Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
It took considerable effort to get the roof to myself at oh God thirty in the morning, but I managed it.
Took me two sound-muffling spells and some extreme caution to slip past the sleeping Valkyrie, but the secure communication I had arranged between myself and Lara—notes carried by tiny fae—had specified that she wouldn’t show up if anyone else, at all, was present.
So I wound up on the roof of the castle at two o’clock in the morning of New Year’s Eve, waiting in stillness and silence.
I just sort of sank into the cold of the clear, dangerously chill night and waited.
The Winter mantle understood stillness and patience, like all predators.
It was pleased to pass the time in quiet.
I waited and soaked up the cold.
There was a whisper in the air, and then Lara, dressed in a long white coat, glided up over the ramparts of the castle at the rear of the building, where she wouldn’t be seen by the guards at the front gate.
She landed as weightlessly as a bird on one of the merlons, dropping down to a feline crouch with the ease and power of a gymnast. Her eyes were silver-grey in the night, catching light and reflecting it weirdly, even when her face was in shadow.
Lara stared at me with those intent, inhuman glittering eyes for a long moment.
Two predators, facing off.
If Lara wanted to try something underhanded with me—say, seducing me into becoming her devoted sex doll—this would be a prime opportunity for her to do it.
“Welcome,” I said to her in a very quiet voice.
Lara inclined her head and prowled down to the roof. I emerged from the patch of shadows I’d been occupying and crossed to the spot where I’d considered pitching Ilyana to the street below. Lara mirrored me, her body and motions tense.
“I’ve thought about it,” she said. “Your…offer.”
“To be fair,” I said, “I more or less demanded it.”
The nearly full moon was clear overhead. The silver light bounced off of plenty of snow, making the city glow with that weird frozen illumination of a quiet winter night. It made light spots nearly bright enough to read in, and the shadows darker than Morticia Addams’s lingerie drawer.
“You did,” she said firmly. “I’m willing to tell you what you want to know, in both of our interests.
But I have a demand of my own.” She tilted her head at me, shadows showing me first her mouth and then her eyes as she turned.
They were the palest possible shade of sapphire. “One you’re going to agree with.”
“That’s where I keep thinking I recognize you from,” I said abruptly.
Lara narrowed her eyes.
“Those paintings. From the eighties. Every young yuppie had them in his apartment back then. They lived all over boy basements in the nineties. Narel? Nargle?”
Lara blurted out a quick laugh. “Nagel.” She shook her head. “Good eye, actually. Several of my sisters posed for him.”
“Did you?” I asked.
Lara sidled a little closer, half of her face coming out of the shadows, and I could see her vulpine smile. “A lady doesn’t speak of such things.”
“So that is you in that big one. Huh. You’re famous.”
Another quick laugh, as if she was working not to let too much of it get away from her—and not the throaty chuckle she used at parties. “You know what fame is worth.”
“Some people seem willing to die for it.”
“Some people are fools,” Lara said. “Most people, it sometimes seems.”
“Nah,” I said. “That’s an illusion, explained by my Perfect Idiot Hypothesis.”
She lifted a raven-dark brow. “How so?”
“Everyone has a talent, yeah? Something they’re naturally good at. It might be something weird and off-putting, or just strange, or something really useful, or something really spectacular that makes them a lot of money. But everyone’s got something.”
Lara actually spent a moment thinking about that before answering. “I am not one of the elder beings of this world. But I have seen many generations of humans come and go. Yes, I would find that statement to be largely true, by long-term observation.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Here’s my hypothesis: Everyone has something they particularly suck at, too. An anti-talent, if you will. Something at which they have the ability to be the Unchosen One.”
Lara’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “Go on.”
“Well, it explains a lot, doesn’t it? You get enough people going, and you’re guaranteed to have someone who exactly, perfectly, completely sucks at handling any given situation.
Sooner or later, that person is the one with the ball, and of course they screw it up.
It’s just math. Chance will eventually decide that the Perfect Idiot will wander along to be put into the exact situation they are worst at coping with.
” I wrinkled up my nose. “There’s always a Perfect Idiot, somewhere.
