Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

"What?" Kaye leaned in and skimmed her hand under his coat, tracing the vertebrae of his back. His breath hitched.

Roiben let his hand fall lightly, hesitantly, across the wings of her shoulders. He sighed like he'd been holding his breath. "It's a Greek story. A human one. The King of the underworld—Hades—fell in love with a girl, Persephone. She was a goddess too, the daughter of Demeter, who controlled the seasons and the harvests.

"Hades stole Persephone away to his palace in the underworld and tempted her with a split-open pomegranate, each seed shining like a ruby. She knew that if she ate or drank anything in that place she would be trapped, but somehow he persuaded her to eat a mere six seeds. Thereafter, she was doomed to spend half of each year in the underworld, one month for one seed.”

"Like you're doomed to spend half your time dealing with the Bright Court and half with the Night Court?" Kaye asked.

Roiben laughed. "Very like.”

Kaye looked at the far shore, where fireworks still heralded the New Year above the jagged teeth of buildings, and then toward where Corny and the others blew noisemakers and drank cheap champagne from plastic goblets.

She slid out of Roiben's arms and whirled on the sand of the beach. The wind blew off the water, numbing her face. Kaye laughed and spun faster, gulping the cold briny air and smelling the faint firework smoke. Pebbles crunched under her boots.

"You still haven't told me," he said softly.

She stretched her arms out over her head, then came to an abrupt halt in front of him. "Told you what?”

He grinned. "How you managed to complete the quest. How you claimed to be able to lie.”

"Oh. It's simple." Kaye lay down on her back on the snowy beach, looking up at him. "This is me," she said, her voice full of mischief as she reached out with one long-fingered hand. "See? This is me lying.”