Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Aftermath"
Snow fell lightly around the abandoned Untermeyer estate, dusting the dirt and dead grass with white. The remains of the old fire-blackened mansion showed through the bare branches. A vast fireplace stood like a tower, overgrown with dead vines. Underneath what remained of a slate roof, the gentry of the Unseelie Court had hastily prepared camp. Roiben sat on a low couch and watched as Ethine entered his chambers. She moved gracefully, feet seeming to only lightly touch the ground.
He had composed himself, and when one of his folk's clawed hands happened to push her, causing her to stumble as she crossed the threshold, he only looked up as though annoyed by her clumsiness. Beside him were bowls of fruit, brought cold from dark caverns; cordials of clover and nettle; and tiny bird hearts still glossy with blood. He bit into a grape, not minding the crack of seeds against his teeth.
"Ethine. Be welcome.”
She frowned and opened her mouth, then hesitated. When she spoke, she merely said, "My Lady knows she dealt you a terrible blow.”
"I did not realize your Lady liked to brag, even by proxy. Come, have a bite of fruit, take something to cool your hot tongue.”
Ethine moved toward him stiffly and perched on the very edge of the lounge. He handed her an agate goblet. She took the shallowest of sips, then set it down.
"It chafes you to be polite to me," he said. "Perhaps Silarial should have taken your feelings into consideration when she chose her ambassador.”
Ethine contemplated the earthen ground, and Roiben stood.
"You begged her to let someone else go in your place, didn't you?" He laughed with vindictive certainty. "Perhaps even told her how much it hurt you to see what your brother had become?”
"No," Ethine said softly.
"No? Not in those words, but I'll wager you said it all the same. Now you see how she cares for those who serve her. You are one more thing with which to needle me and nothing more than that. She sent you despite your pleading.”
Ethine had closed her eyes tightly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers threaded together.
He took her glass and drank from it. She looked up, annoyed, the way she had once been annoyed when he'd pulled her hair. When they were children.
It hurt him to look at her as an enemy.
"I do not see that you care for my feelings any more than she does," Ethine said.
"But I do." He made his voice grave. "Come, deliver your message.”
"My Lady knows she dealt you quite a blow. She further knows that your control of the other faeries in your lands is spotty after the botched Tithe.”
Roiben leaned against the wall. "You even sound like her when you say it.”
"Don't jest. She wants you to fight her champion. If you win, she will leave your lands unmolested for seven years. If you lose, you will forfeit the Unseelie Court to her." Ethine looked at him with anguished eyes. "And you will die.”
Roiben barely heard her plea, he was so surprised by the Bright Queen's offer. "I cannot think but that this is either generosity or some cunning beyond my measure. Why should she give me this chance at winning when now I have near none?”
"She wants your lands hale and whole when she takes them, not weakened by a war. Too many great courts have fallen into rabble.”
"Do you ever imagine no court at all?" Roiben asked his sister quietly. "No vast responsibilities or ancient grudges or endless wars?”
"We have come to rely on humans too much," said Ethine, frowning. "Once, our kind lived apart from them. Now we rely on them to be everything from farmers to nursemaids. We live in their cast-off spaces and sup off their tables. If the courts fall, we will be parasites with nothing to call our own. This is the last of our old world.”
"I hardly think it is as serious as all that." Roiben looked past Ethine. He didn't want her to see his expression. "How about this. Tell Silarial that I will take her insulting and lopsided bargain with one variation. She must wager something too. She must put up her crown.”
"She will never give you—”
Roiben cut her off. "Not to me. To you.”
Ethine opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
"Tell her that if she loses, she makes you the Bright Queen of the Seelie Court. If I lose, I will give her both my crown and my life." It felt good to say, even if it were a rash wager.
Ethine rose. "You mock me.”
He made a dismissive gesture. "Don't be silly. You know very well that I do not.”
"She told me that if you wished to bargain, you must do so with her." She paced the room, gesturing wildly. "Why won't you just come back to us? Pledge yourself to Silarial, ask for her forgiveness. Tell her how hard it was to be Nicnevin's knight. She could not have known.”
