Fitz blinked again and put his eyes firmly on the floor. “Your offer is thoughtful, Queen Mab. But Harry is already doing that.”
Mab actually smiled. It was like seeing a cat walk on its hind legs. “Dresden is a capable teacher,” she agreed. “But should you find yourselfin need of another instructor—and another aegis against the White Council—you have but to call my name three times.”
Fitz started to speak, thought better of it, and inclined his head instead.
“You were not so wise when you were his age,” Mab noted to me.
“Possibly not even now,” I said. “Why are you trying to bogart my apprentice?”
Mab gave me an even look, by which I mean one that told me she regretted not bringing an axe. “It has worked out well for me in the past. Perhaps it will again.”
A muscle in my cheek twitched. Molly.
Mab eyed Fitz once more and then said, “I will speak to you alone, my Knight.”
—
I took Mab to the library that Michael’s crew had finished only days before. It didn’t look like a fancy room in an enchanted castle. It looked more like a school library. Barred windows, lightly stained wooden shelves, which were still largely empty, and several seating areas made of comfortable secondhand couches and easy chairs. Mister had claimed the place even before the workmen had left and was currently sleeping on top of a row of old leather-bound encyclopedias at the outlet of a heating duct from the castle’s gas furnace.
Sleet rattled on the windows. The wind gusted and blurred the buildings across the street through the precipitation. I closed the door to the library behind us, and Mab stared out at the worsening storm with a fascinated, sensual expression on her face.
“I do love the first winter storm here,” she said quietly. “How it sends so many souls scurrying for shelter. Tests those living without it. We will see who is strong.”
“It makes me remember that we still don’t have a snow shovel for the walk.” I sighed. “I’ll have to go out and get one.”
Mab made a throaty sound that might have been amusement and turned to eye me. “I suppose a kiss is a beginning, at least.”
The memory of Lara’s kiss made me feel queasy.
Well.
Also queasy.
“Have I told you how sexy it isn’t for you to keep leaning on me like this?” I asked her.
Any amusement her expression might have held vanished. “Half the men in the world would kill you to be in your place,” she snapped. “See that it is done.”
“And after she turns me into some kind of dopamine zombie, who are you going to replace me with?”
She tilted her head, annoyance replaced by confusion. She frowned, silver brows beetling. “I have told you before that in my calculations, replacing you at this point would be less productive than continuing to use you. Those calculations have not changed. I have no intention of replacing you.”
NowIgot to frown. The Sidhe can do a lot of things, but they can’t tell direct lies, much like lawyers and most politicians. Also like them, that rarely slowed them down from practicing deception when they deemed it necessary—but when you got straight, direct, declarative sentences, they were certain to be the truth, or at least a significant part of it.
“Then why are you shoving me at Heroin Barbie?”
Mab’s face went blank and her eyes all but glowed. Mister looked up abruptly, took one look at Mab, and silently vanished behind a freestanding bank of bookshelves.
“I am not,” she said very quietly, “in the habit of explaining myself to my vassals.”
“Ours is not to reason why,” I said.
“Precisely,” Mab said, biting off the word in crisp syllables. “Be assured, my Knight, that your disobedience in this matter will cause me to take you into my bower while I search out a new candidate.”
That sent a cold chill through my guts. The last Knight to visit Mab’s bower had been Lloyd Slate, my predecessor. Mab had tortured him to the brink of death. Then nursed him back to health. Then tortured him again. Over and over and over. By the end of it, he’d barely been recognizable as a human being.
“Thought that kind of thing was supposed to wait for the wedding,” I said.
Mab made a disgusted sound. “Our tomorrows are more severely limited than you believe. The work must be done, and before it is too late. Lara wields tremendous influence amongst the mortals. Winter must have this alliance.”
