The woman poured herself another cup. “Why ask me?” She gestured around her with one hand, a loose sweep of her arm that took in the reindeer and the old, smoke-stained walls. “This is my Court now. These fat, furry beasts, my subjects.”
The farmhand cleared his throat.
“That included you,” she said dismissively. Her hair swung around her face, the tendrils caught on the rough skin of her cheekbones as she leaned forward. “I am a spent thing, an old woman in retirement. These days, all I can advise on is reindeer meat, milk, and muck.”
She paused before peeling her lips back from her teeth in a vicious smile.
“Thanks to you.”
Somerset set his jaw. “I didn’t force him,” he said. “He chose to take the mantle, even if it meant you couldn’t go with him. That’s on him. I’ve enough of my own sins to deal with, don’t give me his.”
Her nostrils flared, and she tossed the dregs of her cocoa at Somerset’s feet. “How many times did you expect him to say no?” she spat. “He had done it twice already. Once to marry me and once when his father died. Then you came to our door with the watch and the whip and tell him that he could stop the Succession War. That if he didn’t, Yule would crack in half. You put that onhimand expect him to say no again? And for what? For what! You set yourself up a puppet Santa, then didn’t even stick your hand up his hole!”
Dylan choked on that one. The woman glared at him, and he remembered what Somerset had said about his sense of humor. He took a shallow breath of sweat-hot, musky air as he groped for something to disarm the tension.
Somerset nudged Dylan’s shoulder.
“Show her.”
Dylan hesitated. It wasn’t his watch, but the habit of protecting it stuck to him. He shook off the urge to refuse and reached into his pocket to pull the watch out. He held it up in front of him.
The woman dropped her flask. Cocoa spilled out over her feet and soaked into the straw. She swore and stooped to grab it, setting it up straight and scuffing the liquid down into the boards.
“So you didn’t know,” Somerset said. “That’s one good thing.”
The woman leaned forward, her hand extended. Dylan pulled the watch back.
“I’m not in the running,” the woman said as she curled her fingers in an impatient ‘grabby hands’ gesture. “You might as well be giving it to the cow. Let me see.”
“You see with your eyes,” Dylan parroted the tart advice he’d gotten at more than one tchotchke-filled foster home, “not your hands.”
The retort made the woman’s face twitch into an altogether inhuman scowl. Her skin twisted in an exaggerated, elastic expression of rage. She snapped her teeth at him and spat out, “You should know your place.”
“Let her have it,” Somerset said. “It’ll be fine.”
He gave Dylan’s shoulder a nudge to encourage him and nodded at the woman’s callused extended hand. After a deep breath, Dylan did as he was told.
She cupped her other hand under the first, as if the watch was heavier than she’d thought. She stared at it—and it was hard to read the expression on her face, but some sort of strong emotion twisted the mobile features—then took a ragged breath.
“So he’s dead,” she said and cupped both hands gently around the watch.
“Yes,” Somerset said. “The watch wouldn’t be in play otherwise.”
The woman made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat.
“I know that,” she said. “Everything he gave up, and he gained what? Twenty years? And now there’ll be another war.” There was a real, fierce bitterness laced through the woman’s voice, like acid. She suddenly tossed the watch back to Dylan. He caught it out of the air as she rubbed her hands on the heavy material of her skirts. “What do you want from me?
Somerset stepped forward and dropped his voice to a dangerous rasp. “I need to know if you’ve heard anything about this?”
She shook her head and held up one hand. “On my name, I’ve heard nothing,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to my husband since I forgot the name of the man I married. Most of the Winter Court would rather not admit I even existed. It doesn’texactlyfit the myth that one of the Sainted line of Nick dipped his wick in a monster. But…”
Dylan had absolutely no idea what was going on. He wanted to ask, but the tension in the room made it feel that it wasn’t the time.
“But what?” Somerset asked as he took a step forward.
The woman stood up and walked over to the reindeer. She rubbed her hand along its side. Loose, silvery hair coated her palm as it came loose and drifted over her feet. The reindeer didn’t seem to find it soothing. It flicked a long, round-tipped ear at her and rolled a white-rimmed eye her way.
“The Court might not speak to me, but you and I both know the Courts never threw their cloak over everything that went bump in the night. There are those who left and those they never wanted. Sometimes they need meat, or milk, or a little bit of magic, and they talk while I work.”
