I noticed the subtle changes in the air a moment after sliding the partially worn shirt over my head, the way that the few droplets of warm water still clinging to my hair and dripping around my neck cooled over almost instantly. Blinking in surprise as my breath visibly appeared in the air before my nose I glanced around at the few windows on the Waterbeetle and grimaced at the frost gathering into place across them.

Almost before the voice spoke I knew who was to blame, and it came as little surprise to me that she was showing up now when Karrin had maybe fifteen more minutes before arriving for our 'date' together.

"Sir Knight." Mab's tone, chill and biting through the inhuman beauty contained within each note, greeted me from the doorway I had just strode through mere minutes ago.

Turning toward her I gave my own more reluctant greeting. "Mab." My voice sounded like gravel in a mixing machine compared to hers in that moment, and would have even if it wasn't still somewhat raw from the events with the defunct-Red Court only days ago.

She smiled with what could be mistaken for pleasure or amusement on a lesser being - but I knew better. I've had one too many interactions with the Queen of Air and Darkness, and I recognized that it was one of barely tolerated patience, a thinly-concealed malice waiting to strike. I took an uneasy set of steps away just to keep a good distance between us.

"Queen Mab." She corrected me in the same tone with that same smile, slightly harder along the edges, smoothly gliding through the air toward me. As she did the temperature dropped another twenty degrees from what they already had, and I noticed that snow flourished beneath her feet and left a frigid trail in and before her wake, forming along the floor hazardously.

I didn't have either Ebenezar's old staff or my blasting rod nearby even if I wanted to try and put up some kind of visible, physical warning for her to back off, and the feeling that I was a gimped hare caught before a ravenous hawk couldn't be shaken off.

"Listen, I know you're probably here to collect on my end of the bargain- and I intend to keep my word regardless, but back the hell off and give me some breathing room here," I told her as sharply as I could manage at the moment. A belated, "My Queen," slipped out seemingly of its own accord a beat later.

A single wry, broken laugh escaped her luscious lips at that and I found out why a moment later when she gestured with one hand. Before I knew it I found myself on my knees and one hand before her, kneeling like an obedient little Fae. I barely had enough time to recognize my newly adopted posture to resist bowing my head completely, my eyes locked in just around her knees and the hem of her opalescent dress rather than her toes.

It fairly well hurt me for it, too. My muscles fought to bow completely before her will, and I fought just as viciously not to. My grimace descended to a silent snarl. Above my head Mab stopped just out of my reach- for all the good it did me even if I could have moved my arms anywhere - and let out another strangely broken laugh.

"That is right, Sir Knight, kneel before your Queen," she stated after a moment.

For all the good having the mantle of Winter Knight was and all of the power that had come with it, I was being reminded quite clearly of the hidden cons involved with that deal. But if it came down to making the choice over again, with Maggie's life on the line, I'd still choose to wind up here on my knees no matter the pain involved.

And with that said, I refused to allow my body to submit to Mab's will any further than it already had. It was a strain just to drag my shoulders upright, pressing with my other hand against one knee, but I managed to raise my sight up to her own. The cold fire in my eyes met hers and she read the defiance left in place. Her smile edged even further into something approaching the breaking point of her patience, then vanished altogether as she gathered a throne of black-ice between one instant and the next, and sat down before me in it.

It was only at that point that I noticed the thin slash marks decorating her form - from a foot away, her will bent me down irregardless of my stubbornness, the same as Vadderung and the now-deceased Red King had. I had no choice but to bow my head, but even still I avoided sinking the rest of my posture again.

As my eyes were forced downward I saw the rough slits etched into each wrist, and then into the middle of each calf as well. The color of each mark wasn't what I would have called blood under any definition that I had seen, and the edges were just a little too... distorted, almost like something she was wearing had melted into the flesh and clung just beneath the surface.

"So you've noticed," she said simply, all pretense fading from her tone - it was openly cold, cutting into my eardrums and coming just short of shearing them in half. A drop of blood leaked free and splashed across one knee. A moment later and with a blurred motion on the edge of my vision, my taut muscles relaxed and I fell backwards, crashing against the wall.

Score one for my ego.

I grunted and sat up, gradually, and a little unsteadily ascending to my feet. Being treated as her plaything, as she had done to me all those years ago in my office when we had met for the very first time, set an added inflection of anger in my tone when I spoke. "What do you want of me, Mab?" I demanded.

