Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
I went to bed and crashed, exhausted from the energy work, but my mind refused to settle, and I lay there in one of those dozes that drifts freely from thought to dream and back.
Lara’s departure had been, frankly, entirely uncharacteristic of her.
You could call Lara Raith a lot of names, but coward wasn’t one of them.
Yet at the end of the spell, she’d skedaddled like a cat at a dog show.
The look on her face had been as closed as she could manage, but there’d been complicated expressions on it, going by quickly.
When she had realized that she was trapped in the circle, it had been something very close to controlled panic.
My mind treated me to the image of her writhing and arching in pleasure as long as we were reviewing Lara.
And Hell’s bells. Even though my mind had been shielded from influence and even though the greater circle had contained her Hunger’s power, just looking at her could have gotten to me in dangerous ways that had little to do with the supernatural and everything to do with primal, fundamental nature.
And, my body reminded me, there’d been very little in the way of fundamental nature in my life lately.
It was far, far too easy to picture things going a different way.
Like, maybe if I’d been in the circle with Lara.
Sexuality could readily become a source of power and a theater of magical focus, all at once.
I mean, sure, standing a safe distance away and projecting energy worked, but if it had been closer… more intimate…
I tossed and turned. I tried thinking about baseball, but that just meant that imagined-Lara was wearing a Cubs hat and nothing else.
I could all but feel her slim, strong, deliciously feminine weight settling over my hips.
Her cold, pale hands on my chest. Her hair brushing my face as she leaned down, a shivering exhalation tickling my neck.
“Finally,” Mab breathed into my ear. “Well done, my Knight.”
Panic shot through me like a bolt of frozen lightning.
I opened my eyes and found the Queen of Air and Darkness straddling my hips.
She was wearing a glacial-green gown, off the shoulder, its skirts hiked up around pale, lovely thighs.
Her snow-colored hair was down in waves, her eyes bright and electric green, and the look on her face was one of pure, sensual satisfaction.
The Winter mantle howled for release.
“Um,” I said.
It was an awkward sort of conversation to be having with your boss. In my present circumstances, extremely so.
Mab smiled down at me benignly.
It was terrifying.
“What did I do?” I asked carefully.
“You have delivered unto me the White Court, of course,” Mab murmured.
“I cannot think of a Winter Knight who has brought me a finer conquest.” She gave me a thoughtful look, and suddenly my body was aflame.
I had gone to sleep naked. And she wasn’t wearing anything under the gown.
I could feel. “Such service demands a reward. What do you desire, my Knight?”
I blinked several times, juggling confusion with…some kind of incipient sexual berserker state.
When Mab had taken me as Winter Knight, in a ritual where she’d infused me with the power of the Winter mantle, we’d had sex.
I mean, technically, Tab A, Slot B, it had been the act.
But with Mab, sex wasn’t a storm of passion.
It was more like a nation-wrecking, topography-altering hurricane that changes names on maps.
Honestly, I couldn’t remember much, and I think my sanity was probably safer that way.
The idea of more of the same didn’t make me excited—it made me flinch from the thought.
(I mean, sure, my body had other ideas, but bodies aren’t to be trusted with such choices.)
I swallowed until I got some spit back in my mouth, fighting to think clearly. “Before I answer,” I said. “I want to ask questions.”
Mab’s smirk was slow and wicked. “Wizards.” She settled back slightly. I might have jumped a little. “Ask.”
“What do you mean I’ve given you the White Court?” I said carefully.
She tilted her head. “Had you not considered the outcome of your”—her mouth quirked at the corners—“activities with Ms. Raith?”
“What?” I said.
“Thrice she has fed from you, starborn Knight,” Mab purred. “Tasted of Winter’s power thrice.”
My stomach twisted. “Meaning what?”
She stared at me for a moment. “What is magic?”
“Energy left over from the creation of the universe,” I said automatically. “Life that hasn’t yet found physical expression.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing out the word. “Life. Raw. Primal. Creation.” She shivered and arched the fingers of one hand, drawing her long, opaline nails through the hairs on my chest. I fought not to jump again.
“The Hungers are meant to consume the energy inherent in all of creation. That is their purpose. They yearn for it. Lust after it. But because of how they were bound by the ancient sorcerer-king, they can only nibble at tiny, unsatisfying portions that never fill them.”
“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that when Lara feeds, her Hunger’s been getting unflavored oatmeal.”
“And you gave it a taste of ambrosia, starborn,” Mab murmured. “As vanishingly few others could. It will want more. Very badly. Regularly. That need will make Ms. Raith…pliable.”
My eyes widened.
“And that is only the most overt effect it will have on her. One becomes what one consumes, after all. You have fed her Hunger more and better than it has ever known. She has tasted of you, and of Winter. Eaten the food of the Fae. She will become more like both. More and more in accord with you.” Mab shivered with an undeniably sensual movement of her body.
“You have her. With her comes her Court. And I have you. You have served me very well, my Knight. Name your reward.”
I stared at her in horror.
“This whole time,” I said low, “you were using me. To enslave someone.”
“If all goes well, more than one,” Mab murmured.
