“I’ve had enough party,” I said. “Would it inconvenience the Queen for me to depart?”

“If she wished you to stay, you would be at her side,” Cat Sith replied. “And it would seem that you have introduced yourself adequately.”

“Good. If you do not mind,” I said, “please ask Sarissa to join me.”

“I do not mind,” Cat Sith said in a decidedly approving tone. He vanished into the party and appeared a few moments later, leading Sarissa. She walked steadily enough, though she still had my handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

“You want to get out of here?” I asked her.

“It’s a good idea,” she said. “Most of the VIPs left after your dance. Things will . . . devolve from here.”

“Devolve?” I asked.

“I don’t care to stay,” she said, her tone careful. “I would prefer to leave.”

I frowned, and then realized that she was trying to get a read on me. I simultaneously became acutely aware of a number of Sidhe ladies who were . . . I would say “lurking” except that you don’t generally use that word with someone so beautiful. There were half a dozen of them, though, who were staying nearby, and whose eyes were tracking me. I felt disconcertingly reminded of a documentary I’d once seen about lionesses involved in a cooperative hunt. There was something about them that was very similar.

One, a ravishing dark-haired beauty wearing leather pants and strategically applied electrical tape, stared hard at me and, when she saw me looking, licked her lips very, very slowly. She trailed a fingertip over her chin, down across her throat, and down over her sternum and gave me a smile so wicked that its parents should have sent it to military school.

“Oh,” I said, understanding. Despite my fatigue, my throat felt dry and my heart revved up a bit. “Devolving.”

“I’ll go,” Sarissa said. “I don’t expect anything from you simply because we arrived together.”

A Sidhe lady with deep indigo blue hair had sidled up to Miss Electrical Tape, and the two slid their arms around each other, both staring at me. Something inside me—and I’d be lying if I said that none of it was mine—let out a primal snarl and advised me to drag both of them back to my cave by the hair and do whatever I damned well pleased with them. It was an enormously powerful impulse, something that made me begin to shift my balance, to take a step toward them. I arrested the motion and closed my eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, they look great, but that isn’t a fantasy come true, Harry. That’s a wood chipper in Playboy bunny clothing.” I shook my head and turned deliberately away from temptation before I opened my eyes again. “We’ll both go,” I said to Sarissa. “It’d be a bad idea to stay.” I offered her my arm.

She frowned thoughtfully at me for a moment before she put her hand on my arm. We left, again preceded by Cat Sith. Once we were in the icy hallways, she asked me, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Leave,” she said. “You wanted to stay. And . . . let’s just say that the, ah, appetite of Sidhe ladies has never been overstated. And nothing excites them more than violence and power. There are men who would literally kill to have the opportunity you just passed up.”

“Probably,” I said. “Morons.”

“Then why turn it down?” she asked.

“Because I’m not a goddamned sex doll.”

“That’s a good reason to avoid attention that is forced on you,” she said. “But that isn’t what happened. Why pass up what they were offering?”

We walked for a while before I answered. “I’ve already made one choice that . . . that took everything away from me,” I said. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around, or how much of a life I can make for myself now. But I’m going to live as much of it as I can as my own man. Not somebody’s prison bitch. Not the flavor of the day.”

“Ah,” she said, and frowned faintly.

I blinked several times and suddenly realized what she’d been trying to find out. “Oh. You’re wondering if I turned them down because I was planning to have you instead.”

She gave me an oblique look. “I wouldn’t have phrased it that way.”

I snorted. “I’m not.”

She nodded. “Why not?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Why always matters.”

It was my turn to give Sarissa an appraising look. “Yeah, it does.”

“So, why not?”

“Because you aren’t a goddamned sex doll, either.”

“Even if I were willing?” she asked.

My stomach jumped a little at that. Sarissa was attractive as hell, and I liked her. I’d made her smile and laugh on occasion. And it had been a while.

Man, story of my life. It seems like it’s almost always been a while.

But you have to think about more than what is going to happen in the next hour.

“You’re here because Mab ordered you to be here,” I said. “Anything we did would have an element of coercion to it, no matter how it happened. I’m not into that.”

“You saved my life just now,” Sarissa said. “Some people might think you’d earned my attentions.”

“People think stupid things all the time. The only opinion that matters is yours.” I glanced at her. “Besides, you probably saved me right back. Toting steel into the heart of Winter. Using it right in front of Mab herself? That’s crazy.”

She smiled a little. “It would have been crazy not to tote it,” she said. “I’ve learned a few things in my time here.”

We had reached the doors to my suite, which still felt awkward to say, even in my own head. My suite. Guys like me don’t have suites. We have lairs. Cat Sith had departed discreetly. I hadn’t seen him go.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Too long,” she said. She hadn’t taken her hand off of my arm.

“You know,” I said, “we’ve been working together for a while now.”

“We have.”

“But we haven’t ever talked about ourselves. Not really. It’s all been surface stuff.”

“You haven’t talked about you,” she said. “I haven’t talked about me.”

“Maybe we should change that,” I said.

Sarissa looked down. There were points of color in her cheeks. “I . . . Should we?”

“You want to come in?” I asked. “To talk. That’s all.”

She took a moment to choose her words. “If you want me to.”

I tried to think about this from Sarissa’s point of view. She was a beautiful woman who had to be constantly aware of male interest. She was a mortal living in a world of faeries, most of whom were malicious, all of whom were dangerous. Her introduction to the office of the Winter Knight had been Lloyd Slate, who had been one monstrous son of a bitch. She had some kind of relationship with Mab herself, a being who could have her destroyed at any moment she was displeased with Sarissa.

And I was Mab’s hatchet man.

She’d been targeted for death for no better reason than that she happened to be my date at the party. She’d nearly died. Yet she’d taken action to save herself—and me, too—and now here she was standing calmly beside me, not showing the least anxiety. She’d spent months helping me get back on my feet again, always gentle, always helpful, always patient.

She was wary about extending me any trust. She’d been holding herself at a careful distance. I could understand why. Caution was a critical survival trait in Winter, and as far as she was concerned, I was most likely a monster in the process of being born. A monster she’d been given to, no less.

Thinking about it, even if I had saved her life, it wouldn’t have needed saving had she not been with me. I figured that between that and everything else she’d done for me, I was well in her debt.

But I couldn’t help her if I didn’t know more about her.

“For a couple of minutes,” I said. “Please.”

She nodded, and we went inside. I had a little living room outside of my bedroom. I read somewhere that in general, women tend to be more comfortable with someone sitting beside them, rather than across from them. Men tend to be the opposite. Facing each other has undertones of direct physical conflict—in which a generally larger, stronger person would have an advantage. I didn’t know whether it was true or not, but she was already keyed up enough, and I didn’t want to add anything to it. So I seated her at one end of the couch, and then seated myself at the opposite end, out of arm’s reach.