Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(112)

We’d prepared for arriving at night—the floating dock my brother and I had built, the Whatsup Dock, had been lined with luminescent marine tape. I cut the throttle and came in slow and careful. Even without the possibility of aquatic bad guys, operating a boat was a damned dangerous occupation for fools, so I had to be extra cautious.

I saw Freydis move up to the prow of the ship as we approached the dock, skin glowing in the green chemical light. She rubbed her arms a few times as the shadow of the island fell over her, as if the place chilled her. Beside me, Karrin shifted restlessly.

“It’s that bad?” I asked her.

“You don’t feel it at all, do you?” she asked. “Ugh. It’s … You know that feeling, when you’re dreaming, and you realize that you’re in a nightmare?” She nodded toward the island. “It’s that. In IMAX.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it’s not supposed to be a place where visitors are welcome.”

“I worry about you, when you’re out here,” she said. “What it’s doing to you.”

“It’s not doing anything to me,” I said. “I’m the Warden.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it’s something you can’t feel happening to you. Something else.”

A disturbing thought.

But not one I hadn’t had before.

“You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m standing here.”

I brought the ship in carefully to the dock and Freydis leapt like a doe down from the ship and started making her fast.

“Is the cabin still livable?” Karrin asked. “It has supplies?”

“Everything we need,” I said. I cut the motor and headed out of the wheelhouse. “I’ll check on Thomas.”

I cracked a fresh light and took it down belowdecks with me, to the boat’s little living compartment, and into a tableau from some kind of Renaissance painting.

The boat had a couple of bunks, nothing fancy, generally covered in white sheets and heavy red plaid blankets. Thomas and Lara were reclining on one of them. She sat up at the head of the bunk, and he was sprawled back, his shoulders across her upper body. Both were naked, and there was nothing sexual in the moment at all. One of her hands held his broken ones upon his chest. The other simply cupped his cheek. Her head was bowed, as if in exhaustion, and her shoulders sagged. Her hair spilled across her face, hiding all but a bit of her profile, and brushed across his forehead.

My brother’s eyes were open, unfocused. They had acquired faint hints of grey among the silver in his gaze.

He looked like some poor broken knight, being gathered into the gentle arms of an angel of death.

“What the hell?” I asked.

Lara lifted her gaze to me, her eyes flickering with bits of mirror-bright silver that shifted even as I took note of them, sending the eerie light of the chemical stick dancing about them in fluttering, kaleidoscope changes of all shades of otherworldly green… .

I tore my eyes away before something bad happened.

“Lara. What are you doing?”

It took her a moment to speak. Her voice came out furry and delicious. “I’m giving him the energy I took earlier. It’s … slowing down the damage his Hunger is inflicting. But it’s very bad. And I’m almost …”

She licked her lips. The sight of it made me want to rip off my shirt and start boasting of my many manly deeds.

“… empty.” She made the word sound like a sin. “I’ll need to feed if I’m to give him more.”

“Not really an option,” I said. I had to clear my throat in the middle. “We’re here.”

She looked up at me, her silver eyes sharp and clear. “And you’re sure you can protect him here? Even from his own Hunger?”

“Everything we need,” I said. “Give him to me.”

She nodded and said, “Take him.”

She transferred Thomas to me, wrapped in a blanket. The air around her was cold. Like, gorgeously cold. Like, I wanted to take my shirt off and stretch out in it and cool off. And the Winter mantle let out a low growl in my mind that suggested that a number of terrible ideas were in fact the most interesting concepts I had ever considered.

“Dammit, Lara,” I snapped in irritation. “We’re working.”

She blinked at me for a moment at that, as I wrapped a blanket around him and gathered Thomas up like a child. Then she said, “Involuntary. Honestly. We can always choose to use the Hunger. We can’t always choose not to.”

“Well, it’s annoying,” I said grumpily.

She lifted her hand and quickly covered a smile. “Oh. You know, I’ve … never been told that before. Not once.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “I believe you.” It would be a trick to carry my brother up the narrow stairwell to the deck, but whatever. I growled in irritation and toted him out. He was still barely conscious, and he felt entirely too light.

Stupid svartalves.

Stupid vampires.

Stupid Titans.

Stupid Thomas. Why in the hell had my brother gotten himself into this mess?

I got him up on the deck and Freydis was there to steady me. The redheaded Valkyrie eyed me in the light and nodded toward the island. “Not much here.”