He stopped in front of me, down to his own jeans. Then he kept walking toward me until our bodies met, and he pressed me gently down to the bed behind us. My eyes closed as I let out a little groan when I felt the heat of his skin against my chest, and I flung myself into the kiss that came next like the world was about to vanish into a nuclear apocalypse.
The sudden explosion of desire that radiated out from him felt like sinking into a steaming-hot bath, and I reveled in it, my own ardor rising. My hands slid over his chest and shoulders, reached around to his back. He was all tight muscle, heat, and pure passion. His mouth wandered to my throat, then to my shoulders and breasts, and I let out groans of need, encouraging him.
Molly, said the voice of my better reason.
His mouth left me for a second as he pulled off my boots. I arched up to help him remove my jeans, and heard him kicking off his own. With an impatient growl, I sat up and ripped at his belt.
Molly, said reason again. Hello?
I flung the belt across the room, to tell reason to shut up, and tore at his jeans. I had never wanted anything so badly in my life as I wanted Carlos naked and pressed against me.
This isn’t you, said reason.
I pushed his jeans down past his hips. God, he was beautiful. I took his hand and leaned back on the bed, drawing him with me. “Now,” I said. My voice came out thick and husky. “No more waiting. Now.”
He let out a groan as he kissed me again, and I felt him start to touch and then—
And then I was sitting on the floor of the shower, shuddering, hot water pouring down around me.
Wait.
What?
What the hell?
I looked down at the water. The drain stopper was down, and it was seven or eight inches deep.
And pink.
Oh, God.
I looked at my hands. My nails … my nails looked longer. Harder.
And there was red under them.
What had just happened?
I stood up and left the shower, dripping wet, not bothering to stop for a towel. I hurried back out of the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, shocked.
The room had been wrecked. The mattress was against the far wall—and the door. It had been torn in half. The lamps were out, and the slice of light from the bathroom lights provided the only illumination in a stark column. What I could see of the furniture had been trashed. Part of the bed frame was broken.
And Carlos …
He lay on the floor, covered in blood. One of his legs was broken, the pointy bits of his shattered shin thrusting out from the skin. His face was swelling up beneath the blood, his eyes puffed closed. He was covered in claw marks, rakes that oozed blood. He lay at a strange angle, twitching in pain, one hand clutching with blind instinct at his back.
His injured back. His weakness.
I stared down at my hands in utter horror, at the blood beneath my nails.
I had done this.
I had used his weakness against him.
“Mab,” I breathed. I started choking and sobbing. “Mab! Mab!”
Mab can appear in a thunderclap if she wants to. This entrance was much less dramatic. A light in the far corner of the room clicked on and revealed the Queen of Winter, seated calmly in the chair in the corner. She regarded me with distant, opalescent eyes and lifted a single eyebrow.
“What happened?” I asked. “What happened?”
Mab regarded Carlos with a calm countenance. “What will happen every time you attempt to be with a man,” she replied.
I stared at her. “What?”
“Three Queens of Summer; three Queens of Winter,” she said, that alien gaze returning to me. “Maiden, mother, and crone. You are the maiden, Lady Molly. And for you to be otherwise, to become a mother, would be to destroy the mantle of power you wear. The mantle protected itself—as it must.”
“What?”
She tilted her head and stared at me. “It is all within Winter Law. I suggest you spend a few hours each day meditating on it in the future. In time you will gain an adequate understanding of your limits.”
“How could you do this?” I demanded. The tears on my cheeks felt like streaks of hot wax. “How could you do this?”
“I did not,” Mab said calmly. “You did.”
“Dammit, you know what I mean!”
“You have been gifted with great and terrible power, young lady,” Mab said in an arch tone. “Did you really think you could simply go about your life as if you were a mortal girl?”
“You could have warned me!”
“When I tried, you had no inclination to listen. Only to jest.”
“You bitch,” I said, shaking my head. “You could have told me. You horrible bitch.” I turned to go back into the bathroom, to get towels and go to Carlos’s aid.
When I turned, Mab was right behind me, and her nose all but pressed against mine. Her eyes were flickering through shades of color and bright with cold anger. Her voice came out in a velvet murmur more terrifying than any enraged shriek. “What did you say to me?”
I flinched back, suddenly filled with fear.
I couldn’t meet her eyes.
I didn’t speak.
After a moment, some of the tension went out of her. “Yes,” she said, her voice calm again. “I could have told you. I elected to teach you. I trust this has made a significant first impression.”
“I have to help him,” I said. “Please step aside.”
“That will not be necessary,” Mab said. “He will not be in danger of dying for some hours. I have already dispatched word to the White Council. Their healers will arrive momentarily to care for him. You will leave at once.”
“I can’t just leave him like this,” I said.
“That is exactly what you can do,” Mab said. Her voice softened by a tiny fraction of a degree. “You are no longer what you were, child. You must adapt to your new world. If you do not, you will cause terrible suffering—not least of all to yourself.” She tilted her head, as if listening, and said, “The storm is breaking. You have your duty.”
I clenched my jaw and said, “I can’t just leave him there alone.”
Mab blinked once, as if digesting my words. “Why not?”
“Because … because it’s not what decent people do.”
“What has that to do with either of us?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. I am not going to be like that.”
Mab pursed her lips and exhaled slowly through her nose. “Stubborn. Like our Knight.”
“Damned right I am,” I said.
I’m not sure you can micro-roll your eyes. But Mab can. “Very well. I will sit with him until the wizards arrive.”
I turned to regard Carlos’s broken form lying on the floor. Then I hurried into enough clothes to be decent. I knelt over him and kissed his forehead. He made a soft moaning sound that tore something inside my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I kissed his head again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what would happen. I’m sorry.”
“Time waits for no one, Lady Molly,” Mab said. She had crossed the room to stand across from me over poor Carlos. “Not even the Queens of Faerie. Collect the tribute.”
I gave him a last kiss on the forehead and rose to leave. But I paused at the door to consider, to consult Winter Law.
I had never really considered what the tribute was. But it was there in the law. I turned slowly and stared at Mab in horror.
“Their children,” I whispered. “You want me to take their children.”
“Yes.”
“Their children,” I said. “You can’t.”
“I won’t. You will.”
I shook my head. “But …”
“Lady Molly,” Mab said gently. “Consider the Outer Gates.”
I did.
Winter Law showed me a vivid image. An endless war fought at the far borders of reality. A war against the pitiless alien menace known simply as the Outsiders. A war fought by millions of Fae, to prevent the Outsiders from invading and destroying reality itself. A war so long and bitter that bones of the fallen were the topography of the landscape. It was why the Winter Court existed in the first place, why we were so aggressive, so savage, so filled with lust and the need to create more of our kind.
“You’re filling me with a hunger I can never feed,” I whispered.
“We cannot expect our people to bear a burden that we do not,” Mab replied, her tone level, implacable. “You will learn to endure it.”
“You want me to take children,” I hissed.
“I am fighting a war,” Mab said simply. “Fighting a war requires soldiers.”