Chapter Fifty
Chapter
Fifty
Mab and Mother Winter both stood facing me, standing between me and the column of true ice that held Justine’s bound form. Alfred loomed in the background behind them, his cloak composed once more, green-gold eyes glowing softly within the depths of the hood.
The queens’ expressions were unreadable.
Mab looked at Mother Winter and cocked an eyebrow.
The crone’s seamed, lined face was axe-shaped, cheekbones standing out starkly from skin that, while wrinkled, in no way looked soft.
Like a rhinoceros. Her eyes were pale, pale green, rheumy and piercing.
She stared at me for a long, long moment before she said, grudgingly, to Mab, “Tears. Laughter. He’s still soft. ”
Mab’s frozen mulberry lips spread into a slow, wide, wide smile. “Give me time.”
The crone snorted. “He’s far too mortal.”
“That shall change,” Mab murmured, bouncing the bronze knife against one silk-covered thigh. “By and by.”
There was a soft sound of movement, and Thomas, held up by Lara, appeared at my side. He was shaking and could hardly stand. He fixed a sunken, steady gaze on Mab and Mother Winter and said, to me, “Okay. Let’s do this. You want the pretty one or the one with the fake teeth?”
“Thomas,” Lara said severely. She faced Mab and said, “Please excuse this behavior.”
“He but attempts to protect mate and offspring,” Mab said. “This behavior is simple but should not be discouraged.”
“It was a fake-out,” I said. Then I blinked slowly. “You…The one thing you can’t do is directly kill mortals. That’s why you have a Knight.”
Mab smirked.
“You lied,” I whispered.
“Is that what you think?” Mab replied, lips curling. “You haven’t considered the technicalities.”
“Technicalities?”
“The woman bears not one but three lives within her at the moment. The child’s Hunger, of course—and the entity possessing her. I could have struck at either, and the other lives lost would have been mere…What is the mortal phrase?” She smiled more widely. “Collateral damage. The cost of war.”
“You…” Thomas said and surged forward. Well, he sort of leaned forward. Lara sighed, let him go, and he fell.
“Oops,” Lara said wearily. She looked at Thomas and said, “If you’d asked me for help instead of riding off to start a war with Etri on your own, Thomas, none of this might have been necessary.
” Then she stepped between him and Mab and said, “That said, he’s one of mine.
” She pointed at Justine. “So is she. So is her child. If I’m to be one of yours, I expect your support in helping and protecting them. ”
Mab lifted her chin, her eyes narrowing. “Do you?”
“It’s what I expect of myself. I ask no more of you.”
Mab’s frosty gaze turned to me. “And you, my Knight? What do you expect of the Queen of Air and Darkness?”
I stepped up beside Lara.
“I expect you to use your reason,” I said. “The entire point of signing the White Court on is to build alliances. You can’t do that by being an absolute asshat to the people whose support you need.”
Mother Winter’s gimlet eyes swiveled to me, and her gnarled old fingers rippled along the handle of their cleaver, securing their grip. “An absolute what?”
Mab glanced aside at the crone. “I told you I was willing to tolerate much of his insouciance.”
“For this weak, sentimental fool?”
“Do not be deceived by his demeanor as others have,” Mab said.
“Ethniu lies bound within these very caverns because of him. He has mastered the island yet remains unmoved by its temptations. And already, in his youth, he has overcome the resistance of not one, but two Outsiders and bound their allegiance to him while yet he suffers the psychic wounds of bearing a banner of will and leading others to their deaths.”
“Ethniu was a spoiled little princess,” spat Mother Winter. “And Hungers are among the least of those Outside with whom he must contend. If this is the strongest the mortal world can offer, then perhaps this cycle will be its last.”
“Perhaps it will,” Mab agreed. “But that is not for you to decide. Nor me.” She tilted her head and stared at me unnervingly. “Note that he stands ready to do battle against us both, though he knows it hopeless.”
“That merely indicates his stupidity,” spat Mother Winter.
“Stupidity,” Mab mused. “Courage. The only difference is the outcome.”
“Pah,” the crone said. She lifted a weathered, age-spotted hand and drew her hood back up over her face. “He comes of a line of thieves.”
“But daring ones,” Mab mused. “Effective ones.”
“Okay,” I said, “we’re at a point where either one of you needs to talk more about what’s coming or both of you need to shut up.”
