It had definitely been too long since he took one of the local fey to his bed. That was why the warmth of Dylan’s breath against Somerset’s chest made Somerset’s cock twitch.
“I can’t fly,” Somerset said with a snort at the idea. “This is better.”
He held Dylan close and took a long, confident step. The wind, studded with snow, threw him up gleefully and caught him as he came down. Behind them, Winter’s Wolves howled as they broke through the door and ran to the roof's edge. One of them, carried away by his drive, threw himself off in a long, desperate lunge. He didn’t even come close, and the borrowed, remade body tumbled out of the sky. There was something graceful about it at first, and then there wasn’t.
Dylan gasped and loosened his grip on Somerset’s waist. He wanted to reach for the Wolf; Somerset could feel the instinct in the way Dylan’s muscles tensed. He had always been kind, even with the idiots at the bar, but luckily self-preservation won out.
“They’d kill you without a second thought,” Somerset pointed out.
He took another long, loping step across the clouds. The wind slid out from under his feet and let him drop before it snaked back in under his heel to catch him again,
“Maybe,” Dylan said. “But last night he was some man with drunk friends and a weak left hook.”
Somerset sighed and glanced down. The Wolf swung his arms and legs in ungainly arcs as he tried to grab a wind that wanted nothing to do with him. That warm lump in Somerset’s chest tweaked him, and he rolled his eyes.
“Fine.” He pursed his lips and whistled, a shrill, hard note like a mean giggle. The wind picked it up, a breathy, half-heard echo, and slapped the Wolf out of the sky. He flew to the side and splatted against the side of the hospital, stuck there like a bug on a windshield. The Wolf managed to dig thorn-tipped fingers into the concrete as it slid down the last few floors. “There. He might be broken, but he’s not dead. And you might regret that one day.”
“Maybe,” Dylan said. “But not today.”
Somerset shook his head and took another long, loping stride along the wind-path. The cold bit at him, familiar and bitter.
“Today’s not over yet,” he said.
Somerset jumped off the wind and landed on the flat, bitumen roof of the apartment building with a thud that he felt in his knees. Fingers of ice splintered out from under the soles of his feet, buckling the felt. The wind picked at his hair, the tips left frosted, and pinched at his ears before it spun away back into the storm.
He let go of Dylan, who didn’t move as he shivered against Somerset. Then he took a shaky breath and clumsily stepped back. He cupped trembling hands in front of his mouth to breathe warmth back into them.
There was ice in his hair. White frost weighed down dark curls and streaked back from his temples. The look suited him, softened his bony, mobile face, and distracted from the bruising across his nose. It would suit him when he was that age.
And then he’d die, as mortals do, Somerset thought darkly. His bones would be even whiter than his hair. Meanwhile, Somerset would be the same as today, as he was the same as ten years ago. A hundred years ago.
Alone.
Somerset shook his head to shed that miserable idea along with the needles of ice that coated his hair.
“Do you still have the watch?” he checked.
Dylan gingerly wiped his nose on the back of his hand and ignored the question.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What do those… things?… want? What the hell is going on?”
The lies pricked at the tip of Somerset’s tongue. Glamor tasted like aspartame and gin against his teeth as he got ready to cajole Dylan into dismissing everything he’d seen as a daydream, a hallucination, a mental break.
Except, of course, he didn’t need to.
Dylan might be a mortal, but he had possession of the regalia. That made him a subject of the Winter Court, albeit a particularly breakable and temporary one. If Somerset wanted to tell him the truth, he could.
He could fuck him, too, for that matter. If he wanted to.
Somerset ignored that pointed aside from his brain. He had enough trouble; the last thing he needed was to borrow more. Instead, he brushed the snow from his sleeves.
“I’m who I’ve always been,” he said. “The Wolves want you. And as for what’s going on…”
He headed over to the ice-crusted fire escape bolted to the side of the building and climbed onto it. The metal creaked under his weight, and he felt it shift, but it held.
“Santa’s dead,” he told Dylan as he started down the steps. “And that means that the shit is about to hit the fan.”
Again,he completed that thought dourly.
