A Shiver of Light by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

hadn’t expected to feel like this. I was still sore and aching in places that had never hurt before, but it was okay, and long moments like this made me forget that anything hurt. There is power and magic in love, all kinds of love.
    Royal came to the other side of the bed by Bryluen. He was wearing an oversized hospital gown turned so the open back let his wings be free, and a pair of surgical scrub pants. It made him look even daintier than he was, and somehow less like he belonged.
    “May I feed one of the babies?”
    “Of course,” I said.
    Rhys was already moving across the room, with the last bottle that the nurses had brought. He didn’t apologize but let Royal settle onto the edge of the chair that Galen had used. Royal couldn’t sit back too far, because of his wings. I wondered if people with wings got backaches from always having to sit without a back support.
    Bryluen didn’t look so small in Royal’s arms. There was a fit there; was it just that the sizes matched better, or was it the happy smile as he gazed down at the baby?
    “She’s looking right at me,” Royal said in a voice that held wonder.
    “She keeps her eyes open more than the other two,” Rhys said.
    I wasn’t sure about the other men, but Rhys and Galen had spent my nap learning the ins and outs of our children. I liked that a lot.
    I fitted my bra back over one breast and looked down at Gwenwyfar. “So, you’re already demanding what you want?”
    The baby didn’t even open her eyes, just continued to feed happily. I held her closer and leaned over so I could lay a kiss on her white curls. The top of her head smelled amazing, clean and like baby lotion, even though I was almost certain no one had put lotion on her. Did baby lotion smell like newborn babies, or was that just my imagination?
    “They smell so good,” Royal said; he’d bent over Bryluen’s hair just as I had over Gwenwyfar.
    “They do,” I said.
    I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw that Sholto had bent over Alastair. “The smell is clean and somehow calming.” He sounded surprised.
    “Have you never held a baby before?” Rhys asked.
    “Not one that was this … human,” he said.
    “You know these aren’t antenna buds,” Royal said; he was rubbing his cheek against Bryluen’s hair, apparently, over the little black beginnings of her antennae.
    “What are they then?” I asked.
    “Something harder. I think they’re tiny horns,” he said.
    “Did you say horns?” Sholto asked.
    “I think they are,” Royal said, “but I’m certain they aren’t antennae.”
    Sholto looked down at the baby in his arms. He smiled down and said, half to the baby and half to Galen, “I hate to disturb you, but can someone else finish feeding him?”
    “Happy to,” Galen said. He took Alastair out of Sholto’s arms like he’d done it forever. I wondered if he’d sit in Sholto’s chair, but he didn’t. Galen moved to the couch to finish giving Alastair his bottle. Would the nightflyers have cared if Galen had sat where their king had sat, or would it have made Galen uncomfortable to be surrounded by them? Most of the sidhe, of both courts, were afraid of the sluagh. We were meant to be, otherwise they weren’t a threat, and they so were that.
    Sholto walked over to Royal. He offered, “Do you want to feed her?”
    “No,” Sholto said, and knelt beside them. His hair pooled around his legs so that he was lost in a cloak of it, except for the black of his boots. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but Rhys was watching him closely.
    “I think they are horns,” Sholto said.
    I could see his shoulders moving even through the mask of his hair. He exclaimed, “Blood and fire, it can’t be!”
    I hugged Gwenwyfar tighter and asked, “It can’t be what?”
    Sholto turned, still on his knees, so that I got a just a glimpse of that handsome face framed by all that hair. “The wings do not feel like butterfly scales, or moth.”
    “They’re