Jim Butcher - Cold Days

“I know exactly what I have done,” Maeve snarled. “I have beaten you. This was never about the sleepers, or this accursed isle, or the lives of mortal insects. This was about beating you , you hidebound hag. About using your own games against you. Kill me now, and you risk destroying the balance of Winter and Summer forever, throwing all into chaos.”

Sarissa lay on the ground, moaning.

“And it was about taking her away from you,” Maeve gloated. “How many mortal caterwauls or sporting events will the Winter Queen attend with the Summer Lady? And every time you think of her, you remember her, you will know that I took her from you.”

Mab’s black eyes went to Sarissa for a moment.

“The blame for this lies with me,” Mab said quietly. “I cared too much.”

I realized something then, in that moment when Mab spoke. She wasn’t reacting as she should have been. Cold rage, seething anger, megalomaniacal outrage—any of those would have been something I would have considered utterly within her character. But there was none of that in her voice or face.

Just . . . regret. And resolution.

Mab knew something—something Maeve didn’t.

“Remember that when this world is in ashes, Mother,” Maeve said, “for you cannot risk my death this night, and I will not lift a finger to aid you in the Night to come. Without the Winter Lady’s power, your downfall is simply a matter of time—and not much of that. After this night, you will not see me again.”

“Yes,” Mab said, though to which statement was unclear.

“I have choice, Mother, while you will be destroyed in your shackles,” Maeve said. “You will die, and I will have freedom. At last .”

“To fulfill one’s purpose is not to be a slave, my daughter,” Mab said. “And you are not free, child, any more than a knife is free because it leaves its sheath and is thrust into a corpse.”

“Choice is power ,” Maeve spat in reply. “Shall I make more choices this night, to demonstrate?”

She lifted the little pistol again and pointed it at me.

Karrin drew a sharp breath.

And I suddenly understood what was happening; I understood what Mab knew that Maeve didn’t.

Sarissa wasn’t the only Faerie vessel on the hilltop. She was simply the one Maeve had been meant to see.

There was one other person there who had been spending time with a powerful fae.

Who had a relationship with one that was deeper and more significant than a casual or formal acquaintance.

Whose life had been methodically, deliberately, and covertly reshaped for the purpose.

Who had been extensively prepared by one of the Sidhe.

“Maeve,” I said in a panic. “Don’t! You’re killing yourself. You haven’t won. You just can’t see it.”

Maeve cackled in delight. “Can’t I?”

“Being able to choose to tell lies isn’t a freaking superpower, Maeve,” I said. “Because it means you can always make the wrong choice. It means you can lie to yourself .”

Maeve’s smile turned positively sexual, her eyes bright and shining.

“Two plus two is five ,” she said, and rotated the gun sideways, the barrel still pointed at my eye.

Mab moved her little finger.

Karrin’s hands flew out from behind her back in a shower of broken chips of black ice. She tore her little holdout gun from a concealed ankle holster.

“No!” I shouted.

Two shots rang out, almost simultaneously.

Something hissed spitefully past my ear.

A neat, round black hole appeared just to the side of Maeve’s nose, at the fine line of her cheekbone.

Maeve blinked twice. Her face fell into what was almost precisely the same expression of confusion Lily’s had. A trickle of blood ran from the hole.

And then she fell, like an icicle in a warm sunbeam.

“Dammit, no,” I whispered.

Deep blue fire gathered over the fallen Winter Lady. It coalesced with an ugly howl into the outline of a serpent, which coiled and then lashed out in a strike that carried its blazing form fifteen feet, to the nearest corner of the ruined cottage . . .

. . . where Molly, behind her veil, had been crouched and waiting for a chance to aid me.

The serpent of Winter cold plunged into her chest, shattering her veil as it struck, and my apprentice’s expression was twisted in startled horror. She didn’t even have time to flinch. It struck, and she fell back against the side of the cottage, her legs buckling as if the muscles in them had forgotten how to move.

Molly looked up at me, her expression bewildered, confused, and she barely managed to gasp out, “Harry?”

And then she, too, collapsed to the ground, shuddering and unconscious.

“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Oh, God.”

Molly.

Two Queens of Faerie lay dead.

Long live the Queens.

Everyone was shocked, still.

I turned to the retinues of the fallen Queens and said, “Let Fix go. Now.”

They released the smaller man, and he went at once to Lily’s side, his face still wrenched with grief.

“You will put down anything you took from my friends,” I told the fae in a level voice. “Then you will withdraw as far down the hill as the wall will allow. If I see any of you try anything violent, you will never leave this island. Am I understood?”

I didn’t look like much, but Mab was looming right over one of my shoulders, and Demonreach over the other, so they took me seriously—even the rawhead. They all moved away, breaking into two groups as they went.

“Harry,” Karrin said. “What just happened? Is Molly all right?”

I stared hard at Mab. “I don’t know,” I said to Karrin. “Can you and Justine get them both into the cottage? Just . . . make sure they don’t swallow their own tongues or something.” I looked over at Justine. “How you doing, Mac?”

Mac gave me a weary, shaky thumbs-up.

Justine looked up from tending to him. “I don’t think there’s too much bleeding. But we need to get this dirt washed off of him.”

“There’s a pump by the door to the cottage,” I said. I looked around and frowned at Demonreach. “Hey, make yourself useful and help them carry the wounded inside.”

Demonreach eyed me.

But it did so, lumbering forward to pick Molly and then Sarissa up, very carefully, the way a person would carry an infant, one in each arm. Then it walked over to the cottage, carrying them. Karrin, meanwhile, went to Justine, and between the two of them, they were able to get Mac on his feet and hobbling into the cottage. I went and managed to drag Thomas over my shoulder. I toted his unconscious form to the cottage, too, and told Mouse, “Stay with him, boy.”

Mouse made a distressed noise, and looked over at Molly. He sat down on the floor halfway between the two of them, and looked back and forth.

“Just have to have a little campout until dawn,” I said. “We’ll take care of them.”

Mouse sighed.

“Harry,” Karrin began.

“Gun,” I said quietly, and held out a hand.

She blinked at me, but she checked it, engaged the safety, and handed it over.

“Stay here,” I said, moving toward the door.

“Harry, what are y—”

“Stay here ,” I snarled, furious. I took the safety off and left the cottage to stalk over to Mab.

As I crossed to her, her black gown and hair became storm-cloud grey, then silver, then white again.

“Yes, my Knight?” she asked me.

I started walking around the base of the tower, away from the cottage. “Could you please come this way?”

She arched a brow but did, moving over the ground with the same approximate weight as moonlight.