Iced

I look down at the Seelie hallow across his hands, one of four Fae talismans that only humans and those of the Light Court can touch. I could take it, drive the blade through his heart and be free of him forever.

I reach for my sword.

He pulls it back. “A little thanks might be nice.”

“Christian, you’re the Shit,” I say. “First, you saved my life and now you’re giving me back my sword when nobody else would even help me.”

“Dickhead sure didn’t.”

“He sure didn’t,” I agree and reach for my sword again. “Nobody cares about me like you do.”

“Och, lass, you’ve no bloody idea,” he says in a near-whisper. “I see you from the inside.”

“Can I have it now?” I want it so bad my palms itch.

He cocks his head and looks at me then swivels his head just like an Unseelie prince, like his head and neck aren’t put together quite right. It gives me chills. “You wouldn’t be thinking of killing me with it, now would you, lass?”

“Of course I would. But I’m not going to.” Not right now, anyway.

His smile is blinding. “Good, because I have another gift for you tonight. I know you like to save humans, so I’m going to help you. You may consider it one of many early wedding gifts.”

I blink. Huh? Either I manage to mask my astonishment or he doesn’t even notice the look on my face, because he just keeps talking.

“The Unseelie princes know the thing that came through the slit at the warehouse. They called it Gh’luk-ra d’J’hai.”

“What the heck does that mean?” Also, wedding gifts? Has he completely lost his marbles?

“It’s hard to translate. Unseelie have forty-nine words for ice, and there’s a nuance to d’J’hai I’m not sure I understand. Loosely, I’d call it the Hoar Frost King.”

“The Hoar Frost King,” I echo. “What is it? How do you kill it? Will the sword work?” Assuming anyone could even get close enough without freezing to death.

“I don’t know. But I know a place where we might find out. If there are answers anywhere, they’ll be there. Take the sword, lass. I don’t like you being unprotected. And I know you don’t want me hanging around all the time. Not that I blame you with the monster I’m becoming.”

I reach for it with both hands. I almost can’t contain myself. I’m trembling with excitement.

He leans in and lays the sword across my palms.

I close my eyes and sigh with ecstasy. The heft of cool steel in my hands is … well, better than I think sex must be! It’s like having both arms amputated and thinking you’ll have to learn to live without them, then getting them put back on completely fine again. I love my sword. I’m invincible with it. I don’t know one fecking ounce of fear with this thing in my hands. Deep inside where my blood runs a little stranger than other folks’, gears shift and slide back into perfect alignment. I am one with my blade. I’m complete.

“Och, and there’s the woman you’ll be one day,” Christian murmurs. “Passion enough to rule an army. Not that I have one. Yet.”

I might want an Unseelie prince on a leash but we need to get one thing straight. “I ain’t ever getting married.”

“Who said anything about getting married?”

“Dude, early wedding gifts.”

He looks at me like I’m nuts. “Who said anything about wedding gifts?”

“And I don’t want an Unseelie army to rule.”

“Army? Dani, my bonny will o’ the wisp, what are you talking about? I was telling you about the Hoar Frost King. Are you coming or not? It’s a fine night to be alive. We’ve a monster to catch.” He winks at me. “And tonight it’s not me.”

Dude. Sometimes that’s all you can say.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“I walk up on high and I step to the edge to see my world below”

A good leader knows her world.

I know nothing of my world.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I know that 152 paces beyond where I stand looking out of Rowena’s dressing room window there is a serene arbor of shaped topiary with a tiled pavilion, stone benches, and a reflecting pool that centuries-dead Grand Mistress Deborah Siobhan O’Connor built for meditation in times of turmoil. Far enough from the abbey to grant privacy, near enough to be used often, the silvery pool was long ago usurped by fat frogs on lily pads, and on a gentle summer night, in my old room three floors above Rowena’s and two to the south, they charmed me to sleep with their lazy baritone ah-uuups for many years.

I know also that there are 437 rooms in the abbey, in common-knowledge use. I know of an additional twenty-three on the main floor alone, with more on the other three, and undoubtedly countless more of which I know nothing at all. The rambling fortress is a hive of concealed passageways and hidden panels, stones and floorboards and fireplaces that move, if you’ve the secret to their operation. Then there is the Underneath. That is how I have always seen the abbey: the Upstairs proper where sunshine glitters on windowpanes and we bake and clean and are normal women, and the Underneath where a dark city twists and turns, with passageways and catacombs and vaults, and the sweet Lord only knows what all. There, those of us in the Haven become something else sometimes, something ancient in our blood.

I know that a quarter of a mile behind the abbey is a barn with 282 stalls where cows and horses and pigs were once penned. I know a brisk walk beyond it is a dairy that housed forty-odd milk cows, with a chilled larder where we made butter and cream. I know that there are seventeen rows of five beds making eighty-five tiered vegetable garden beds behind the dairy that once grew enough to sustain the abbey’s thousands of occupants plus more to sell in the village for a tidy sum.

All these things I know belonged to a different world.

The world I live in is no longer a world I know.

It is four-thirty in the morning. I pull my wrapper more closely around me and stare out the window at gnarled oaks casting long shadows, and moonbeams crisscrossing the lawn through latticed branches. My comforting view of the familiar shaped topiary is blocked by one of those dangerous aberrations of physics Mac calls Interdimensional Fairy Potholes; IFPs for short, an expedient abbreviation. This one has the funnel shape of a crystalline tornado and shines milky-lilac, its dull, faceted exterior reflecting the moonlight. In the light of day those pellucid facets are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding countryside, compounded by their extreme variations in shape, texture, and size. I have seen IFPs larger than our back field and smaller than my hand. This one is taller than a four-story building and as wide.