As if from a far distance, she heard Silvan say gruffly, “’Tis good to be seeing you again, lad. Nellie and I have been sore fashed o’er you. Och, the wee lass is going, son. You might catch her now.”

When Dageus’s strong arms slipped around her, Chloe tuned out the voices and embraced the mercy of oblivion, because she just knew that when she woke up again, everything would be all right. She’d be in bed, in Gwen and Drustan’s castle, having had one of those strangely intense dreams about Dageus.

I like the sex dreams better was her final peevish thought, as her knees gave way and her mind went blank.

Adam Black was dozing—not sleeping, for the Tuatha Dé Danaan did not sleep—but drifting in memory and time when the nine members of the council appeared behind his queen’s dais.

He sat up abruptly.

One of them spoke into the queen’s ear. She nodded and dismissed them back to wherever it was the elusive council made their home.

Then Aoibheal, queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, raised her hands to the sky and said, “The council has spoken. It shall be trial by blood.”

Adam tensed to rise, but caught himself, and forced himself to sink back down on his cushioned chaise. He waited, measuring the reactions of the others gathered in the forest bower on the isle of Morar where the queen was wont to hold her court. Drowsing beneath silken canopies, the others stirred languidly, their melodic voices humming softly.

He heard no protests. Fools, he thought, it’s a wonder we’ve survived this long. Though immortal, they could be destroyed.

When Adam spoke, his voice was dispassionate, bordering on bored, as befitted his kind. “My queen, I would speak, if you will it.”

Aoibheal glanced his way. There was a glimmer of appreciation in her gaze as it raked over him. He wore her favored glamour—that of a tall, dark-haired smith, rippling with muscle. An otherworldly beautiful man who was wont to waylay human travelers, particularly women. A smith who took them to places and did things to them they later recalled as dark dreams of unending pleasure.

“You have my ear.” She inclined her head regally.

And on rare occasions, Adam thought, other parts of her when she so graced him. Aoibheal had a certain fondness for him, and he was counting on it now. He was unlike any other of their race in small ways that baffled both he and them. But the queen seemed to enjoy those differences. Of all her subjects, Adam suspected he was the only one who still managed to surprise her. And surprise was nectar of the gods to those who lived forever, to those who’d lost wonder and awe an eternity ago. To those who spied on mortal’s dreams because they possessed no dreams of their own.