curling like a serpent around his legs.
It took me a moment to realize that he was sobbing. Frost and I looked at each other. Neither of us had a clue as to what was happening to our stoic Darkness.
I moved toward him, but Frost held me back, and shook his head. He was right. But it made my chest tight to hear such broken sounds coming from Doyle.
Frost knelt beside him and laid a white hand on Doyle's dark shoulder. "My captain, Doyle, what ails you?"
Doyle covered his face with his hands and hunched over until his hands were nearly flat to the ground. He curled in upon himself, and his voice came thick with tears, and thicker with anger. "I cannot do it." He raised up on hands and knees, his head hanging down. "I cannot bear it." He looked up, and grabbed Frost's arm, much as he'd grabbed mine, almost pleading. "I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong, or that good."
Frost nodded, and drew the other man into his arms. He held him tight and fierce, and the face he showed to me was raw with sorrow.
I had missed something. Something important. Something had happened not just to Doyle but to Frost as well. This was not his typical moodiness; this was mourning. But what did they mourn?
"What has happened?" I asked.
Doyle shook his head, pressed into Frost's shoulder. "She doesn't understand. She doesn't know what it means."
"What?" Fear was beginning to tickle my stomach, march up my spine. My skin was cool with the beginnings of dread.
Frost looked at me, and I realized that there were unshed tears glittering in his eyes. "The ring has chosen your king, Meredith."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Mistral," Doyle said, raising his head, so I could see his face. "The ring has chosen Mistral. And I cannot let him have you."
I stared at him. "What are you babbling about? There is only one way for my king to be chosen, and I am not with child."
"Are you certain of that?" Frost asked. His face was so calm, empty of the emotional turmoil I would have expected from him. It was almost as if with Doyle fallen to pieces, he had to hold himself together better than was his wont.
"Yes, I mean..." I thought about what he'd said. "It's too early to be certain."
Doyle shook his head hard enough that his heavy braid rustled against the leather. "The ring has never come to life for any of us. You have never had such sex with any of us. What else could it mean but that he is the ring's choice?"
"I don't know, but..." In the face of his pain, I didn't know what to say. I looked from one to the other of them. Their belief was plain on their faces. I looked at them huddled together, light and darkness entwined, and my chest was tight. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The room felt hot and close. If I was pregnant from Mistral, I would lose them, both of them. I would be bound to Mistral, and I would be monogamous to him and him alone. The sex had been good, maybe great, but it was just sex, and... "I don't love him." The moment I said it, I knew it was a child's plea. A child's wish.
"A queen does not marry for love." Doyle's deep voice held the edge of tears.
"But wait, I thought the ring found your true love, your perfect match."
"It does," Frost said.
"Nicca and Biddy are completely gone on each other," I said. "They look at each other as if there is no one else in the world."
They both nodded. Frost said, "It was always thus with the ones the ring chose."
"But Mistral and I are not looking at each other that way."
"You did not see his face afterwards," Doyle said. "I did."
"As did I," Frost said.
I waved it away. "I was the first sex he's had in centuries. And it was magical sex, power-driven sex. That is heady stuff. Any man would look at me that way, but it was lust, not love."
Frost frowned at me. Doyle just stared as if his emotions had emptied him.
"I certainly don't feel that way about Mistral."
Frost looked positively suspicious. "You do not, truly?"
I shook my head. "If the ring had chosen him, then I'd be in love with him, right?"
Frost