Divine Misdemeanors

I smiled back. “I’m better now.”

Hafwyn’s voice turned us toward the door. She came out of the house with her long yellow hair in a thick, single braid to one side of her slender form. She was everything a Seelie sidhe woman should have been. She was an inch under six feet, slender but feminine, with eyes like spring skies. When I had been a little girl this was what I had wanted to look like instead of my all-too-human height and curves. My hair, eyes, and skin were sidhe, but the rest of me had never measured up. Many of the sidhe of both courts had made certain that I knew I was too human looking, not sidhe enough. Hafwyn had not been one of those. She had never been cruel to me when I was just Meredith, Daughter of Essus, and not likely to sit any throne. In fact, she had been nearly invisible to me in the courts, just one of my cousin Cel’s guards.

Standing there in Rhys’s arms with Doyle and Frost moving up behind us, I did not envy anyone. How could I want to change anything about myself when I had so many people who loved me?

Hafwyn wore a white sundress, simpler than mine, almost a shift like something they once wore under dresses, but the simplicity of the cloth could not hide her beauty. The beauty of all the sidhe reminded me often why we’d once been worshipped as gods. It was only partly the magic. Humans have a tendency to either worship or revile beauty.

She dropped a curtsy as she came to me. I’d almost broken the new guards from such public displays but a century’s worth of habits are hard to break.

“Do you need healing, my lady?”

“I am unharmed,” I said.

She was one of the few true healers that faerie had left. She could lay hands on a wound or illness and simply magick it away. Outside of faerie her powers were lessened, but then many of our powers were less in the human world.

“Goddess be praised,” she said, and touched my arm where it lay against Rhys’s body. I’d noticed that the longer we were outside of the high courts of faerie the more touchy-feely the guards became. Touching someone when anxious was considered something that lesser fey did. We sidhe were supposed to be above such petty comforts, but I had never found the touch of a friend a petty comfort. I valued the people who drew strength from touching me, or gave me peace with their own touch.

Her touch was brief, because the Queen of Air and Darkness, my aunt, would have either laughed at her for the need, or turned that kind gesture into something sexual and/or threatening. All weaknesses were to be exploited; all kindness was to be stamped out.

Galen came out of the house still wearing an apron that was all white and very TV chef, unlike the sheer white one we had in the house. He wore that one without a shirt, because he knew I enjoyed watching him. But he’d fallen in love with the food cha

Rhys let me go so I could be wrapped up in Galen’s six feet worth of lean body. I was suddenly airborne as he picked me up. His green eyes were so worried. “We turned the TV on just a little bit ago. All that glass; you could have been hurt.”

I touched his face, trying to smooth out the worry lines that would never leave a trace on his perfect skin. The sidhe did age in a way, but they didn’t really grow old. But then immortal things don’t, do they?

I leaned up for a kiss, and he leaned down to help me reach him. We kissed and there was magic to Galen’s kiss as there had been to Rhys’s touch, but where the other man’s touch had been deep and almost electric, like some kind of distant motor humming, Galen’s energy was like having my skin caressed by a soft spring wind. His kiss filled my mind with the perfume of flowers, and that first warmth that comes when the snow has finally left and the earth wakes once more. All that poured over my skin from one kiss. It drew me back from him with wide, startled eyes, and I had to fight to catch my breath.

He looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Merry, I was just so worried, and so glad to see you safe.”

I gazed up into his eyes and found them just the same lovely green color. He didn’t give as many clues as the rest of us did when his magic was upon him, but that kiss said better than any glowing eyes or shining skin that his magic was very close to the surface. If we’d been inside faerie there might have been flowers growing at his feet, but the asphalt driveway was untouched underneath us. Man-made technology was proof against so much of our magic.

There was a man’s voice from inside. “Galen, something’s boiling over. I don’t know how to stop it!”

Galen turned gri

“You left them in charge of di

He nodded happily as he began to walk toward the still-open door. He carried me effortlessly, as if he could have walked with me in his arms forever and never tired. Maybe he could have.

Doyle and Frost fell into step on one side, and Rhys on the other. Doyle asked, “How did you get them to agree to help cook?”

Galen flashed that hail-fellow-well-met smile of his that made everyone want to smile back. Even Doyle was not immune to the charm, because he flashed white teeth in his dark face, responding to the sheer goodwill of Galen.

“I asked,” he said.

“And they just agreed?” Frost asked.

He nodded.

“You should have seen Ivi peeling potatoes,” Rhys said. “That was something the queen had to threaten torture to get him to do.”

All of us but Galen glanced at him. “Are you saying that Galen simply asked them and they agreed?” Doyle said.

“Yes,” Rhys said.

We all exchanged a look. I wondered if they were all thinking what I was thinking, that at least some of our magic was doing just fine outside faerie. In fact, Galen’s seemed to be growing stronger. That was almost as interesting and surprising as anything that had happened today, because just as it was “impossible” for the fey to be killed in the ma