ice flashed, droplets hanging in the air. Puck’s breathing warmth sent steam out in questing tendrils that froze and fell, tinkling merrily.
When the sound faded, Puck’s expression had turned hard. “You laugh, Unwinter? My own are dying, and yours, too. Summer seeks to blame you, and you laugh.”
“Who do you believe, Goodfellow? Do I care?”
“You would scorn me, then?”
“We are not lovers.”
“And not allies, either.” Puck did not move, even as ice melted on his lashes and in his brown hair. “Yet that may change.”
“Ah. Now we come to it.” Unwinter did not move, but the chill sharpened. His attention was well and truly engaged now. The hangings and pennants overhead, some of them the rotting remains of the standards of fallen foes, snapped as the breeze turned brisk for a moment. “What price, Fatherless? I know better than to trust your generosity.”
“I have one of Summer’s own,” Goodfellow said. “Who will invite you over her borders.”
Unwinter stilled. The breeze halted, fell into a hush. Even the stoneflames quieted, dying to a low indigo glow. The crimson pinpricks intensified, bright points of bloody light.
Puck waited. The frozen crystals on his hair grew heavier, and his ear-tips flicked, ridding themselves of tiny ice-globules. Here in the heart of another’s realm, it would be difficult to step sideways through the Veil.
Not impossible, though. There was a faint itching along his arm, where a mortal’s desperate glass fang had bitten him. He ignored it.
“When?”
“I shall send word. If, that is, you bear an interest.”
“I bear much, Goodfellow. Get thee gone, now. You stink of her perfume.”
“And yet,” Puck observed, as he turned, “you remember its smell.”
Unwinter said nothing, but the cold intensified as Puck marched across slippery obsidian. The narrow doors opened again, the ruby glow swallowed his shadow, and when he was gone, Unwinter was motionless for a long, long while. Perhaps his attention followed the free sidhe as he danced through the Keep’s dust-thick, glass-floored halls, and perhaps he took note of the moment Puck cavorted across the drawbridge, ignoring the Watcher’s hiss of displeasure from below. For it was shortly thereafter that Puck Goodfellow stepped sideways and disappeared, nipping through a fold in the Veil…
… and all through Unwinter’s realm, a secret subtle thrill ran, as its lord rose slowly from the Throne.
The hunter had stirred.
WHAT WOULD PLEASE
32
Gallow’s breath came high and hard, but he had his balance now. The lance hummed, splattering steaming green ichor, and savage little rips of pain smoked all over him, both from exertion and from the caustic of the monster’s blood.
Robin was nowhere to be seen. Of course she thought he was a faithless bastard. He’d bruised her, dragged her, insulted her over breakfast—and an awful breakfast it had been—and she knew Summer’s effect on anything with a cock. The fact that desire was mixed with loathing made it all the sharper, and the worst was knowing Robin was probably right. Of course Summer would think Jeremiah eager to worm his way back into her graces, and bring the vials back.
Once he was certain Robin had them, of course, and he had relieved her of them and her life. He’d been the Armormaster long enough to know what would please the Seelie Queen. Robin had robbed Summer of a mortal toy before the Queen was done with it, and for that, there was little forgiveness even if the Ragged was a useful weapon.
No doubt, if Jeremiah brought Summer what she wanted, he would be in favor for a short while, until the Queen remembered he had left Court for a mortal. He had been so careful, so cautious, thinking himself reasonably clever, but in the end it hadn’t mattered.
Stick to what you’re good at, Jer.
From now on, he intended to.
The passageway steamed as he slid along the left wall. The occupant of this place-between—a Tangle, well-fed and grown monstrous foul-tempered—observed a wary distance, its hairy tendrils and tentacles sliding along the right, waiting for an opening. He had greased the walls and himself with its green ichor before it decided he was too much trouble at the moment and withdrew, watchful. A single slip here would cause its many arms to swarm him again.
Robin had squeezed through a dwarven-made door. If it did not take her to a different location in the mortal city, it might dump her in the lightless lands of the little men. Of course, a Realmaker would be held in high honor among them, and she could pay for passage