A Lick of Frost

WE WERE MET BY A BOIL OF BODIES AT THE DOOR TO THE BIG house. Dogs, faerie hounds, met us with barks, bays, yips, and noises that sounded like they were trying to talk. Since they were supernatural in origin I wouldn't have put it past them.



There were so many dogs trying to greet so many different masters at the door that we couldn't move forward. As dogs will, they were acting as if we had been gone days instead of only hours. My hounds were like greyhounds, but not quite. There were differences in the head, the ears, the line of body from shoulders to tail, but they had that muscled grace. In color they were white, a pure, shining white like my own skin, but with marks of red, again like my own hair. Minnie, short for Miniver, was white save for half her face and one large spot of red on her back. The face was very striking: red on one side, white on the other, as if someone had drawn a line neatly down her face. Mungo, my boy, was a little taller, a little heavier, and even whiter, with only one red ear to give him color.



Some of the larger hounds looked like Irish wolfhounds had, before they'd gotten mixed with anything less beefy. There were only a few of them among the greyhounds, but the few towered over everything else like mountains rising above a plain. Some had rough coats, some smooth, but all were a variation of red and white. Then you had the terriers that spilled around our ankles. They, too, were mostly white and red, except for a few who were black and brown. The old black and tan, brought back to existence by wild magic, was the breed that most of the modern terriers are descended from.



Rhys had the most terriers, but then he was a god of death, or had been. Our people see the land of the dead as an underground place, most of the time, so the fact that he had earth dogs was logical. He didn't seem to mind that he had none of the graceful hounds, or the huge war dogs. He knelt in the mass of barking, growling dogs, all so much smaller, and glowed with the joy that all of us showed. We had always been a people who honored our animals. They had been much missed.



There was one other exception to the color of the dogs - Doyle's hounds. They were not as tall as the wolfhounds, but meatier, black muscle over bone. They were the original shape the dogs had come to us in, black dogs, what the Christians called hellhounds. But they had nothing to do with the devil. They were the black dogs, the black of void and nothing from which comes life. Before there is light, there must be darkness.



Doyle tried to walk unaided but stumbled. Frost gave his strong arms to his friend. Strangely, there was no dog to greet Frost. He and only a few others had touched the black dogs but they had not changed into some other hound for them.



None of us knew why, but I knew it bothered Frost. He feared, I think, that it was a sure sign that he was not enough to be truly sidhe. Once he had been the hoarfrost, Jack Frost, and now he was my Killing Frost, but there was always that insecurity that he was not born sidhe, but made.



Hovering above the sea of dogs were small winged fey; the demi-fey. To be wingless among them was a mark of great shame. All that had followed me into exile had been wingless until I brought new magic back to faerie. Penny and Royal, twins with dark hair and bright wings waved at me.



I waved back. To be greeted like this by a cloud of demi-fey and our dogs was an honor I never thought I would have.



I offered to help Frost with Doyle, but Doyle refused. He wouldn't even look at me. His supposed "weakness" had cut him deeply. One of the big black dogs pushed at me and gave a soft growl. Mungo and Minnie both moved up, hackles beginning to raise. That was not a fight I wanted to see, so I backed off, calling them to my hands.



My hounds were capable of protecting me if they had to, but against the black dogs they looked fragile. I stroked their heads. Mungo leaned against my leg, and the weight was comforting. I wanted nothing more than a nap with my dogs on the floor by the bed, or at the door. Not all my men liked a furry audience, and sometimes neither did I. Regardless, we had one more task to do before we could rest.



We called my aunt, Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, as soon as we got inside. I would have put Doyle and Abe to bed immediately, but Doyle had pointed out that if someone else told the queen before we did that I had been offered her rival's throne she might view it as treason. She might view it as me jumping ship. Andais didn't take rejection, any type of rejection, well.



She was already fairly pissed that so many of her most devoted guards had dumped her for me. I didn't see it as dumping her for me. I saw it as them choosing a chance for sex after centuries of forced celibacy. For that, most men would have gone to any woman. It helped that I wasn't a sexual sadist and Auntie Andais was, but that, too, was a fact best not shared.



Doyle had insisted on being present for the call. He wanted her to see what Taranis had done. I think he thought the visual aid would cut through her usual fits of temper. She was more stable than Taranis, but there were moments when my aunt didn't seem entirely sane. Would she like this unexpected news or hate it? I honestly didn't know.