"Silarial has spies everywhere. I very much doubt that she was ignorant of my suffering.”
"There was nothing for her to do! Nothing for any of us to do. She spoke often of her fondness for you. Let her explain. Let her be your friend again. Forgive each other." Her voice dropped low. "You don't belong in a place like this.”
"And why is that, dear sister? Why don't I belong here?”
Ethine groaned and slapped one open hand against the wall. "Because you are not a fiend!”
She reminded Roiben so much of his old, innocent self that for a moment he hated her, for a moment he only wanted to shake her and scream at her and hurt her before someone else did. "No? Is it not enough, what I have done? Is it not enough to have cut the throat of a nix that dared laugh too loud or too long before my mistress? Is it not enough to have hunted down a hob that stole a single cake from her table? Is it not enough to have been deaf to their entreaties, their begging?”
"Nicnevin commanded you.”
"Of course she did!" he shouted. "Again and again and again she commanded me. And now I am changed, Ethine. This is where I belong if I belong anywhere at all.”
"What about Kaye?”
"The pixie?" He gave her a quick look.
"You were kind to her. Why do you want me to think the worst of you?”
"I was not kind to Kaye," he said. "Ask her. I am not kind, Ethine. Moreover, I no longer have any interest in kindness. I mean to win.”
"If you were to win," Ethine said, her voice faltering, "I would be the Queen and you would be my enemy.”
He snorted. "Now don't go casting a pall over my best outcome." He held out the cup to her.
"Drink something. Eat. After all, it is natural for siblings to squabble, is it not?”
Ethine took the cup back from him and lifted it to her mouth, but he had left her only a single swallow.
Kaye cradled a large ThunderCats thermos of coffee as she walked to Corny's car. Luis followed, wrapped in a black coat. It hung voluminously from his shoulders, its inner lining torn to pieces. He had taken it out of the back of one of the closets, from a pile strewn with chunks of plaster.
She was glad to keep moving. As long as there was something in front of her, something still to do, things made sense.
"You got a map of upstate New York?" Luis asked Corny.
"I thought you knew the way," Corny said. "What kind of guide needs a map?”
"Can you two not—," Kaye started, but stopped in front of a newspaper machine. There, in a sidebar on the front page of the Times, was a picture of the cemetery on the hill by Kaye's house. The hill where Janet was buried. The hollow hill under which Roiben had been crowned. It had collapsed beneath the weight of an overturned truck. The photo showed smoke billowing up from the hill, fallen gravestones scattered like loose teeth.
Corny slid quarters into the machine and pulled out a paper. "A bunch of bodies were found, too burnt to identify. They're looking for dental matches. There was some speculation that maybe people were sledding when the truck hit. Kaye, what the fuck?”
Kaye touched the picture, running her fingers over the ink of the page. "I don't know.”
Luis frowned. "All those people. Can't the folk kill each other and leave us out of it?”
"Shut up. Just shut up," Kaye said, walking to Corny's car and jerking on the handle. Pieces of chrome came off on her singed fingers. She felt sick.
"I've got to unlock it," Corny said, opening the door for her with his keys. "Look, he's okay. I'm sure he's okay.”
She threw herself into the backseat, trying not to imagine Roiben dead, trying not to see his eyes dulled with mud. "No, you're not.”
"I'm calling my mom," Corny said. He started the car while he dialed, his gloved fingers awkward.
Luis pointed out the turns and Corny drove with the phone cradled against his shoulder. This time Kaye welcomed the iron sickness, welcomed the dizziness that made it hard to think.
"She says Janet's coffin wasn't disturbed, but the stone's gone." Corny pushed his phone closed. "Nobody saw anyone sledding that late, and according to the local paper the truck wasn't even supposed to be making deliveries in the area.”
"It's the war," Kaye said, putting her head down on the vinyl seat. "The faery war.”
"What's wrong with her?" she heard Luis ask softly.
Corny's eyes stayed on the road. "She was dating someone from the Unseelie Court.”
