Cold Days

someone manages to do it.”

“Love,” Titania said. She had keyed on the word. “Is that what happens here?”

“The guys who come here for anonymous sex?” I sighed. “Not so much. I think that part’s a little sad. I mean, anytime sex becomes something so . . . damned impersonal, it’s a shame. And I don’t think it’s good for them. But it’s not me they’re hurting.”

“Why should that matter?”

I just looked at Titania for a second. Then I said, “Because people should be free. And as long as something they want to do isn’t harming others, they should be free to do it. Obviously.”

“Is it?” Titania asked. “It would not seem to be, judging from the state of the mortal world.”

“Yeah. A lot of people don’t get that,” I said. “They get caught up in right and wrong. Or right and left. But none of that stuff matters if people aren’t free.”

Titania studied me intently.

“Why are you asking me about that, of all things?” I asked.

“Because it felt appropriate. Because my instincts told me that your answers would tell me something about you that I needed to know.” Titania took a deep breath. “What think you of my sister?”

I debated for a second: polite answer or honest one?

Honest. It’s almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight. “I thought Mab’s wrath was pretty bad until I found out what her affection was like.”

At that, I think Titania almost smiled. “Oh?”

“She nursed me out of bed by trying to kill me every day for eleven weeks. She scares the hell out of me.”

“You do not love her?”

“Not by any definition of the word I’ve ever heard,” I said.

“And why do you serve her?”

“Needed her help,” I said. “That was her price. Sure as hell wasn’t because I like the decor in Arctis Tor.”

Titania nodded. She said, “You are unlike the other monsters she has shaped for herself over the centuries.”

“Uh. Thank you?”

She shook her head. “I have done nothing for you, Harry Dresden.” She pursed her lips. “In many ways, she and I are alike. In many more ways, we are entirely different. Do you know what my sister believes in?”

“Flashy entrances,” I said.

Titania’s lips actually twitched. “In reason.”

“Reason?”

“Reason. Logic. Calculation. The cold numbers. The supremacy of the mind.” Titania’s eyes became distant. “It is another place where we differ. I prefer to follow the wisdom of the heart.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

Titania lifted her hand and spoke a single word, and the air rang with power. The ground buckled, ripping my circle apart and flinging me from my feet onto my back.

“Meaning,” she said, her voice hot and furious, “that you murdered my daughter.”

Birds flew shrieking in every direction as if released from a centrifuge. Titania raised a hand, and a bolt of lightning fell from the tornadic sky and blew a smoking crater the size of my head in the ground a yard away.

“You dare to come here! To ask for me to interfere in my sister’s business! You who gave my Aurora an iron death!”

I tried to get up, only to have Titania grab the front of my jacket and lift me off the ground. With one hand. She held me straight up, over her head, so that her fist was pressed against my chest.

“I could kill you in a thousand ways,” she snarled, her opalescent eyes whirling with colors. “I could scatter your bones to the far corners of the earth. I could feed you to my garden and make you scream the entire while. I could visit torments on you that would make Lloyd Slate’s fate seem kind by comparison. I want to eat your heart.”

I hung there over the furious Queen of Summer and knew, knew for certain, that there was not a damned thing I could do to save my own life. I can do things, sure—remarkable things. But Titania had no more to fear from me than a polar bear does a field mouse. My heartbeat became something close to a solid tone, and it was all I could do not to wet my freaking pants.

And then something really unsettling happened.

Tears filled her eyes. They came forth and spilled over her cheeks. Titania seemed to sag. She lowered me to the ground and released me.

“I could do these things. But none of them,” she whispered, “would give me my daughter back. None of them would fill the emptiness within me. It took time, but Elder Gruff’s wise counsel helped me to see that truth.”

Hell’s bells. Elder Gruff had spoken on my behalf? I owed that guy a beer.

“I am not a fool, wizard. I know what she had become. I know what had to be done.” More tears fell, shining like diamonds. “But she was mine. I cannot forget that you took her from me. I cannot forgive you for that. Take your life and leave this place.”

I sounded a little unsteady to my own ears when I spoke. “If the Well is ruptured, your realm stands to lose as much as the mortal one does.”

“The wisdom of my heart tells me to hate you, mortal,” Titania said, “whatever my reason might say. I will not help you.”

“No? What does your heart tell you is going to happen if those things in the Well are set free? They’re immortals. The fire in the fail-safe might keep them down for a while, but they’ll be back.”

Titania didn’t turn to face me. Her voice was weary. “My heart tells me that all things end.” She paused. “But this thing I will tell a Winter Knight who believes in freedom: You must learn greater discretion. The power you have come to know and fear has a name. One should know the proper names of things.”

She turned and walked toward me. My body told me to run like hell, but I told it to shut up, that my legs were shaking too hard anyway. Titania leaned up onto her toes and whispered, very close to my ear.

“Nemesis,” she breathed. “Speak it carefully—or it may hear you.”

I blinked. “It . . . it what?”

With that she turned and began walking away. “Fare thee well, wizard. You say that people should be free. I agree. I will not shackle you with my wisdom. Make your choices. Choose what the world is to be. I care not. There is little light left in it for me, thanks to you.”

A relatively small flock of birds, only a few hundred, blurred by between me and Titania. When they had passed, she was gone.

I stood there, letting my heart rate slow down, along with the spinning clouds. I felt like crap. When I’d killed Aurora, there hadn’t been much in the way of a choice—but I’d still taken someone’s little girl away from her forever. I felt like a man in a rowboat with only one oar. No matter how hard I worked, I wasn’t really getting anywhere.

But at least I had a name now, for the force the Ladies had told me about.

Nemesis.

And it was aware.

The rain that had been held back abruptly began to come down in a torrent, and I sourly suspected that Titania had made sure I was going to get drenched. She hadn’t killed me, at least not yet. But I knew she sure as hell didn’t like me.

Night was coming on fast, and when it got here, all hell was going to break loose. And that was a best-case scenario.

I bowed my head, hunched my shoulders against the rain, and started out of the Magic Hedge.

Chapter Thirty-one