"Well, this is a little colder than I'm used to, but I guess it could be nice if you enjoy frostbitten toes and unsightly gangrene." Puck sniffed, pushing open the door to Tir Na Nog from the trod. "How about we begin this adventure, princess?"

But before Meghan could answer, another, darker voice cut in.

"I don't think that you'll get very far."

Standing before them, his black hair tousled by the chill winter wind whipping in through the doorway, was a figure clad in silvery white armor with a sword that shone like ice stretched out before him, the blade wavering with a challenge. He was a dark mark on the pristine landscape, his eyes boring into their group like a spear. If Puck was vibrant colors, bravado, and banter, then this man was his opposite: he was subtlety and silence, a quiet but pervasive threat.

"Ash." Puck said, like he'd bit into a rotten fruit, wincing at the sweetness turned bitter. His hands found Meghan's shoulders and ushered her behind him. "You have this great habit of showing up exactly when no one wants you around."

The prince shrugged, brushing it off. "It tends to come in handy. Shall we, then?"

Puck snorted derisively, his smile becoming more dangerous. "Oh, you better believe it."

Meghan could feel the muscles in Puck's back tense as he reached to his boot and pulled forth a dagger whose blade was clear as glass and had designs swirled into it, etching out the delicate lines of leaf spines. Through the blade, she could see the barren, snow-covered landscape, unmarred by the passage of man or beast.

But not for much longer, she realized. Not if these two had their way.

"Puck," she whispered, her head close to the trickster faery's ear, "you don't have to do this. We can talk. Ash is-"

"Not the kind of guy you want to get too close to, princess." Puck whispered back. "And unless the Nevernever's changed a lot since I left, I don't think having your sword out means you wants to play nice."

She bit her lip, watching as Puck winked, trying to get a smile. But Meghan was sure that she had seen something unspoken pass between them. Ash was more than Puck was making him out to be, that she knew. She and Ash hadn't danced together at Elysium, hadn't felt that connection, strange and treacherous though it had been, for nothing. She refused to believe that it really was as simple as everyone was making it out to be, winter versus summer, good versus evil, locked in a constant battle like every over-used anime plot.

"You always were pretty dumb." Puck grinned manically. "But if it's a fight you want, then I am more than happy to oblige."

He stretched his shoulders, trying to loosen the muscle. It hadn't been all that long since his fight with Shard, and while redcaps were normally easy fare, he'd also been employing a significant amount of concentration in order to evade getting stomped by a troll, not to mention having to fly a while after a long term stay as a raven on Oberon's chair. Ash was an obstacle that generally required all the tricks he had up his sleeve, and that was what had always made their sparring interesting in the past. They'd been well-matched.

These days, though, it just seemed to prolong the inevitable, that, one way or another, one of them was going to slip up and die.

"Kiss for luck, princess?" Puck looked at Meghan hopefully.

It was a shot out of the blue, but hey, a faery could dream. It wasn't like he was going to get all that many opportunities with a cait sith watching over their every move to the ice fortress like a hawk. Puck knew Grimalkin too well to doubt that the cat would allow his query to go off anywhere interesting or do anything gossip-worthy without him. That was just one more reason why he'd been less than thrilled about Meghan bringing the feline along.

"After all, if I die," for once, Puck spoke his thoughts aloud, "when am I going to get another chance?" He smiled winningly.

It was always this way. He always lied a little more, pretended and acted a little more over the top when something this serious was at stake. A true trickster never showed his hand.

Still, Meghan frowned. "I don't want you to die."

"Sad to say, it's all too common in duels to the death." He stuck out his tongue. "That's why I need the luck."

She hugged him, and she realized that since their frenzied ride through the wyldwood when he was a horse, this was the first time that she'd hugged Puck as a human. His body seemed like something long lost, familiar that she hadn't expected to come back, something calm, calling back the memories of the last time they were like this, when he'd saved her from the kelpie and then spent the night by her side.

He was always saving her, she realized, always doing this, standing between her and trouble and often getting himself into even more trouble because of it.

She brushed her lips across his cheek, feeling her breathing go a little odd. "It's like you're my knight in shining armor."

For a moment, she thought that she must have said something wrong, because Puck started, and then his smile turned strangely sad.

"Of all the things, princess, I can never be that." He grinned, this time all traces of sadness gone, replaced with fierce determination. "Faeries and iron don't mix well, remember? Let's just tackle one problem at a time, ice boy for instance."

As she watched them circle each other, she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd touched a sore nerve, that maybe this altercation went a lot deeper than a feud between courts.

"Everyone has some personal baggage." Grimalkin groomed his tail as Puck and Ash took up sparring positions. "These two more than most, but it can't be helped."

And then the battle was joined.

