How long had I been out, and what had I told her? I didn’t remember all of it, and that worried me.

The fairy queen was wearing a different dress than she had been. This one was blue and gold. Did that mean it was a different day? Or just that she’d gotten things on her dress and had to change?

“They have left me only vengeance for now.” Her eyes gave that weird flutter. “Eventually, they will not guard the Silver Borne as diligently, and I will have it. Until then, I’ll take what I can get. I hope you enjoy your victory.

“Mercedes Athena Thompson,” she said, putting a hand on my forehead. Look at me.

The “Look at me” part was inside my head. It reminded me of the way Mary Jo’s voice had entered my head in the bowling alley. Maybe without that experience, the queen’s voice wouldn’t have seemed so clearly foreign.

You want to serve me. Nothing else matters.

Adam mattered.

If I didn’t make it out of here alive, he’d think it was his fault. That if he’d been in better shape, I’d have brought him with me, and he’d have saved the day. He’d take responsibility for the world if someone (like me) wasn’t around to shake him up. So I had to survive—because Adam mattered to me.

The fairy queen had continued to talk in my head, but I wasn’t paying attention to what she said.

“Whom do you serve?” she asked aloud, pulling her hand away from my head. Not as though she were interested in the answer.

“ ‘Choose this day whom you will serve,’ ” I murmured. “ ‘But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ ” It seemed appropriate to quote Joshua at her.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“What were you expecting me to answer?” I asked, feeling a little let down. Some of the very old fae react poorly to scripture, but this one didn’t seem to mind—not the scriptures anyway.

“Bring her to the hall,” she said, her eyelashes beating her cheekbones with the force of her temper.

The men picked me up, chair and all, and hauled me back to the hall. I had only vague memories of what had happened to me there at the hands of the witch—my mother once told me that childbirth was like that. All that pain, then nothing. But if my mind had blocked out the worst of it, my body seemed to make up for it. As we got closer and closer, my stomach clenched, and I broke out in a sweat. By the time we made it into the hall, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the men carrying me could smell my fear.

They brought me right up to the throne before setting me down.

“What did you do?” the queen hissed at the witch, who shrank back from her. “What did you do that she resists me?”

“Nothing, my queen,” the witch said. “Nothing that would allow her to resist you. She is only half-human. Perhaps that is the problem.”

The queen released her and stormed back to me. She took a silver knife out of her belt and cut my arm right over the bite Samuel had given me. The bite marks were still fresh-looking, so I hadn’t lost a lot of time.

She rubbed her fingers in my blood and put them in her mouth. Then she cut herself and dribbled three drops into the open wound on my arm.

She was going to use old magic to bind us together. This was the stuff the wolves got out to make someone pack.

I had a sudden panicky thought. If she got me, could she get to the pack through me? Zee had been worried about her enthralling the wolves.

“My blood to yours,” she said, and it was too late to do anything about what she was doing. “My silver, my magic, our blood makes you mine.” Because it was done.

A fog rolled over my head.

I struggled and struggled, but there was nothing to struggle against; it was only fog that seemed to cover everything and muffle my thoughts.

Chapter 15

AFTER STRUGGLING AND STRUGGLING, I FOUND MYself alone, standing on a great barren field of snow. The cold was so great that it froze my nose when I breathed in, but, although I was naked, I wasn’t uncomfortable.

“Mercedes,” Bran’s voice was breathless. “Here you are! Finally.”

I turned all around and couldn’t see him.

“Mercedes,” he told me, “I can talk to you because you are part of Adam’s pack and his pack is mine, too. But you need to listen because I can’t hear you. All I can do is show you what I think you need.”

“All right,” I told him. It felt lonely knowing he couldn’t hear me. Lonely because it wasn’t Adam who’d found me there in the snow. I shivered though I still wasn’t feeling the cold.

“The biggest weapon in the arsenal of a fairy queen is enthrallment. As a member of a pack, you should be all but immune to that. But yours is a special case, and I am told that no one thought to teach you how the pack magic should work for you. Apparently my son and Adam, who should know better, assumed that it would all be instinctive because that’s how it works for a wolf. When Adam found that it was not the case, he chose to wait so he could find out who had been messing with you—instead of making you safe.”

“There were complications,” I told him sharply. I didn’t like to hear him being critical of Adam. I’d known what he was doing and approved of the way his mind worked.

A pause followed, and I had the distinct impression of surprise.

“I’m sorry for offending you,” he said slowly. “That I know you are offended is . . . interesting.” I got the impression of a shrug, and he continued with his message. “You should know that thrall magic is not so different from the pack bonds, Mercedes. The pack bonds are not built to subdue individuality to the Alpha or enforce behavior of any kind. A pack needs all its differences, and we find strength in that: a lot more strength than one stupid fairy queen who is stealing magic and using a witch. You understand me? ” His fury shook my whole being, he was so angry.

He wasn’t angry with me, though, so it wasn’t my concern.

“I understand,” I told him, even though he couldn’t hear me. Or mostly couldn’t hear me.

“I’m going to show you something,” he said. And suddenly in the white snow there was a silver garland. “This is one of your pack bonds,” he told me. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him walking beside me as we followed the garland. We stopped by the end, and there was a rock tied . . . enveloped in a soft cage of silver. The rock glowed a warm yellow that was very welcome in this cold place.

“Christmas garlands and a rock?” he said, a smile in his voice. “Why not an ornament?”

“Wolves aren’t fragile,” I told him. “And they’re . . . stubborn and hard to move.”

“I guess that imagery works as well as anything,” he allowed. “Do you know who this is? Can you feel how worried she is for you?”

“Mary Jo,” I said. And once he’d pointed it out to me, I could feel it, too. Could feel that she was looking for me, running on four feet to use her nose to its best advantage. She wasn’t hot on the trail—and I had the impression of miles traveled and miles to go stretching out both ways in weary infinity.

“It is not usually so clear,” Bran said, pulling me out of Mary Jo. “Partially it is because I am with you—and I am the Marrok. Another part is that the fairy has locked you into your own head—I can tell that by the quality of my contact with you. That she has done this is an unforgivable offense”—once more I felt him try to contain his anger—“but that will give you strength here you would not otherwise have had.” He paused. “The connection between you and me is stronger than it should be, too. I’m not getting words back, but there is something . . . No use getting distracted with the why of that now. We have other tasks.”

He took me to another silver garland and had me tell him whom it belonged to. After the third, I could find the strands myself without his guidance. The fourth was Paul’s. He was running with Mary Jo—and just as anxious to find me. He still didn’t like Warren, though. I could see that his garland and Mary Jo’s were intertwined and connected to all the other garlands, too. One by one we walked by the rocks that were the wolves in the pack.