moment that Rhys had been right. Barinthus was beginning to take on the role of king, because only a king would have been so bold to the father of my child. I could not let it stand unchallenged. I could not.
"It wasn't the pixie in him that let him almost bespell the great Mannan Mac Lir," I said.
Sholto's hand squeezed my arm, as if trying to tell me that he wasn't sure this was a good idea. It probably wasn't, but I knew I had to say something. If I didn't I might as well concede my "crown" to Barinthus now.
Barinthus turned those angry eyes on me. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that Galen has gained powerful magic through being one of my lovers, and one of my kings. He'd have never come so close to fogging the mind of Barinthus before."
Barinthus gave a small nod. "He has grown in power. They all have."
"All my lovers," I said.
He nodded, wordlessly.
"You truly are angry that I have not taken you to my bed at least once, not because you want sex from me, but because you want to know if it would give you back everything you have lost."
He would not look at me, and his hair washed around him again with that sense of underwater movement. "I waited until you came back into the room, Meredith. I wanted you to see Galen put in his place." He looked at me then, but there was nothing I could understand on his face. My father's best friend and one of the most frequent visitors to the house we had lived in in the human world was not the man before me now. It was as if his few weeks here by the sea had changed him. Was this arrogance and pettiness what he'd been like when he first came to the Unseelie Court? Or had he already been diminished in power even then?
"Why would you want me to see that?" I asked.
"I wanted you to know that I had enough control not to send him out the window, where I could use the sea to drown him. I wanted you to see that I chose to spare him."
"To what purpose?" I asked. Sholto drew me in against his body so that I wrapped my arms around him almost absently. I wasn't sure if he was trying to protect me or just to comfort me, or maybe even just to comfort himself, though touch is more comfort to the lesser fey than to the sidhe. Or maybe he was warning me. The question was, warning me about what?
"I wouldn't drown," Galen said.
We all looked at him.
He repeated it. "I am sidhe. Nothing of the natural world can kill me. You could shove me under the sea but you couldn't drown me, and I wouldn't explode from pressure changes either. Your ocean can't kill me, Barinthus."
"But my ocean can make you long for death, Greenman. Trapped forever in the blackest depths, the water made near solid around you as secure as any prison, and more torturous. The rest of the sidhe cannot drown, but it still hurts to have the water go down your lungs. Your body still craves air and tries to breathe the water. The pressure of the depths cannot crush your body, but it still presses down. You would be forever in pain, never dying, never aging, but always in torment."
"Barinthus," I said, and that one word held the shock I felt. I clung to Sholto now, because I needed the comfort. It was a fate truly worse than death that he threatened Galen with, my Galen.
Barinthus looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face didn't please him. "Don't you see, Meredith, that I am more powerful than many of your men?"
"Are you doing this in some twisted bid to make me respect you?" I asked.
"Think how powerful I could be at your side if I had my full powers."
"You'd be able to destroy this house and everyone in it. You said as much in the other room," I said.
"I would never harm you," he said.
I shook my head, and pulled away from Sholto. He held on to me for a moment, then he let me stand on my own. It was how this next part had to be done.
"You would never hurt my person, but if you had done that terrible thing to Galen, stolen him as husband and father for me, it would be harming