Luis looked back at her. "Dating?”
"Yeah," Corny said. "He gave her his class ring. It was a whole big thing.”
Luis snorted.
"Roiben," Corny said. His voice sounded too loud, as though the name were echoing off the walls of the car. Kaye closed her eyes, but the dread didn't ebb.
"That's not possible," said Luis.
"Why do you think Silarial wants to see me?" Kaye demanded. "Why do you think it's worth two messengers and a guarantee of protection? If he isn't dead already, she thinks I can help kill him.”
"No," said Luis. "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court.”
"Well, I'm not. He dumped me.”
"You can't get dumped by the Lord of the Night Court.”
"Oh, yes you can. You so completely can.”
"We're all on edge." Corny rubbed his face. "And it's a bad day when I'm the voice of reason. Relax. We're going to be stuck in this traffic for a long time.”
They drove upstate while the late afternoon sunlight filtered through the leafless trees and the new-fallen snow melted into slush. They passed strip malls hung with wreaths and garlands, while kicked-up road salt streaked tide lines onto the sides of cars.
Kaye looked out the window, counting silver cars, reading every sign. Trying not to think.
At sunset they finally pulled onto a dirt road and Luis told them to stop.
"Here," he said, and opened the door. In the fading light Kaye could see an ice-covered lake stretching out from a bank just beyond the lip of the road. Mist shrouded the center of the lake from view. Dead trees rose from the water, as though there had once been a forest where the lake now stood. A forest of drowned trees. The fading light turned the trunks to gold.
Wind whipped loose snow into Kaye's face. It stung like chips of glass.
"There's a boat," Luis said. "Come on.”
They walked downhill, shoes skidding on the ice.
Corny gasped and Kaye looked up from watching her feet. A young man stood in front of her, half obscured by the branches of a fir tree. She yelped.
He was as still as a statue, in a down jacket and a woolen cap. He stared past the three of them as though they weren't there. His skin was darker than Luis's, but his lips had gone pale with cold.
"Hello?" Luis said, waving his hand in front of the guy's face.
The man didn't move.
"Look," Corny said. He pointed through the evergreen trees to a woman in her fifties standing by herself. Her ginger hair fluttered in the slight breeze. Squinting, Kaye could see other spots of color along the lake. Other humans, waiting at attention for some signal.
Kaye's gaze dropped to the man's chapped fingers. "Frostbite.”
"Wake up!" Luis shouted. When that got no response, he slapped the man across one cheek.
The frozen man's gaze shifted suddenly. Without a trace of expression he threw Luis to the ground and stomped on his stomach.
Luis groaned in pain, rolling to his side, his body curling up defensively.
Corny threw himself at the man. They fell backward, cracking through the thin ice of the lake as they splashed into the shallow water.
Kaye rushed forward, trying to pull Corny onto the shore. A hand closed on her arm.
She turned to see a creature, as tall and thin as a scarecrow, shrouded in tattered black fabric that whipped through the air. His eyes were a dead, pupil-less white, and his teeth were clear as glass.
Kaye's scream died in her throat. Her nails scrabbled at the creature's arm and he let her go, pushing past. He moved so nimbly that by the time she'd turned her head, his skeletal hand was on the frozen man's throat.
Corny splashed up onto the bank and collapsed in the snow.
The creature pressed a thumb against the man's forehead and hissed some words that Kaye didn't know. The frozen man moved slowly to resume standing like an indifferent sentry, clothing soaked through and dripping.
"What do you want?" Kaye demanded, taking off her coat and wrapping it around a shivering Corny. "Who are you?”
"Sorrowsap," said the creature, bowing his head. His hair was thin and coiled like the tangle of roots beneath a weed. "At your service.”
"Great! That's just fucking great." Luis held his stomach.
Corny shuddered reflexively and pulled the coat tighter.
"My service?" Kaye asked. Looking across the forest, she saw the other human figures walk back to their original positions. They had been coming, had been perhaps only moments away from entering the fight.
