The thing that used to be Lloyd Slate made quiet, hopeless sounds.

I trembled, afraid.

The dark shape came closer, and a pale hand emerged from the folds of cloth. Something glittered coldly in the strange light and landed in the thick grass at my feet. I bent to take it up and found an ancient, ancient knife with a simple leaf-blade design, set into a wooden handle and wrapped with cord and leather. It was, I thought, made of bronze. Its double edge had a wickedly sharp shine to it, and its needle point looked hungry, somehow.

Energy surged through the little blade, power that was unfettered and wild, that mocked limits and scoffed at restraint. Not evil, as such—but hungry and filled with the desire to partake in its portion of the cycle of life and death. It thirsted for bloodshed.

“While Lloyd Slate lives and breathes, he is my Knight,” said Mab’s voice. “Take Medea’s bodkin, wizard. Take his life’s blood.”

I stood there holding the knife and looking at Lloyd Slate. The last time I’d heard him speak, he had begged me to kill him. I didn’t think he’d be capable of even that much now.

“If you would be my Knight, then this is the first death I desire of you,” Mab said, her voice almost gentle. She faced me across the Stone Table. “Send his power back to me. And I will render it unto thee.”

I stood in the cold wind, not moving.

What I did with the next moments would determine the course of the rest of my life.

“You know this man,” Mab continued, her voice still gentle. “You saw his victims. He was a murderer. A rapist. A thief. A monster in mortal flesh. He has more than earned his death.”

“That isn’t for me to judge,” I whispered quietly. Indeed not. I was tempted to hide behind that rationale, just for a moment—just until it was done. Lie to myself, tell myself that I was his lawful, rightful executioner.

But I wasn’t.

I could have told myself that I was ending his pain. That I was putting him out of his hideous misery in an act of compassion. Necessarily an act of bloodshed, but it would be quick and clean. Nothing should suffer as much as Lloyd Slate had. I could have sold myself that story.

But I didn’t.

I was a man seeking power. For good reasons, maybe. But I wasn’t going to lie to myself or anyone else about my actions. If I killed him, I would be taking a life, something that was not mine to take. I would be committing deliberate, calculated murder.

It was the least evil path, I told myself. Whatever else I might have done would have turned me into a monster in truth. Because of Lloyd Slate, I knew that whatever Mab might say, she did not control her Knight completely. Slate had defied her power and influence.

And look where it got him, a little voice whispered inside my head.

The full, round moon emerged from behind the clouds and bathed the whole Valley of the Stone Table in clear, cold light. The runes upon the table and the menhirs blazed into glittering, cold light.

“Wizard,” whispered Mab’s appropriated voice, seemingly directly into my ear. “The time has come.”

My heart began pounding very hard, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” Mab’s voice said, almost lovingly. “Choose.”

Chapter 31

I stared at the broken man. It was easy enough to envision my own mutilated face, looking blindly up from the table’s surface. I took one step toward the table. Then two. Then I was standing over Lloyd Slate’s broken form.

If it was a fight, I wouldn’t think twice. But this man was no threat to me. He was no threat to anyone anymore. I had no right to take his life, and it was pure, overwhelming, nihilistic arrogance to say otherwise. If I killed Slate, how long would it take for my turn to come? I could be looking at myself, months or years from now.

I couldn’t, any more than I could cut my own throat.

I felt my hand drop back to my side, the knife too heavy to hold before me.

Mab suddenly stood at the opposite end of the Stone Table, facing me. Her right hand moved in a simple outward motion, and the mists over the Table suddenly thickened and swirled with color and light. For a few seconds, the image was hazy. Then it snapped into focus.

A little girl crouched in the corner of a bare stone room. There was hay scattered around, and a wool blanket that looked none too clean. She had dark hair that had been up in pigtails, but wasn’t anymore. One of the little pink plastic clips had evidently been lost or stolen, and now she had only one pigtail. Her face was red from crying. She’d evidently been wiping her nose on the knees of her little pink overalls. Her shirt, white with yellow flowers and a big cartoon bumblebee on it, showed stains of dirt and worse. She crouched in the tiniest ball she could make of her body, as if hoping that if something should come for her, she might be overlooked.

Her big brown eyes were quietly terrified—and I could see something familiar in them. It took me a moment to realize they reminded me of my reflection in a mirror. Other features showed themselves to me, muted shapes that maturity would bring forth eventually. The same chin and jawline Thomas and I shared. The same mouth as her mother’s. Susan’s straight, shining black hair. Her hands and her feet looked a little too large for her, like a puppy’s paws.

Dimly, as if from a great distance, I heard the cry of a Red Court vampire in its true form, and she flinched and started crying again, her entire body trembling in terror.

Maggie.

I remembered when Bianca and her minions had kept me prisoner.

I remembered the things they had done to me.

But it didn’t look like they had harmed my child—yet.

“Yes,” said Mab’s cold voice, empty of emotion. The image began to slowly fade away. “It is a true seeing of your child, as she is even now. I give you my word. No tricks. No deceptions. This is.”

I looked through the translucent image to where Mab and my godmother waited. Lea’s face was somber. Mab’s eyes were narrowed to glowing green slits within her hooded cloak.

I faced them both for a moment. The cold wind gusted over the hilltop and stirred the cloaks of the two Sidhe. I stared at them, at ancient eyes full of the knowledge of dark and wicked things. I knew that neither the child in the image nor the man on the table meant anything to them. I knew that if I went forward with Mab’s bargain, I would probably end up on the table myself.

Of course, that was why Mab had shown me Maggie: to manipulate me.

No. There was a distinction in what she had done. She had shown me Maggie to make perfectly clear exactly what choice I was about to make. Certainly, it might influence my decision, but when a stark naked truth stares you in the face . . . shouldn’t it?

I’m not sure it’s possible to manipulate someone with candor and truth.

I think you call that enlightenment.

And as I stared at my daughter’s fading image, my fear vanished.

If I wound up like Slate, if that was the price I had to pay to make my daughter safe, so be it.

If I was haunted for the rest of my life because Maggie needed me to make hard choices, so be it.

And if I had to die a horrible, lingering death so that my little girl could have a chance to live . . .

So be it.

I tightened my grip on the hideous weight of the ancient bronze knife.

I put one hand gently on Lloyd Slate’s forehead to hold him still.

And then I cut his throat.

It was a quick, clean death, which made it no less lethal than if I’d hacked him up with an ax. Death is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter how you get there. Just when.

And why.

He never struggled. Just let out a breath that sounded like a sigh of relief and turned his head to one side as if going to sleep. It wasn’t neat, but it wasn’t a scene from a gorefest slasher movie, either. It looked more like the kind of mess you’d see in a kitchen when preparing a big bunch of steaks. Most of his blood ran into the carved indentions on the table and seemed to become quicksilver once there, running rapidly outward through the troughs and down the lettering carved in the sides and the legs. The blood made the letters reflect the eerie light around us, giving them a sort of flickering fire of their own. It was a terrible, beautiful sight. Power hummed through that blood; the letters, the stone, and the air around me were shaken by its silent potency.