elf-mare neighed and turned sharply, obeying the pressure of her knees and shifting weight.
Wratton Street was busy at dusk. Horns blared, headlights glaring at the sudden appearance of a wild-haired sidhe on a white horse. Up the sidewalk, the elfhorse uneasy at the cold iron throbbing under pavement and in the canyon walls of this street, the rider’s immunity to inimical metal communicating itself through the creature but not enough. A clatter of silvershod hooves, Robin’s sharp cry as they nipped under the Metropolia Hotel’s red and white striped awning, a bank of windows suddenly full of smoky forms as the Veil quivered around them.
A hard turn, Robin’s body melded to the white mare’s. She’d never ridden a horse in her benighted mortal childhood, but Court meant palfreys and easy walkers, and she had been complimented on her pretty seat more than once, with varying degrees of innuendo. Stealing away to call an elfhorse and coax it into a moonlight ride over the scented hills or the sugar-white dunes along Summer’s half of the Dreaming Sea was one of the few things she would miss if she turned away from Court.
Or if she was banished.
The long straight shot of Santhorn, up a slight rise, would be accessible at the corner of Wratton and 8th. Just a few more blocks to go, clinging to the mare’s back, the horse’s flush deepening as its hooves pounded, chimed, rollick-and-rocking back and forth.
Silver huntwhistles pierced the deepening indigo of the sky. If she let the elfhorse have its head and reached Santhorn she stood a chance. At the crest of the hill was Amberline Park, well along with its greening because the mortal hilltop was not full-sideways to Summer’s realm; they aligned more often than not, sidhe rubbing through as a knife-edge creases taut paper.
The whistles behind her, curving forward on either side to cup her course, were a silver net as true darkness filled the city’s rivers of pavement. Even the pollution of orange streetlight painting the undersides of the clouds couldn’t alter that shadowing, a reminder of the time when mortals barred their doors at dusk and would not open them until dawn. More among them heard the sidhe-horns in those days.
Heard, heeded, and feared.
The perfect crossroads in the Marlyle residential section was far behind her now, and there were tiny flashes in her peripheral vision. What the—
They were flutterings, each one a point of foxfire. The sidewalk was no longer deserted, the elfhorse needle-threading through pockets of the Veil as the crowd thickened. More horns blared as some drivers saw her and others didn’t; there was a crunch of metal as the distraction of her appearance struck like a viper.
I am sorry for it, she thought, wishing the wind would drive the words from her head.
The firefly-dots were pixies, hop-skipping around the rents in the Veil as the horse casually flickered through real and more-than-real with each step. Green, red, blue, their jewel-wings fluttering and their babble a high, excited drone through the sound of Unwinter’s pursuit. Why were they clustering about her?
Sorry for everything. For those she had just learned the names of—Panko, Sylvia. For those she had sung into death’s arms at Summer’s command—riding like this, her arm tingling before it grew numb, she heard them all. She even heard Parsifleur and Henzler, caught in webs not of their making.
Most of all, she sorrowed because she suspected she had just left Jeremiah Gallow to die at Unwinter’s dubious pleasure. He had been afoot and challenged the Unseelie King, and it was because everything Robin Ragged made the mistake of caring for withered.
Daisy. Even Mama. And the most hurtful name was also the smallest.
Sean.
Was he still awake and aware inside the amber casing? The expression of horror on his young face—what had Summer done to him before she struck, or another sidhe struck with her blessing? Did he know Robin was the reason he had been—oh, of course. Summer would not let a chance to drop that information pass.
It was, after all, what mortal playthings were for. Like Mama, abandoned with a baby when mortal summer ended. Robin, just a silent swelling inside Mama’s body, was the burden that forced Mama to turn to Daddy Snowe for help, because waiting tables, even with a breath of sidhe upon you, was not enough to feed and shelter mother and child. And Daddy Snowe, suspecting Robin wasn’t his, turned to vinegar like cheap mortal wine.
If not for Robin, Mama and Daddy Snowe