Eileen Wilks - Inhuman

And his colors—! Rich and warm and earthy, but with hints of leaf green, the violet of a twilight sky, and arctic white. The thoughts woven through those colors were smooth and somehow complete.

"Nadrellian." His voice was rich as freshly pressed cider, pure as a bell, and it caught on some strong emotion. "Ah, Nadrellian." And he held out his arms.

Nathan took one step, then another, and the Huntsman sprang forward to meet him, and the two men embraced—the Huntsman laughing, then seizing Nathan's face in his two hands and planting a smacking kiss on each cheek. The hounds crowded around them, tails wagging, wanting to greet and be greeted.

After a moment the Huntsman released Nathan, a grin splitting his beard. "Hoy, so this is odd, is it not? To grab you and be grabbed back! What, you won't lick my face now you have hands? Ah, but I've missed you, boy."

Kai heard him. In her mind, she heard and understood him. But her ears heard different sounds, not what her mind reported. She shook her head as if she could shake free of the disconnect that way.

Nathan's laugh rang clear. He rested one hand on the head of a hound who stood hip-high to him. Another hound butted him in the leg, wanting attention. He glanced down fondly. "Ardadamar, where are your manners? And you, sir, claiming you missed me. You've scarcely thought of me."

"No, but I did… well." He scratched his ear. "Several times, yes, I did. Is my grief less for being inconstant, eh? I missed you. But why did you call me? You don't need me to come home."

"I've a favor to ask." As the Huntsman's face darkened he added, "And stories for payment. Four hundred years' worth."

"Stories. Well." He fingered his beard, then his gaze shifted. He saw Kai and the beast at her side. He nodded. "Ah. So you called me for this, but it's no favor. How could you think so? Queens' law, boy, and you were wise not to take this hunt on yourself." He reached into thin air—and withdrew a bow.

"What? No," Nathan said. "I'm asking you to return the chameleon to her home."

"Oh, the chameleon. Poor girl. No, she can't be sundered again. The hounds can deal with her, or you can. Better you," he decided. "You'll make it easy on her. But I'll take the binder, don't worry."

"Binder?" Nathan said. His voice came out strangled. He glanced at Kai, emotions skittering across his face and spiking in his colors so fast she couldn't track them—but they ended in horror.

He leaped—made one great, impossible leap, and he landed in front of her. He spun to face the Huntsman, a noise rising from his throat he couldn't have made, deep and inhuman, a growl rising straight from nightmare.

The chameleon sprang to her feet, answering his growl with hers.

Kai thought she might wet her pants. "Nathan?"

The Huntsman stilled and said in a voice too much like Nathan's growl, "You defy me?"

"Mine." Nathan crouched lower, hands out—a fighting posture. "She's Kai, and she's mine."

The Huntsman tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. "Or you are hers. She's a binder, boy. She's caught you."

"She's not. Not a true binder, though I… she thinks she's a telepath. I don't know what she is, but she's Kai. I can't let you kill her."

"You can't stop me." All the humor—the fey, Robin Goodfellow pleasantry—fell away, and Kai was looking at death. Beautiful, implacable death was coming for Nathan and for her. The hounds—so friendly a moment ago—spread wide, hackles lifting, heads lowering.

Nathan called out a name.

Kai heard icicles and silence, and silently the air split open in front of them. A woman, all in white, stepped out of that slit in reality. It closed up neatly behind her. She took a single step forward—and Nathan abandoned Kai to reach for his queen, and he held her as she held him, both of them speaking in a liquid roll of syllables that made no echoes of meaning in Kai's head.

Kai stood, stricken and staring. This wasn't the Queen of Winter. She was winter.

Her skin was white. Not Caucasian, but truly white—like snow or alabaster or opals, for there was a sheen to it, as if colors played beneath the surface. Her hair was blacker than the hellhounds' midnight fur and spiraled in shiny curls to her waist. Her long, oval face angled in ways no human face would, and her tilted eyes were silver just kissed by blue. Tears spangled those eyes, glistening like melting snow in the lashes and on the white cheeks, as she and Nathan embraced.

She had no colors.

Kai blinked. She focused harder, but still saw none of the colors every living creature possessed. No shapes, intricate or otherwise. No thoughts. No emotions. Nothing. "She's not there," Kai said stupidly.

The queen turned her head, her arm still around Nathan, to look directly at Kai. "Binder." Her voice wasn't bells or flutes or anything Kai had expected. No, it was husky and warm, the welcoming warmth of a fireplace on a winter's night. She spoke English now. Clear, unaccented English. "Did you think I would leave my thoughts dangling free for you to seize?"

"My queen." Nathan inhaled on a shudder and stepped back from her, closer to Kai. "She is not a binder."

Those tilted eyes swung toward him, and the queen spoke gently. "I see what you cannot."

"Yes. But it may be I see what you cannot, also."

Her eyebrows lifted. "Nadrellian." She cupped his face in both hands. Her fingers were long and thin and indescribably graceful. "My Nadrellian."

A shudder passed through him. He stared into her eyes, and for several moments neither of them spoke. Finally he said, "I cannot step aside. She is mine."

Kai didn't know if it was courage or ego or simple stupidity pushing her, but she couldn't keep still any longer. " She has a name and a voice, and I was raised to think it's rude to discuss people as if they weren't present when they are. Especially if you're talking about killing them."

The queen laughed. "So we are," she said agreeably. And a knife winged through the air, heading straight for Kai.

Nathan's hand slapped out, knocking it aside.

The queen glanced over her shoulder at the Huntsman. " Iss'athl ," she said—two precisely inflected syllables that echoed in Kai's mind as something like "lively and clever idiot."

"Control yourself."

"She lacks respect."

"She's human." The queen moved around Nathan to study Kai, her gaze traveling up and down. "Mostly human."

Mostly?

The queen stretched out a hand to one side. The chameleon, who had been oddly still until that moment, inched forward to sniff those white fingers, then lick them. "I will discuss your fate with you, then, Kai Tallman Michalski. How did you bring Dell to you?"

"I…" Kai licked dry lips. Now that she had the chance to speak, it was hard to do so. Those eyes… "I didn't, exactly. I was sleeping, and she asked… I don't know how to say it because there weren't words, nothing like words. But she was so alone, and she hurt. I said yes, and just—I fit her in, or she came in."

"She asked?"

"I told you," Nathan said. "Kai is not a binder. She sees thoughts, but doesn't—"

"Hush," the queen said absently. She tipped her head to one side. In that moment, curious and alert, she looked about twenty. "I would examine you. For that, I need your permission. You do not have a wide spectrum of choices, since if you refuse I must let my brother kill you. But still, you have this choice. I will not undertake such an invasion without your consent."

Kai's head buzzed with questions, a dizzying mass of questions. She couldn't speak them. Somehow the words wouldn't form, not while she stood beneath the gaze of this ancient power. "May I talk to Nathan?"

"Nai-thann." She made the syllables longer, more weighted, and turned her head to smile at him. "It was a good choice, that name. Are you Naithann now?"