I would imagine that, looking in from the outside, it would make humans look quite a bit more stupid than the average member of the species deserves. ”
“I find it counterproductive to consider life in terms of species and averages,” Lara said. “Every individual is its own unique threat. It should be dealt with as it is, not as someone analyzing numbers deems its average.”
I studied her profile for a moment. Her eyes were silver, throwing back the winter light like a cat’s. “You see everyone you meet as a threat?”
“Everyone you meet is a threat as well,” Lara said, her eyes glittering.
“You’re just too young to see it yet. You still think that society, civilization, law, these imaginary fortresses you’ve constructed, are something solid.
They can vanish in a day. I’ve seen it. Over and over. Last summer, you saw it, too.”
The battle. I leaned on the merlon and said nothing.
“That’s what history looks like,” Lara said quietly.
“There’s been an unusually long quiet spell.
And sometimes I forget that you’re young enough to have grown up in that.
That you see a largely peaceful world as normal.
It isn’t. Peace is easy to lose. Hard to get back.
” She lifted her head a little, baring the long line of her neck, and inhaled slowly. “And history is on the wind.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“That it is time to take chances,” Lara said, silver eyes glimmering. She wasn’t looking anywhere near my face, and I was having trouble looking away from them. I mean, I did. Wizardly mental discipline and whatnot.
But I didn’t want to.
“Here it comes,” I said, squinting out at the quiet street. If I squinted hard enough, I almost couldn’t see the houses that had been burned down during the battle. “What do you want?”
“I want to sort out what it’s going to be like between us,” Lara said quietly. “Our marriage. Right now.”
“I’ll expect dinner every evening at six, pipe and slippers at seven…”
Lara’s mouth twitched at the corners, as her expression visibly wavered between annoyance and amusement.
Finally she rolled her eyes and sighed. “I could probably live with that much more comfortably than I’d like to think.
” She shook her head. “Running the White Court is a ridiculous amount of work. I make difficult or impossible decisions for two hours a day and spend the rest dealing with the consequences of previous decisions. It…grinds. A period of routine, quiet, and order could very well prove to be excellent self-care.” She gave me a sly sideways look that made my knees feel a little weak. “You should see me in a poodle skirt.”
My throat was probably dry because it was so cold. I worked a couple of times and then swallowed.
“I’m serious, Harry,” she said in a heavier voice. “How do you want this to work?”
“I get to choose?”
“You’re one of the two,” she said. “Seems reasonable that you’d have a say in it.”
“This is supposed to be a state marriage,” I said.
“It is that,” she said. “Is that all you want it to be?”
I stared at her. “Given what I’ve heard from Mab, I thought the plan was for me to be your addict.”
Her expression smoothed over into neutrality and her eyes focused into the distance.
“I would certainly be comfortable with my part in that role. And you would be treated as close to ethically as the situation could sustain. But frankly, in this matter I don’t particularly care what Mab wants. Is that what you want?”
It really, really bothered me that it took a long moment before I answered, “Not really.”
“Ah,” Lara said, bowing her head so that her hair fell forward over her cheeks. “You’re tempted. But you have promises to keep.”
“And miles to go,” I said, nodding. “So, no. And I will totally fight you over it.”
Lara nodded and shivered. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that I might be concerned about you using magic to subjugate me in a similar fashion.”
I blinked.
It hadn’t.
Lara sighed. “I didn’t think so. But it is one of the talents wizards possess, and therefore a possibility I have to bear in mind with you, don’t you think?”
“God,” I mused. “I’d hate to think of the job I’d do on you if I tried it. My psychomancy is less subtle than most pile drivers. I’d make a mess of you.”
“I am, if possible, even more horrified than I was when I first considered the idea,” Lara said wryly. “Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
“Be assured,” Lara said, “I am nervous, too.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Leaving us where, exactly?”
“In balance?” Lara asked. “Perhaps as allies?”
“Strong word,” I said. I narrowed my eyes. “Associates. We share discretionary information. We do one another a kind turn when we can. We wiggle the line a little for one another when need arises. We exercise reciprocity. And we see where that takes us.”
“That sounds like a beginning I can live with,” Lara said. “Provided it is understood that we are associates with”—she flashed me a perfectly merry, perfectly wicked smile—“intentions.”
The Winter mantle wanted me to tackle her, immediately. I pushed it down and rasped, “Is that a legal term?”