Jim Butcher - Cold Days

I walked for about five minutes, and instinct converted into certainty. I was being followed. I couldn’t spot who was doing it, exactly, and there were all kinds of plant cover to conceal whoever or whatever was pacing me, but I was confident that they were out there.

Maybe my brother’s fears hadn’t been entirely without merit.

Lily hadn’t said where she intended to meet me, exactly—or rather, I chided myself, I hadn’t badgered Cat Sith hard enough for the details. The furry jerk had calmly denied me that rather important piece of information, simply by never mentioning it, and I hadn’t questioned him closely enough. My own fault. I’d played the malicious obedience card more than a couple of times in my life, but this was the first time I’d had it played against me.

Man. No wonder it drives people insane.

So I started walking the main paths systematically. The gardens are built on a series of islands in a little lake, joined by footbridges and grouped into themes.

I found Lily waiting on the covered bridge to the Japanese garden.

Her long, fine hair flowed in gentle waves to the small of her back. It was silver-white. Evidently the weather didn’t bother her either. She was dressed in a simple green sundress that fell to her knees, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in July. She had a pastel green sweater folded over one arm for appearance’s sake. Brown leather sandals wrapped her feet, and their ties crisscrossed around her ankles. She stood very still, her deep green eyes focused on the ripples the little raindrops sent up on the surface of the lake.

And if I hadn’t known better, if I hadn’t known Lily’s features well enough to be sure it was her, I would have sworn that I was looking at Aurora, the Summer Lady I’d murdered at the stone table.

Before stepping onto the bridge, I paused for a moment to look around me, to truly focus my senses. There, in the bushes—something that moved with feline smoothness paced me in utter silence. More presences filled the water, stirring up more ripples than the rain could account for. And on the far side of the bridge, a number of presences lurked, veiled by magic that kept me from knowing anything about them beyond the fact of their existence.

I figured that there were at least twice as many guardians present, the ones I couldn’t sense without really buckling down. They would probably be the most capable and powerful of Lily’s escort, too.

If Lily meant to do me harm, walking out onto that bridge was a great way to trap myself, and an absolutely fantastic place in which to be shot. The railing on either side was of light, fine material, and would provide no real cover. There were an almost unlimited number of places where a rifleman could be lying in wait. If I went out there and Lily meant to hurt me, I’d have a hell of a time arguing with her.

But she’d given her word that she wouldn’t. I tried to look at this from her point of view—after all, I hadn’t given my word, and even if I had, I could always break it. Had I intended to attack Lily, the bridge presented her with an opportunity to block me in, to slow me down while she and her people escaped.

Screw this. I didn’t have time to waffle.

I hunched my shoulders, hoped no one was about to shoot me again, and strode out onto the bridge.

Lily didn’t give any indication that she’d noticed me until I got to within about ten feet of her. Then she simply lifted her eyes from the water, though she never looked at me.

I’d been the one to ask for this meeting. I stopped, gave her a bow, and said, “Thank you for meeting me, Lady Summer.”

She inclined her head the slightest visible degree. “Sir Knight.”

“Been a while,” I said.

“Relative to what?” she asked.

“Life, I guess,” I said.

“Much has happened,” she agreed. “Wars have raged. Empires have fallen.” She finally turned her head to regard me directly. “Friends have changed.”

Lily had been gorgeous as a mortal woman. After becoming the Summer Lady, her beauty had been magnified into something that was only barely human, something so tangible and intense that it shone out from her like light flowing out of her skin. It was a different kind of beauty from Mab’s or Maeve’s. Their loveliness was an emptiness. Looking on them created nothing but desire, a need that cried out to be filled.

By contrast, Lily’s beauty was a fire, a source of light and warmth, something that created a profound sense of satisfaction. Looking at Lily made the pains of my heart ease, and I suddenly felt like I could breathe freely for the first time in months.

And some other part of me abruptly filled my mind with a violent and explicit image—my fist tangled in Lily’s hair, that soft gentle mouth under mine, her body writhing beneath my weight as I took her to the ground. It wasn’t an idle thought, and it wasn’t a daydream, and it wasn’t a fantasy. It was a blueprint. If Lily was immortal, I couldn’t kill her. That didn’t mean I couldn’t take her.

I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds as I fought the image out of my forebrain. Then I forced myself to look away from her, out to the water of the lake. I leaned down on the guardrail, gripping it with my hands. I was a little worried that if I didn’t give them something to do, they might try something stupid. I took a cleansing breath and reengaged my speech centers. “I’m not the only one who’s changed since that day.”

I could feel her eyes on me, intently studying my face. I had a feeling that she knew exactly what I’d just felt. “True,” she murmured. “But we’ve made our choices, haven’t we? And now we are who we are. I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Sir Knight.”

“What? Just now?”

I saw her nod in my peripheral vision. “A moment ago, you looked at me. I have seen a face with that precise expression before.”

“Slate.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I growled, “I’m not Slate. I’m not some pet monster Maeve made to play with.”

“No,” Lily said, her voice sad. “You are a weapon Mab made to war with. You poor man. You always had such a good heart.”

“Had?” I asked.

“It isn’t yours any longer,” Lily said quietly.

“I disagree,” I said. “Strenuously.”

“And the need you felt a moment ago?” she asked. “Did that urge come from your heart, Sir Knight?”

“Yes,” I said simply.

Lily froze for a second, her head tilting slightly to one side.

“Bad things are inside everyone,” I said. “I don’t care how gentle or holy or sincere or dedicated you are. There are bad things in there. Lust. Greed. Violence. You don’t need a wicked queen to make that happen. That’s a part of everyone. Some more, some less, but it’s always there.”

“You say that you were this wicked from the beginning?” Lily asked.

“I’m saying I could have been,” I said. “I chose something else. And I’m going to continue choosing something else.”

Lily smiled faintly and looked back at the lake. “You wished to speak to me about my knight.”

“Fix, yeah,” I said. “He basically gave me until noon to leave town, or we shoot it out at the OK Corral. I’m busy. I don’t have time to skip town. But I don’t want either of us to get hurt.”

“What do you wish me to do?”

“Tell him to stand down,” I said. “Even if only for a few days. It’s important.”

Lily bowed her head. “It grieves me to say this, Sir Knight. But no. I will not.”

I tried not to grind my teeth audibly. “And why not?”

She studied me again, her green eyes intense. “Can it be?” she asked. “Can it be that you have come so far, have fallen in with your current company, without realizing what is happening here?”