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Roiben thought of what would happen if the sacrifice was not made, if by guile or chance or something else, Kaye escaped. The solitary fey would be free for seven years. He imagined the chaos that would ensue.
It very nearly pleased him.
"I don't think I've exactly been cheery myself, fair Kaye."
She sighed, smiling, and let her head fall back, her ragged blond hair spreading out in a halo over his pillows. He thought absently that he would like to braid that hair the way he had once braided his sister's.
"I went to high school for a while," she continued absently, "and then I got out of the habit. People usually think that I'm pretty weird, which is funny at the moment. Maybe funny is the wrong word."
He sat on the end of the bed, just listening.
"I thought weirdness was a good thing. I don't mean that defensively, either. I thought it was something to be cultivated. I spent a lot of time hanging around bars, setting up equipment, breaking it down, loading up vans, fishing my mom's head out of toilets—things other kids didn't do. And sometimes things just happened, magical things that I couldn't control. But still, all this—you—it's so hard to accept that you're really real." She said the last with a hushed reverence that was completely undeserved.
Still, she sounded so normal. Conversational. She even looked normal, if a touch too comfortable on a stranger's bed. "Do you still want to please me?"
Her smile was surprised, a little baffled. "Of course I do."
"It would be better if you did not," he said, hesitating, trying to find a way to reason her out of enchantment. He could do nothing for her if she was like this when the actual ceremony took place. "It would be better if you acted according to your own desires."
She sat up and looked at him intently. "Do you? Don't you want to go home?"
"To the Seelie Court?" He allowed himself to say it. For a long moment, he considered what she asked and then he shook his head. "Once, I wanted nothing more. Now, I think I would not be welcome among them and, even were I, it is unlikely we would suit."
"You're not the way everyone says you are," Kaye said, looking at him so fiercely that he couldn't meet her gaze. "I know you're not."
"You know nothing of me," he said. He wanted to punish her for the trust he saw on her face, to raze it from her now so that he would be spared the sight of her when that trust was betrayed.
He wanted to tell her he found her impossibly alluring, at least half enchanted, body bruised and scratched, utterly unaware she would not live past dawn. He wondered what she would say in the face of that.
Instead, he forced a little laugh. "Let me explain again. Of the Host of the Unseelie Court are many unconcerned by blood and death, save as amusement. But the Host is more than a scourge. Nicnevin rules over ancient secrets, buried in the bowels of warrens and fens. The twilight holds as many truths as the dawn, perhaps more, since they are less easily perceived. No, I do not think that I would be welcomed back, now that I can see that."
"But they—," Kaye began, and he held up a hand to forestall her objection.
"Smallish sects of beings, of which Faery is certainly one, require enemies to give them purpose. Think on Milton's angels. Was not his God wise in giving them a devil to fight?"
Kaye was quiet a moment. "Okay, you're saying that the Seelie Court needs to hate the Unseelie Court. But does that mean that you think that they're not all bad?"
"I can think of no insult too rich for the Unseelie Queen, but I have seen kindness in some of her court. More kindness and wisdom, surely, than I would have ever been given leave to expect."
"So what adversary does the Unseelie Court have?"
"Again, the parallels to your devils are amazing. They struggle with their own boredom. It is a struggle that often requires increasingly cruel diversions."
Kaye shuddered. "And you?"
Roiben shrugged. He had nearly forgotten what it felt like to just sit and talk with someone. "I am some other thing, not of any court, nor truly solitary. There are too many possessors of my soul."
She moved to her knees, and reached for both his hands. "Just so you know, I trust you."
"You shouldn't," he said automatically. Nevertheless, he found himself no longer wanting to punish her for her faith in him. Instead, he found himself wanting to be worthy of it. He wanted to be the knight he had once been. Just for a moment.
He watched her take a breath, steeling herself, perhaps, for the next turn of the conversation. He found that he could not bear it.
Roiben leaned forward before he might think to do otherwise and pressed a kiss to her dry lips. Her mouth opened with a rush of warm breath, and her arms ran over his shoulders to rest lightly, almost hesitantly, at the nape of his neck.
His tongue swept her mouth, searching for some escape from the chill inside him. It felt so good it made his teeth hurt.
Nor from hell one step more than from himself can fly. Charmed. He was kissing a charmed girl. He jerked his mouth back from hers. She looked a little dazed and ran her tongue over her lower lip, but said nothing.