"The King of the Unseelie Court commands that I guard your steps. I have followed you since you left his court.”
"Why would he do that?" Kaye blurted. She thought of Roiben covered in collapsed dirt, his face as pale as a marble tombstone, and she closed her eyes against the image. He should have been protecting himself and been less worried about her.
Sorrowsap tilted his head. "I serve his whims. I need not understand them.”
"But how could you stop the frozen people like that?" Luis asked. "This barrier has to have been created to keep you out more than us.”
At the question, Sorrowsap smiled, his clear wet teeth making his mouth look poisonous. He reached into a sack beneath his robes and threw down what at first seemed like green leather lined in red silk. Then Kaye saw the fine hairs dotting the surface and the sticky wetness underneath. Skin. The skin of a faery.
"She told me," said Sorrowsap.
Luis made a noise in the back of his throat and turned away like he was going to retch.
"You can't—I don't want—" Kaye said, furious and terrified. "You killed her because of me.”
Sorrowsap said nothing.
"Never do that! Never!" She walked up to him, hands fisted. Before she thought better of it, she slapped him. Her hand stung.
He didn't even flinch. "Just because I am to protect you does not give you governance over me.”
"Kaye," Luis said stiffly. "It's done.”
Kaye looked toward Luis, but he avoided meeting her eyes.
"I'm freezing," Corny said. "As in 'to death.' Let's get where we're going.”
"All these people are going to die from the cold," Kaye said, although it seemed that, lately, her trying to make things better had only succeeded in making them worse. "We can't just leave them.”
Corny took out his phone. "Let's call the—”
Luis shook his head. "I don't think we should lead more victims out here. That's what you'd be doing if the police came.”
"I'm not getting reception anyway," Corny said. "You break curses. Can't you do anything for them?”
Luis shook his head. "This is way beyond what I know how to handle.”
"We have to dry this guy off," Kaye said. "Maybe cover his fingers before they get worse. Sorrowsap, can you keep him . . . deactivated?”
"You have no governance over me." Yellow eyes watched her with as little expression as an owl's.
"I didn't think I did," Kaye said. "I'm asking for your help.”
"Let them die," said Sorrowsap.
She sighed. "Can't you snap them out of it? Remove whatever enchantment is keeping them like this—remove it permanently? Then they could just go home.”
"No," he said, "I cannot.”
"I am going to help this guy. If he attacks me, you are going to have to stop him. And if you don't keep him turned off, he's going to attack.”
Sorrowsap's face seemed expressionless, but one of his hands curled into a fist. "Very well, pixie-who-has-my-King's-favor." He strode to the frozen man and placed his thumb on the man's forehead once more.
Kaye sat down in the snow and pulled off her own boots as Sorrowsap chanted the unfamiliar words. Taking off her socks, she wrapped them over the man's hands. Luis draped the guy in his coat and ducked out of the way of a swinging arm when the hissing chant faltered.
"It's not going to help," Corny said. "These people are screwed.”
Kaye stepped back. The cold felt like razors cutting her skin. Even wearing her coat, Corny's lips had gone blue. The frozen man would die with all the others.
"The Seelie Court's close," Luis said.
"There I cannot follow," said Sorrowsap. "If you go, you will be without my protection and that would cause my Lord deep displeasure.”
"We're going," Kaye said.
"As you say." Sorrowsap bowed his head. "I will wait for you here.”
Kaye looked at Corny. "You don't have to come. You'd warm up quickly in the car.”
"Don't be an idiot," he told her through chattering teeth.
"The next leg of the journey means getting into that,” Luis said, pointing along the shore. For a moment Kaye saw nothing. Then the wind rippled the water, setting something to rock and glisten in the moonlight. A boat, carved entirely from ice, its prow shaped like a swan ready to soar into flight. "The Bright Lady didn't exactly tell me about her frozen zombie sentries, so I'm thinking she's full of surprises.”
"Oh, great. That'll warm us right up," Corny said, stumbling over the frozen snow.
