I looked up at Barinthus, and with me sitting and him standing, it took awhile to get all the way to his face. "If you like." I kept my voice light and my face pleasant. Barinthus and I had never kissed, and the first kiss should not be on film.
It was Rhys who saved the day. "If Barinthus gets a kiss, then so do I."
Doyle said, "To be fair, we all should."
Barinthus gave a slight smile. "I would bow to the larger need, and take my kiss in private."
"Galen and Frost have already had theirs," Rhys said, and as Galen went back to his place in line, Rhys pretended to box his ears.
Barinthus did a very graceful bow and tried to slink back to his place. But that wasn't happening. A reporter asked, "Lord Barinthus, have you decided to go from being kingmaker to being king?" No sidhe would have called him kingmaker to his face, or queenmaker either. But the media, well, he couldn't box their ears.
He knelt beside me, rather than lean into the mike. Kneeling down, his head was about even with mine. "I doubt I will stay with the princess as a permanent member of her guard."
"Why not?"
"I am needed elsewhere."
Truth was that before Queen Andais had accepted him into the Unseelie Court after the Seelie Court kicked him out, Barinthus had to promise that he would never accept the throne here, not even if it was offered. He'd been Manannan Mac Lir, and the queen and her nobles all feared his power. So he'd given his most solemn oath that he would never, personally, sit on our throne.
He bowed to the room in general and simply went back against the wall. He made it clear that he was done with questions for the day. Kitto, the half-goblin sidhe, had already moved back to his place. He was only four feet tall, and that made a lot of the media try to portray him as child-like. He was old enough to remember what the world was like before Christianity was a religion. But his appearance made the media uncomfortable. His short black curls, pale skin, and sunglasses made him look ordinary in his jeans and T-shirt. The queen didn't have a designer suit to fit someone so short. There hadn't been time even for the queen's seamstress to make those kind of alterations. He got away with hugging his section of the wall.
"Princess Meredith, how will you choose your husband from among all these gorgeous men?" a reporter was asking.
"The one who gets me pregnant wins the prize," I said, smiling.
"What if you are in love with someone else? What if you don't love the one who gets you pregnant?"
I sighed, and didn't fight the smile slipping away. "I am a princess, and heir to a throne. Love has never been a prerequisite for royal marriages."
"Isn't it traditional to sleep with one fiance at a time, until you either get pregnant or don't get pregnant?"
"Yes," I said, and cursed that anyone knew our customs that well.
"Then why the marathon of men?"
"If you had the chance, wouldn't you?" I asked, and that got them laughing. But it didn't distract them.
"Would you marry a man you didn't like just because he was the father of your child?"
"Our laws are clear," I said. "I will marry the father of my child."
"No matter who it is?" another reporter asked.
"That is our law."
"What if your cousin Prince Cel gets one of his female guards pregnant first?"
"Then, according to Queen Andais, he will be king."
"So it's a race to get pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Where is Prince Cel? No one has seen him in nearly three months."
"I'm not my cousin's keeper." In fact, he was in prison for trying to kill me one too many times, and for other crimes that the queen didn't want even the court to know. He should have been executed for some of them, but she'd bargained for her only child's life. He was to be locked away for six months, tortured with the very magic he had used against sidhe-ancestored humans. Branwyn's Tears, one of our most guarded ointments. It was an aphrodisiac that worked even against someone's will. But more than that, it made your body crave to be touched, to be brought. He was chained and covered in Branwyn's Tears. There were bets around the court that what little sanity he'd been born with would not survive it. The queen had given in to one of his guards only yesterday, to let the woman slack Cel's need, save his sanity. And suddenly I had not one, but two, no, three attempts on my life, and one on the queen's. It was more than a coincidence, but the queen loved her son.
Madeline was back in front of me, looking at me. "Are you all right, Princess?"