“And they didn’t know that about me?”
“They cannot judge others except by their actions,” Lea said. “Hence their treaty with the Fomor, who had not yet crossed their paths. My actions have shown me to be someone who must be treated with caution. You had … a clean record with them. And you are smoking hot. All is well, your city saved, and now a group of wealthy, skilled, and influential beings owes you a favor.” She paused for a moment and then leaned toward me slightly. “Perhaps some expression of gratitude is in order.”
“From me to you?” I asked. “For that?”
“I think your evening turned out quite well,” Lea said, her eyebrows raised. “Goodness, but you are a difficult child. How he manages to endure your insolence I will never know. You probably think you have earned some sort of reward from me.” She rose and turned to go.
“Wait!” I said suddenly.
She paused.
I think my heart had stopped beating. I started shaking, everywhere. “You said that you know Harry. Not knew him. Know. Present tense.”
“Did I?”
“You said you don’t know how he manages to put up with me. Manages. Present tense.”
“Did I?”
“Auntie,” I asked her, and I could barely whisper. “Auntie, is Harry … Is he alive?”
Lea turned to me very slowly, and her green eyes glinted with wicked knowledge. “I did not say that he was alive, child. And neither should you. Not yet.”
I bowed my head and started crying. Or laughing. Or both. I couldn’t tell. Lea didn’t wait around for it. Emotional displays made her uncomfortable.
Harry. Alive.
I hadn’t killed him.
Best reward ever.
“Thank you, Auntie,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
I really enjoyed writing, in the previous tale, from Molly’s viewpoint at one of the lowest points of her life. I wanted to keep following her personal story after the events of Ghost Story, where she faces an uncertain future but is beginning to rebuild who she is and what she wants out of her life. Molly has always had issues with her mother—and now, as the new Winter Lady of the Unseelie Court, she has found herself faced with one of the more terrifying mother figures imaginable in Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. I wanted to get a look at that interplay, but I had to write the story to do it.
I also wanted to get a little bit more into the actual role of the Winter Lady in the circles of power that are the Faerie Courts, and why her role is so important, and why it was so distressing that Maeve had been shirking her duties for such a long time.
And finally, I wanted to show more of Molly, who has been through so much and learned such bitter lessons—and to demonstrate why it might just be possible that Mab may have bitten off more than she could chew in the inestimable Miss Carpenter.
“You understand what you must do,” said Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness.
It wasn’t phrased as a question.
I gripped the handrail on the side of the yacht and held on as it whumped and thumped through choppy water on the way toward a bleak shore. “I get it,” I told her. “Collect the tribute from the Miksani.”
Mab stared at me for a long moment, and that made me uncomfortable. It takes a lot to make that happen. I mean, you should see the stares my mother can give—Charity Carpenter is terrifying. And I got to where I could shake those off like nothing.
“Lady Molly,” Mab said. “Regard me.”
Not Look at me. Oh no. Not nearly dramatic enough.
I looked up at her.
We weren’t around any mortals at the moment, but we were technically moving through the mortal world, among the Aleutians, and Mab was dressed in mortal clothing. The Queen of the Winter Court of the Fae wore white furs and a big, poufy white hat like you might see on a Northern European socialite in an old Bond movie. No mortal alive would have been wearing white heels on the frozen, dripping, bucking deck of the yacht in those seas, in the beginnings of a howling winter storm, but she was Mab. She would take the path of least resistance when practical, but her willingness to tolerate the possible alarm and outrage of the human race extended only so far. She would wear what she felt like wearing. And at the moment, it would seem that she mostly felt like wearing an expression of stern disapproval.
My own clothing, I knew, disappointed her gravely, but I was used to doing that to mother figures. I was dressed in flannel-lined winter jeans and large, warm boots, with several layers of sweaters, a heavy bomber jacket, and an old hunter’s cap with ear flaps that folded down. Practical, sturdy, and serviceable.
I didn’t need them any more than Mab needed the furs, but it seemed like it would be simpler to blend in—to a point, anyway.
“Appearances matter, young lady,” Mab said, her voice hard-edged. “First impressions matter.”
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” I said, rolling my eyes.
I might have sounded a bit like this guy I know. Maybe a little. Mab stared at me for a long second before she gave me a wintry smile. “Wisdom wrapped in witless defiance.”
“Witless,” I sputtered.
“I am offering you advice,” Queen Mab said. “You have been a Queen of Faerie for less than a week. You would be wise to listen.”
The yacht began to slow and then slewed to one side, throwing a wave of icy spray toward the rocky shore. It handled too well to be a mortal craft, but out here, where few eyes could see, the Sidhe who piloted her were only so willing to be inconvenienced by seas that would have daunted experienced mortal captains and advanced mortal vessels.
Not mortal, I told myself sternly, in my inner, reasonable voice. Human. Human. Just like me.
“Thanks for that,” I said to Mab. “Look, I get it. My predecessor hasn’t performed her duties properly for, like, two hundred years. I’ve got a huge backlog. I’ve got a lot of work facing me. I understand already.”
Mab gave me another long stare before saying, “You do not understand.” Then she turned and walked back toward her cabin, the one that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. “But you will.”
I frowned after her for a second, then glanced at the thrashing twenty yards of sea between myself and the land and asked, “How am I supposed to go ashore?”
Mab moved her eyes in what might have been an impatient glance, if she’d actually moved them all the way to me, and went into her cabin and shut the door behind her without a word.
I was left standing on the pitching deck. I glanced up at the Sidhe piloting the yacht. They were both male, both tall, both dark of hair and eye. Which was not my type. Even a little, dammit. One noticed me and met my gaze boldly, his mouth curling up into a little smirk, and my heart went pitty-pat. Or something did. I mean, he was a damned attractive man.
Except he’s not a man. He’s one of the Sidhe. He’s picked a look he knows you like for his glamour, and he’d cheerfully do things with you no human could possibly be flexible enough to manage, but he wouldn’t care.
My reasonable voice sounded a lot like my mom’s, which was more than a bit spooky.
Besides, I didn’t need him to care. I just needed him to look pretty while I tore his clothes off and …
I shook my head and looked away, out at the ocean. Being the Winter Lady brought a host of challenges with it. One of the most annoying was what had happened to my libido, which had never exactly lacked for health. These days, I was like an adolescent boy bunny rabbit. Everything had sex in it, no matter how much it didn’t or how hard I tried not to notice it. It was annoying, because I had a job to do.
The two extremely sexy Sidhe stared at me, being all smoldery and distracting, but not doing a damned thing to help me get ashore or prove myself on my first mission for the Queen of Air and Darkness. And since the last Winter Lady who had failed Mab wound up with a bullet in her skull, I figured I’d better not screw it up.
Which is what she’d meant about first impressions. It had been a polite threat, and, as I realized that, my legs felt a little wobbly.