A Lick of Frost

THE WORLD EXPLODED, IF YOU COULD CALL LIGHT, COLOR, music, and the perfume of flowers an explosion. I had no other word for what happened. It was like standing at ground zero on the first day that life walked on the planet, but it was also like standing in the most beautiful meadow in the world on a lovely spring day with the gentlest of breezes blowing. It was a perfect moment, and a moment of incredible violence, as if we were all gently torn apart and put together again in the blink of an eye.

Through it all, the dogs pressed close on either side. They anchored me, steadied me, kept me from breaking apart and flying into that moment. They kept me solid enough, sane enough, to survive.

I clung to their fur, the touch of them in my hand. And thought, Frost has no dog to keep him here.

I thought about screaming, then it was over. Only the sense of disorientation and the memory of pain and power, fading in the dance of light and magic, let me know that it hadn't been some sort of dream.

Doyle gazed at me across the back of his black dogs. He seemed to be healed, whole. He touched the kelpie, but did not lean on it. He stood straight and tall.

He reached up and pulled off the bandages to show that the burns were gone. I suppose if you're creating reality, a little healing isn't much.

Because reality had changed.

We were still in Maeve Reed's ballroom-dining room, but it wasn't the same room. It was huge, an acre of marble stretching in every direction. The far windows were a distant twinkling line. There were demi-fey everywhere, as if too deep a breath would make you swallow one.

Ash and Holly swatted at them as if they were flies.

I said, "If you harm them, I will not be happy."

The Red Caps did not swat at them. They did not threaten them. The huge men stood there and let the tiny things alight on them. They were covered in the fanning of butterfly wings, until you could barely see their flesh through the slow dance of color.

Jonty gazed up at me with those red eyes framed by the shining wings. The tiny hands clung to his bloody hat, They rolled in the blood, giggling, a sound like crystal chimes.

"You remake us, my queen," Jonty said.

I don't know what I would have said to that, but then Rhys's voice came. "Merry!"

That one word, that note of urgency was enough. I turned and knew that whatever I would see, I would not like it.

Rhys and Galen were kneeling beside Frost. He lay crumpled on his side, terribly still.

I remembered then what I'd thought. He had had nothing to hold on to while reality remade itself. He had been alone in the terror and beauty of it.

I ran to him with my dogs at my side, trippingly close, but the magic was still here, still working, and I did not dare send the hounds away. The oldest magic that had ever belonged to the sidhe was in this room tonight. It was a magic that could be ridden, but never controlled, not completely. Creation is always a chancy thing, because you never know what it will be when all is said and done, or if it will be worth the price.