Doyle sat on the edge of my bed. I sat beside him. Rhys sat on my other side. He'd jokingly said, "You promised me sex, but I know you, you'll get distracted unless I stay by your side." It was a joke with some bite in it for Rhys and me. But Doyle said yes to his staying with us too quickly. It let me know that my Darkness was hurt worse than he'd let on.



Frost stood at the corner of the bed. It's easier to go for a weapon when you are standing.



Galen stood beside him. He'd insisted on being included in the call, and nothing anyone had said could dissuade him. In the end it had been easier to just give in. Galen's arguments that we needed at least one more able-bodied guard on the call had some merit. But I think he, like me, wasn't sure what Andais would do with the news from the Seelie Court. He was afraid for me, and I was afraid for us all.



Abe lay on the far side of the bed. He hadn't wanted to be included, but hadn't argued with Doyle's order. I think Abe was afraid of Andais. Of course, so was I.



Rhys moved to the mirror. His hand was close to the glass, but not quite touching it. "Everybody ready?" he asked.



I nodded. Doyle said "Yes."



"No," Abe said, "but my vote doesn't count, apparently."



Frost just said, "Do it."



Galen just watched the mirror with eyes that were a little too bright. It wasn't magic, it was nerves.



Rhys touched the mirror, using such a small piece of magic that I didn't even feel it. The mirror was cloudy for a moment, then the black bedroom of the queen appeared. But she was not there. Her huge black-draped bedspread was empty except for a pale male figure.



He lay on his stomach across the black fur and sheets. His skin wasn't just white, or even moonlight skin like mine, but so pale it had a translucent quality to it. It was what skin would have looked like if it could be formed of crystal. Except that this crystal was cut with long crimson slashes on arms and legs. She'd left his back and buttocks untouched, which probably meant the cuts were for persuasion and not torture. Andais liked to go for the center of the body when she was causing pain for the sake of pain.



The blood shimmered in the lights, again with a jewel quality that I'd never seen in blood before. The man's hair spread to one side of his body, catching the light in small prism rainbows. He was so still that for a moment I thought there was some awful wound we could not see. Then I saw his chest rise and fall. He lived. He was hurt, but he lived.



I whispered his name, "Crystall."



He turned, slowly, obviously in pain. He laid his cheek against the fur underneath him, and stared at us with eyes that looked empty, as if there was no hope left. It hurt my heart to see that look in his eyes.



Crystall hadn't been a lover of mine, but he had fought with us in faerie. He had helped defend Galen when he might otherwise have died. The queen had decreed that all the guards who wished could follow me into exile and then too many of them had opted to come, so she had had to take back her generous offer. The men who had left were safe with me. The men who had not been in the first few groups that Sholto, Lord of that Which Passes Between, had brought to Los Angeles had been trapped in faerie with her. Trapped with a woman who didn't take rejection well, when they'd openly chosen another woman. I was seeing what the other woman, my aunt, thought about that.



I reached out toward the mirror, as if I could touch him, but it wasn't one of my powers. I could not do what Taranis had done so easily earlier today.



"Princess," Crystall whispered, and his voice was hoarse, roughened. I knew why his voice sounded like that. Screaming will do that. I knew because I had been at the queen's mercy more than once. The queen's mercy had become a saying among the Unseelie sidhe, as in, "I'd rather be at the queen's mercy than do that."



Andais had seen exile from faerie as worse than any torture she could devise. She did not understand why so many of her fey had chosen it. Just as she hadn't understood why my father, Essus, took me and our household into exile in the human world after Andais tried to drown me at six years of age. If I was mortal enough to die by drowning, then I wasn't sidhe enough to be allowed to live. Sort of the way you'd drown a puppy that your purebred bitch dropped after you realized it wasn't the mating of your dreams, but some mongrel that had gotten inside the fence.



Andais had been shocked when my father left faerie to raise me among the humans, and she had been equally shocked when, many years later, nearly her entire guard would have followed me into the Western lands. For her, to leave faerie was worse than death, and she couldn't understand why it wasn't a fate worse than death to everyone else. What she failed to understand was that the queen's mercy had become a fate even worse than exile.



