Chapter Text
It wasn't my fault. For a number of reasons.
One, I hadn't wanted to be the Winter Knight to begin with. I had even gone to extreme lengths to prevent that very thing from happening.
Two, I warned Mab that loaning me out to Marcone was a bad idea. That just because we, you know, respected each other these days (and it was really painful how few caveats I had to add to that statement) it did not mean we should be stress-testing the integrity of our new status quo.
And three, I had fucking told Marcone not to touch anything.
But my life being what it was, I'd been tasked with guiding Marcone through the Nevernever to some clandestine meeting, and then back again. My protests had been noted. My jaw still ached from Mab's response.
I gathered that it was Gard's day off.
The actual travel went smoothly enough. Some of the Ways crossed through nasty territory, but that was what I was for. I got Marcone to his meeting at a sleek-looking building in the heart of Taipei with nary a hair out of place. I scraped bug guts off the heels of my boots on the edge of the steps outside the building while Marcone had a word with a short, prim-looking fellow at the door. A few minutes later I was shown to a quiet tucked-away room.
My work fending off the pack of raccoon-sized centipede-creatures that'd dogged the last half hour of our travels had apparently earned me lunch. I pigged out on steamed buns, nodded pleasantly to every wide-eyed local that gestured to me in clear astonishment at my height, and I waited for Marcone to finish so we could both get back to Chicago.
Not my worst Winter assignment, all in all.
No, the problems started on the way back.
"Keep it moving, Marcone!" I barked. I had a grip on his arm and was dragging him forward. He was fit but my legs were longer. The centicoons hadn’t braved us again, no, we weren’t so lucky as that. We’d stumbled upon something much larger that had been snacking on the remains of the centicoons I’d blasted earlier. Fire roasted for flavor.
It was a Flesh Eater. Rhino-sized, significantly uglier, with a disorienting number of horns. Very territorial and not too happy about having its meal interrupted.
Its hide was also stubbornly magic resistant.
The Eater smashed through another barrier of ice I’d thrown up while we ran. I shoved Marcone ahead of me and pivoted on my heel, thrusting my staff out. The title of Winter Knight wasn’t just for shits and giggles. This part of the Nevernever was warm and tropical, everything around us overgrown, green, and clinging. I wrenched more water from the air and froze a ten-foot-tall wall of ice behind us, the fourth one in twice as many minutes.
“I’d advise another strategy,” Marcone said. Like it was easy to think on the fly and control that much magic. Maybe for him and his cheat code stowaway it was. My ice had barely solidified before the Eater rammed into it with an earth-shaking thud. A crack spread through the ice. Marcone wasn’t wrong.
I consulted my mother’s jewel, set into the center of my pentacle. We were still a good run away from most established Ways back to Chicago, but – if I was willing to brute force through a few barriers – there was a narrow, even familiar, path.
The Flesh Eater roared. This time when it hit my ice wall chunks fell into the foliage.
I growled and began slashing a Way open. Magic rending the air. It wasn’t as simple as opening a door, it was more like I was hammering my way through stone. I pushed my way through just as the Flesh Eater finished off the ice barrier with a shatter.
My godmother's garden was a picturesque vision, just on the other side of the tear in reality. The opening was maybe a dozen strides from where we stood. It wasn't guaranteed to be much safer than here, but it was closer to where we needed to be, and I’d know what to expect.
The Eater shook its large, horned head in an apparent daze. Its heavy hooves pawed at the ground, churning up buckets of blood-red earth.
"You first!" I shouted. Marcone might not like flashing Namshiel around, but I trusted he wouldn't let himself die if I left him unsupervised for the next couple of minutes. I held my staff in one hand, pulled my blasting rod free with the other, and turned to face the Eater. There was a pressure in me, clear and cold as a glacier, that urged me to return the offense given by the Eater’s attempt to impede my travels.
The Eater had recovered. It bellowed another roar and pushed itself into motion once again. There was a beauty to its relentless aggression.
Marcone stopped just short of the opening. "I am not interested in paying your weregild, Dresden," Marcone said.
