comb worn against her scalp, and her hand tingled with Realmaking’s pins and needles. She found Jeremiah’s coatsleeve in the glare, plucking at it with her free hand, a vine’s desperate caress.
“Go!” he cried. “I’ll hold them!”
Her throat was still full of the light, and only moments of its flood remained. Hold Unwinter?
Did he seriously think he could?
She tugged again, her fingers sweating and the song beginning to fade at its edges. Shadows crept back in, against the false daylight she had birthed. They tore at its edges, and the sweat was all over her as she held the tone steady. Running out of breath and the energy to persuade him to come away.
He shoved her, bruising-hard, again. “Go!” he yelled, and though he perhaps did not mean to, he struck her with his shoulder, almost knocking her down. The ivory comb clutched in her fist—four-pronged, its fluid head and carven mane writhing as it scented readiness—twitched madly, struggling for release. Her fingers spasmed open, but she caught the wicked little thing as it sought to jump free—and stabbed her free palm with the four sharp prongs, driving them into the flesh below her thumb.
The pain jolted up her arm, all the way to her shoulder. She did not flinch, but Realmaking and chantment both roared through her. Which meant, of course, that the song died as she pulled the bone pin free of her flesh.
Blood welled in her violated palm.
Creaking, crackling cold rushed in as the light vanished. Dusk returned, dazzled but still ascendant, and the Veil unfolded in origami petals, yet another sideways-realm behind it glowing pearly-bright. A shape loomed, white and curious, stamping as it answered her call.
Chantment wasn’t the song under her thoughts, it was enchantment, and it stole its force from the will of the one performing it. The less sidhe blood, the more will required—and the more sidhe blood, the more evanescent the chantment. Unless you were of the pure, but then you were at risk of the plague descending upon you with its greenspots and blackboil rot.
But every sidhe of Summer could call an elfhorse, just as every sidhe of Unwinter could summon a twisted, darkened mount.
A slim white elfhorse bowed its head as it finished solidifying, shaking its waterfall of silver tail. Robin, scrambling with a clatter of heels, grabbed at its silken mane and was up in a heartbeat. The four bloody pricks in her palm scorched as she wound her fingers securely in the mane, and a flush spilled through the creature’s satiny glow.
As long as she fed it, the mare would carry her.
“Jeremiah!” She coughed, rasping. “Come!”
“A night-mare cannot carry two.” Unwinter’s grinding laugh killed the last traces of liquid golden light. No few of the hounds were charred lumps, and the rustlings in the shadows were Unseelie no doubt still smoking and steaming. She had scarred no few of them, and they would remember.
It was a pity she could not do more. She could continue to let the song loose in lungfuls, but they would swarm her before long.
Jeremiah stood, balanced lightly in his heavy boots, the lance he somehow carried with him held at the same angle.
“You have a challenge to answer, knight.” Gallow’s hands were steady, but the weapon quivered. It bloomed with red along its blade—cold iron, she realized, shuddering even though she was Half and immune to its effects.
Still, if one were to face Unwinter, iron was a good ally. “Gallow,” she whispered. “Come away.”
“Go, Robin.” How did he sound so certain? “I shall see you soon enough.”
Unwinter’s laugh tore at the darkening. Night shivered, turned to ink instead of indigo. “Indeed. You both shall be my guests ere long.”
Still, she hesitated, the elfhorse nervously sidling as it scented Unseelie.
Jeremiah’s patience broke. “For God’s sake, go.”
It was enough. She touched her heels to the white mare’s sides, and the horse shot forward like foam on a breaking wave.
Behind her, the cries began.
THE HORN
36
Each version of the potential battle flowed together, narrowing toward a certain point. Beyond that, everything was murk-mist, whether death or simply confusion-flux he didn’t care to guess.
What mattered was the receding hoofbeats, bell-chiming silvershod. And her cry, rising clearly audible on the veils of evening breeze.
“I have the cure, Unwinter!”
Goddamn you, woman, just run. He braced himself, lance sweeping sideways as one of the Unseelie, a tallish knight in red perhaps thinking to make himself a name or gain some favor, pressed forward with a crystalline, curved sword upraised.