I stared into Crystall's luminous, hopeless eyes, and my throat tightened around the tears that I knew I could not afford to shed. Andais had left us a present to look at, but she'd be watching, and she would see tears as weakness. Crystall was her visual aid. Her example to us, to me. I wasn't certain what the message was supposed to be, but in her mind there was one. But, Goddess help me, other than her jealousy and hatred of rejection I couldn't see any message here.



"Oh, Crystall," I said. "I am sorry."



His voice had reminded me of the sound of chimes in a gentle wind. Now it was a painful croak. "You did not do this, Princess."



His eyes flickered toward what I knew was the outer door, though I could not see that part of the room. His face closed down, and for a moment where there had been hopelessness there was rage. A rage that he stuffed down, and hid behind eyes that showed as neutral a face as he could find.



I prayed that Andais hadn't seen that moment of rage. She'd try to beat it out of him if she had.



The queen swept into the room dressed in a loose, flowing black robe. It left open a triangle of white flesh, the flat perfection of her stomach and a trace of her belly button. There was a thin cord tied across the high, tight planes of her breasts that kept the front of the outfit from spilling open completely. There were long, wide sleeves that left most of her forearms bare. She must have been called away on important business to have put on that much clothing with Crystall still in her bed. He wasn't hurt enough for her to be finished with him.



She'd tied her long black hair back in a loose tail of hair. The ribbon she'd chosen was red. I'd never seen her wear red before, not even a spot of it. The only red the queen liked on her person was other people's blood.



I couldn't have explained it, but that red ribbon made my stomach clench tight, and my pulse speed. Andais slid onto the bed in front of Crystall, but close enough that she could stroke the untouched flesh of his back. She stroked him idly as you would a dog. He flinched at her first touch, then settled down and tried not to be there.



She looked at us with her tricolored eyes: charcoal, to the color of storm clouds, to a pale winter gray that was nearly white. Her eyes went so perfectly with the black hair and the pale skin. She was so made for Goth fashion, like Abe, except she was scarier than any Goth on the planet. Andais was serial-killer scary, and she was my father's sister, my queen, and there was nothing I could do about either.



"Aunt Andais," I said, "we have arrived from the hospital to tell you much news." We had already agreed that we needed to be clear from the beginning that we were telling her the news at the first opportunity.



"My queen," Doyle said, doing an awkward sitting bow as far as the bandages would allow.



"I have heard many rumors this day," she said, in a voice that some thought was a throaty, seductive sound, but that had always filled me with dread.



"Goddess knows what the rumor's are," Rhys said as he moved back to stand by the bed, near me. "The truth is weird enough." He said it with a smile and his usual teasing lightness.



She gave him a flat look that was anything but friendly. There would be no lightening her mood if that look was any indication. She turned those angry eyes back to Doyle. .



"What could possibly injure the Dark itself?" Her voice was angry, and almost disinterested. She knew, somehow she already knew. Who the hell had talked?



"When the Light appears, the Darkness must leave," Doyle said, in his best flat nothing voice.



She ran the bright redness of her lacquered nails down Crystall's back. She left red lines, though she didn't quite break the skin. Crystall turned his face away from the mirror and from her, afraid, I think, that he could not control his expression. "What light is bright enough to conquer the Darkness?" she asked.



"Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, is still potent in his hand of power," Doyle said, his voice even emptier than her own.



She dug fingernails into Crystall's back just below the shoulder blade, as if she meant to dig a handful of flesh out of his back. Blood began to show around her hand, like water filling a hole in the ground, slowly seeping upward.



"You seem preoccupied, Meredith. Whatever could be the matter?" Her voice was almost conversational, except for that edge of cruelty.



I decided to concentrate on the things that might distract her from tormenting the man in her bed. "Taranis attacked us through the mirror in the lawyer's office. He injured Doyle, and Abeloec. He was trying for me when Galen got to me safety."



"Oh, I doubt he meant to injure you, Meredith, even in his madness. I suspect he was trying for Galen."



I blinked at her. The way she said it meant that she knew something that we did not. "Why would he target Galen?"



"Ask yourself first, niece, why he accused Galen, Abeloec and Rhys of raping the Lady Caitrin." Her hand dug deeper into Crystall's flesh, causing tiny red lines to begin to trickle over his skin.



