Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter
Forty-Two
Spring sprang a bit early, and by the second week of March we were having cool mornings with warm and pleasant afternoons.
The pressure I experienced from the Winter mantle had begun to wane, though it never vanished.
It would get even easier after the equinox, until midsummer, and then it would begin to rise again.
I’d borne it for a few cycles now. I was beginning to know what to expect.
Lara met me at the botanic gardens, at my request.
The place didn’t look like it would in April, but green had come back into the world, and the first insects, and the early flowers, and life was getting about its business again.
The gardens are a big place and had been far enough from the fighting to escape any particular damage during the battle.
They’d gotten their electricity back—by March, most of the city that hadn’t had to contend with collapsed buildings and toxic cleanups had been restored more or less to working order.
From walking around the gardens, you wouldn’t know that civilization had more or less ground to a halt for so many people.
They were pristine and growing and lovely, just the way a garden should be.
Human beings were never meant for constant concrete and steel.
It’s convenient and economical and in some ways safer—but we were meant for the wilderness.
For grass and trees and rocks and rivers.
To be among the sights and sounds and smells of life, of things that grow.
I got to the meeting an hour early, just so I could spend some time walking in that, even if it was a little curated.
To watch the sunlight play with shadows, to hear the wind whispering through long grass and budding branches, grow, grow, grow.
Winter always comes to an end. Bad times always come to an end. Spring is the earth’s way of reassuring us about that. I could feel the slow stirring of power in that life, gently inexorable as the sun grew warmer, day by day—here much more clearly than I could at the castle.
There weren’t many people at the gardens this time of year.
The real show wouldn’t start for another month or so.
I was standing alone by a pond framed by willow trees, their long naked branches studded with leaf-green buds, when I sensed Lara’s presence.
There wasn’t a sound, or a smell, and I hadn’t seen her approach. I just knew where she was.
As if she’d been carrying part of me with her and I felt it when she got close.
“It’s the smells I like best,” I said quietly. I inhaled through my nose. “Earth, and mold and mildew and new green things.”
“It’s why the White Court is behind so many environmental causes,” Lara said, from beside me.
I lifted both eyebrows. “Really?”
“We take the care of the herd as seriously as we can,” she said. “At least at the leadership levels. The younger members are too buried in sensation and lack the experience to have reasoned that far forward.”
“Sensible,” I said. “Maybe a little creepy, but sensible.”
“That’s my wheelhouse,” she said, her tone faint with humor.
I turned to her.
I was wearing jeans, a white tee, and a grey denim jacket. She had on a pale pink sundress with matching sandals and a pale yellow knitted wrap over her shoulders. The pastels shouldn’t have worked with her dark hair and pale skin, but they somehow did. They made her blue eyes look electric.
“Do you know what’s happened?” I asked her.
Her lips twisted into a small smile. Her expression was unreadable. “I worked it out,” she said calmly. “I’m on your hook now. Tables turned.”
“I didn’t know that’s what was happening,” I said. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Her eyes, her face, neither moved. Thomas got like that sometimes. He could be more still than anything living. “You did tell me there would be risks.”
“Yeah. I didn’t realize that was one of them.” I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
She stared at me for a long time.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“Oh?”
She tilted her head to one side. “You’re telling the truth.”
I spread open the fingers of one hand. “Yeah.”
She smiled faintly. “Oh.”
“Oh again?”
“Harry,” she said gently, “I don’t want to offend you. I honestly don’t. But you couldn’t have tricked me like that. You didn’t get the better of me.”
“Mab did,” I said.
“There you go,” she said.
We both turned to look out at the wind playing on the water. We were both silent for a long time.
“She got the better of both of us,” I said.
“And despite my best efforts,” she said, “it would seem I really am going to marry someone much like my father.”
I winced.
“I’m only talking about you indirectly,” she said. “This marriage was always between Mab and me. You were merely her surrogate.”
“We’ll get you out of it,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”
“You’re going to outwit the Queen of Air and Darkness?” Lara asked, amused. “A creature who has been weaving webs of illusion and deception for centuries upon centuries before either of us was born?”
“No,” I said. “But maybe we can. I’m not exactly without resources.”
Lara folded her arms and inhaled deeply.
