Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

She wanted to beg him to be the Roiben she knew, the one who said she was the only thing he wanted, the one who hadn't betrayed her and didn't hate her. "Look at me. Why won't you look at me?”

"The sight of you is a torment." His eyes, when he raised them, were full of shadows. "I thought if I kept you out of this war, it would be the same as keeping you safe. But there you were in the middle of the Seelie Court as though to prove me a fool. And here you are again, courting danger. I only wanted to save one thing, just one thing, to prove there was some good in me after all.”

"I am not a thing," Kaye told him.

He closed his eyes for a moment, covering them with long fingers. "Yes. Of course. I shouldn't have said that.”

She caught his hands and he let her draw them from his face. They were as cold as the falling snow.

"What are you doing to yourself? What's going on?”

"When I became King of the Unseelie Court, I thought we could not win the war. I thought that I would fight and I would die. There is a kind of mad glee in accepting death as an inevitable cost.”

"Why?" Kaye asked. "Why bind yourself to such a miserable fate? Why not just say 'screw this, I'm going to make birdhouses' or something?”

"To kill Silarial." His eyes glittered like chips of glass. "If she isn't stopped, no one will be safe from her cruelty. It was so hard not to crush her neck when I kissed her. Could you tell it from my face, Kaye? Did you see my hand tremble?”

Kaye heard her own blood pounding at her temples. Could she really have confused loathing with longing? Recalling the blood on Silarial's mouth, she thought of the way his eyes had seemed glazed over with passion. Now it seemed closer to madness. "Then why did you kiss—”

"Because they're my people." Roiben swept his hand over the field, taking in the graveyard and the prison. "I want to save them. I needed her to believe I was in her power so she might agree to my terms. I know it must have seemed—”

"Stop." Kaye felt a cold finger of dread shiver up her spine. "I came here to tell you something," she said. "Something I figured out about the battle.”

He raised a single silvery brow. "What is it?”

"Silarial's going to choose Ethine as her champion.”

His laugh was almost a sob, short and terrible.

"Call off the duel," Kaye said. "Find some excuse. Don't fight.”

"I wondered what terrible thing she might set against me, what monster, what magic? I forgot how clever she is.”

"You don't have to fight Ethine.”

He shook his head. "You don't understand. Far too much is at stake tonight.”

Coldness spread from her heart to freeze her body. "What are you going to do?" Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended.

"I'm going to win," he said. "And you would do me a great service if you told Silarial that I said so.”

"You wouldn't hurt Ethine?”

"I think it's time that you went, Kaye." Roiben swung a strap with his scabbard attached over his shoulder. "I won't ask you to forgive me, because I don't deserve it, but I did love you." He looked down as he said the words. "I do love you.”

"Then stop doing this. Stop not telling me shit. I don't care if it's for my own good or whatever stupid reason—”

"I am telling you shit," Roiben said, and hearing him swear made her laugh. He smiled back, just a little, like he got the joke. In that one moment he seemed heartrendingly familiar.

He reached out, still smiling, as though he were going to touch her face, but he traced the shape of her hair instead. It was not even a real touch, feather-light and never coming to rest, as though he were afraid to dare more. She shivered.

"If you really can lie," he said, "tell me this will end well tonight."

Icy air blew up a thin flurry of snow and tossed back Roiben's hair as he strode past graves to the area marked for the duel. The Night and Bright courts waited restlessly in a loose circle, whispering and chittering, pulling their cloaks of skin and fur closer. Kaye hurried behind the edge of the crowd to where the Bright Queen's courtiers stood, their shimmering gowns blown by the wind.

Ellebere and Dulcamara walked beside Roiben, their insect-like armor glittering against the frost-covered landscape and the stone markers. Roiben dressed as gray as the overcast sky. Talathain and another knight flanked Silarial. They wore green-stained leather with gilt bumps that studded their shoulders and their arms like the markings on a caterpillar. Roiben bent in so deep a bow that he might have touched his lips to the snow. Silarial made only a shallow bob.

Roiben cleared his throat. "For decades there has been a truce between the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. I am both proof of and witness to that old bargain, and I would broker it again. Lady Silarial, do you agree that if I defeat your champion, you will concede a concord between our two courts?”