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There was light, and that feeling of weightlessness, and the forest changed again. Birds chattered at them from all sides, a cacophony of life despite the heavy blanket of snow.
                  Sid turned to face him.
                  In the scarce time he’d know her, Chris had thought of Sid as pale. He didn’t know what to call her skin now, gone white as a corpse and tinged with blue. It was stark against her black curls, almost as stark as the feathers that crowned her hairline and tangled themselves through her hair. Pure white feathers.
                  Her eyes were wide and staring.
                  “House of Owls,” Chris said dumbly, mostly to himself.
                  “House of Cats,” said Sid, like she might hurt someone.

Part III
                  Sid had spent nine months in her mother’s womb, surrounded by magic and nurtured by a fae body. She was as much a fairy as any half-mortal could be, and her form reflected the world she walked in. As a mortal, Chris should not have changed. His eyes should not have gone amber and slit-pupiled. He maintained the rest of his mortal colors, but the eyes told a tale. As did his canines, sharp now and flashing behind his lips as he spoke.
                  She hadn’t been shepherding a mere mortal. To be sure, whatever blood he carried was weak, diluted by many generations. But it was enough.
                  Sid should have been told. No matter how well she followed orders, she had a right to know. A right not to be gaping at Chris like a child being told how babies are made.
                  “What?” Chris asked. “What? Sid?”
                  “Don’t bite your tongue.”
                  He immediately did so, and grimaced. Sid had expected more yelping; she was begrudgingly impressed. Chris pressed a finger to his mouth and it came away red. At least he’d held onto that much.
                  “Oh,” he said, in a magnificent display of eloquence.
                  “I don’t think either of us got the full story.” Sid scowled. “At all.”
                  Chris’s grin was queasy. “You know, I never pegged anyone in my family as particularly pixie-like.”
                  “You could be generations removed from the source. The first in a long time to show true. It’s happened before.”
                  A long fucking time ago, but time was different for the Court, eras incidental. Chris, on the other hand, was staring straight ahead with the dedicated silence of one who had learned to panic quietly.
                  Sid was cruelly relieved to find he had a limit, but she didn’t need him out on that ledge.
                  “You’re not suddenly a monster,” she said, “or immortal, or anything else. A stray drop of blood makes you look weird in our land, and that’s all.”
                  He managed a wry smile. “I’m weird?”
                  Sid couldn’t say why she let him reach out and stroke a careful finger down one of her feathers. It was a strange intimacy, one that sent shivers down into her skin.
                  “You’re lucky you don’t have a tail,” she told him, then checked to make sure.
                  “So what’s this change?” he asked.
                  “I may have been off in my assumptions about what the queen is after.” Not the nice butt, probably. “The House of Cats prefers to keep track of their own. Their House produces few knights, so they probably called in a Queen’s favor to get me to fetch you.”
                  “Does that mean the Summer asshole makes anymore sense now?”
                  “It might. I’ll have to ask the lady of their house if there’s any standing