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“You have some faerie blood in your ancestry,” Rhys said.

“That’s not….” But again Dawson’s words failed him. His hands were balled into fists, and he was shaking his head.

“Don’t make us have to put up wards against you, Princess,” Gregorio said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?”

In my head I thought, “You couldn’t ward against me now if you tried.” Out loud, I said, “I’m sorry, Specialist, I’m just tired, and it’s been a rather difficult few days. It’s just nervous tension, I think. Just get us out of here. Farther away from the faerie mounds will be better for all of us.”

She looked like she wanted to argue but just nodded and went to check on her sergeant.

Rhys and Galen moved close to me. Rhys said, “Your power called to his blood.”

“You mean his genetics?” I asked.

“I suppose so,” Rhys said.

Doyle moved up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders, drawing us all in close to talk. “Is this what it means to call someone’s blood?” I asked.

Rhys nodded. “Yes, it’s been so long since any of us could do it that I’d forgotten what it meant.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, pressing myself back into the curve of Doyle’s body. Sholto and Mistral were on either side of our group, but they were watching outward while they listened, as if Doyle had told them to do it. He probably had.

“You hold the hand of blood, Merry,” Doyle said against my hair. “The power to call blood isn’t just calling it out of the body,” Rhys said. “It’s also being able to call to the magic in a person’s body. It may be that now you’ll be calling to any fey blood in the humans around us. That’s good on one hand; it will up their power level, and maybe yours. But it’s going to creep out the humans you do it to until you figure out how to do it a little more quietly.”

“What does it mean, exactly, that my hand of blood calls to Dawson’s blood?”

“It means that your magic calls to his.”

“Like calls to like,” Mistral said, his eyes still directed out into the night.

“The fey in Europe intermarried with a lot of humans whose families immigrated to the United States,” I said.

“Yes,” Rhys said.

“So this may happen a lot?” I asked.

He nodded and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“But it means more than that,” Mistral said. “It means that the princess may be able to call the part-fey to her cause.”

I looked up, trying to see Doyle’s face, but he laid his cheek on top of my head. Not to stop me from seeing his face, but just for comfort, I think. “What does that mean?”

Doyle spoke low, his chest and throat so close to me that his voice vibrated against me. “Once, to hold some hands of power, you could call the humans to be your army, or your servants. You could call them to your side, and they came willingly, lovingly. The hand of blood was one of the few that could make humans want to join you. Literally, if you have all the power that the hand of blood once held, you call to the magic in their blood, and they will answer.”

“Do they have a choice?” I asked.

“When you master this power, they will not want to have a choice. They will want to serve you, as we do.”

“But….”

Rhys put his fingertip on my lips. “It’s a type of love, Merry. It’s the way men were supposed to feel for their lord and master. Once it wasn’t like it is now, or has been for so long.” He lowered his finger, and looked utterly sad. “I could do it too, call men to me. I gave them safety, comfort, joy. I protected them, and I did love them. Then I lost my powers, and I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t save them anymore.” He hugged me, and because Doyle was so close, he hugged us both.

Rhys whispered, “I don’t know whether to be happy that this kind of power is returning to us or sad. It’s so wonderful when it works, but when it went away, it was like I died with my people, Merry. They died, and they were pieces of me dying. I prayed for true death then. I prayed to die with my people, but I was immortal. I couldn’t die, and I couldn’t save them.”

I felt