"I do not know, Aunt Andais," I said, and fought to keep my own voice even and empty. I was trying not to show either fear or anger, though right now, fear was by far the strongest emotion. She was pissed, and I didn't know why. If she knew about the offer of the Seelie throne to me, then she might be pissed at that, but if I blurted it out, she'd think I felt guilty and I didn't. She was always so difficult to deal with, like being in the middle of a minefield. You know you have to get to the edge, but how to do that without getting blown up, that was always the question.



"Oh, come, Meredith, think. Or are you so little Unseelie and so much Seelie that all you can think about is fertility?"



"I thought my fertility was supposed to be the thing I thought about most if I am to be your heir, Aunt Andais?"



She drew her fingers together, forcing a sound from Crystall. She'd made bloody scratches in his back like some evil flower carved into his flesh. She raised her pale hand so I could watch his blood drip down her fingers.



"Are you going to be my heir, Meredith, or is there another throne that calls to you more?"



There, she'd said enough that I could address it. "It is true that when Taranis was subdued by his nobles they offered me a chance at his throne."



"You told them yes." She hissed it at me, standing and striding toward the mirror.



"I did not. I told them we would have to discuss such news with our queen, with you, Aunt Andais, before I could say yes or no."



She was at the mirror now, blocking our view of the bed and Crystall. Her anger had awakened her power. Her skin was beginning to glow. Her eyes were filling with the light, but not the way that most of the sidhe's eyes glowed with power. She seemed to have light behind her eyes, as if someone had set a candle behind all that gray and black. For the rest of us, for the most part, the individual colors glowed, but not her. She was queen, and she had to be different.



"I heard you jumped at the chance, you ungrateful little bitch."



"You have been lied to then, Aunt Andais." I fought to keep my voice neutral.



"Yes, remind me that you are my bloodline, my last chance to have someone of my line to rule after me. If you would but get with child, Meredith. Goddess knows you're fucking everything in sight. Why are you not with child?"



"I do not know, Aunt, but I do know that we came directly here from the hospital. We came into the house and to this mirror. We came to call you and tell you all that has happened. I swear to you by the Darkness that Eats all Things that I did not tell the Seelie I would sit upon their throne. I told them we would have to speak to our queen before we could answer them."



Her eyes had begun to dim. Her power was beginning to fold away. Something tight in my stomach eased a little. I had used an oath that no fey would have taken lightly. There were powers older even than faerie, and they waited in the dark to punish oathbreakers.



"You truly did not agree to sit on the golden throne and forsake our court?"



"I did not."



"I must believe you, niece of mine, but the Seelie Court is thick with knowledge that you will be the next Queen of their court."



Doyle reached across his body and touched me with his good arm at the same time that Rhys touched my shoulder. I touched Doyle's thigh lightly and laid my hand on Rhys's hand. "What they say, or think, I cannot control, but I did not agree to it."



"Why not?" she asked.



"I have friends and allies among the Unseelie Court. To my knowledge I have no such thing at the Seelie Court."



"You must have powerful allies there, Meredith. They are voting Taranis unfit to rule even as we speak. They will then vote you queen. They would not do that unless you had been approached by the nobles of that court. You must have been courted by them before now. There must have been many secret meetings that I did not know of, and that none of our guards reported to me."



I was beginning to see where her anger was coming from, and I couldn't entirely blame her. "One of the reasons I said no, and made clear that I must speak with you first, was exactly that, Aunt Andais. I have not been approached in any way by the nobles. Taranis was almost unnaturally persistent in his desire to have me at one of their Yule celebrations, but other than that I have not had dealings with the Seelie Court. I swear this to you. That is why the offer makes me suspicious as to what they truly want of me."



"I know Hugh. He is a political animal. He would not have offered it to you unless he had a reason to do so. You swear to me that he has never before approached you about this?"



"I swear," I said.



"Darkness, tell me exactly what happened?"



"I fear, my queen, that I will be useless for this. To my deep shame, I was unconscious through most of it."



"You don't seem that injured."



"Halfwen healed me at the hospital or I would still be there."



"Abeloec," she said.



Abe stirred behind us on the bed. He'd tried very hard to go unnoticed. "Yes, my queen."



"Do you know why Taranis would target you?"



He sat up slowly, careful of his back, and ended by half kneeling almost on all fours behind us. "Once my power was necessary for the choosing of a queen, as Meabh's power was to the choosing of a king. I think Taranis heard rumors that my power was returned to me, in part. I think he feared that I would help turn Meredith into a true queen of faerie. If we had known that any noble was dreaming of offering her the throne, then the accusations against me would have made some sense. He wanted me away from the princess."



