Cold Days

could pick me up and drive my head into one of the icy walls, then hammer my spine in like a piton.

“I’ve been waiting to see that expression on his face all night,” the Redcap said to Sarissa. “Isn’t it priceless? What’s going to happen next? I’m so interested.”

Taking on a little friendly training and a grumpy malk was one thing, but going up against three of the nastier creatures in Faerie all at once was probably a losing proposition. Maybe I could survive it, if I was fast and good and a little bit lucky.

But Sarissa wouldn’t.

I had only one real chance: instant and overwhelming aggression. If I could knock one of these bozos out of the fight before it even started, that changed the odds from impossible to merely daunting. It meant that there might be a chance of saving the girl.

Of course, it also meant that I would break Mab’s law. I’d bragged about opening a Way, and if push came to shove, I probably could—but not before the rawhead and the ogre closed in on me.

Just then there was a sound: a shriek, a blast of cruel trumpets that sounded as if whoever blew them was being beaten with a salted lash. It took me a second to realize that no instruments were playing. Instead, high up on the constructed replica of my favorite chair, at my left shoulder, crystals were thrusting themselves up out of the ice, and screaming as the ice changed form. They rose into a half dome of spikes and frozen blades, and shuddered as the center of the new outgrowth shifted again. Wisps of arctic blue and green and purple buzzed and whirled within those sharp spikes, sending out a wild coruscation of colored light. The aurora was mesmerizing and blinding at the same time, and little disco balls hoped that they could grow up to be half as brilliant one day.

Mab stepped out of the solid ice as if passing through a gauzy curtain. She was in formal wear, a robe of opalescent white, belted with joined crystals of ice. A tall crown of more ice rose from her brow, and her white hair spilled down around her like snow atop a mountain. She was distant and cold, as pure and lovely and merciless as moonlit snow.

She stood for a moment, staring out at the cavern. Then she sat, the motion slow and regal, and the ice within the spiked dome reshaped itself into a seat beneath her. She settled onto it, and the ice screamed again, shrieking out a second tortured fanfare.

Every head in the cavern turned to her. The Sidhe all around me knelt at once, including the Redcap and his buddies. All over the chamber, other beings of the Winter Court did the same, and suddenly only a very few people were standing upright. I was one of them. So were the Erlking, Kringle, and Eldest Gruff, though each of them stood with his head bowed in acknowledgment of Winter’s ruler. I took my cue from them, but kept my eyes open.

I spotted Maeve standing only forty or fifty feet away, on an icy deck that had been formed to look like a paperback that had fallen from one of my bookshelves. Maeve was in a perfect position to see the conflict between the Redcap crew and me, and she hadn’t bowed either. She was sipping something ice blue from a champagne flute, and ignoring her mother’s presence entirely—but I could feel her malice, burning toward me even though she wasn’t looking directly at me.

Mab studied me and my playmates for a solid minute, saying nothing, and in that silence you could hear the fluid dripping from the rawhead’s various bits onto the icy floor.

Maeve turned to her mother and sipped at her blue champagne. She said nothing, and her features were entirely smooth and relaxed, but you could just smell the way she was smirking on the inside.

And only then did I really get it. Maeve’s first attempt to get me to start a fight at court had been a distraction, then. She’d wanted me to focus on her, to unnerve me with her high-voltage psychic sex moves. That way I wouldn’t be thinking clearly enough to avoid it when the Redcap sprang his surprise.

Mab stared down at the Winter Lady for another silent minute. Then she smiled and bowed her head very slightly toward her daughter, the gesture one of acknowledgment.

“Well played,” Mab murmured. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. The ice rang with it.

Her eyes shifted to me, and though she was too far away for me to make out any details, I somehow knew exactly what the expression on her face meant: I had allowed myself to be drawn into this mess. I would have to be the one to get me out of it.

I was on my own.

Mab turned her gaze back to the rest of the room. “On this day of celebration of Our newest Knight’s birth, We give you greetings one and all, you lords and ladies of Winter. Welcome again to Our home. We can see that the celebrations are already well under way.” She settled back on her throne and placed one finger against her lips, as though she were fascinated with the scene before her. “We pray you, do not let Our entrance further disrupt them.” She lifted a languid hand. “It is Our desire that you continue the festivities.”

Oh, fun.

I turned back to face the Redcap, keeping his wingmen in my peripheral vision, and tried to think of something, anything, that would get both me and Sarissa out of this mess.

The rawhead gathered itself into a crouch again, clearly ready to pounce. Its mismatched set of claws and talons gouged at the floor in anticipation. The ogre flexed its hands open and closed once. It sounded like a popcorn popper. The Redcap already had his feet underneath him again, dragging Sarissa effortlessly up with him.

And I was wearing a tux.

Hell’s bells.

Clearly, if I wanted us to survive the evening I had to step up my game.

Mab’s voice came out as a throaty purr. “Music. Let Us see a dance.”

Chapter Seven

The odds here were long. Way long. All three deadly faeries stood ready to move, and no matter which of them I took on first, Sarissa’s outlook wasn’t good. The music began, low and quiet, with a slowly, slowly rising presence.

I needed some kind of edge, a game changer.

In fact . . .

A game changer was exactly what I needed.

Faeries are always underhanded and tricksy, true, and I’d overlooked that a few moments before. But there’s something else about faeries that runs absolutely bone deep: They love to play games.

“Why don’t we make this interesting?” I said out loud. “I trust you wouldn’t object to making a bit of a game of our dispute?”

Oh, the room got intense then, as maybe a thousand throats all inhaled at the same time. I could practically feel the air grow closer as all of those beings leaned very slightly toward me, their suddenly sharpened interest filling the cavern. The tempo of the music changed with it as well, now all suspended strings and muted percussion.

I felt a surge of emotion run through me, one that I knew was not my own—it was too pure, too primal, and it made my body do that thrumming thing again: Mab’s approval was fierce.

“But, wizard,” said the Redcap. “We’re already playing a game. One cannot change the rules simply because one is losing.”

“But one can change the stakes,” I replied. “What if you could get more out of it?”

The Redcap narrowed his eyes. “What more could you have to lose than your life?”

I gave him what I hoped was a patronizing smile, and then said, “Wait. Why am I talking to the tool instead of the person holding it?” I turned my back on the Redcap, gulped, and faced Maeve. “I’m offering you a prize, Winter Lady. Are you willing to hear me out?”

Maeve’s eyes sparkled more brightly than the jewels on her . . . midriff. She came to the edge of the platform and stood watching me.

“If he wins,” I said, jerking my head back at the Redcap, “I’ll go with you. Willingly.”

Maeve tilted her head. “And if you win?”