Dame of Owls (9 page)

             
“What’s your name?” Chris asked, all gentle and reasonable.

             
“Bors,” the Lily Knight answered. “For all that it matters, now that you’ve slaughtered my comrades.”

             
“You invaded my country,” Sid hissed. “Don’t play finger pointing with me or you’ll find yourself without any fucking fingers.”

             
“Temper,” said Bors. “It’s hardly my fault you took him.”

             
“Me?” Chris asked.

             
Bors’ long suffering look was the fae equivalent of
duh.
“The queen would have marched us into hellfire for you, regardless of how well we burn.”

             
“Why?”

             
Bors’ gaze flicked between them. “You don’t know. You don’t know, and Aventurine’s get doesn’t know.” His chuckle was on its last legs. “Let me say how highly I am tempted not to tell you.”

             
Sid bared her teeth at him. “Would you like me to speak of the things
I’m
tempted to do?”

             
“Spare me. Ages upon ages ago, half-blood, while your grand Aventurine was busy at her butchery, there was a seer in my court. Her victory was two-fold: she tamed the beastly knight of the Winter Court, and she spoke a prophecy.”

             
“A prophecy?”

             
“They happen,” Sid told Chris, and unpleasant certainties rolled in her gut. "What was it?”

             
“That long in the future, if we were patient and waited for our numbers to swell, for our time to return, there would be born in the mortal realm a seeming-mortal child, equal in blood of Summer and Winter. I see your mother’s marks on you, boy, but you remain quite flush here among the corpses.”

             
“Because I’m mostly human,” said Chris, raising a hand to put his fingers on the pulse point in his throat.

             
“They’d have to take much more care with you, if you measured as mortal as you believe.”

             
Sid could almost hear her own teeth grinding. She didn’t come around Court much, and it had been hundreds of years since the queen’s last mortal lover, but that boy had been frail, constantly hungry and perpetually tired. No one could have run him around the train field without him keeling over. Some long-forgotten drop of winter blood was not enough to counteract that, not to the extent that Chris was thriving here. Not in the way he was.

             
Summer kept him warm.

             
Sid quashed down the urge to storm into the cell and throttle Bors. She didn’t even have the keys.

             
“Why do we have him?” she demanded. “Why do you want him?”

             
“You have him because your people are thieves. We need him…” Bors paused to stare at the cell around him, at his dying comrade. “He’s a symbol. Control the symbol, control the sick balance. Destroy the symbol, destroy the stalemate.”

             
Sid’s hands gripped the iron bars so hard her knuckles turned white. “You want to kill him.”

             
Bors’ lips quirked up in a sorry excuse for a smile. “A sacrifice is so much different from a murder. And don’t glare at me like that, he’s hardly your property. You haven’t even branded him.”

             
Sid pulled the long dagger out of her belt and tossed it into the cell. It clattered at Bors’ feet.

             
“There’s my mercy. Take it or leave it.”

             
Chris didn’t need much pulling to follow her back upstairs.

---

              Sid led Chris back to her cramped room. She shucked off her dress with steady fingers and pulled on her traveling clothes. Not jeans and a t-shirt, not yet, no need to be that obvious. As she reached for her scabbard, Chris laid his hand on her wrist.

             
“Don’t panic,” he said.

             
She could have spit on his utter calm. “I’m not panicking. I’m
reacting.
Why aren’t you?”

             
“Reacting is a good way to get yourself in trouble. Especially overreacting, which is what you’re doing. Think before you drag me off again.”

             
How could he be so placid, so accepting? He should be fighting tooth and nail against the mere hint of a threat. Then she remembered that he’d followed her here in the first place, hadn’t even tried to punch her, had hardly spoken a word for himself.

             
And she saw red.

             
“And what will you do?” She dropped her scabbard on the bed, caught his eyes and refused to look away. “Will you just wait and see?”

             
“Yes. And don’t glare at me like that. Capella is my family, her house is my family. I believe that, so I believe they might have brought me here for my safety.”

             
“Why the hell would you think that?”

             
“For one thing, it’s what you kept telling me.”

             
He wouldn’t raise his voice. It was like talking to a wall, like talking to her damn sister. He wouldn’t lose his temper, not to fight her, not to save his own stupid ass.

             
“You have family in the Summer Court, too,” she snapped. “They don’t seem to give a fuck for sentiment.”

             
“I haven’t met them. I’ve met Capella, and she’s treating me all right.”

             
“Fairies are liars!” A hard enough lesson for a half-mortal child to learn, even though she’d been raised here. They couldn’t afford the time it would take Chris to figure it out.

             
“Look, Sid, we don’t all have the option of treating our families like shit, okay?”

             
If they’d been in the mortal world, Sid would have flushed with anger. Here, she could only hope he appreciated how terribly, terribly cold she’d gone.

             
“You don’t know anything about my family. Or about Court. You don’t even know why I brought you here!”

             
“Neither do you!” Finally he started to crack, to shout. “I like you, Sid, but that doesn’t make you my goddamn bodyguard! I’m a grown man. I can make my own decisions.”

