The groom pushed him until Dylan’s back was painfully arched and his feet had left the ground. His phone slipped out of his pocket and fell past his head toward the ground below. He didn’t hear it land.
“We’re looking for the Lord of Yule,” he said through those stained lips. “So, last chance. Where the fuck is Santa?”
Chapter Four
“It’sbeennearlytwentyyears,” Somerset said. “I don’t know how long for you, but twenty years for me. I’d started to think that maybe you were going to let me go my own way.”
Somerset stood at the hotel room window, hands in his pockets, and stared down at the street outside. A handful of people waited in a shivering queue in front of a food truck. A row of trees behind it stretched ice-sheathed branches toward a sky heavy with fresh snow.
Since his brother hadn’t bothered to rouse enough to make a reply from the hospital bed, Somerset filled one in for him.
“I should have known better.”
Somerset pressed his finger to the corner of the window and watched frost spread out in jerky, fractal lines across the glass from where his nail touched the surface. He had, of course. Known better. In his gut, he’d always known that his brothers would find him one day.
He could have run farther than Belling. It was a horrible thought, but it would have bought him a few more years if he'd gone somewhere sunny. It hadn’t seemed worth it. What was he going to do if he had found somewhere they couldn’t track him down? He’d passed the time here by flouting the Court’s laws in any profitable, low-key way he could. It had been fun for a time, but after a while, there didn’t seem much point.
Mind you, whenever he’d imagined their eventual confrontation, he’d not pictured it like this. If anyone had been going to kill his brother, he’d assumed it would have been him.
Somerset took his hand away from the window. It was frosted over completely, from one corner to another. He brushed his hands together, bits of ice dropping onto the floor, and watched as the heat from the room dissolved the crust from the glass. Water ran down and puddled on the thin, plastic sill. It beaded and ran off the silicone filler.
As the window cleared, Somerset could see his brother sprawled out on the bed. It was Gull, who’d never been his favorite. That should have made it easier.
“Now what am I going to do with you?” Somerset wondered out loud.
Finish the job and kill him.
It would solve, or at least put-off, Somerset’s problem. The Court might even count it in his favor. It would save them from having to send their own assassin to do the deed. There were rules around leaving blood or come in human hands, never mind a whole body of flesh and bone.
There was only one problem. Somerset had resigned his position—or run away, or been driven out, depending on who told the story—because he was sick of being handed the Court’s dirty work. It stuck in his throat to give them even one last murder for free.
“Shit,” he muttered and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Let them handle it. None of you are my problem. And if you’ve any sense, you’ll not make me…”
He trailed off. There was something wrong. Somerset couldn’t put his finger on what exactly, but the instinct that it was dangerous itched at the back of his head like a sting. He glanced up and down the street as he tried to pinpoint whatever it was that had triggered his ‘fight’ instinct.
A choked noise from the bed behind him pulled Somerset’s attention back to the room. He turned around as Gull pulled the tubes out of his battered face. The machines started to beep frantically, and an alarm went off as Gull tore at the tape on his arms. One of Gull’s eyes was still swollen shut. The other darted frantically around the room before it finally landed on Somerset.
“... did you… do you have it?” Gull asked, his voice slurred and ragged with pain. He tried to swing his legs out of bed and nearly toppled onto the ground instead. Somerset lunged across the room and caught him. He propped Gull back up in bed, his brother’s skin fever-hot as his body stitched itself back together. Gull ignored Somerset’s clumsy attempt at caretaking and grabbed his shoulder, fingers digging down into muscle until it felt like they were about to touch bone. “I know… I know you left us… but you’re the only one I could trust.”
Blood bubbled on Gull’s lips and stained his teeth. Their kind—their kin—were hard to kill, but something had come close. Somerset grabbed the back of Gull’s neck to make him focus.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
Gull ignored the question as he dragged himself out of the bed. Dark red bloomed on the bandages over his stomach, wet and shiny against the white cotton. He pushed Somerset away and staggered toward the window.
A nurse appeared at the door to the room. His face blanched as he saw Gull on his feet, and he yelled for help over his shoulder before rushing into the room.
It should have been difficult.
Somerset hadn’t used anything but parlor tricks and muscle for years. This wasn’t evenhis.It had been a perk of position and might have gone away with it. Luckily, he didn’t think about any of that.
He reached between the seconds and pulled what he found there out. It was the moment between the tick and the tock, the frosty heart of Yule. The world slowed around him, not quite stopped, but close enough. Something in Somerset’s brain pulled taut like a plucked wire; the high, unsteady tone of it made his back teeth taste like bones.
The nurse was caught mid-step, precariously balanced as he dropped the files he was holding, and the high, urgent beep of the machines was drawn out into a one-note drone. Only Gull and Somerset were still there, pinned to the same time, while everyone else was one over.
Gull left a bright red handprint on the glass as he braced himself against it. He took a ragged, uneven breath that caught in his throat.
“They’re here,” he said. “I didn’t… think they’d find me so soon,”