I wanted to kill the Flesh Eater. It'd dared to challenge me, and it’d be a good fight. I could take it. But when I looked back, Marcone hadn't moved. Wasn’t going to move, if I didn’t come with him. His body was a line of coiled tension. The Eater had gained ground. I could see the froth of exertion around its mouth and nostrils.
"Now, Dresden!" Marcone ordered.
I shook my head with a hard jerk. I was supposed to be getting Marcone back to Chicago. That was the job.
I turned and ran. The Eater on my heels. Marcone jumped through the opening to Lea's garden and I ended up skidding and sliding after him, like I was making a run for home plate. The second I felt the change in the air, still sharp with magic but familiar, like the smog that sometimes settled over the city, I closed the opening behind us with a sharp word.
The Eater hit the closed entry hard enough that the air reverberated. Unlike my ice walls, the closed seam in the Nevernever held firm.
I rolled onto my back and spread my arms wide. "Safe!"
"You cut that close," Marcone said. His tone made it clear his comment card for Mab was going to be detailed.
I got to my feet and brushed the dirt off my hands. "I got us through, didn't I?" I asked. It'd been a little while since the mantle had really gotten to throw down, and I'd skipped my morning workout with Bear. It hadn't seemed wise to exhaust my connection to Winter right before a job. I wasn't interested in explaining the balancing act to Marcone.
Marcone scrutinized me for a moment longer before turning his attention to the lush flowerbeds around us.
"What is this place?" Marcone asked.
My celebration had been a little premature. "Small detour," I said. "We're not staying."
Opening the door from Lea's garden into my subbasement was easy in comparison to the tunnel I'd forced into existence to get here. The view of my lab through the portal was dark, but I could've recognized the room by the smell of its stale air, let alone by my wards. The familiarity eased some of the mantle's sharp edges.
I thrust my staff in front of Marcone before he could step through.
"My house, Marcone," I said. "My rules. Got it?"
Marcone's answer was a half-lidded, measuring look. Sweat dripped into my eyes. Stinging. I didn't feel tired. Didn't mean I hadn't burned through a hell of a lot of energy.
"In our history it has not been me that has ventured outside of my territory," Marcone said. It wasn't an agreement, but he wasn't wrong either. I'd smashed my way through several of Marcone's establishments, broken into his high-security vault, and had even climbed the wall of his private estate in the Gold Coast.
Marcone had sat in my office chair once. The memory still rankled.
The back of my neck itched. Even the best parts of the Nevernever were kind of like a bad neighborhood. Best to not linger.
"Don't touch anything," I said firmly. I lowered my staff, and held my pentacle out. We crossed through my wards without difficulty and I closed the Way behind us.
I waved my hand and my candles flickered into life, filling my small basement lab with light.
My lab was all that was left of my original apartment. It'd been left unchanged, even after Marcone had cleared out the burned ruins of my old boarding house and built a castle where it once stood.
I'd slept down here, for the better part of a year, after Ethniu. After everything. There had been a lot of bad days.
Now the lab was once again fully functioning. It was where I did most of my wizarding, and where I tutored my apprentice, Fitz, in the art of potion-making. I'd also fed Lara's Hunger a time or two down here.
Marcone looked around with open interest. His gaze swept over my stock of potion ingredients. I kept them organized in a variety of containers. Tupperware, glass mason jars, old Gatorade bottles. Marcone's eyebrows raised when he saw Bob's shelf. I suspected it was as much at the sight of a human skull as it was at the stacks of shiny hardcovers. Bob had access to the internet these days, but he still enjoyed making me hunt down bodice rippers and romantasy smut for him.
I scowled at Marcone. Daring him to say anything. He inclined his head to the center of the room, where I had a circle inlaid into the concrete floor. It was an upgraded model from what Marcone might have seen if he'd stuck his head down here while he'd played lord of the castle.
It was currently filled with a stack of wedding presents. Lara and I had received a slew of them. Some from friends and family, others from what could be tentatively referred to as coworkers, and even more from countless numbers of Sidhe.
“Not off the registry?” Marcone asked.
The mundane gifts I'd mostly left for Lara to pick through. I didn't need another toaster, and outside of the few sentimental gifts from people that actually knew me, most of the harmless stuff was sent to us on account of Lara's public persona.
