Chapter 9 begins with Merry and Co leaving the hospital, only to find a barrage of media outside waiting for them. The media is screaming at them, taking photos, and basically crowding them so much they can hardly make their way to the limos that are waiting.

They get inside the limo, and Merry goes to sit next to Doyle, but he asks her instead to sit by Abeloec and let Abe rest his head in her lap. Doyle then calls Frost to bring Unsa and Aisling into the limo with them. Aisling, because the Seelie sithen had once selected Aisling as its true king, before Taranis banished him, and Unsa, because Unsa’s mother is a noble in the Seelie court, and still is on good terms with her son.

Merry realizes that Doyle and Frost are acting distant towards her, focused more on figuring out the whole Seelie/Taranis intrigue instead of focusing on her feelings, so she bluntly asks them why they’re being like that. How queenly of her.

“You are not with child, Meredith,” Doyle said, voice still so controlled. “You are beginning to make it clear that you have chosen us. But if you are not pregnant then we are not your king. You must look at the other men with more favor.”
“You get badly hurt and you go all crazy on me,” I said.
Doyle tried to turn his head and look directly at me, but apparently that hurt too much, so he had to turn his whole body. “It is not crazy. It is sanity. You must not give your heart where your body does not go.”
I shook my head. “Don’t make decisions for me, Doyle. I am no longer a child. I choose who comes to my bed. “

Actually, so far, the queen has chosen who goes to your bed.

“We fear,” Frost said, and he didn’t look happy saying it, “that your caring for us is making it difficult for the other men.”
“I’m sleeping with them. Considering that we’ve only been back a few weeks, I think I’ve given them plenty of attention.”
Frost gave a small smile. “Sex is not all that a man craves, even after a thousand years of abstinence.”

God, does anyone else just constantly read Merry as being a clueless halfwit? She just doesn’t understand anything. She’s so astonishingly stupid all the time.

Anyway, Abe points out that Hugh offered Merry the Seelie throne, no sex-strings attached, and the chapter ends with Merry and Co wondering if Hugh has other things in mind for Merry than just the Seelie throne.