“Lea,” I said. “What has happened to you? How long have you been a Sidhe-sicle?”
Some of the strength seemed to ebb from her, and she suddenly seemed exhausted. “I grew too arrogant with the power I held. I thought I could overcome what stalks us all. Foolish. Milady Queen Mab taught me the error of my ways.”
“She’s had you locked up in your own private iceberg for more than a year?” I shook my head. “Godmother, you look like you fell out of a crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Her eyes opened again, glittering and unsettling as hell. And she laughed. It was a quiet, low sound-and it sounded nothing like the laugh of the deadly Sidhe sorceress I’d known since before I could drive.
“Crazy tree,” she murmured, and her eyes closed again. “Yes.”
I heard heavy, thumping steps on the staircase, and Thomas came sprinting onto the parapet, fae-bloodied sword still in hand. “Harry!”
“Here,” I said, and waved an arm at him. He glanced at Charity and Molly, and hurried over to me.
A little lump of fear knotted itself in my guts. “Where’s Murphy?”
“Relax,” he said. “She’s downstairs guarding the door. Is the girl all right?”
I pitched my voice low. “She’s breathing, but I’m more worried about damage to her mind. She’s crying at least. That’s actually a good sign. What’s up?”
“We need to go,” Thomas said. “Now.”
“Why?”
“Something’s coming.”
“Something usually is,” I said. “What do you mean?”
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Since last year… since the Erlking… I’ve had… intuitions, maybe? Maybe just instincts. I can feel things in the air better now than before. I think the Wild Hunt is coming toward us. I think a lot of things are coming toward us.”
No sooner had he said it than I heard, blended with the distant cry of the wind, a long, mournful, somehow hungry horn call.
I stepped up onto the edge of the fountain and peered out into the moonlit night. I couldn’t make out anything very clearly, but for an instant, far in the distance, I saw the gleam of moonlight on one of the odd metals that faeries used to make their weapons and armor.
Another horn rang out, this one more a droning, enormous basso- only the second horn came from the opposite side from the first. Over the next few seconds, more horns joined in, and drums, and then a rising tide of monstrous shrieks and bellows, all around us now. In the mountains east of Arctis Tor, one of the snowcapped peaks was abruptly devoured by a rising black cloud that hid everything beneath it. A quick check around showed me several other peaks being blanketed in shadow. Horn calls and cries grew louder and continuously more numerous.
“Stars and stones,” I breathed. I shot a glance at my godmother and said, “The power I used here. That is what caused this, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Lea said.
“Holy crap!” Thomas blurted, jumping like a startled cat when what he must have thought was another statue moved and spoke.
“Thomas, this is my godmother, Lea,” I said. “Lea, Th-”
“I know who he is,” my godmother murmured. “I know what he is. I know whose he is.” Her eyes moved back to me. “You summoned forth the power of Summer here in Arctis Tor, in the heart of all Winter. When you did so, those of Winter felt the agony of it. And now they come to slay you or drive you forth.”
I swallowed. “Uh. How many of them?”
The mad gleam returned to her eyes. “Why, all of Winter, child. All of us.”
Crap.
“Charity!” I called. “We’re leaving!”
Charity nodded and rose, supporting Molly, though the girl was at least mobile. If she’d remained unaware and walled away from the world, it would have been a real pain to get her all the way back down the tower. Molly and her mom hit the stairs.
“Thomas,” I said. “See if you can chop off some of this ice without hurting her.”
Thomas licked his lips. “Is that a good idea? Isn’t this the one who tried to turn you into a dog?”
“A hound,” Lea murmured, glittering eyes flicking back and forth at random. “Quite different.”
“She was a friend of Mom’s,” I told Thomas quietly.
“So was my Dad,” Thomas said. “And look how that turned out.”
“Then give me the sword and I’ll do it myself. I’m not leaving her.”
Lea made a sudden choking sound.
I frowned at her. Her eyes bugged out and her face contorted with apparent pain. Her mouth moved, lush lips writhing, twisting. A bestial grunt jerked out of her throat every second or two. The fingers of her freed hand arched into a claw. Then she suddenly sagged, and when she turned her eyes back to me, they were my godmother’s again; one part lust, one part cool, feline indifference, one part merciless predator.
“Child,” she said. Her voice was weak. “You must not free me.”
I stared at her, feeling confused. “Why?”
She gritted her teeth and said, “I cannot yet be trusted. It is not time. I would not be able to fulfill my promise to your mother, should you free me now. You must leave.”
“Trusted?” I asked.
“No time,” she said, voice strained again. “I cannot long keep it from taking hold of…” She shuddered and lowered her head. She lifted her face to me a few seconds later, and the madness had returned to her eyes. “Wait,” she rasped. “I have reconsidered. Free me.”
I traded a look with Thomas, and we both took a cautious step backward.
Lea’s face twisted up with rage and she let out a howl that shook icicles from their positions. “Release me!”
“What the hell is going on here?” Thomas asked me.
“Uh,” I told him. “I’ll get back to you after we get out of Dodge.”
Thomas nodded and we both hurried toward the stairs. I glanced back over my shoulder, once. The fountain was already building itself up again, freezing water to ice. A thin sheet of it already covered my godmother. I shuddered and looked away, directly at the delirious Lloyd Slate. My footsteps quickened even more.
And then, just as I was leaving, only for an instant, I thought I saw one more thing. The triangle of statues of Sidhe noblewomen caught a stray beam of moonlight, while thin clouds made it jump and shift. In that uncertain light, I saw one of the statues move. It turned its head toward me as I left, and the white marble of its eyes was suddenly suffused with emerald green the same color as Mab’s eyes.
Not just the same color.
Mab’s eyes.
The statue winked at me.
The sounds of the approaching fae grew even louder, reminding me that I had no time to investigate. So I shivered and hurried down the stairs beside Thomas, leaving the parapet and its prisoners and-perhaps-its mistress behind me. I had to focus on getting us back to Lily’s rift in one piece, so I forced all such questions from my mind for the time being.
The four of us were slogging through snow up to my knees a few moments later, while I spent the last reserves of power I’d taken from Lily’s butterfly to keep us from going into hypothermia.
I took the lead and ran for the rift as a nightmarish symphony of wails and horns and howls closed in all around us.
Chapter Forty
Shielded by the good graces of Summer, we fled Arctis Tor. The winds outside howled louder, kicking up increasingly intense clouds of mist, snow, and ice. Beyond the wind, still vague but growing slowly more clear and immediate, I could hear the cries of things that thrived in the dark and the cold. I heard drums and horns, wild and savage and inspiring the kind of terror that has nothing to do with thought, and everything to do with instinct.