if the touch of a sidhe was intoxicating to her.
She peered around his neck, her wings flicking nervously. "What?" she asked.
"Did Beatrice have a lover that you know of?"
She pointed to Harry. "Him."
"Did she have a sidhe lover?" I asked.
Mug's eyes went wide. "A sidhe for a lover? Beatrice..." She shook her head. "If I had known, I would have asked her to let me touch him."
"Beatrice would never have told Mug," Peasblossom said.
I looked for her and found her perched on the pots that hung from hooks on the near wall. "Did she tell you?"
"She did."
"Who was her sidhe lover?" Harry asked, voice eager.
None us said anything, because it was one of the things we all wanted to know.
"She wouldn't tell me, said he made her promise not to tell anyone or he would break off the relationship."
"Why would that end the relationship?" Doyle asked. "Unless..."
Frost said it. "Unless he was a royal guard."
"Who would risk death by torture for less than sidhe flesh?" Amatheon said.
I gave him an unfriendly look.
"I do not deserve that look, Princess; it is only truth."
I started to argue but hesitated. I had had lesser fey lovers in Los Angeles, and it had been wonderful, but... but I had craved other flesh. Once you have had the full attention of another sidhe, all else was truly lesser. I wanted to argue with Amatheon, but I could not, not and be truthful.
"I will not argue with you, Amatheon," I said.
"Because you cannot," he replied. He kept his grip on Onilwyn, but his attention seemed all for me.
I acknowledged the truth of it with a nod.
"But if not a guard," Galen asked, "then why would he care if others knew of his relationship with Beatrice?"
I looked at him, searching his face for any hint that he knew how naïve that question was, but there was nothing in his face that said he understood anything.
Mug cuddled in against his neck and spoke for most of us. "That is so sweet."
"What?" Galen asked.
"A fair few dabble among us lesser folk," Maggie May said, "but few wish to acknowledge us publicly."
Galen frowned. "Why not?"
Amatheon said, "Have you been living in the same court as the rest of us?"
Galen shrugged, almost unseating Mug. He helped her catch her balance by holding up his fingers so she could catch herself. "Love is too precious to be ashamed of."
If I hadn't already loved him, I would have in that moment.
"You are right, my friend," Doyle said, "but that is not always how our free brethren feel about such things."
"Arrogance, such arrogance, to be ashamed of that which the rest of us would give so much to have," Adair said.
"Who would admit to bedding something with wings?" Onilwyn said.
"Good enough to fuck, but not to love?" Maggie May asked.
Some of the men would not meet her gaze. Doyle had no trouble meeting those hard golden eyes. "Was Harry Hob her lover?"
She nodded. "Aye."
Mug and Peasblossom answered together, "Yes."
Doyle turned back to Harry. "It's not every hob who gets to share a mistress with a sidhe."
"Mistress, nay, I loved the girl."
"How did you feel about sharing the girl you loved with another?"
"Beatrice had broken up with Harry," Peasblossom said.
"But we was back together," Harry said.
Peasblossom acknowledged that was true.
"She had broken up with the sidhe," he said.
"Dumped a sidhe for you?" Mug said, and laughed, a high twittering sound.
"Don't you laugh at him, Mug," Maggie May said. "Sometimes love is more than a magic or grand power."
"Did you know that Beatrice had let Harry go?" I asked.
"Aye, and that she'd taken 'im back, too."
"If she'd broken with him," Doyle said, "why did Harry expect him down in the kitchens?"
"Beatrice said he wanted her to do awful things for him. She'd agreed at first, then changed her mind."
"What kind of awful things?" Doyle asked.
"She wouldna' tell me. Said it was so awful, no one would believe it of him."
We were Unseelie not Seelie, which meant we were willing to admit most of what we wanted. What could be so terrible that it wouldn't be believed? What perversion that Beatrice had turned from it in fear?
"Her sidhe lord had demanded one last meeting, to try and persuade Beatrice to reconsider. I begged her not to meet with him."
"Why? Did you fear for her safety?" Doyle asked.
"No, not that. If I had ever dreamed such a thing, I would never have let her meet him alone," Harry replied.
"Then why didn't you want them to meet?"
"I was jealous,