? ? ?
I’d never entered Faerie alone before. Hell, I could count on one hand how many times I’d passed through the door to the winter court. Not one trip had been entirely voluntary, so I guess it wasn’t a huge surprise that I’d always had an escort. This time, I had to go it alone.
I stood to one side of the massive tree, staring at the innocuous-looking bit of space that appeared to be just another part of the bar wrapping around the tree, but I knew better. As soon as I stepped around it, this pocket of Faerie would melt away and I’d be at one of the entrances to the winter court. I didn’t want to do it.
But I had to.
I took a deep breath, nodded my head, and had almost psyched myself up to stepping forward when someone cleared their throat behind me.
“My dear, it works better if you walk into it,” a dry, raspy voice said, and I spun around.
An old woman, bent with age, stood there. She smiled, making the wrinkles in her face rearrange as she flashed her toothless gums.
“Of course,” she said, “if you have the will and magic, you can make it move around you.” She clicked her tongue and patted my arm with twig-thin fingers that felt rough and brittle. “But walking is much easier.”
This sage advice imparted, she turned and shuffled away, her wooden clogs loud on the hardwood floor. I stared after her and shook my head. This place always had interesting characters. I didn’t know what type of fae she was, or if she was fae, though it could be assumed she was, but I had no doubt that somewhere lost in time there was a tale about her.
I turned back toward the tree. “Might as well,” I muttered, and as the old woman had suggested, I walked through the “door.” The bar blurred, melted, and the halls of the winter court snapped into cold relief around me.
“Lady Planeweaver,” a snowy-cloaked guard said, stepping from who-knew-where and into my path. He gave me a small bow. “The queen awaits you.”
Under his cloak, I could see the edges of his ice armor and the hilt of a huge sword at this waist, but with his hood pulled down and his head toward the floor in his bow, I could see nothing of his face. I waited for him to straighten, but the seconds stretched.
“Uh, lead on,” I said, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot.
Thankfully, the guard straightened, turned on his heel and started down the corridor. I followed, knowing it was likely futile to try to memorize which turns we took, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Of course, I suspected they changed and rearranged themselves after we passed. I was never going to learn to navigate Faerie.
My guiding guard stopped in front of a threshold and stepped aside without a word. Like any door in Faerie, it appeared to lead nowhere so could go anywhere. I assumed it led to the queen. Well, looked like this was it. I took a deep breath and stepped through the threshold.
? ? ?
The space beyond the threshold was smaller than I anticipated. Most of the rooms I’d seen in the winter court had been large and dauntingly impressive. This one was no larger than the reception room at Tongues for the Dead. The walls were the same ice-crusted architecture I’d seen elsewhere, the ceiling lost in swirls of snowflakes that never touched the floor, but this room was much more intimate. Two plush couches sat facing each other in the center of the room, a coffee table carved of ice between them.
The queen paced in front of these couches. She looked up as I entered. Her normally perfect curls were slightly frizzed today and the icicles on her gown appeared to be melting, which I hadn’t even known was possible. Her gaze fell on me, her blue eyes feverish. Was she unwell?
Beyond the queen, his posture rigid, sat Falin. A nasty-looking gash bisected his cheek from the corner of his eye to the edge of his mouth, and a bloody bandage showed under the sleeve of his shirt, just above his elbow. From his slightly pained posture, those weren’t the only wounds he sported. My first instinct was to rush to him and see how badly he was hurt, but I ground my heels to the spot. Ignoring the queen to rush to her knight’s side sounded like a dangerous choice. Particularly now. There was something off about her.
Falin was alone on his couch. Lyell and Maeve sat on the opposite one. Ryese leaned against the arm of the couch. He was staring at nothing, and didn’t look up as I entered. I wasn’t even sure he’d noticed my arrival. The fourth council member, Blayne, was missing.
“About time,” the queen said, tossing her disheveled curls. “I want a full update. Your missive said you had information on the case for my knight. Where are you on finding this menace in my court?”