The air smelled of fire and death. Hundreds of Fae lay dead or dying around me but I didn't pay them much heed. My entire reality narrowed down to the young Faerie Queen in my arms.
I had done this. To an enemy, sure, and to someone who had been trying to kill me at the time, but also to a scared girl whose intentions weren't truly evil. The worst part, though, was how helpless I was to do anything about it. There were wizards gifted with the power of healing but I'd never had a lick of talent in that venue. I couldn't help her.
But there was someone who could. Generally speaking, I would've stuck to proprieties. No. That wasn't true. Normally, I would never have spoken her name at all but desperate times call for potentially suicidal measures.
"Titania. Titania. Titania!"
A warm spring wind brushed my cheek and stirred my duster as it swept past me, forming a whirlwind that kicked up leaves and debris, coalescing into the shape of a woman.
Titania, the Queen of Light and Life, was beautiful beyond words. Enough so that even under the circumstances, I found myself staring at her in wonder for several seconds. Her deep green eyes were wide with horror and disbelief, as they swept from my bloody hands and clothes to her daughter's crumpled, shivering form.
I knew in that instant that if Aurora didn't make it, neither would I.
Titania swept past me like a warm wind and knelt by the fallen Summer Lady, brushing back sweat-matted hair from her forehead.
"Mother," Aurora coughed, straining to draw enough breath to speak. "I'm… sorry."
Titania hushed her daughter with a gentle finger to her lips. There were tears running down her cheeks, a display of emotions I'd never even thought possible for the Fae.
That scared me.
The fae are fundamentally alien creatures and that makes them damn unnerving. It's when they're like us though, that they are at their most dangerous. There's probably a lesson to be had there.
"Do not apologize. It was not your fault. I see now what ails you."
Sunlight poured out of Titania's palms, so bright and searing that I had to avert my eyes. In my peripheral vision, I saw Titania's light pass over Aurora's wounds, searing them shut.
Aurora screamed and screamed until she ran out of breath and could do nothing but writhe against the Summer Queen's unbreakable hold. I'm not sure how long it lasted but eventually, Titania eased her daughter back to the ground and walked up to me.
I stayed very, very still and kept my lips firmly shut before something stupid would spill out.
Titania watched me, approaching slowly, as though looking for… Something. Apparently, that was enough of a distraction for my self-control to slip and my mouth's auto-pilot resume.
"Do I have something in my teeth? I had some salad earlier and you know how that is."
Titania ignored my remark and a full minute of close, silent scrutiny passed, the tension in the air growing thicker and thicker, until she finally spoke.
"My daughter is alive thanks to you, Harry Dresden," she said, her expression almost thoughtful. "Summer will not forget your service."
And in a breath of of wind, she and Aurora were gone and I collapsed. I'm not sure how much time went by before a rough kick to the ribs woke me up. Some part of me must have been aware and remembering where I'd passed out because I came up fighting, rolling out of the path of a second blow and unleashing my will in a violent surge of kinetic energy.
The spell was already tearing through the air by the time I could see my target. Maeve stood in front of me, decked out in chain mail, sword in hand.
She raised one hand and clenched her fingers into a fist. My strike, one that damn near would've sent a car tumbling over sideways, shattered on her defense without ruffling a hair on her head.
The Winter Lady licked her lips and stalked forward, the naked hunger in her expression far more terrifying than any weapon she might bring to bear.
"Cease."
The voice rang out from everywhere, echoing off the hillside, not loud but pervasive all the same. I recognized that voice and even if I hadn't, there was no mistaking the power behind the simple command.
I had stopped trying to move away from Maeve, who now stood rigid, arms and legs locked in place. The very air around us seemed to have stilled at the command of the Queen of Winter.
A feminine form drifted out of the mists surrounding the valley of the stone table. She was tall and slender, the greatest beauty I had ever laid my eyes upon.
"It would seem you did everything I asked of and more besides, my emissary." Mab was still thirty feet away, yet her voice tickled my ear as if she stood by my side.
"Uh yeah. I'm a hard worker."
Okay. Not my A-game but cut me some slack. It had been a long day.
"Tell me what happened.
"Something got to the Summer Lady. It twisted her. Titania got rid of it."
Mab's smile slipped and the weight of her focus pressed down on me like a yoke. When she spoke, her voice was deathly calm.
"Describe it."
"I didn't see," I sputtered. "Titania said it was something that… Ailed her. That what had happened wasn't her fault."
Mab considered me for a long while, her eyes far away in thought.
"The adversary has made its first move," she said quietly.
Maeve was circling back to stand by her mother's side, sword still in hand, eyes wary. Something was going on. Something beyond my understanding and far, far beyond the conflict I'd just thought I'd resolved.
Mab's eyes widened as she must have reached some sort of conclusion. In the same moment, Maeve's sword whipped back and down in a smooth arc towards Mab's unprotected throat. I shouted out a warning but it was too late.
