“Welcome,” I said. I walked around the table and drew out her chair for her. She settled into it with inhuman grace.
Her eyes focused on the bread with the drop of blood on it, glittering and sharp. But she folded her hands in her lap while I poured out the ice wine, a modest amount for each of us, then seated myself across from her.
I took up my glass as she did.
“To promises kept,” she murmured.
“Promises kept,” I agreed.
We touched glasses and tasted the ice wine. It was sweet, cold, and strong.
“May I?” I asked, gesturing at the food.
“Yes,” Mab said.
I served her out some cheese and meat to go with the bread and served the same to myself.
I took up my bread.
Mab snatched hers and shoved it into her mouth like a starving animal.
It was such an utter reversal of her usual demeanor that my belly jerked in a sudden startled reaction, a thrill of primal fear jolting through me.
She didn’t eat the bread with my blood on it. She devoured it, hereyes closed, letting out small sounds of pleasure and satisfaction as she did. She tilted her face to the starry sky when she swallowed. When her eyes opened, they had to roll down, and it took a long breath before they came into focus again.
I gulped. And took a small bite of my bread, chewing it with a dry mouth.
“Small pleasures,” she murmured, her voice throaty and rich, “grow more significant over time.”
I swallowed and said, “You’re right.”
She took up a bite of cheese and deliberately wrapped a bit of the thin-sliced steak around it. “Thou dost wish to choose the boon I have granted thee.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Wealth?” she said, a coy smile on her frozen-mulberry lips. “Influence? An army? Slaves? The perfect lover?”
I blinked again.
She was…Stars and stones. She wasjokingwith me.
Mab making a joke was perhaps more frightening and disorienting than Mab slamming my head against an elevator wall.
I tried to smile. I think it came out a little sick.
“Thinkest thou I know not thy heart, my Knight? For while I am mortal no longer, yet do I remember what it is to care. To love. To yearn.” She took a bite of steak and ate it slowly. “To feel pain for family.”
“If you know,” I said, “why not just grant it?”
“Of all folk, a wizard should know the importance of the word, imbued with the very breath of thy life.”
She had a point.
Words mattered. Even the little ones.
The little ones matter most, in fact.
All of the most powerful words are brief.
