"I am sorry, my lord, but I do not understand."
"Meredith," the Goddess said, "explain it to him." The Goddess was beginning to fade, like a dream as dawn's light steals through the window.
"I do not understand," Sholto said.
"You are sluagh and Unseelie sidhe," the God said; "you are a creature of terror and darkness. It is what you are, but it is not all you are." With that, the dark shape began to fade, too.
Sholto reached out to him. "Wait, I don't understand."
The God and Goddess vanished, as if they'd never been, and the sunlight dimmed with them. We were left in gloom. It was the twilight of the underground of faerie these days - not the aberration of the momentous sunlight that had bathed us moments ago.
Sholto yelled, "My God, wait!"
"Sholto," I said. I had to say it twice more before he looked at me.
His face was stricken. "I don't know what they want from me. What am I to do? How do I bring the heart of my people back with joy?"
I smiled at him, the mask of blood cracking with it. I had to clean off this mess. "Oh, Sholto, you get your wish."
"My wish? What wish?"
"Let me clean off some of this blood beforehand."
"Before what?"
I touched his arm. "Sex, Sholto, they meant sex."
"What?" The look on his face, so astonished, made me laugh again. The sound echoed across the lake, and again I thought I heard birdsong.
"Did you hear that?"
"I heard your laughter, like music."
"This place is ready to come back to life, Sholto, but if we use laughter and joy and sex to make it happen, then it will be a different place than it was before. Do you understand that?"
"I'm not sure. We are going to have sex here, now?"
"Yes. Let me wash off some of the blood, and then yes." I wasn't sure he'd heard anything else I'd said. "Have you seen the new garden outside the throne room doors in the Unseelie sithen?"
He seemed to have to fight to concentrate, but finally he nodded. "It's a meadow with a stream now, not the torture area the queen had made of it."
"Exactly," I said. "It was a place of pain and now it's a meadow with butterflies and bunnies. I'm part Seelie Court, Sholto, do you understand what I'm saying? That part of me will impact the magic we do here and now."
"What magic will we perform here and now?" he asked, smiling. He was still leaning heavily on the spear, the raw wound of what the Seelie had done to him bare to the air. I'd had enough of my own injuries to know that just the touch of air hurt when the skin was abraded. The bone knife lay next to Sholto's knees. Truthfully, I'd thought it might vanish when the God and Goddess went - for he had refused to use it for its true purpose. Nevertheless, Sholto was still surrounded by major relics of the sluagh. He'd been visited by deity. We knelt in a place of legend, with the possibility of bringing his people to a rebirth of their powers. And all he seemed to be able to think of was the fact that we might be having sex.
I looked in his face. I tried to see past the almost shy anticipation there. He seemed afraid to be too eager. He was a good king, yet the promise of sex with another sidhe had chased all the cautions from his mind. I could not allow him to leap in, though, until I was sure he understood what might happen to his people. He had to understand or...or what?
"Sholto," I said.
He reached out to me. I took his hand to keep him from touching my face. "I need you to hear me, Sholto, to truly hear me."
"I will listen to anything you say."
He was willing to follow my lead. I'd noticed that about him in L.A. - that the dominant, frightening king of the sluagh became submissive in intimate situations. Had Black Agnes taught him that, or Segna? Or was he just wired that way?
I patted his hand, more friendly than sexual. "What I bring to sex magic is meadows and butterflies. Some of the corridors in the Unseelie mound are turning to white marble with veins of gold."
His face became a little more serious, less amused. "Yes, the queen was most upset," he said. "She accused you of remaking her sithen in the image of the Seelie Court."
"Exactly," I said.
His eyes widened.
"I didn't do it on purpose," I said. "I don't control what the energy does with the sithen. Sex magic isn't like other magicks - it's wilder, and has more a mind of its own."
"The sluagh are wild magic, Meredith."
"Yes, but wild sluagh and wild Seelie magic aren't the same."
He turned my hand palm-up. "You bear the hand of flesh and the hand of blood. Those are not Seelie powers."
"No. In combat I seem to be all Unseelie, but in sex magic it is the Seelie in my blood that comes out. Do you understand what that might mean for your sluagh?"
All the light seemed to drain from his face, so somber now. "If we have sex, and the sluagh are reborn, you might remake the sluagh in your image."
"Yes," I said.
He stared at my hand as if he'd never seen it before. "If I had taken your life, then the sluagh would have remained what they are: a terrible darkness to sweep all before us. If we use sex to bring life back to my people, then they may become more like the sidhe, or even the Seelie sidhe."
"Yes," I said, "yes." I was relieved that he finally understood.
"Would it be so terrible if we were more sidhe?" He almost whispered it, as if he spoke to himself.
"You are their king, Sholto. Only you can make this choice for your people."