Meghan could hardly follow the blur of sword and dagger as Puck and Ash parried and dodged. A crisp mountain breeze cut through the fight like a harbinger of a storm, setting Meghan's teeth chattering but not slowing the combatants in the least. While she couldn't track all of their moves, she could see their strategies. Ash's tactics were quick, decisive offense. He favored close combat, drawing in his opponent with bombardments of icicles until he could lure Puck into a swordfight, where Meghan surmised, his true strength lay.

Puck, on the other hand, seemed to prefer keeping the battle as far away from him as possible. He fought defensively, either through hurling small balls of fur at Ash, which turned into animals and fought in his place, or through cunning manipulation tricks that saw several Puck doppelgangers all leering down at a surrounded Ash.

She thought that she could almost make some sense of it, their delirious dance, but then, just as Puck and Ash were drawing closer, beginning their steps in the hand to hand combat part that she knew would signal the fight's end, something swept underneath her like a wave. At first she thought that it was Summer magic when she felt the electricity cut through her, but then when the metal claws and limbs lifted her in a buzzing tide, and she knew she wasn't dealing with normal faeries anymore.

"Puck, help!" She cried out as the strange creatures, the same gremlins that had invaded the computer lab at her school and then sent her that haunting message in the kitchens of Arcadia swarmed her en masse, flowing out below her like a blanket of water, and then bore her upwards like she were some sort of rock star being carried away by her legions of adoring fans.

Only this time, from her experiences in the Nevernever, she was pretty sure that her "fans" were less the autograph-and-picture variety and more the razor-sharp-claws-and-hostage kind.

"Help me!" She tried to call out again, but this time, the gremlins rushed over her as they tumbled away, a wave of metal cutting across the clean, white hills, and she could speak or see no more.

-o-

"Well." Puck stuck his hands on his hips, his glass dagger still grasped in one fist. "This makes things a little awkward."

His nose was burning from the ozone-spiked vapor trail that the gremlins had left in their wake. Throw in the fact that the patch of land that they'd traveled over was blackened as though it had been razed by a small army, and you got one very nasty (and very lethal) enemy to chase after.

"Goodfellow." His opponent still had his sword at the ready, was ready and willing to continue where they had left off. But Puck just sighed, frowning at the dark path cut into the snow. The Winter prince was unrelenting, his expression cold. "Will you run from accepting responsibility for Ariella's death yet again? That's a new low, even for you."

Puck dug his foot into the snow, solidifying his position. "Oh, believe me, pretty boy, we aren't done yet. But I have bigger fish to fry. Specifically, whatever the hell those things were that stole Meghan. Who is currently kidnapped, by the way, in case it escaped your notice."

"As always, you show yourself to be a poor guardian."

"If you two would stop posturing," Grimalkin cut in with a very feline sniff, "I believe their trail leads into a cave."

-o-

"Why do I have the feeling that I'm not going to like what comes next?" Puck muttered, rubbing his cold hands together but keeping his dagger at the ready. They found the place easily enough, and no other creatures seemed willing to go around it, which made sense, considering the harsh smell of sulfur that cut through the air nearby. "This place feels about as fun to explore as a tin can factory."

Ash raised an eyebrow at Puck as he scouted the entrance. Before he gingerly poked his head in, he whispered with a faint smirk. "So it is true, then. The great Robin Goodfellow is acting like a human."

Puck had a witty retort about humanity and where Ash might be inclined to stuff it on the tip of his tongue, but the way that the winter prince's eyes widened as he withdrew silenced it. Instead, Puck groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead melodramatically.

"Great. Don't tell me, it's another dragon."

"It was a wyvern, you ass. Can't you even remember that?" Ash gave him a sour look. "And no, it's not, actually."

"Oh!" Puck brightened. "Well, should be no problem for me to kick it to the ass-end of Faery then, right?"

"It's a fire-breathing horse made out of steel."

Puck was silent. After a while, he sighed with a little laugh. "Damn. Well... damn. This is what I get for volunteering to be the decoy."

-o-

Sometimes, he did dumb things.

"Dumb" was usually getting tipsy in the company of phoukas or hesitating a little too long before reporting back to Oberon with news about his daughter. "Dumb" was even an excuse for what he had been doing recently, leading Meghan into enemy territory for the sake of her younger brother. What he was doing right now, though, as he dodged between shots of fire and the clattering stamp of iron hooves, wasn't dumb at all.

It was abject stupidity, brainlessness boarding on suicide, and went so far beyond the realm of actions he would normally bill as dumb that he needed a new name for it.

Ice boy had run out with Meghan when Puck had given them an opening, zinging in with a bevy of twig-and-leaf copies of himself and several furry compatriots. Meghan's captor and then the gremlins had roared with rage and as the battle was joined, their strange Iron glamour trickled along his skin and cut into him, a slow poison. But Puck had to hold them back, keep them from following until Ash gave the signal that he and Meghan were clear.

