Dame of Owls (10 page)

             
“Sid.” Chris exhaled like she’d punched him instead of just looking at him. “I’m glad you found me.”

             
“Really? Because you look like you’re just dandy – wait.” Sid cut herself off, told herself firmly to stop being an asshole. “I’m sorry. I wanted to say I’m sorry for going off on you like that.”

             
He put a hand on her arm. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry too, I know you feel responsible for me, but. I’m used to rough situations, and I’m used to working it out on my own. I think we have that in common.”

             
Sid felt her lip quirking up in a crooked smile. “Yeah, I get that, I do. But…”

             
“You’re a warrior, so you think like one. I’m not. I don’t. I
can’t.
But I do listen to you, and I am being careful.” He nodded towards the clearing. “Hard to kill me if they like me, right?”

             
Flawless human logic. She didn’t know how to disabuse him of it. “I sure hope so.”

             
Chris leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers. “So, apologies all around. Are we okay?”

             
“We’re okay.” She tilted her head up to kiss him. “So honor me by escorting me to this grand ball of yours?”

             
“I’d love to go to prom with you.”

             
“You’re so weird.”

             
It was Juniper who interrupted their further apologies to each other. Juniper, looking furious and grim.

             
“The Lily Knight has slain his companion and escaped from our cells.”

             
Sid swore.

---

              Juniper probably shouldn’t have brought her battle axe to the meeting. Nobody told her so. Perhaps the queen agreed with her sentiment.

             
“Where does a Summer Knight hide in my own Court, my own
palace?
” The queen’s voice was as forbidding as the thaw.

             
None of the assembled knights had an answer for her. All in all, they weren’t that great in number. There were a full 300 guardsmen in the palace, but their commander was as silent as the grave. The palace represented safety, and the guard was relaxed as a rule.

             
Ren, a knight of Holly, cleared his throat. “He could be hiding among the servants. It would be – ”

             
The queen cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I trust my servants. And hope that no one in this entire Court is stupid enough to overlook a Summer fae simply because he wears working garb.”

             
“I’ll bet he’s gone to an empty part of the city,” said Juniper, her grip on her axe tightening. “He’ll wait. Hide. Recover from the cold iron sickness.”

             
“And then try to carry out his queen’s wishes,” Ren added.

             
Their queen’s lips were drawn in a thin white line.

             
“He’ll come after Chris,” Sid blurted out. She hadn’t meant to sound so concerned. Juniper patted her shoulder bracingly and a bit too roughly.

             
“We insulted the Lily Knight gravely when we didn’t allow him his prize. He can’t stand before his queen empty-handed but for excuses,” said the queen. “He’ll have our guest, or else the head of someone of greater worth.”

             
“We’ll cancel the fete,” said Ren, who was a half-breed like Sid. That made him too serious for most fae.

             
“Absolutely not. We are not human, we will not repress ourselves and cower. We will feast. If this Lily Knight tries to bring violence to me or my guest, then his death will become the centerpiece of our festivities.”

             
In that moment the queen looked every bit as vicious as her lost sister. Sid wished that Bors had just killed himself as she’d intended. It would have saved him a dear amount of pain.

---

              It was difficult to walk into the echoing ballroom without a sword at her side and a shield on her arm. Sid straightened her arm and focused on the feeling of Chris’s hand on the small of her back. At least this time they both knew the danger he was in, and he was taking it seriously. The knife he wore was much less useless than its ornamental scabbard suggested.

             
Sid didn’t know who’d been in charge of decorating the hall, but she could guess it had been the queen herself. The flowers strewn about and dangling from the rafters bloomed only at the very edges of Court land, where Spring’s influence was strongest. An extravagant gift from the House of Crocuses, perhaps; their namesake was certainly everywhere. Crocuses and daffodils, pansies and irises, snowdrops and lilac. The effect was a riot of purples and yellows, dizzying to stare at too long. Sid was glad for her black gown. Perhaps it was a bit drab in comparison, but when you were named for a color you tended to keep to it in times like these.

             
Across the room she could see Ruby in her violent reds.

             
“Is this the entire Court?” Chris asked in an undertone.

             
“More or less. Certainly the Court branches of every major house.”

             
And likely the palace’s entire servant population. There would be little need for them elsewhere; no one missed Capella’s little parties.

             
“You’re not going to make me dance, are you?”

             
“Nobody’s going to notice if you don’t.” It wasn’t that kind of party, the sort that ended up with most of the participants naked sooner rather than later. Most people might even make it back to a private room before things started getting unlaced.

             
“Well, what should I do?”

             
“Act natural. Make friends. Be charming.” Which was a bit like commanding fish to swim, but it never hurt to be specific.

             
“Anyone in particular I should be friends with?”

             
Sid scanned the crowd and sifted through her admittedly patchy knowledge of Court politics.

             
“There.” She nodded towards a large man. “There’s Melly’s brother. He’ll like us, and if trouble rears its head he’ll just wring its neck.”