             
She wanted to pry her fingers underneath his ribcage and tell him that making his own decisions had probably been what landed him in jail. She swallowed it down, and it festered in her belly.

             
“Out, then!” She jabbed a finger at the door. “If you don't need my opinions, then get out of here!”

             
He didn’t even slam the door behind him.

---

              Juniper must have noticed Sid skulking around in an ill temper. Juniper picked up on things like that, and was too country-bred to be polite about it. Which was how Sid found herself, a few afternoons after her stinging argument with Chris, herded into a corner of the training field.

             
“What’s crawled up your butt and died?” Juniper asked.

             
“It’s a family matter.”

             
“You’re a shit liar.”

             
Sid knew that. It became painfully clear every time she was stuck at Court. She was qualified to cut off heads, not play these looping mind games. The truth, then, or enough of it to satisfy Juniper’s concern.

             
“Chris and I argued.”

             
Juniper raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

             
“Chris and I fucked, and then we argued.”

             
“Ouch,” said Juniper, and seemed mollified. “You tossed him over, then?”

             
Sid shrugged. Truth be told, she missed him. She’d gotten pretty used to having him around, and her head had been clearer for his calm. Well, when it wasn’t infuriating. And maybe she’d been a
little
rash, and not listening to him very well. Maybe she had a tendency to shout a bit much when she was pissed off.

             
“Look, Sid. I know you don’t like advice from old married ladies, but give this a think. Chris isn’t going to be around forever. They’ll send him home, and send you back to the battlefield.”

             
Back to tents and swords and the smell of burning flesh. Sid knew. “Your point?”

             
“My point.” Juniper sighed. “My point is, I’d like to see you have a little fun while you still can. Get enough practice and you might even get married someday, eh?”

             
Sid rolled her eyes and mimed a blow at Juniper’s head. Juniper caught her fist and held it up so that Sid had to stand on her tip-toes, an annoyance Sid had lived with since their adventures in puberty.

             
“I’m not going to marry –”

             
“I’m going to die gloriously in battle,” Juniper chorused. “Yeah, you see what Melly thought of that line. And it’s not like I’m betrothing you. You’ve got time. But Chris doesn’t, so maybe you should make it worth each other’s while, right?”

             
Sid squirmed free of Juniper’s hold. “I have enough older sisters without you getting in on the act, thanks.”

             
“The House of Cats is holding a party in Chris’s honor. Escort him, relax. Get laid, get ready to go back to the fight.”

             
“Will you stop pestering me?”

             
“That’d be worth taking into consideration.”

             
Sid told herself that she’d been boxed into a corner and really, now she had no choice. Whether or not she wanted to mend bridges with Chris was a totally different matter entirely.

---

              Mending bridges, unfortunately, meant eating a little crow. Sid had hoped to find Chris in his bedroom, but luck wasn’t on her side. She had to go to Capella’s solar and ask after him like a jilted lover. Well, if the shoe fit.

             
Capella directed Sid to the walking paths with an indulgent smile, as if she knew exactly what was up. Patronizing. Sid kept all her biting words safely behind her teeth, and thanked Capella with the respect due a high house’s lady.

             
The walking paths cut through a carefully cultivated and trimmed pine forest that filled in the back borders of the palace grounds. No stone rose among the trees, and it was easy enough to get lost in that some fae considered a few years' wandering fine sport. Sid hoped that someone was keeping a good eye on Chris. Any number of horrible ends could be met out here, tucked away in evergreen obscurity, and it was hard for her to shake off her paranoia among the trees. Her battles were often fought in woodlands, where the more numerous flora houses of the Summer Court had an advantage. It made Sid want to grab Chris and run all over again.

             
She reminded herself sternly where she was, surrounded by allies and close to the queen. Nothing would ambush her here.

             
Sid kept to the popular paths, kept cleared of snow by multitudes of footsteps and servants. She soon heard the chatter and laughter of young fae, the sort without much reason or responsibility. A gaggle of them sat in a clearing, sipping hot cocoa and flirting and politicking outrageously. Chris sat among them, as natural as a bird in his flock. And if his plumage were just a bit brighter, well, if Sid hadn’t noticed, then who could be expected to?

             
Taking a deep breath, Sid set her shoulders and strode forward. This had nothing on an enemy with a sword and a bad idea. Though she could pinpoint their houses – Crocus, Hare, Robin, Cat – she didn’t know any of the fae here personally. Even if she humiliated herself, it wouldn’t affect her life beyond this insignificant point.

             
She walked right up to Chris and the cat-cousin laughing with him, trying not to think of how quickly he seemed to have recovered from their argument. How thoroughly.

             
“Christopher,” she said in her best noble cadence. “May I steal you away for a moment?”

             
Chris smiled, and Sid hoped for sincerity. From the way his regard slammed into her gut, she was fucked if he was just playing nice for his new friends.

             
“Sure.”

             
He apologized to his companion. The amused whispering intensified as he followed Sid out of the clearing and down a lesser used path. Damn gossips.