Kaye stepped gingerly onto the slippery surface of the boat and sat down. The seat was cold against her thighs. "So, would this water fix Corny's curse?”
Corny got in next to her. "I don't—”
"Corny?" Luis frowned.
"Neil," Kaye said. "I mean fix Neil's curse.”
"No," Luis pushed the boat hard and it slid out onto the water. Luis hopped in, making them rock wildly as he sat. He looked over at Corny, and there was something considering in his gaze. "Too still and not salt.”
They didn't paddle, but a strange current propelled them across the lake, past the drowned trees. Beneath the dripping hull of the boat the water was choked with vibrant green duckweed, as though a forest grew underneath the waves.
Green and gold fish darted under the boat, visible though the ice hull. Fish had to keep swimming to breathe, Kaye thought. She knew how they felt. There was nothing safe to think about, not Roiben, not her mother, not all the people slowly dying on the far shore. There was nothing to do but keep going until despair finally froze her.
"Kaye—check it out," Corny said. "It's like from a book.”
Through the mist, Kaye saw the outline of an island filled with tall firs. As they got closer, the sky grew lighter and the air became warm. Although there was no sun, the shore was lit bright as day.
Corny glanced at his watch and then held it out to show her. The digital numbers had stopped on December 21 at 6:13:52 p.m. "Bizarre.”
"At least it's warmer," Kaye said, rubbing his arms through the coat, hoping she could rub the chill out of him.
"That would be better news if we weren't in a boat made of ice.”
"I don't know about you all," Luis said. He smiled slightly, almost like he was embarrassed. "But I can't even feel my ass anymore. Swimming might be better.”
Corny laughed, but Kaye couldn't smile. She was putting Corny in danger. Again.
The last of the haze blew off and Kaye saw that each tree on the island was white with cocoon silk in place of snow. She thought she could see masses of caterpillars writhing at the peaks of the trees, and she shuddered.
The boat dug into the soft mud. They climbed out, feet sinking slightly so there was a sucking noise with each step across the shore.
Stupid mud, Kaye thought. Stupid boat. Stupid faery island. She found herself suddenly exhausted. Stupid, stupid me.
There was music, distant and faint, accompanied by the sound of laughter. They followed it into a grove of flowering cherry trees, the blooms blue instead of pink, petals falling like a shower of poison with every slight breeze.
She thought of something the Thistlewitch had told her when she had explained to Kaye that she was a changeling: The child's fey nature becomes harder and harder to conceal as it grows. In the end, they all return to Faerie.
That couldn't be true. Kaye didn't want it to be true.
Corny shivered once, hard, like his body was shaking off the cold, and toed off his sodden and mud-covered shoes. It was warm, but not hot, on the island—so perfect a temperature, in fact, that it was as though there were no weather at all.
A few of the Bright folk strolled on the grass. A boy in a skirt of silver scale mesh held the hand of a pixie with wide azure wings. Clouds of tiny buzzing faeries hovered in the air like gnats. A knight in white painted armor looked in Kaye's direction. A singing voice, heartbreakingly lovely, drifted down to where she stood. From the branches of the trees, pointed faces stared down.
A knight with eyes the color of turquoises walked up to meet them and bowed deeply. "My Lady is pleased by your arrival. She asks that you come and sit with her." He glanced at her companions. "Only you.”
Kaye nodded, worrying her lip with her teeth.
"Beneath the tree." He gestured toward a massive willow, its drooping branches covered with struggling cocoons. Every now and again one of the silken purses would rip open and a white bird would flutter loose and take flight.
Kaye made herself lift one of the heavy leathery branches and duck underneath.
Light filtered through the leaves to glimmer on the faces of Silarial and her courtiers. The Lady of the Bright Court did not sit on a throne, but rather on a collection of tapestry cushions heaped upon the ground. Other faeries were strewn about like ornaments, some of them horned, others thin as sticks and sprouting leaves where hair might have been.