Another copy winced and then vanished as a steel-clad hoof cut through it like ripping paper. The leaf it had been fell charred to the floor.

"INTRUDER! YOU WILL RETURN MEGHAN CHASE TO US OR PERISH!" The horse reared, its hooves burning into the cave walls.

All around the steel horse, the ice cave seemed to be collapsing as its magic unraveled in the maelstrom of fire and falling ice. Even the air in here was becoming more and more polluted with the scent of iron; it was like Puck was riding in a smaller version of the school bus, the very air was spiked with it. Metallics cut into him from all angles; even as a raven, when he flew to evade his pursuers, he knew that he would not be able to last long, not if the spurts of fire kept coming at him like this, the iron piercing his skin so easily. As Summer fey, fire was like a second skin coiling along his nerves, but this kind was different.

These flames seethed like curses, biting into him, unwilling to let go. Puck knew at once that he could not hope to turn the battle in his favor. At last, maybe he had overreached himself.

But hey, he gasped as another burst of smoke clogged the air and his horse opponent loomed over him, at least he wouldn't have to put up with the humiliation for long.

-o-

"Puck!" Meghan cried into the flames rounding out of the cave. There was no response, save Puck's taunts at Ironhorse and the Iron faery's growing whinnies of frustration and rage. She struggled even as Ash held her, her lips cherry red in her ashen face.

"Come on." Ash implored, tugging at her arm, moving her further and further from the entrance to the cave. "You need to get away from here and fast."

"Puck's still in there!" She protested. "And if you think that I'm leaving my friend, you've got another thing coming-"

"Puck will die." Ash said detachedly, in the same voice that Meghan thought one might describe a particularly boring slug. "Unless you are away from this place, far enough away, he will continue to protect the entrance. So, move away."

Meghan scowled at him, her face a mixture of confusion and distress. Her best friend was possibly being roasted alive for her sake and the boy that she (maybe) had a crush on since dancing with him at a faery ball was telling her to abandon her friend. If Puck had been in her position, would he have retreated when she was in danger?

The answer to that seemed to be right in front of her.

"No! Get him out of there, Ash! Do something!"

It burst from her like a bird, like an orchid sprout breaking through rough earth. Ash shot her a strange look even as he stabbed his sword into the ground, making the ice seal that bound Ironhorse (and Puck?) inside the cave. Meghan even surprised herself, her hands finding their way to her mouth as though they were attempting to hide the sound, cover it after the fact. But, her surprises were hardly over yet.

"Appreciated at last," a very weary Puck chuckled, voice warbly. "Well, princess, you've just made my day."

And then he fell over into the snow, black feathers poofing out from him in a wispy cloud.

For a moment, Ash and Meghan just looked at each other. And then the prince of the Unseelie Court took to one knee, clutching his stomach, surprise flickering over his features.

"Copycat." Puck wheezed from the ground. "You weren't fighting it. I was. How do you get injured?"

"Shrapnel. Some piece of iron must have flown at me as I was sealing it off. Gods," Ash hissed through clenched teeth, his blue eyes flecked with pain as he attempted to stand again and failed. "I will be of little use like this."

"Oh dear." Grimalkin raised an eyebrow as he surveyed the fallen. Meanwhile, the cave glittered ominously as Ironhorse attempted to roast his way out. "Are both of you out of commission so soon? I had expected better."

"Never fear, princess!" Puck's hand shot upwards in a triumphant fist, though the rest of him remained in the snow heap, his speech breathy as though he'd run a marathon. "We'll guard you with our very lives."

Ash just glowered at him.

Glancing back at the cave, Grimalkin sighed and buried his head under a paw, ears flattened. "We must keep going. I highly doubt any enchantment will hold up against that creature for long and, though your avowed protectors seem eager for a rematch," sarcasm rolled off his tongue, "I would prefer to be farther along our journey by the time our opponent breaks out."

"Um, Grim?" Meghan stepped forward hesitantly looked from one fallen boy to the other. "Are we going to have to carry them? I'm not sure how far we can make it like this, to be honest."

Puck looked pallid at best as he tried to pull himself up, the effects of the wintry territory clearly taking its toll on top of his injuries. Even Ash, who should have been at home in the frozen tundra, was slow to attempt to rise.

The cat simply rolled his eyes and sighed as though inconvenienced. "I suppose a detour may be in order."


Author's Note:

So glad you guys are digging this! I know school's going to start again soon (at least for me), so here's a chapter before the academic craze begins anew. Thanks again for all the kind words and encouragement- I really appreciate it. Next chapter will feature a small deviation from canon (!) and summerpods. Excited? I am. ;D

-cy.