
"Tempting as it is," I said, "Niceven might consider hostile magic on her proxy to be a violation of our treaty."
"It would solve the problem," Rhys said.
"Very well," Sage said. "For a taste of Frost and a taste of the white knight, I will agree to hold my tongue until I see my queen."
"In the flesh at her court," I added.
He whirled up near the ceiling like some lazy bird. He laughed and came to hover near me. "Are you afraid I will cheat?"
"Say the words, Sage," I said.
He gave me a smile that said he would do what I wanted, but he would be a pain in the ass while doing it. It was his way. In fact, it was the way of a lot of the Unseelie demi-fey. A cultural thing, perhaps.
He put his wee hand over his tiny chest and stood straight in midair, toes pointed downward. "For the blood of both men, I will wait to tell my queen about the chalice until face to face and true flesh to true flesh we are." He darted upward, so that I had to crane my neck to keep track of him near the ceiling. "Satisfied?"
"Yes," I said.
"I have not agreed to this," Frost said.
"I'll be there," Rhys said.
I slid my arm through Frost's arm, over the silk and the pull of his muscles. "I'll be there, too."
"Frost," Doyle said.
The two men looked at each, and something passed between them, some knowledge, some comfort. Whatever it was, it softened Doyle's face, made him seem more... human.
Frost nodded. "What if the new magic tries to harm Meredith again?"
"Rhys will be there to see that that does not happen."
Frost opened his mouth as if he would say something more; then he stopped, closed his mouth, and gave one sharp nod. "As my captain commands, so will I do."
The rest of the guards seemed to forget sometimes that Doyle was the captain of the Queen's Ravens, then suddenly they'd remember. They'd use a title long disused. The respect was always there, and the fear, but the titles came and went.
"Good," Doyle said. "Now that that is settled, we have other business to discuss. Once our respective queens know of the chalice's return, it will come to Taranis's attention. What do we do when he demands its return?"
I glanced around the room, tried to read their faces, and couldn't read most. "You aren't seriously thinking about keeping the chalice once Taranis asks for it? It would be a fight, if not an outright war."
"We cannot give it to him," Nicca said. "He no longer deserves it."
"What do you mean, Nicca?" Doyle asked.
"He is not..." Nicca seemed at a loss for words, then finally spread his hands wide and said, "He is not worthy to wield the chalice. If he were worthy, it would have come to him - but it hasn't. It came to Merry."
Doyle sighed loudly enough that I heard it halfway across the room. "And that is yet another problem. If Taranis fears that his hold as king is slipping because of his infertility, then to have the chalice appear to another sidhe noble, especially one half-Unseelie, will only feed his fear."
"He should be afraid." Rhys came to stand beside me, on the other side from Frost's solid presence. "Bringing Maeve and Frost to godhood, maybe that's just her being the only goddess-shaped vessel, just like Doyle said." He put his arm around my waist, hugging me a little to him, while my arm was still linked with Frost's. It made his hand bump into Frost, and I felt the bigger man tense. Rhys didn't seem to notice, but gazed out at the other men. "But the chalice coming to her, that's not just because she's the right sex for the power. The cauldron was originally given to men, not women. What if it came to her because she's the only sidhe noble fit to be its caretaker?"
"I don't think that's it," I said.
"Why isn't it?" Frost said.
I looked up the length of his own body to meet Frost's gaze. "Because I'm mortal. I'm not even full sidhe by some standards,"
"By whose standards?" Frost said. "All those would-be gods who stand around and talk about the glories of the past?"
"The Seelie Court does sound like someone's high school reunion," Rhys said. "They talk about the old days when they were younger, stronger, better. The nostalgia is deep."
I frowned up at him, then glanced back at Frost. "Fine, yes, by the standards of the people who lost the chalice in the first place, I don't count. But regardless, Frost, Taranis will never accept that we have the chalice, not without a war."
"She's right," Rhys said, "because all the Seelie will think that with the chalice back, they could regain their powers."
"And with that logic," Doyle said, "if the Unseelie have it, then we could regain ours."
"I don't think that's true," Frost said. "I have not regained my powers. I have acquired powers that belonged to sidhe I once called master. And the chalice did not give me these powers, Merry did."
Rhys hugged me close. "Our queen will be pleased, but Taranis won't."
"He would be, if he thought she could do for him what she's done for Frost," Doyle said.
Rhys's face showed a moment of absolute panic, before he covered it with a grin and a joke. "I don't know which is more dangerous, that he thinks he can use Merry to regain his lost vitality, or that her new powers would make her a strong queen."