Silarial's hair was parted in two soft waves at her brow, the strands shining like copper, and for a moment Kaye thought of the pennies that had fallen from the man's mouth in Luis's apartment. The Bright Lady smiled, and she was so stunning that Kaye forgot to speak, forgot to bow, forgot to do anything but stare.
It hurt to look at her.
Perhaps like great pain, great loveliness must be forgotten.
"Will you have something?" asked Silarial, gesturing to bowls of fruit and pitchers of juice, their surfaces beading from the chill of the contents. "Unless it is not to your taste.”
"I'm sure it is very much to my taste." Kaye bit into a white fruit. Black nectar stained her lips dark and ran over her chin.
The courtiers laughed behind their long-fingered hands and Kaye wondered whom exactly she had been trying to impress. She was letting herself be baited.
"Good. Now take off that silly glamour." The Lady turned to the faeries that lounged beside her. "Leave us.”
The assemblage rose lazily, lifting their harps and goblets, pillows and books. They made their way out from beneath the tree as haughtily as offended cats.
Silarial turned on the pillows. Kaye sat at the very edge of the pile of cushions and wiped the black juice from her mouth with her sleeve. She let the glamour fall from her, and when she saw her own green fingers, she was surprised by her relief at not having to hide them.
"You mislike me," Silarial said. "Not without reason.”
"You tried to have me killed," Kaye said.
"One of my people—any one of my people— was a small price to pay to trap the Lady of the Night Court.”
"I'm not one of your people," Kaye said.
"Of course you are." Silarial smiled. "You were born in these lands. You belong here.”
Kaye had no answer. She said nothing. She wished she did know who had birthed her and who had switched her, but she didn't want to hear it from the Lady's lips.
Silarial plucked a plum from one of the plates, looking up at Kaye through her lashes. "This war began before I came into the world. Once, there were little courts, each huddled together near a circle of thorn trees or beside a meadow of clover. But as time passed and our places thinned, we drew together in larger numbers. My mother won folk to her with the keen edge of her blade and her tongue.
"But not my father. He and his people dwelt here in the mountains and they had no use for her or her kin, at least at first. In time, however, she fascinated even him, becoming his consort, gaining governance over his lands and even bearing two children by him.”
"Nicnevin and Silarial," Kaye said.
The Bright Lady nodded. "Each girl as unlike the other as two of the folk could be. Nicnevin and our mother were of a kind, with their taste for blood and pain. I was as our father, content with less brutal amusements.”
"Like freezing a ring of humans to death around a lake?" Kaye asked her.
"I do not find that particularly diverting, merely necessary," Silarial said. "Nicnevin killed our father when he gave a boon to a piper she preferred to torment. I am told our mother laughed when my sister explained how it had been done, but then, death was my mother's meat and drink. I served her a banquet of my grief." The Bright Queen looked upward, into the wriggling shadows of the willow. "I will not let my father's lands fall to my sister's court.”
"But they don't want your lands. Your sister's dead.”
Silarial looked surprised for a moment. Her fist tightened around the plum. "Yes, dead. Dead before my plan could break her. I spent all the long years of peace between our people building my strategy and biding my time, and she died before my bereavement could be sated. I will not give her court the chance to plan as I planned. I will take her lands and her people and that will be my vengeance. It will secure the safety of all of the Bright Court.
"This is your home, whether you wish it or no, and your war. You must pick a side. I know of your pledge to Roiben—your declaration—and he was right to rebuff you. He went to the Unseelie Court as a hostage for peace. Do you think he wants you to be tied to them as his consort would be? Do you think he wishes you to suffer as he's suffered?”
"Of course not," Kaye snapped.
"I know what it is to give up something you desire. Before Roiben left for the Unseelie Court, he was my lover—did you know that?" She frowned. "Passion made him occasionally forget his place, but oh, do I regret giving him up.”
"You forget his place now.”
Silarial laughed suddenly. "Let me tell you a story of Roiben when he was in my court. I think of it often.”
"Sure," Kaye said. She felt strangled by the things she could not say. She didn't believe Silarial meant anything but harm, but to let the Queen know that would be foolish. And she did want to hear any story about Roiben. The way that Silarial spoke gave her hope he was still alive.
