"Then why are you here?" I asked.
"The queen ordered it," he said, as if that explained everything.
"Why?" I asked, because it explained nothing.
He moved gracefully in the tailored leather coat. It fit his upper body like a glove but flared out around his h*ps and legs so it was like a leather robe. The black leather made his hair richer, brighter, like copper flame. When he was close enough for me to see his eyes, I had that moment of dizziness that his eyes always gave me. His pupils were petaled layers of red, blue, yellow, and green, like a multicolored flower.
"You're lovely to look at, Amatheon. To say anything else would be lying."
His handsome face smirked at me.
"But pretty is as pretty does, and you are Cel's friend, last I knew. I don't think he'd take kindly to you protecting me, let alone anything else."
Doyle had moved in front of me, just enough to keep Amatheon from closing the distance between us. Frost had moved up on the other side of me, as if there were any question of Amatheon getting past Doyle. Amatheon ignored them both, all his attention meant for me. "Prince Cel does not rule the Unseelie Court, not yet. Queen Andais has made that clear to me." The smirk was gone when he said that, and the arrogance slipped a bit. I wondered how Andais had chosen to make her point so terribly clear to him. I trusted Aunt Andais to choose a painful method, and for once I was glad at the thought of one of the guards suffering. Petty, but then Amatheon had been one of the sidhe who'd made my childhood unpleasant.
"Good of you to remember that," Doyle said.
Amatheon's eyes flicked to him, but came back to rest on me. "Trust me, Princess, I wouldn't be here if I had a choice."
"Then go," I said.
He shook his head, sending his hair sliding over the leather of his shoulders. The last time I'd seen him, the hair had been to his knees. Most sidhe took it as a point of pride to have hair that had never known a blade. In fact, fey who were not sidhe were forbidden from having hair to their ankles.
I gazed up at him. "You've cut your hair since last I saw you."
"As you've cut yours," he said, but his face was sullen.
"I sacrificed my hair to hide the fact that I was sidhe. Why did you cut yours?"
"You know why," he said, and he fought to keep his face behind its arrogant mask.
"No, I don't."
Anger broke through his mask, tore it away, and I watched something close to rage in his flower-petal eyes. He balled his hands into his shoulder-length hair. "I refused to come here today. I refused to be one of your men. The queen reminded me that refusing her anything is not wise." He forced himself to relax, and the effort was visible and near painful to behold.
"Why is it that important that you get a chance in my bed?" I asked.
He shook his head, and the movement of his newly shortened hair seemed to bother him. He ran his hands through the thick waves, shook his head again, and said, "I don't know. That is the truth of it. I asked, and she told me I didn't need to know. I just needed to do what I was told." The anger was mere sullenness now, showing the edge of fear that had been there all along.
He looked at me, and he wasn't angry with me; he just seemed tired and beaten. "So here I am, and the queen wishes me to touch the ring. If it does not react to my skin, then after we deliver you safely to the court, I am free to leave this guard detail, but if it sings to my touch..." He looked down at the floor, and his hair spilled around his face. He looked up abruptly, combing his fingers through the hair to keep it back. "I must touch the ring. I must see what happens. I have no choice, and neither do you." He sounded so unhappy that it made me like him better than I ever had before. Not like him enough to take him to my bed, but I always had trouble hating people if they showed me something that wasn't hateable inside them. Andais had seen that as a weakness; my father had seen it as a strength. I still hadn't decided.
Without taking his gaze from Amatheon, Doyle asked, "Do you wish to allow it?"
Frost moved closer to me so that his coat enveloped me like a cloud.
"Allowing him to touch the ring means nothing, costs us nothing," I said. "When I speak to the queen about him, I would rather have done everything she wished, up to that point."
"She will not allow either of us to pass on this, Princess." His hand went to his hair, and he stopped himself with a visible effort. "She will have us bed, if the ring knows me."
I wanted badly to ask him again, why, but believed he knew no more of Andais's logic than did I. "What happens after will be a problem for another day." I stepped up to touch Doyle's arm. "Let him pass."
Doyle glanced at me, as if he wanted to argue, but he didn't. He simply stepped aside, allowing me to step forward, but Frost did not move back. He stayed so close that the line of his body touched mine.
"Frost," I said, "we need a little more space."
He glanced down at me, then at Amatheon, then he took a small step to the side, his face its best arrogant mask. Neither he nor Doyle liked Amatheon. Maybe it was something personal, or maybe, like me, they didn't like the idea of someone who was Cel's man being near me.
"Frost," I said again, "what if the ring picks up on you, and not Amatheon? Give us enough room so we know that the reaction is for him alone."
"I will give half an arm's length of room, but no more. He has been Cel's cat for far too long."
Amatheon gazed up at the slightly taller man. "The princess is under the queen's protection, magically given. If I raised a hand to her, then my life would be forfeit, and the queen would make me beg for death long before she gave it." His eyes looked haunted. "No, Frost, I would not go back under the queen's tender care, not even to keep this half-human mongrel off our throne."