border. Sagging against the rock, she tipped her head to the side, and for a few moments he struggled with temptation. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to approach her; she could probably use the warmth, right? Even if she couldn’t, there was such a thing as a knight’s right to a damsel. Among the sidhe, such a thing wasn’t the crime it was elsewhere.
Christ, she reminded him of Daisy. He hadn’t had a woman since, sidhe or mortal.
Jeremiah, you’re a bastard.
Despite the damp, the ground here was dry, covered with sere grass and crackling dead leaves. A good scent of spiced cherries, threads of smell mixing with the cold exhaust breathing of the city around them, and he pillowed his head on his backpack. Moved around a bit to get comfortable. Stared up into the branches. The trees leaned over, secretive, the hollies darker than the laurels.
Robin’s breathing was almost inaudible. Her feet, in those same black heels, lay on the grass. Her shins were bare, she hadn’t curled up, but his coat would keep the worst of the dew off.
Night outside was full of noises, creaks and whisperings, stealthy movements and the sense of vulnerability from sleeping without a roof. A very mortal feeling.
It took him a long while to fall into blackness.
He must have thought Summer would never change. Why else would a strange fluttering void open under his heart when little details caught his gaze? The gnarled trunks of the Queen’s apple trees, with their carved-agony faces, under white drifts of blossom, had gained a few millimeters of girth. Some had gained new faces, too, but there was no flash of skin hidden deep in the cracks of brown bark. As usual, imagining the rough wooden tickle as the tree absorbed its prey—or Summer’s—sent a chill down his spine.
The grass was just as green, and the paths were just as flour-white. The blossoms were just as fragrant, and the four white and greenstone towers of Summer’s Keep pierced a sky softly blue and endless. Dew lay on the long grass. It was the morning of the world, and yet little things bothered him.
No brughnies a-gathering herbs in the shadowed dells, no pixies humming in the grass collecting ice-bright drops of water-breath. No fetches shimmering between shapes, no riverfolk gamboling or woodland sprites dancing as they did all day. There were gleams in the shadows of fernbrake and leafshade—eyes watching, of course, as Robin walked before him. The sidhe sunlight was a flood of gold, turning her hair to a furnace and burnishing her dress as the skirt fluttered, kissing her knees. Muscle flicked under her flawless skin, and he couldn’t imagine she was Daisy, because his wife had never walked like this. No, here in Summer her mortal imperfections would have shone, burnished to a high gloss… and would he have felt the lack if he’d taken her back to the mortal realm afterward and seen her fade?
He’d awakened at dawn to find his jacket tucked securely around him and Robin perching on the stone she had slept against, chin up and her entire body expressing wariness. And she had insisted he step over the border into Summer first, as if she were a gallant.
Or a bodyguard.
Now she walked before him, her head up, looking neither left nor right. Either her surroundings were familiar and so, ignored…
… or she was very aware of everything around them, and chose not to appear so.
There were no ghilliedhu girls dabbling in the streams, no naiads poking their sleek heads up to see who was passing. As they began up the gentle slope of Hearthill, he realized what else was missing.
“No birds,” he murmured. All of Summer was in a breathless hush, and he began to feel even more uneasy.
If that was possible.
Robin didn’t pause, but she did turn her head slightly. “Perhaps our liege wishes silence.” Each word weighed carefully. Of course, her voice could kill, and here the air would be conscious of the fact.
That very air carried tales here, too. Gossip, rumor, all the games of fickle near-immortals. It was enough to make him reconsider, but he’d decided to follow her, so…
What else had he decided?
She gave him one sidelong glance as she dropped back at the foot of the glass stairs, each riser reflecting a different color. Even a mailed fist would not break them, their fragility a lie.
Just like everything else.
The great silver-chased doors were open. Now he preceded her, and he tried to figure