Some of the tension went out of her, some of the dread.
"Once there was a fox that got tangled in a thornbush near our revels. Tiny sprites darted around, trying to free it. The fox didn't understand the faeries were being helpful. It only understood that it was in pain. It snapped at the sprites, trying to catch them in its teeth, and as it moved, the thorns dug deeper into its fur. Roiben saw the fox and went over to keep it still.
"He could have held its muzzle and let it twist its body deeper into the bush. He could have let go of it when it bit him. He did neither of those things. He let the fox bite his hand, again and again until the sprites freed it from the thorns.”
"I don't get the point of the story," Kaye said. "Are you saying that Roiben lets himself get hurt because he thinks he's being helpful? Or are you saying Roiben used to be good and kind, but now he's a prick?”
Silarial tilted her head, brushing back a stray lock of her hair. "I am wondering if you aren't like that fox, Kaye.”
"What?" Kaye stood up. "I'm not the one who's hurting him.”
"He would have died for you at the Tithe. Died for a pixie he'd met only days before. Then he refused to join me when we might have united the courts and forged a real peace—an enduring peace. Why do you think that is? Maybe because he was too busy disentangling you and yours from thornbushes.”
"Maybe he didn't see it that way," Kaye said, but she could feel her cheeks go hot and her wings twitch. "There could still be peace, you know. If you would just stop biting his hand. He doesn't want to fight you.”
"Oh, come now." Silarial smiled and sank her teeth into the plum. "I know you've seen the tapestry of me he slashed to pieces. He doesn't just want to fight me. He wants to destroy me." The way she said "destroy," it sounded pleasurable. "Do you know what happened to the fox?”
Kaye snorted. "I'm pretty sure you're going to tell me.”
"It ran off, stopping only to lick its cuts, but the next morning it was caught in the bushes again, thorns buried deep in its flesh. All Roiben's pain for nothing.”
"What do you want me to do?" Kaye asked. "What did you bring me here for?”
"To show you that I am no monster. Of course Roiben despises me. I sent him to the Unseelie Court. But he can come back now. He is far too biddable to lead them.
"Join us. Join the Seelie Court. Help me show Roiben. Once he gets past his anger, he will see that it would be best if he ceded control of his court to me.”
"I can't—" Kaye hated that she was tempted.
"I think you can. Convince him, that is. He trusts you. He gave you his name." Silarial's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes did.
"I'm not using that.”
"Not even for his own good? Not even for peace between our courts?”
"You mean make him surrender. That's not the same thing as peace.”
"I mean convince him to surrender the terrible burden of the Night Court," Silarial said. "Kaye, I am not so vain that I cannot appreciate that you outwitted me once, nor so foolish that I cannot understand your desire to preserve your own life. Let us be at odds no more.”
Kaye sank her nails into her palm, hard. "I don't know," she managed to say. It was a seductive thought that the war might not go on, that everything could be so easily resolved.
"Think on it. Should he no longer be the Lord of the Night Court, your pledge would be void. You would never have to complete the impossible quest. Declarations are only made to Lords or Ladies.”
Kaye wanted to say that it didn't matter, but it did. Her shoulders slumped.
"Were you willing to help me, I could arrange for you to see him, even to speak with him, despite the declaration. He is on his way here now." Silarial stood. The soft susurrations of her gown were the only sounds under the canopy of branches as she crossed to where Kaye stood. "There are other ways to persuade you, but I do not like to be cruel.”
Kaye took a quick breath. He was alive. Now she just had to do what she'd come for. "I want the human Kaye. Ellen's daughter. The real me. Switch her back. If you do that, I'll think about what you said. I'll consider it.”
After all, it wasn't like Kaye was really agreeing to anything. Not really.
"Done," said Silarial, reaching out to stroke her cheek. Her fingers were cool. "After all, you are one of mine. You had only to ask. And, of course, you will have the hospitality of the Bright Court while you consider.”
"Of course," Kaye echoed faintly.