"Galen," she said, "why did he target you?"



Galen looked flustered for a moment. He shook his head. "I don't know."



"Come, Galen Greenknight, green man, why?"



I had a thought. "He knows the prophesy that Cel got from the human psychic," I said.



"Yes, Meredith, because you and the green man will bring life back to the courts. Taranis has made the same mistake my son did. He thinks that Galen is the green man of the prophesy. Neither of them remember our history."



"The green man means the god, the consort," I said.



Andais nodded. She turned those eyes to Rhys. "And you, why you? Have you figured it out yet?"



"He heard the rumor that I'm Cromm Cruach again. If I were truly back to my original strength then he would fear me."



"Rumor has it that you can bring death to a goblin with a touch again. Is that rumor true?"



"I have done it once," he said, "but whether it will work again, I do not know."



"The rumor might be enough for Taranis," she said. She seemed calmer. Which was good. She looked at Doyle. "I understand why he attacked you. If I were to try and kill the princess, I would kill you first, but he was wrong in not targeting our Killing Frost." She turned those calm eyes to the big man standing so silent beside the bed. "To kill Meredith and survive would require both your deaths, wouldn't it, Killing Frost?"



Frost licked his lips. He was right to be nervous. This was not a conversation that we wanted to be having with our queen. "That is true, my queen," he said.



"Did the Seelie Court make the same condition on you that I do? Do you need to be with child before you can sit their throne?"



"No, they offered the throne with no conditions except that the nobles of the Seelie Court vote Taranis out and me in."



"What do you think of that, Meredith?"



"I am flattered, but not stupid. I am wondering if the nobles are playing some game of their own choosing, and the offer to me is simply to buy them time to consolidate their own bid for the throne. A vote to put me on the throne would slow the process of choosing a new king, or queen, for the Seelie Court to a crawl."



Andais smiled. "Did Doyle reason it out for you?"



"No, my queen," Doyle said. "The princess is well aware of the Seelie Court's potential for treachery."



"Is it true that Taranis almost beat you to death as a child?"



"Yes," I said. In my head I added, as you tried to drown me. Out loud I kept my mouth shut.



Andais smiled as if she'd hit on the same memory and it was a happy one for her. "Meredith, Meredith, you must learn to control your entire face. Your eyes betray how much you hate me."



I lowered my gaze, not sure what to say that wouldn't be a lie.



She laughed, and it was both a lovely sound and a sound that made me shiver, as if it were my own body lying on her bed unable to protect itself from what would come next. I wanted to save Crystall from her, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it. Me trying and failing would just make her hurt him worse. She'd think it meant he was special to me, and it would amuse her all the more to slice him up.



"Now that I know that you have not been meeting with Hugh and the Seelie nobles in secret, I agree that they mean you treachery. Perhaps you will be their stalking horse to lure out all the would-be assassins. Or perhaps it is what you say, that they simply throw your name into the ring to slow the process while someone else consolidates their own power. I think the latter the more likely, but the offer is so completely unexpected that I have not had time to think clearly on it."



What she meant was that she'd been convinced that I'd betrayed her with the Seelie Court, so she'd been too angry to think clearly. I kept my reasoning to myself. I had my face enough under control that I could look back up at her. Or I hoped I did. How do you tell if your own face is neutral?



"The fact that Taranis knows of the prophesy that Cel got from the human prophet means that one of Cel's trusted people is spying for the king of the Seelie Court." She tapped her chin with one bloody fingernail. "But who?"



There was a sound from the mirror, almost the clanging of swords. I glanced at the clock. "We are expecting a call from Kurag, Goblin King," I said.



"You have call waiting on your mirror," she said.



I nodded.



"I've never heard of such a thing. Who did the spell?"



"I did," Rhys said. His face was still softly amused, but there was a wariness around his eyes.



"You will have to bespell my mirror as well."



"Gladly, my queen," he said, voice pleasantly neutral.



The clang of swords sounded again. "Perhaps you should come back to court and do that today."



"With apologies, Aunt Andais, Rhys is to bed me if we can get time between calls and emergencies."



"Would it upset you to see his pale flesh bleeding on my bed like Crystall's?"



There was no safe answer to that question. "I do not know what you want me to say, Aunt Andais."



"The truth would be nice."