             
But as they meandered through the crowd, sidetracked by greetings and glasses of wine, Sid was distracted by red in her peripheral vision.

             
“Go on,” she told Chris as he waved off his fifth offer of another drink. “My sister wants to nag me about something. I’ll catch up.”

             
“Sure.”

             
Chris leaned down to kiss her softly. Someone nearby hooted appreciatively, which earned them a rude gesture from Sid. She lingered a bit with Chris, then drifted through the crowd towards Ruby. Sid stubbornly refused to hurry, as if she didn’t care that Ruby was pulling her obnoxious hovering act.

             
As soon as she was able, Ruby reached out and seized Sid’s elbow. Sid jumped.

             
“I almost punched you,” Sid hissed. Even if they’d been an affectionate family, which they weren’t, most people were smart enough not to go around grabbing at knights without warning.

             
“You are always almost punching me.” Ruby kept her voice low, nearly inaudible under the raucous party. She pulled Sid close to her. “Have you always been this slow on the uptake, or do you simply strive to vex me?”

             
“Excuse me?”

             
Sid was more taken aback by the naked frustration in Ruby’s voice than the actual insult. Her sisters were passive-aggressive often enough, but Ruby just didn’t slip, didn’t crack.

             
“You’ve never been terribly clever,” Ruby said.

             
“Then spell it out for me.”

             
Ruby looked around them, then tightened her grip on Sid’s elbow and hauled her through the ballroom with surprising strength. They garnered a few curious looks, but it wasn’t terribly odd for Sid to be in trouble with the lady of her house. If Ruby’s anger had never been this sharp before, well, Sid had never involved herself with strange mostly-mortal boys before.

             
Sid hoped that wasn’t what this was really about. Not content with the hall outside the party, where people still lingered, Ruby pulled her away into a small alcove.

             
“Do you love that man?”

             
“Excuse me?”

             
“We don’t have time for you to be defensive. Do you love that man? Would you put yourself in harm’s way for him?”

             
Sid’s fists clenched. “I’ll protect him, yes. If that’s what you mean.”

             
“I thought so.” Ruby sighed, her proud shoulders slumping. “You went to see the Lily Knight in his cell.”

             
Shit.

             
The smart thing to do would be to lie. Ruby wouldn’t buy it for a minute.

             
“Yes.”

             
“So you know the Summer Court plans to do with your…man.”

             
Sid’s heartbeat thundered furiously in her ears. “Yes.”

             
“I have made the decision to tell you this, both as the lady of your house and as your sister,” Ruby said, staring Sid straight in the eye. “Our queen would follow the same path as theirs.”

             
It took Sid a long moment to process the meaning of Ruby’s words. She tripped over the implications, denied and refused them, then felt the bile rising in her throat. She wrenched her arm free of Ruby’s grasp and whirled, realized she had nowhere sensible to storm off to, turned again and slammed her fist into the wall. The palace’s smooth stone refused to give, but her knuckles cracked with the force of her anger. The pain, at least, brought her back to herself.

             
She would heal. Chris wouldn’t, if the queen herself held a knife to his throat.

             
“Are you quite finished?” Ruby asked.

             
Cradling her hand to her chest, Sid nodded. She was a knight; she needed orders. Ruby looked good and ready to give them. Sid would wonder why, why Ruby was on her side after all these years, after they got Chris to a safer place than the Winter Queen’s palace.

             
And where was that, exactly? Could they tuck him away on a tropical island, or keep him hidden in the Thoroughfare? Was Sid to pretend she had no knowledge of him, brush up on her lying? From Court to battlefield to hiding place and back? Lie to her queen, her own family, the woman who had held a sword at her shoulders and proclaimed her
dame
–

             
Or give that woman Chris.

             
“Obsidian. Obsidian, look at me. What are you thinking?”

             
Sid tried to focus on her sister’s steady gaze, but was finding it hard to concentrate. Red crept in at the edges of her vision. She wanted to punch something else, but the wall had proven immovable and the only other target was Ruby. She knew, somewhat dimly, that she couldn’t strike her sister.

             
“Is it true?”

             
“You’re going to have to give me specifics.”

             
“What Bors said. About killing Chris, is that true?”

             
“That it could win one side the war?” Ruby asked. “Yes, that is what the queen believes. After your last battle, when you were healing, we had a prisoner of war. They tried to use the information to barter for their life.”

             
Ruby did not have to clarify that their attempt had been unsuccessful.

             
“So the queen sent me after their target.”

             
“We didn’t expect you to get so attached, I’m sure.” Ruby’s expression twisted into something wry. “I warned mother, you know, when she sought out your father. I told her that mortals can’t put a leash on their love affairs.”

             
Suddenly, punching Ruby was back on the table. “So why are you helping me?”

             
“Because you’re family. And because I have reason to believe that the Spring Court doesn’t approve of all this, and I’d rather than not upset our benefactors.”

             
“What do I do?”

             
“Get your mortal. Run. I’ll cover for you as long as I can. Don’t panic.”