at Merry, or at those closest and most powerful near her until she stood alone and helpless as they saw it. There are those who would have been happy to turn her into a puppet for their hand."
"With us at her side and in our full power they would not have dared," Barinthus said.
"The rest of us have been brought back into our power, but you have only regained a small portion of yours," Rhys said. "Unless Merry brings you back fully into your powers, then you are not as powerful as most of the sidhe in this room."
The silence in the room was suddenly heavier, and the very air was suddenly thicker, like trying to drink our breath.
"The fact that the Killing Frost may be more powerful than the great Mannan Mac Lir must rankle," Rhys said.
"He is not more powerful than I am," Barinthus said, but in a voice that held some of the slurring of the sea, like angry waves crashing on rock.
"Stop this," Doyle said, and he actually moved to stand between them.
I realized that it was Barinthus's magic making the air thick, and I remembered stories of him being able to make humans fall down dead with water flowing out of their mouths, drowned on dry land miles from water.
"And will you finally be king?" Barinthus asked.
"If you are angry with me, then be angry with me, old friend, but Frost had no say in the choices we made on his behalf. Merry and I chose freely."
"Even now you stand guard over him," Barinthus said.
I stood up, still holding Frost's hand. "Are you bothered that we gave up the crown for just one man, or are you bothered that we gave it up for Frost?"
"I have no quarrel with Frost as a man, or a warrior."
"Then is it really that he's not sidhe enough for you?"
Rhys stepped just enough around Doyle so he could meet Barinthus's eyes. "Or do you see in Doyle and Frost what you wanted with Prince Essus but were always afraid to ask for?"
We all froze, as if his words were a bomb that we could all see falling toward us, but there was no way to stop it. There was no way to catch it, and no way to run. We just all stood there, and I had moments for my childhood memories of my father and Barinthus to run through my head. It was quick flashes. A hand on someone's arm, a hand held a little too long, an embrace, a look, and I suddenly realized that my father's best friend might have been more than just his friend.
There was nothing wrong with love in our court no matter what sex you chose, but the queen didn't let any of her guard have sex with anyone but her, and one of the terms for Barinthus joining her court had been that he had joined her guard. It had been a way to control him, and a way to say that she had the great Mannan Mac Lir as her lackey and hers in every way, only hers.
I'd always wondered about her insisting that Barinthus join her guard. It hadn't been standard at the time for exiles from the Seelie Court Most of the other sidhe who had come from that time had just joined the court. I'd always thought it was because the queen feared Barinthus's power, but now I saw another motive. She had loved her brother, my father, but she had also been jealous of his power. Essus was a name that people still spoke as a god, at least in the recent past, if you counted the Roman Empire as recent, but her own name, Andais, had been lost so completely that no one remembered what she had once been. Had she forced Barinthus to be her celibate guard to keep him out of her brother's bed?
I had a moment to think about Essus and Mannan Mac Lir joined as a couple both politically and magically, and though I didn't agree with what she'd done, I understood the fear. They were two of the most powerful of us. Combined, they could have owned both courts, if they'd been willing to, because Barinthus had joined us before we were cast out of Europe. Our internal wars had been our own business and no matter for human law, so they could have taken first the Unseelie and then the Seelie Court.
I spoke into that weighted silence. "Or was