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hesitate now that Midwinter’s Eve is past?”
    “Perhaps she is bored and lazy and sick of fighting,” said Roiben. “I am.”
    “You are too young.” Ruddles gnashed those sharp teeth. “And you take the fate of this court too lightly. I wonder if you would have us win at all.”
    Once, after the Lady Nicnevin had whipped Roiben—he could no longer recall why—she had turned away, distracted by some new amusement, leaving Ruddles—her chamberlain, then—free to indulge in a moment’s mercy. He had dribbled a stream of water into Roiben’s mouth. He still remembered the sweet taste of it and the way it had hurt his throat to swallow.
    “You think that I don’t have the stomach to be Lord of the Night Court.” Roiben leaned across the petrified wood table, bringing his face so close to Ruddles’s that he could have kissed him.
    Dulcamara laughed, clapping her hands together as if anticipating a treat.
    “You are correct,” said Ruddles, shaking his head. “I don’t think you have the stomach for it. Nor the head. Nor do I think you even truly want the title.”
    “I have a belly that craves blood,” said Dulcamara, tossing her sleek black hair and stepping so that she was behind the chamberlain. Her hands went to his shoulders, her fingers resting lightly at his throat. “He need not hurt anyone himself. She never did.”
    Ruddles went stiff and still, perhaps realizing how far he had overstepped himself.
    Ellebere looked between the three of them as if judging where his best alliance might be made. Roiben had no illusions that any one of them was in the least part loyal beyond the oath that bound them. With one lethal word Roiben could prove he had both the stomach and the head. That might cultivate something like loyalty.
    “Perhaps I am no fit King,” Roiben said instead, sinking back into the chair and relaxing his clenched hands. “But Silarial was once my Queen, and while there is breath in my body, I will never let her rule over me or mine again.”
    Dulcamara pouted exaggeratedly. “Your mercy,” she said, “is my mischance, my King.”
    Ruddles’s eyes closed with relief too profound to hide.
    Long ago, when Roiben was newly come to the Unseelie Court, he had sat in the small cell-like chamber in which he was kept, and he had longed for his own death. His body had been worn with ill-use and struggle, his wounds had dried in long garnet crusts, and he’d been so tired from fighting Nicnevin’s commands that remembering he could die had filled him with a sudden and surprising hope.
    If he were really merciful, he would have let Dulcamara kill his chamberlain.
    Ruddles was right; they had little chance of winning the war. But Roiben could do what he did best, what he had done in Nicnevin’s service: endure . Endure long enough to kill Silarial. So that she could never again send one of her knights to be tortured as a symbol of peace, nor contrive countless deaths, nor glory in the appearance of innocence. And when he thought of the Lady of the Bright Court, he could almost feel a small sliver of ice burrow its way inside him, numbing him to what would come. He didn’t need to win the war, he just needed to die slowly enough to take her with him.
    And if all the Unseelie Court died along with them, so be it.

    Corny knocked on the back door of Kaye’s grandmother’s house and smiled through the glass window. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he was flushed and giddy with knowledge. The tiny hob he’d captured had talked all night, telling Corny anything that might make him more likely to let it go. He’d uncaged it at dawn, but true knowledge seemed closer to him now than it ever had before.
    “Come in,” Kaye’s grandmother called from inside the kitchen.
    He turned the cold metal knob. The kitchen was cluttered with old cooking supplies; dozens of pots were stacked in piles, cast iron with rusted steel. Kaye’s grandmother couldn’t bear to throw things away.
    “What kind of