Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,103
the one to ask for this meeting. I stopped, gave her a bow, and said, “Thank you for meeting me, Lady Summer.”
She inclined her head the slightest visible degree. “Sir Knight.”
“Been a while,” I said.
“Relative to what?” she asked.
“Life, I guess,” I said.
“Much has happened,” she agreed. “Wars have raged. Empires have fallen.” She finally turned her head to regard me directly. “Friends have changed.”
Lily had been gorgeous as a mortal woman. After becoming the Summer Lady, her beauty had been magnified into something that was only barely human, something so tangible and intense that it shone out from her like light flowing out of her skin. It was a different kind of beauty from Mab’s or Maeve’s. Their loveliness was an emptiness. Looking on them created nothing but desire, a need that cried out to be filled.
By contrast, Lily’s beauty was a fire, a source of light and warmth, something that created a profound sense of satisfaction. Looking at Lily made the pains of my heart ease, and I suddenly felt like I could breathe freely for the first time in months.
And some other part of me abruptly filled my mind with a violent and explicit image—my fist tangled in Lily’s hair, that soft gentle mouth under mine, her body writhing beneath my weight as I took her to the ground. It wasn’t an idle thought, and it wasn’t a daydream, and it wasn’t a fantasy. It was a blueprint. If Lily was immortal, I couldn’t kill her. That didn’t mean I couldn’t take her.
I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds as I fought the image out of my forebrain. Then I forced myself to look away from her, out to the water of the lake. I leaned down on the guardrail, gripping it with my hands. I was a little worried that if I didn’t give them something to do, they might try something stupid. I took a cleansing breath and reengaged my speech centers. “I’m not the only one who’s changed since that day.”
I could feel her eyes on me, intently studying my face. I had a feeling that she knew exactly what I’d just felt. “True,” she murmured. “But we’ve made our choices, haven’t we? And now we are who we are. I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Sir Knight.”
“What? Just now?”
I saw her nod in my peripheral vision. “A moment ago, you looked at me. I have seen a face with that precise expression before.”
“Slate.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” I growled, “I’m not Slate. I’m not some pet monster Maeve made to play with.”
“No,” Lily said, her voice sad. “You are a weapon Mab made to war with. You poor man. You always had such a good heart.”
“Had?” I asked.
“It isn’t yours any longer,” Lily said quietly.
“I disagree,” I said. “Strenuously.”
“And the need you felt a moment ago?” she asked. “Did that urge come from your heart, Sir Knight?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
Lily froze for a second, her head tilting slightly to one side.
“Bad things are inside everyone,” I said. “I don’t care how gentle or holy or sincere or dedicated you are. There are bad things in there. Lust. Greed. Violence. You don’t need a wicked queen to make that happen. That’s a part of everyone. Some more, some less, but it’s always there.”
“You say that you were this wicked from the beginning?” Lily asked.
“I’m saying I could have been,” I said. “I chose something else. And I’m going to continue choosing something else.”
Lily smiled faintly and looked back at the lake. “You wished to speak to me about my knight.”
“Fix, yeah,” I said. “He basically gave me until noon to leave town, or we shoot it out at the OK Corral. I’m busy. I don’t have time to skip town. But I don’t want either of us to get hurt.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“Tell him to stand down,” I said. “Even if only for a few days. It’s important.”
Lily bowed her head. “It grieves me to say this, Sir Knight. But no. I will not.”
I tried not to grind my teeth audibly. “And why not?”
She studied me again, her green eyes intense. “Can it be?” she asked. “Can it be that you have come so far, have fallen in with your current company, without realizing what is happening here?”
“Uh,” I said, frowning. “You mean here, today?”
“I mean here,” Lily said. “In our world.”
“Yeah, uh. Maybe you haven’t heard, but I haven’t been in our world much lately.”