“Lara and her negotiators assumed the language in the bargain about the exercise of control being permissible addressed her propensity to control you,” Mab said serenely.
“They even protected its wording, so that it would be certain she would be held free of any retribution should your allies in Winter be upset at her actions.” Mab arched a pale brow and looked down at me.
“She would have been content to enslave you, my Knight. It is entirely fitting that the tables be turned upon her.”
“You used me,” I said again, fury making my voice quiet, “to enslave someone.”
The Queen of Air and Darkness tilted her head slightly, frowning down at me. “You would never have been able to deceive her if you’d known. Such subtlety is not among your gifts.”
“You’re right,” I growled.
And I punched Mab in her slender throat.
The angle wasn’t good and I had no base of leverage from my back, so it didn’t crush her windpipe. But her eyes flew wide open and she exhaled in a little choking sound. I seized her by the hair and threw her off the bed to the floor.
“You used me,” I snarled, “to do that.”
Catlike green eyes flickered to my hands and then up to my face, and her mouth spread into an inhumanly wide smile as she nodded.
I snarled, seized her by the thigh and the front of her gown, picked her up over my head as if she weighed nothing, and flung her across the room into the stone wall. She hit it like a bundle of wet sticks and tumbled down to the top of my dresser, bounced off it, and hit the floor.
“You used me!” I screamed. I stalked across the floor as Mab began to push herself up and brought my heel down on her spine, slamming her back to the floor.
She turned her head a little too far around to be natural to stare up at me, green eyes gleaming, her sharp, inhuman smile growing even wider.
Blood trickled from a corner of her mouth.
I let out an incoherent cry and raised a clenched fist.
Mab let out a croaking cackle and said, “Yes. Yes. It feels good, does it not?”
…
…
It did.
Hell’s bells.
I froze there, fist raised, ready to drive it down at her smiling face. My body was flooded with adrenaline, limbs singing with the pleasure of tensed muscle about to be used, heart beating steady and hard. I felt afire with rage. I felt certain. I felt so freaking strong.
I felt good. Intensely good.
Insanely good.
Like it had with Rudolph.
“Oh,” Mab said, eyes closing. She took a deep breath, and her broken ribs made crackling sounds as they expanded and resettled into their original places.
Mab opened her eyes dreamily, rolling her throat, and when she spoke again her voice had returned to normal.
“You are coming along quite nicely, my Knight. I approve.”
My raised hand started shaking. So did the rest of me.
I reeled back from Mab.
She sat up slowly, laughing a low, satisfied laugh. “Instinct. Fury. Focused aggression. Yes, my Knight. All powerful tools, ones you will need. Excellent.” She tilted her head. “Though I would suggest better tactics. Did you think you could beat an immortal to death with your bare hands?”
I looked away from her.
“No,” she purred. “You weren’t thinking. You gave in to your instincts. And already so protective of Ms. Raith. Also good.” She rose, slowly and sinuously, like a cobra. “What is done is done. You will control her, my Knight. The alternatives are unthinkable.”
I seized the sheets off of my bed. I covered myself.
“I want time to think of my reward,” I said, voice hoarse. “I want you to leave.”
She was suddenly in my face, faster than I could see.
“Did you think,” she hissed, her voice somehow audibly adding capitals to words, “that you would use My mantle to save your child, and then rob Me of My due service? Did you think that in the service of Air and Darkness that you would not be changed? Not bent to My will?” She leaned close and whispered, “The truth becomes more and more obvious, does it not? You are, more and more, bit by bit, a wicked man, in service to a wicked Queen.”
I shuddered.
Mab let out another low laugh. “I have had a fine, fine day. Your request for more time to choose is wise. This, too, I wish to encourage. I give you until your wedding.”
And with a whisper and a stir of cool air, she was gone.
Leaving me sitting on the cold stone floor under an uneven swath of cotton sheet, legs curled against my chest.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
As a professional wizard, let me tell you—that’s one of those phrases you kind of dread saying, with excellent reason.
“You got played,” I answered myself.
And so had Lara. She’d extended trust to me.
And, grieving, blindly focused on helping Thomas, needing to keep what I was doing secret, I’d been arrogant enough to proceed with some serious high magic with only bare weeks of research rather than the months or years that were usually recommended.
If I’d done that, come at it from enough angles, I might have seen this coming.
But there hadn’t been time.
My shoulders sagged.
I just needed time.
A wicked man, in service to a wicked Queen.
Mab’s voice echoed in my head.
And inside my chest, in that little warm spot that still burned, a quiet voice said, No. That’s not going to happen.
And I recognized the voice.
Because it was me.
Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.
Right. She could manipulate me, obviously. She could deceive me. But she couldn’t change me.
Only I could do that.
And no, that wasn’t going to happen. Yeah, maybe I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t going to become her freaking monster, either.
And while we were at it, who the hell did she think she was, to deceive me like that?
And did she honestly believe that she was going to pull something like that on me and I was going to just sit there twiddling my thumbs?
No. Hell, no.
And if I did it right, maybe I could solve two problems at once.
I needed to talk to Lara.
And Molly.