I sensed the two Sidhe behind me, watching with calm, predatory eyes as the Knight who had betrayed his queens died. I knew when it was over. The two of them let out small sighs of . . . appreciation, I suppose. I couldn’t think of any other phrase that fit. They recognized the significance of his death while in no way actually feeling any empathy for him. A life flowed from his broken body into the Stone Table, and they held the act in a respect akin to reverence.

I just stood there, blood dripping from the bronze knife in my hand onto the earth beneath my feet. I shivered in the cold and stared at the remains of the man I’d murdered, wondering what I was supposed to feel. Sadness? Not really. He’d been a son of a bitch of the first order, and I’d gladly have killed him in a straight-up fight if I had the chance. Remorse? None yet. I had done him a favor when I killed him. There was no getting him out of what he’d gotten himself into. Joy? No. None of that, either. Satisfaction? Precious little, except that it was over, the deed done, the dice finally cast.

Mostly? I just felt cold.

A minute or an hour later, the Leanansidhe lifted a hand and snapped her fingers. The cloaked servitors appeared from the mist as silently as they’d left, and gathered up what was left of Lloyd Slate. They lifted him in silence, carried him in silence, and vanished into the mist.

“There,” I said quietly to Mab. “My part is done. Time for you to live up to yours.”

“No, child,” said Mab’s voice through Lea’s lips. “Your part is only begun. But fear not. I am Mab. The stars will rain from the sky before Mab fulfills not her word.” She tilted her head slightly to one side, toward my godmother, and said, “I give thee this adviser for thy final quest, sir Knight. My handmaiden is among the most powerful beings in all of my Winter, second only to myself.”

Lea’s warmer, more languid voice came from her lips as she asked, “My queen, to what degree am I permitted to act?”

I thought I saw the fell light gleam on Mab’s teeth as Lea’s lips said, “You may indulge yourself.”

Lea’s mouth spread into a wide, dangerous smile of its own, and she bowed her head and upper body toward the Queen of Winter.

“And now, my Knight,” Mab’s voice said, as her body turned to face me exclusively. “We will see to the strength of your broken body. And I will make you mine.”

I swallowed hard.

Mab lifted a hand, a dismissive gesture, and the Leanansidhe bowed to her.

“I am no longer needed here, child,” Lea murmured. “I will be ready to go with thee whenever thou dost call.”

My throat was almost too dry to get any words out. “I’ll want the things I left with you, as soon as you can get them to me.”

“Of course,” she said. She bowed to me as well, and took several steps back into the mist, until it swallowed her whole.

And I was alone with Queen Mab.

“So,” I said into the silence. “I guess there’s . . . there’s a ceremony of some kind to go through.”

Mab stepped closer to me. She wasn’t an enormous, imposing figure. She was considerably shorter than me. Slender. But she walked with such perfect confidence that the role of predator and prey was clear to both of us. I edged back from her. It was pure instinct, and I could no more stop from doing it than I could have stopped shivering against the cold.

“Going to be hard for us to exchange oaths if you can’t talk, huh,” I said. My voice sounded thin and shaky, even to me. “Um. Maybe it’s paperwork or something.”

Pale hands slipped up from the dark cloak and drew her hood back. She shook her head left and right, and pale, silken tresses, whiter than moonlight or Lloyd Slate’s dead flesh, spilled forth.

My voice stopped working for a second. My bare thighs hit the Stone Table behind me, and I wound up sitting on it.

Mab kept pacing toward me, one slightly swaying step at a time. The cloak slid from her shoulders, down, down, down.

“Y-you, uh,” I said, looking away. “You m-must be cold.”

A throaty little laugh bubbled up out of her frozen-berry lips. Mab’s voice, touched with anger, could cause physical damage to living flesh. Her voice filled with simmering desire . . . did other things.

And the cold was suddenly the least of my concerns.

Her mouth closed on mine, and I gave up even trying to speak. This wasn’t a ceremony so much as a rite, and one as ancient as beasts and birds, earth and sky.

My memory gets shaky after the kiss.

I remember her body gleaming brightly above me, cold, soft, feminine perfection. I don’t have the words to describe it. Inhuman beauty. Elfin grace. Animal sensuality. And when her body was atop mine, our breaths mingled, cold sweetness with human imperfection. I could feel the rhythm of her form, her breath, her heart. I could feel the stone of the table, the ancient hill of the mound, the very earth of the valley around us pulsing in time to Mab’s rhythm. Clouds raced over the sky, and as she moved more quickly she grew brighter, and brighter, until I realized that the eerie luminescence around us all evening had been nothing but a dim, muffled reflection of Mab’s loveliness, veiled for the sake of the mortal mind it could have unmade.

She did not veil it as her breathing mounted. And it burned me, it was so pure.

What we did wasn’t sex, regardless of what it appeared to be. You can’t have sex with a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a furious winter gale. You can’t make love to a mountain, a lake of ice, a freezing wind.

For a few moments, I saw the breadth and depth of Mab’s power—and for a fleeting instant, the barest, tiniest glimpse of her purpose, as well, as our entwined bodies thrashed toward completion. I was screaming. I had been for a while.

Then Mab’s cry joined mine, our voices blending together. Her nails dug into my chest, chips of ice sliding beneath my skin. I saw her body drawn into an arch of pleasure, and then her green cat eyes opened and bored into—

Her mouth opened, and her voice hissed, “MINE.”

Absolute truth made my body vibrate like the plucked string of a guitar, and I jerked into a brief, violent contortion.

Mab’s hands slid down my ribs, and I could suddenly feel the fire of the cracked bones again, until those icy hands tightened as again she said, “MINE.”

Again, my body bowed into a violent bow, every muscle trying to tear its way off of my bones.

Mab hissed in eagerness as her hands slid around my waist, covering the numb spot where my spine had probably been broken. I felt myself screaming and struggling, with no control whatsoever over my body.

Mab’s feline eyes captured my own gaze, trapping my attention within their frozen beauty as again a jolt of terrible, sweet cold flowed out from her fingertips and she whispered, her voice a velvet caress, “. . . mine . . .”

“Again!” screamed a voice I vaguely recognized.

Something cold and metallic pressed to my chest.

“Clear!” shouted the voice.

A lightning bolt hit my chest, an agonizing ribbon of silver power that bent my body into a bow. I started screaming, and before my hips had come down, I shouted, “Hexus!” spewing out power into the air.

Someone shouted and someone else cursed, and sparks exploded all around me, including from the lightbulb above, which seemed to overload and shatter into powder.

The room was dark and quiet for a few seconds.

“D-did we lose him?” asked a steady, elderly man’s voice. Forthill.

“Oh, God,” said Molly’s quavering voice. “H-Harry?”

“I’m fine,” I said. My throat felt raw. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

“Y-your heart stopped . . .” said a third voice, the familiar one.

I felt my chest and found nothing there, or around my neck. My fingers quested out and touched the bed and the backboard beneath me, and found my necklace there, the ruby still fixed in place by an ugly glob of rubber. I gripped the chain and slipped a little of my will into it, and cold blue light filled the room.