top of me. We were still joined, our bodies still glowing softly like two fires banked down for a long winter's night. A warmth that would keep the house, the family, everything safe through the long cold nights to come.
Flashes of color were still flitting through the room like stray rainbows from some crystal sun catcher. But there was no sun, no crystal, only us.
Well, not only us. The guards stood around the bed, hands held up, palms toward us. I concentrated and saw the nearly invisible barrier that they had thrown up around us. They had put up a sacred circle, a circle of power.
Doyle's deep voice came. "The next time you decide to invoke enough energy to raise an island from the sea, Meredith, a little warning would be good."
I blinked up at him, for he stood closest to me. "Did we hurt anything?"
"We caught it in time, I think, but the news will probably be full of unusual tides. We will have to see if the ground itself holds still for such a release."
Kitto hid his face between my breasts, and whispered, "I'm sorry."
"Do not be sorry, Kitto. It is we who owe you an apology. We thought of you as goblin because you are half theirs. We never thought what it might mean for you to be half ours."
Kitto moved his head enough to look up at Doyle, then he hid his face again. "I don't understand." He spoke with his mouth against my skin, and even after all we'd done, the feel of him whispering against my chest made me shiver.
My voice was a little breathy, but I answered, "You are sidhe, Kitto, truly sidhe. You have come into your power."
He shook his head, his face still buried against my breasts. "I have no powers."
I put a hand on either side of his face and raised him gently to look upon me. "You are sidhe, one of the shining ones. There will be power now."
His eyes widened, and he looked frightened.
"We'll help you," Galen said from the far side of the bed. "We'll help you learn how to control your magic. It's not that hard; if I can do it, anyone can." He smiled, made it a joke.
Kitto didn't look convinced.
Some small movement made me turn my head farther, and I saw Sage perched upon a stray mound of pillows. He was still glowing softly like a golden, bejeweled doll. His face was tear-streaked, the line of tears like silver glitter upon his tiny face. His face was enraptured.
"Damn you, Princess, and damn this newest prince. I have glimpsed heaven and found it fair, and now I stand on the shores of earth, abandoned. I did not understand until this moment what it meant that you were sidhe and I was not." He laid his face in his hands and wept, curling on his side on a satin pillow, his wings held out behind him, stiff, almost forgotten.
Kitto touched my chest, and it hurt, a little. I realized that he'd bitten me between my breasts, a little to one side, so that some of the mark was in the mound of my left breast. It hadn't hurt until he touched it. It wasn't as deep as the mark on my shoulder, because it hadn't needed to be. The sex had made up for the lack of violence. It should have healed cleanly and quickly, but somehow I knew it would not. Somehow I knew I would bear his mark over my heart forever.
"I am sorry," he whispered, as if he'd read my mind.
I shook my head, touching the silken skin of his cheek. "I wear your mark with honor, Kitto. Never doubt that."
He gave a shy smile, then raised up on his arms much as he had through the beginning of the lovemaking. I noticed first the spots of blood on my own white skin. He had hurt me more than I'd thought; then I looked up at Kitto and saw that from collarbone to waist my nails had marked him. Bloody furrows across the perfection of his skin, across the small mounds of his nipples. I'd sliced into the meat of one of his nipples and it bled there more than the rest.
It was my turn to say, "I'm sorry."
He shook his head, and the smile wasn't shy now. "You have marked me, and there is no higher compliment among my kind. May the marks never fade."
I traced the edge of one of the