“Any chance you’d like to go shopping with me, once all this is over?” I asked impulsively, stepping over a fallen tree covered in snow.
Laurie faltered. It was subtle, and he recovered swifter than my eyes could track, but I saw it.
“Are you asking me out on a date, Fortuna Sworn?” the faerie prince asked, looking over his shoulder with a grin.
The breezy way he phrased the question made it easy to back out. He was giving me a chance to reestablish the boundary of friendship between us. Somehow, in spite of the toe-curling sex we’d shared, that boundary had survived. It wasn’t too late to step back and face him from the other side.
I knew Laurelis Dondarte wanted me—I wouldn’t do us both the disservice of pretending otherwise, not anymore. But I was barely out of my early twenties. I’d just had my heart broken a few weeks ago. One of my best friends was currently being kept in a basement because he was possessed by a demon. I wasn’t ready to fully commit myself to another person, not when I was still figuring out how to be one myself.
“No,” I said finally, smiling back. “But I don’t hate your company. You might actually make a panicked, last-minute search for Christmas gifts fun.”
Laurie kept walking, the corner of his mouth tilted upward. But I couldn’t see enough of his face to discern whether he was hurt. “Of course I’ll go shopping with you,” he replied without turning. “I would never turn down an opportunity to improve someone else’s wardrobe. Your brother and Sir Nym are in desperate need of my services.”
My lips twisted in thought. “Let me get this straight,” I said after a moment. “Me, Damon, and Nym all need your help, but Emma hasn’t earned a spot on the list?”
“Mrs. Miller,” Laurie declared, “is perfect just the way she is.”
I laughed. The sound echoed around us, and Laurie smiled at me, his eyes the palest of blues in the twilight.
It felt like hours later when we reached the Unseelie Court. Laurie entered the darkness first, probably as a precaution, but no one bothered us in the tunnel. We emerged into another forest, this one less frozen. The trees were still bare, though, and our breaths were visible with every exhale.
The easiness between us had faded—neither of us fully trusted Viessa, I thought—as we’d been using the Door. Now tension crackled around us like electricity. Still, Laurie moved with the certainty of someone who’d been here many times before. He led me toward our mysterious destination, maintaining his strange silence the entire way. I would’ve asked where we were if I thought I’d get an answer.
By the time Laurie stopped, the world was more shadow than light. We stood at the very edge of the wood, and the sight of what existed beyond it made my anxiety give way to awe. Before us, gently sloping hills lapped toward the horizon, looking like the strangest of seas. Faint outlines of mountains stood just below the setting sun.
Laurie propped himself against a tree, one heel pressing to the bark while his other braced his weight on the ground. He crossed his arms and tilted his head, his expression relaxed and contemplative. I stood beside him, facing the horizon. My spine was stiff. What if Finn woke up while I was gone? What if he used my absence to do something stupid?
We should go back. I turned my head to say the thought out loud.
“Do you want to know a secret?” Laurie asked, keeping his gaze on those rolling hills. “How I manage to smile and make my grand jokes, even when the world is crumbling around us?”
I didn’t need to think about it. “Yes. Desperately.”
His tone became distant, as if he were seeing a slideshow of memories where the sun should be. “I view life like a story,” Laurie said. “A story in which I am the main character, and every terrible thing that happens is just a chapter in it. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so I always remind myself that I am somewhere in the middle.”
“You say that as if every story has a happy ending,” I said softly.
“True. But the alternative is far too serious for someone like me. I’m perfectly content clinging to my childish beliefs.” He smiled at me again, but this smile said there was far more to Laurelis Dondarte than I’d ever realized. That he’d lived an entire life before meeting me, and there were many parts of it he kept locked away.
“Why isn’t Betty speaking to you?” I asked abruptly. I wasn’t sure why I chose that moment to ask, or why the question popped into my head at all. Maybe it was the only topic change I could think of.
“Beg pardon?” Laurie said, giving me an innocent blink. I responded with a look that said, You heard me. Laurie sighed and turned his silver head back toward the sunset. “She grew tired of watching me fall in love with other people. I knew she loved me, and I did nothing to assuage her of that during our years together. Her love was useful to me, and use has always been what matters most.”
“Did your mother teach you that?” I asked, trying to hide the disdain I felt for Mab.
I knew I hadn’t been successful when Laurie’s mouth twitched. “She liked you, you know. She didn’t make it obvious, of course, but Mother never would’ve gone through the trouble of throwing that party if she’d found you annoying.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Laurie’s gaze shifted. His eyes flicked back to mine and he put a finger to his lips, then nodded at something behind me. I frowned, squinting as if that would help me see better. There was a rumbling in the distance. Thunder, maybe? But there were no clouds in the sky…
Then I spotted movement on the horizon. A long row of figures appeared, splashes of color in a world faded by winter. When I realized what I was looking at, I clutched the bark of the tree closest to me. Tendrils of hair blew into my face, but I didn’t brush them away.
Then they were thundering past. Clumps of earth flew from beneath their hooves. There was no need for Laurie to stress the importance of silence; it was obvious that these were wild creatures. They looked exactly like how I used to imagine the Mares of Diomedes, the man-eating horses from my mother’s grisly stories. Huge. Colorful. Strong. Their manes fluttered like sails and every single beast looked toward the horizon, as if nothing else existed for them.
My eyes met those of an enormous stallion, both in stature and in presence. Even in that briefest of moments, I saw the intelligence burning in its dark eyes. The smolder of arrogance and the brightness of something so wild, so untamable, that it may as well have been made of wind. And flew like wind it did, thundering past my hiding spot with Laurie, hundreds more following him into the pale horizon. I kept my eyes on it, long after the herd was gone, envious of such speed and grace.
“They were beautiful,” I murmured. At that moment, the world felt like a church, a sacred place that should be treaded through quietly. I turned back to the faerie prince standing near me.
“There’s a story about this herd.” Laurie’s hair stirred in a cold burst of wind. “My mother told me they used to be Fallen. Shapeshifters. They were so content as they were they forgot to change back.”
I couldn’t decide if I found the story tragic or happy—perhaps a little bit of both, like all good stories. Another gust of wind hit us, then, and my nostrils flared in a deep, exalted inhale. My mind was the clearest it had been in days, and the bone-deep weariness had become more bearable.