A startled silence fell over both Queens of Winter.
Then Mother Winter hobbled closer. It was a painful-looking movement, as though her back, leg, and hip all put her in agony to walk. She let out a low, growling sound and loomed over me.
“Tell me, young bantam,” she said, and her rough voice was very soft, very smooth, something that could haunt a man for a lifetime. “Have you begun to dream the dreams yet?”
“What dr—” I began.
And quicker than thought, she reached out with her open palm and struck my forehead.
It wasn’t the force of the blow that knocked me flat.
It was a vast, echoing explosion that happened nowhere except between my ears.
Imagine both ears popping, along with your jaw, along with the dizzying sensation you get when you suddenly stop spinning around, all happening at once.
Now multiply it by several million. I couldn’t tell which way was down, even though I could feel the cold, cracked crystal floor of the chamber beneath me.
“Mother!” Mab said sharply, though her voice sounded distant and frail. “How dare you!”
“The loom does not stop weaving because a single thread feels strain,” hissed the crone.
Her voice came from somewhere overhead, clear and strong.
“The arrow of time flies swift. The hour draws near. Subtlety is a luxury that can no longer be afforded. The ancient ways and ancient drives and ancient pains draw nearer by the hour. And this young thing must be readied for them—or broken, and another weapon chosen.”
The gleaming eyes in the recesses of her hood swerved to Thomas and then Lara. “These younger days,” she said with contempt. “Our options grow more fragile, more dependent, more helpless with every passing cycle.”
Mab’s voice turned colder. “Long have you been absent from the mortal world,” she snarled. “Long has it been left to my keeping, my wit, my will. This is my seat of power. This is my responsibility. It is not yours and well you know it. Any further interference will result in challenge, crone.”
There was a second long silence. And then Mother Winter let out a low, long cackle. “And you,” she said. “For all your cleverness, for all your stratagems, for all your webs and plans—do you really think you can challenge me?”
Mab lifted her chin.
And then she squared off on Mother Winter.
“Arise, my Knight,” called the Queen of Air and Darkness.
“Arise! ARISE!” She said it in a voice that blew away my disorientation like a dunk in cold water.
Ice filled my chest and my guts and my head like the deepest heart of winter, bringing with it the memories of screams of war, of the howls of wolves, of shrieks of pain and bloodlust and battle madness, as if every single fight I’d been through, every victory I’d won, every ounce of struggle and pain and triumph I’d ever felt, had been focused into a single, blindingly intense emotion.
And I came to my feet, teeth clenched, muttering a word that sent my staff hurtling into my hand, ready to throw down with Mother Winter herself.
“Alfred,” I growled. “Prepare a cell for our guest.”
Demonreach’s eyes flared. Again, the ground shook. Chips of fractured crystal fell from the opening in the ceiling.
Mother Winter went completely still.
Lara glanced aside at me, her eyes wide. She glanced down at the fallen Thomas and then back, letting me know her plan: She would get him clear before she came in herself.
I nodded my chin almost imperceptibly.
“Consider where you are,” Mab said coldly. “Consider what you face.”
The crone’s voice came out in a bare whisper. “You would really dare this? Now?”
Mab lifted her chin as the air grew colder and a crown of ice formed upon her head, snow falling from it about her hair and her green gown. “I will do and dare whatever I must to protect this world. From whatever threatens it. Including you.”
And I stepped up next to Mab. I felt like hell. But I felt even more like kicking someone’s ass, and I honestly didn’t much care whose it was.
“I’m with you,” I said to Mab.
The crone’s eyes swiveled toward me. I felt their weight like crushing black rock.
“Have you any idea,” she whispered, “what horrors I could summon? What pain I could bring forth? Think you that you have suffered agonies in one little battle? When over the eons I have fought thousands upon thousands, back unto the dawn of Creation itself?”
I started calling Soulfire into my thoughts and will, and the runes in my staff suddenly flared with light, pure light, the echoes of the First Light, when darkness was on the face of the deep.
The crone hissed. She didn’t exactly flinch from the light. But she lowered her head until her hood shielded her eyes.
“Everyone talks a big game,” I said, “but at some point, I stopped caring how much bigger they are than me. I’ve been punching out of my weight class my whole life. You wanna go? Here I am. Let’s go.”
No one moved.
The air crackled with tension.
Then something creepy happened.