I kept the less mundane stuff down here. Shoved in the relative security of my lab until I had time to sift through it all properly. My godmother had assured me she’d checked everything sent to the castle personally, and that none of the gifts bore ill will, but that didn't mean much. Very little from the fae was truly harmless.
“Something like that,” I grunted to Marcone. The presents took up a good amount of the floor space. I leaned back to edge past Marcone to get to the trap door that would let us up into the castle proper. I succeeded in not brushing against Marcone. Instead I knocked into the pyramid of packaging. A bauble near the top, a translucent round crystal that would look pleasant gathering dust on a shelf or a fireplace mantel, wobbled and fell.
Marcone caught it, just before it hit the floor. The ball lit up in his hands. Gold light shone on his face, brightening the green of his eyes. Magic hummed through the air, as audible as a strummed harp.
"Don't move," I said. Needlessly. Marcone had gone completely still. His reflexes had been faster than his brain.
I might have gotten Marcone through the Nevernever and out again, but I hadn't gotten him back to his office yet. Anything that happened to him until then would be my responsibility. And if it happened in my house? There'd be hell to pay.
I took the crystal from Marcone. If anything the light got brighter. The hum louder. It was warm in my hands. There was a definite magic to the bauble, but I couldn't detect a drive to it. And Lea had said nothing here bore malice.
"Do you feel anything?" I asked.
Marcone's gaze went distant as he catalogued himself. I didn't like having a Denarian in my house, but if Namshiel could keep Marcone from dying without me having to open my Sight I wasn't going to complain about it.
"I don't detect any ill effects," Marcone said, slowly. "Who gifted it to you?" He was still standing where he'd been when I'd tried to wedge past him. We were close enough to each other that I could see the notch of scar tissue on his ear.
"Do you see a tag?" I demanded.
I set the bauble back on top of the other wedding gifts. The light went out as soon as I set it down. I closed the circle with a press of my will.
We didn't linger.
I'd left the Munstermobile parked outside Marcone's office downtown, so he and I both got the pleasure of driving through rush hour in the Beetle Thomas had restored for me. I saw at least one patrol officer do a double take when he saw who sat in my passenger seat. I tapped my thumb against my steering wheel, antsy. It wouldn't be the first time rumors had gone around about me being in Marcone's pocket.
"You feeling any effects?" I asked, as we turned onto the street of Marcone's high-rise.
"No," Marcone said. Less patient than the first three times I'd asked over the course of the drive.
I pulled up to the curb, got out, and rounded the car to open Marcone's door for him. Marcone eyed me. I don't know if he just didn't trust my attempts at showing him respect, or if he genuinely preferred me to give him attitude.
"It's part of the job," I said.
I walked him up to the front steps and everything.
"You are released from your service, Sir Knight," Marcone said.
Job done.
The title had rankled. Maybe there was something to preferring our old manners of address. I gave Marcone a jaunty two-fingered salute before making a break for it.
"I'll send someone around to get the company car," I called over my shoulder. The Munster might have better legroom but I was still reveling in having the Beetle back. Like hell I'd be leaving it here. Besides, the Munster was safe. It'd practically be an international incident if a vehicle for one of Winter's emissaries got damaged under the Lord Baron of Chicago's watch.
I didn't make it to the Beetle. A sharp tug in my chest had me lurching to a stop just as I reached the bottom step. The feeling didn't go away. I took another step forward, onto the sidewalk. My car was right there. Just a few feet away.
The tug turned into something sharper.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. Taking a moment to process. Fuck the fae, and Mab, and this stupid job. I turned around. Like I'd suspected, Marcone was standing outside the building's front doors. One arm wrapped around his stomach, the hand of the other braced against the wall. His face was drawn tight.
I had a pretty hardy pain management system, these days. A perk of the job. The tug under my ribs still smarted.
I jogged up the front steps. My heart pounded faster, even as the tension in Marcone's jaw eased. I took a couple of backward steps, just to confirm. Yeah. Didn't feel good.
"Dresden," Marcone hissed from behind clenched teeth. Clearly feeling worse. Not Sir Knighting me now, was he?
I sighed and walked back to him.
"I told you not to touch anything."