I sighed. Doyle squeezed my hand. Rhys tensed beside me. It was then that Galen lost it. "What does it matter? Taranis attacked us today. He went so crazy that his own nobles jumped him and dragged him away. He's about to be voted out as king of the Seelie Court, and you want to spend time tormenting Merry about us!" He actually stepped close to the mirror and continued to yell at her. "Doyle almost died today. Merry could have died today, and then you'd never have a child of your blood on any throne. The Seelie nobles are up to something dangerous that involves our court, and you want to play these stupid, painful games. We need you to be our queen, not our tormentor. We need help here. Goddess save us, but we do."



We might have jumped him to keep him quiet, but I think we were all too stunned to do anything. The silence was heavy, broken only by Galen's too-fast breathing.



Andais stared at him as if he'd just appeared. It wasn't a friendly look, but it wasn't an unfriendly look either. "What help would you have of me, Greenknight?"



"Try to find out why Hugh offered the throne to Merry, really why."



"What reason did he give?" she asked in an amazingly calm voice.



"That there are swans with gold chains, and that a Cu Sith stopped the king from beating a servant. The Seelie think Merry is to blame or gets credit for the return of the magic."



"And does she?" Andais asked with that edge of cruelty beginning to creep back in.



"You know she does," Galen said, and there was no anger, just a sort of righteousness, as if it was just truth.



"Perhaps," Andais said. She turned her gaze to me. "I will try and find out if Hugh is being honest, or as treacherous as we think. You must have some magic over men that I do not see, Meredith. You have not even fucked Crystall, yet he seems strangely loyal to you. I will break him to my ways again, then I will choose another of the men who would have deserted me for you. Sidhe who would have rather followed you into exile than stay with me in faerie." She said the last almost in a thoughtful voice, as if she truly didn't understand it.



The truth was that it wasn't faerie they wanted to leave but her sadistic care, but that was a truth better kept to myself.



"If the Seelie offer is a genuine one, Meredith, you might consider taking it."



A thrill of fear ran through me. "Aunt Andais, I don't understand."



"Every man who prefers you to me makes me hate you a little more. Soon, my hatred for you may outweigh my desire for you to sit my throne. On the golden throne of the Seelie Court you would be safe from my anger."



I licked my suddenly dry lips. "I do nothing to anger you on purpose, my queen."



"And that is what is so maddening about you, Meredith. I know you do not do it on purpose. You simply are, and somehow by being yourself you part my nobles and my lovers from me. Your Seelie magic wins them away."



"I carry the hands of flesh and blood, those are not Seelie hands of power, Aunt."



"Yes, and Cel's prophet said that if someone of flesh and blood sat the Unseelie throne he would die. He thought it meant your mortality, but it didn't." She looked at me, and there was something other than cruelty, though I wasn't sure what exactly. "Cel screams your name in the night, Meredith."



"He means my death if he can manage it."



She shook her head. "He has convinced himself that if he lay with you, you and he would have a child, and he would be king to your queen."



My mouth couldn't get any drier, but my heart rate could get faster. "I do not think that would work, Aunt Andais."



"Work, work - it is fucking, Meredith. The mechanics of it would work just grand."



I tried again, while Doyle and Rhys gripped me harder. Even Abe moved in at my back to put his face against my hair. Touching to comfort me.



"I suppose what I meant was that I do not think Cel and I would make a good ruling couple."



"Do not look so frightened, Meredith. I know that Cel would not make you pregnant, but he has convinced himself of it. I suppose I am warning you. He no longer wants you assassinated, but he would kill every lover you have, if he could."



"Is he... - " I tried to think of a way to say it, " - free to..."



"He is not imprisoned, but he is under guard at all times. I do not want my own guards to kill my only son to protect my heir." She shook her head. "Go, call the goblin king back. I will try to find out if Hugh's offer of the golden throne is true or false." She was walking back to the bed as she spoke the last few sentences. "But first I will take out my anger and frustration at you on your Crystall. Know that every cut is a cut I would make on your lily-white skin if I didn't need your body whole." She crawled onto the bed and reached for Crystall. A knife had appeared in her hand, either by magic or it had been tucked into the sheets.



Frost got to the mirror first and cleared it with a touch. We were left staring at our own images. My eyes were a little too wide, my skin pale.



"Crap," Rhys said.



That about summed it up.