Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,169

Knight was designed for.”

“Designed for? I’m not. . . . That isn’t how it works. It’s not a choice I’m making. That’s just how it is.”

Click, click, click.

“There is,” Mab said, a very soft, very gentle tone of warning in her voice, “one year, for it to be different.”

“That isn’t how it works,” I said. “People aren’t machine parts. You can’t just plug them in wherever. They aren’t game pieces. You can’t just pick them up and move them around the board, wherever you want them to go.”

“Yet the machine still must function. The game must be played,” she said, her voice implacable, stating facts, not angry. “Do not test me. There is no margin here for you to dance within. Bend, wizard. Or I will break you.”

I drew in a breath and let it out again.

“I guess we’ll see,” I said.

Her eyes glinted. But she looked like someone who had heard what she expected to hear. She inclined her head to me in an opponent’s acknowledgment. “We will see.”

* * *

* * *

Molly’s car was being driven by one of the Sidhe who I couldn’t quite tell was male or female, and who could presumably kill me a dozen times while I tried to figure it out.

“You hear nothing,” Molly told the Sidhe, and the being shuddered a little and nodded.

“Literally,” Molly said. “That’s my Winter Law voice. The driver is effectively deaf until I say otherwise.”

And then she rolled up the privacy curtain between the front and the back.

“Your driver reads lips?” I guessed.

“I find it best to assume,” she said. “The Winter Court is just that kind of place.” She folded her arms and crossed her knees, which looked very nice in the sharp, rather conservative dress suit she wore. “I can’t believe she’s just selling you off like a horse to Lara.”

“Thanks?” I said.

She waved a hand in a vaguely apologetic gesture. “You know what I mean. It’s unconscionable.”

“For most of humanity’s history,” I said, “it was standard practice. Marriage of a couple, symbolizing the actions of a state, bound together in an act of ritual high magic. And it was practiced so long because it worked.”

Molly eyed me. “Who exactly do you think you’re teaching, here, Socrates?”

I lifted a hand in acknowledgment. “I’m . . . tired, Molly. Sorry.”

She grimaced and looked out the window. “No. I shouldn’t have pushed.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe Mab is doing this to you now. The dirt’s barely settled on Murphy’s grave.”

No.

It hadn’t.

I stared out the window for a while, just sort of letting the world happen to me. Molly spoke, I think.

“You haven’t heard a word I said, have you?” she asked me, a while later.

I blinked and tried to recall, but I hadn’t really been tracking too well. “Sorry,” I said. “I mean, I’m not sorry. I’m hurt, and I deserve consideration for it. But I’m sorry that’s a pain for you right now.”

Molly gave me a faint, grim smile and shook her head. “No. I get it. Losing someone you feel that way about. Having them taken away. It changes you for a while.”

I looked at her and winced.

I started to apologize.

She saw it coming, and smiled and shook her head firmly, even while tears formed in her eyes. “We’ve dealt with that already. That was pain and it happened and it was real and necessary, and now it’s in the past.”

I cupped her cheek with my hand. She closed her eyes and leaned against my palm.

“Harry,” she said. “She was a good person. I’m sorry.”

I nodded several times and couldn’t say anything. Or see anything.

“But listen. I don’t expect you to be fine. I expect you to maybe behave like an ass for a while, because you’re hurting. And while we would all be grateful if you didn’t, if you do sometimes, you’ve . . . earned it. There are people around you who understand what it’s cost you to do the things you’ve done. And if you’re grouchy while you heal from the wounds you’ve taken, it’s unpleasant and understandable.” She looked up at me. “So, yeah. It’s okay if you’re a mess for a while. That’s how you heal from stuff like this. And when everything shakes out, I’ll still be your friend.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said, and even if I laughed, I mostly meant it. “This Lara thing Mab’s throwing at me. I can’t deal with it.”

“I don’t think Lara was thinking things would happen at that pace, either,”