Or rather, it should've been too late. Mab's arm whipped out at the sword and the steel shattered upon her palm as it struck, the pieces freezing mid-air and scattering across the ground covered in rime.
Maeve recovered quickly and pushed both her hands out at Mab, power surging down her arms. The temperature plummeted. The grass under my boots crunched as I stepped back and it hurt to breathe the suddenly frigid air.
Mab didn't raise a hand to defend herself. She simply waded through that torrent of horrible power as though it was a gentle autumn breeze and seized her daughter by the throat. Her fingers clenched and the cold slowly began to fade as the winter lady lost grasp of the magic.
Mab lifted Maeve off the ground until they were at eye level and stared into her eyes. When she spoke, her voice shook the valley we were standing it.
"What is your name?"
Maeve's lips turned up into a too-wide smile and she laughed. I'd heard her laugh before. It was a mocking, cruel thing. Disturbing but still human. Mostly. This… This was something else entirely. Maeve was gone. As empty and as cold as the void of space, that laughter slithered past her lips.
"What…" Mab repeated firmly. "Is your name?"
Not-Maeve kicked and flailed at Mab but the Winter Queen stood as adamant and unmoving as a mountain.
"You have no power over me, Faerie," Not-Maeve spat. "And you never shall."
Mab's eyes narrowed. "Thrice I ask and done, Outsider. You are in my realm and I bid thee tell me. What is your name?"
Maeve's face twisted in pain and anger and the words sounded like they tore something in her throat and they left her mouth.
"I am Nemesis. Oathbreaker, Kinslayer. I am He-Who-Walks-Within. One day your walls will crumble, your fortress will be torn asunder and on that day you will kneel before me, Faerie!"
Mab sneered at him. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. Today, you lose."
There was a blinding surge of light and power and when I could see again, an unconscious Maeve was being carried away by sidhe knights. Mab had settled next to me on the ground and was running her hand along my hair in a disconcertingly maternal gesture.
"You have done both Winter and Summer a great service on this day, Harry Dresden," she said.
"Oh, you know me," I croaked. "I'm a real do-gooder."
I think she may have smiled at that. My mind was a bit fuzzy so who knows. What I do know is that I woke up in my apartment. The Alphas had all been given the best possible care I could have wanted for them. My hide was safe from the Council, too, as I found out when Morgan came and told me as much. The man looked like I'd just told him I'd pissed in his tea. I tried not to gloat. I may not have done a good job of it, but I really did try.
Apparently, thanks to me, Titania and Mab had spoken for the first time since the battle of Hastings. Now, you may be thinking 'That can't possibly be a good thing.'
To which I'll reply 'No fucking shit.'
Despite all that I'd thought I'd gotten away clean and gone back to my life. Up until the day eight months later when I walked into my apartment with a pizza under one arm and a six-pack of beer under the other and found The Winter Queen and Lady sitting next to one another on my couch.
Mab sat straight-backed, with her hands folded in her lap. Maeve, by contrast, sat slouched with her boots propped up on my coffee table.
"If this is a Jehovah's Witness thing," I said, settling the beer down as though my heart wasn't about to beat out of my chest. "Then you can consider me converted."
"Not today," Mab said. "Today I have come to ask you a favor."
"Super," I said. "If it's about making an honest woman out of your spawn, I'm going to have to decline."
I headed over to the kitchen and fetched three sets of forks and knives, then put the two extras down again. Stainless steel. Bad idea. I got an opener instead, popped the caps off two of the beers, and handed one of the bottles each to the Fae.
Next, I opened the lid of the pizza box and cut my dinner into slices.
"I don't have any silver cutlery so if you're hungry you'll have to eat with your hands." I took a slice for myself and chewed slowly before adding: "So… What do you want me to do?"
Two pairs of nigh identical green eyes lingered on me as I swallowed, washed it down with my own beer, and took another bite.
Mab leaned back in my sofa and cross her legs. My eyes tracked the process without ever consulting my higher brain functions for a go-ahead. She took a slow pull of beer.
"I have received intelligence from a reliable source," she said. "That a threat is rising in a little city in Britain called Innsmouth."
I waited for her to follow that up with something. She didn't.
"So let's get this clear," I said. "You want me to go someplace I've never been, to investigate a threat that you won't or can't specify."
"Correct," Mab said. "Worry not. You will not undertake this task alone."
My eyes drifted over to Maeve. I'd been expecting a smirk but her face was perfectly neutral.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better about this?" I asked and pushed The Winter Lady's boots off my table. "Because it doesn't."
"You will do this, Harry Dresden," Mab said.
I stuck out my jaw belligerently.
"And if I don't?" I asked. "What if I tell you to take that offer and shove it?"
Mab's smile was blinding in its beauty and as she rose, candle flames dimmed, the fireplace died down to sullen embers and even the sunlight peering in through my low-set windows seemed to grow wan.
The Queen of Winter leaned down and whispered in my ear.
I swallowed as the temperature in my apartment, along with my pulse, slowly began to return to normal
"So…uh. When are we leaving?"