“There are factors,” she said. Her raven-dark brows beetled into a faint frown.
“Like what?” I asked.
She gave me a long stare. Not a kind one.
“I want to help,” I said quietly.
“Your help has been—” She shook her head and cut herself off. She closed her eyes and took a deep, deep breath. “I can accept that you did not intentionally inflict this harm upon me,” she said. “But nonetheless. The deed is done.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She used us both. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
She opened her eyes again, warily.
“You got out from under your father’s control,” I said quietly. “And he’s a berjillion years old and twisted and sneaky and all that, too. For you, this is just the next challenge.”
Something flickered in her eyes.
“And I’m a pretty handy guy to have around in situations like this,” I said.
“What’s in it for you?” she asked.
“I don’t like being used,” I said, my voice turning a little hard. “I don’t like being manipulated. I don’t like it when someone tries to control me. What’s in it for me?” I shook my head. “I get to be my own man. I get to be free.”
“Idealism,” she said, gently chiding, “is foolish.”
“Too much of it, maybe,” I said. “Too much of anything is foolish. But so is letting people think they can pull your strings. Mab thinks she has you in her pocket. Me, too. We’re going to show her she’s wrong. But to do that, I’ve got to understand what I’m up against.”
Lara considered me for a long moment and folded her arms.
“I’m going to give you some,” she said. “And we will see what you can give in exchange.”
“Good place to start,” I said.
She frowned for a moment, considering her words.
“What you…did to me,” she said. She swallowed. “For me. Even thinking about it now, I…ache. Want more. My Hunger has never been so, so…quiet. Such silence, within.” Her eyes went slightly out of focus. “I have lived for centuries and never had so much peace. Such…”
“Surcease,” I said gently.
Her mouth twisted into a grim little smile.
“Precisely. I could return to feeding on mortals but…it took me decades of careful feeding, careful restraint, to bring my Hunger into a state of balance. If I fed on them now, after what my demon has tasted, I would not be able to control it. It would seek that peace again. Take and take and take. And it would kill, seek the same satisfaction. Satisfaction that a mortal could not provide—and I would be unable to prevent it from doing so.”
“Which would affect you,” I said.
“It would likely strip me of reason entirely, either slowly or in a meltdown. It hardly matters. I would be unable to defend my position in the Court, and thus be useless to Mab, who would then either discard me or enslave me completely.” She shuddered.
“Or worse. I’d just be an animal. Feeding and feeding.
This is a very thorough trap. I am reliant upon you not merely for my demon’s sustenance, but for my position, power, identity, and life.
Which makes me both resent and admire you. ”
“Oh,” I said quietly.
“I am infuriated at the circumstance. At you, for being ignorant, and for meaning well, and for putting a chain about my throat.” She shivered. “I considered killing you today.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “Mab wanted you to hook me right back. Then she’d have us both wrapped up entirely.”
Lara exhaled and nodded. “Yes. She’d have us both, body, mind, and soul.”
“But she doesn’t,” I said. “At least, not yet. And maybe not ever, if I’ve got anything to say about it. Which I damned well do.”
Lara tilted her head, skeptical. “I would very much like to believe that,” she said quietly. “Now. I have given you a little knowledge. What do you have to give in return?”
“Thomas,” I said firmly.
She frowned. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“I’m getting him out of the mess he’s in,” I said. “I’m fixing his problem with his demon. And I’m dealing with Etri and the svartalves, too.”
“How?”
I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Mab offered me a boon. I mean to collect.”
Lara’s eyes widened. “She…Oh. For what you did to me.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Mab’s…Look, she’s weird. She deceives, she manipulates, she’ll do anything she needs to in order to accomplish her goals. But she also pays her debts. Her obligations go both ways. It’s part of what she is. I don’t think she has a choice about it.”
“You think it can be used against her,” Lara said, eyes widening.
“I don’t think. I know.”
“If you’re right,” Lara said quietly, “she isn’t going to be happy about it.”
“Lot of that going around,” I said, my voice hard. “She’s tough. She’ll get over it.”
“She’s unlikely to simply accept it,” Lara said.
“I’m pretty tough, too. I’ve paid some prices. You know that better than most.”
Lara frowned, searching my face.
“May I ask you something?” she said after a moment.