I hardly needed any reminding of the state of being Lloyd Slate had been left in for his rebellious actions toward her and Maeve, but that cold anger welling up inside of my heart just wouldn't settle down - I could smell it on her, in the blood oozing out, a distant emotion she was trying to keep carefully hidden away behind all of the rest, that heady scent of barely contained fear as if for her very life.

She's off balance and weak, terrified. Just strike at those blooded marks to keep her unsteady and drag her down off of that fucking throne, press her into the ground like she deserves... I shook my head all of a sudden, realizing what my thoughts had been roving toward, and I recoiled. Hell's bells, what just happened?

A shrewd expression spread over her face while my own slipped into something akin to horror - if I had just acted upon that alien, rage-filled and predatory instinct, Mab would have skewered me a hundred different ways over. "So the mantle begins to lay its claim upon you, my Knight." She stated in the same tone as before. A handful of additional drops of blood leaked free from each ear in the aftermath, but I was too freaked out by the sudden implications to respond.

Seeing I wasn't going to answer that, Mab continued speaking. "What I want of you is something only you could provide to me. Something only a mortal wizard could accomplish in the coming days, and even then your new-found strength in Winter could be an undoing in and of itself."

I wanted to say something, to demand for her to stop beating around the bush and spit it out, but I clamped down on that urge with all the same effort that I had previously put into not bowing. I can't even trust my own thoughts, now? Again I scented that fear upon Mab, whether I wanted to or not, and it set my breath hitching. It left me on the edge, quietly seething at my own inability to take advantage of the wounded prey, and my earlier concern over our roles was washed away.

But I knew that if I acted upon it, if I let myself believe that she was the hare and I the hawk, I wouldn't walk out of the Waterbeetle again, her mysterious quest be damned.

As if growing tired of patience and my rapidly changing thoughts, Mab gave me a sharp look and I found my body dropping again to my knees. This time I didn't fight against it. If I couldn't stand, couldn't freely move, than I couldn't kill myself prematurely by reaching out and striking first.

Her warning delivered, she continued where she had left off. "Perhaps you mortals still have some scrap of knowledge of this tale," she began in a less damaging tone. It was still cold, but it emerged more contained. "The tale of Oberon, King and fallen Lord of the Sidhe Courts."

It took a moment after she said that for my brain to process the information, but I latched onto it like a drowning man would a life-raft. I had personally met the three different representations of the Sidhe Queens save for Titania herself, but I had never heard of a King before, and the nearest representations that came to my mind were the Erlking with his goblins and, perhaps, Kringle and his elves.

"What does that have to do with your task?" I asked her carefully.

Mab gestured to the cut on the inside of her legs, across her wrists. My eyes honed in and dilated as I focused upon them. A moment later I exhaled harshly and I closed my eyes to keep them from watching the obvious weak points.

"Long before your Merlin came about, farther even than the Vampire Court's distention and separation into four, when the realms only now distantly tied into the world were still fresh and thriving, Oberon ruled over much of the Nevernever not already controlled by other gods," she explained. "Eventually his arrogance and pride grew to match his power and our King challenged for the right to rule over other portions outside of our domain. He set about his own oblivion by seeking the domain of the Dragons and entering a short-lived war."

Pausing a moment as if in remembrance, her tone returned to its malicious sharpness, and blood began to spill freely from my ears.

"Ferrovax and his sixteen kin destroyed Oberon's followers and gave rise to our loathing of iron in the process, for once defeated a cage of iron was wrought like never before at the Dragon's command. With his magic the King fought dearly against his imprisonment and was, as the Romans would later learn from Ferrovax, crucified at the core of the mortal world..." as she spoke I chanced opening my eyes again, and I watched the pale light in her own eyes grow dimmer.

I found myself sitting up into a crouch again as her will waned in the moment, weakening. Now. Launch forward and claim her now! I grunted as my body rocked forward and then back again on the balls of my feet, straining to both take advantage of her and hold that desire back. It had been so long since last I had been with a woman, until Mab and I consummated my ascension to the mantle of the Winter Knight so shortly before. It truly, honest to god scared me that I was suddenly fighting a war against myself like this.

Before I could falter again Mab's eyes opened fully, watching the gleam in my own eyes, and she was radiating cold fury between one beat and the next.

"Such insolence! Be still again!" She all but hissed at me from between clenched teeth. I was rocked backwards by the sensations and emotions conveyed in that look, in the intensity of her words, and the sudden onslaught of her will crushing me down

Her eyes were widened completely as I was pressed into a subservient position, barely keeping my face from pressing into the hardened snow mere inches beneath it. Only then did she return to her point, and I could barely hear it through the throbbing, warm pain drizzling out of my ears.

"Oberon has never ceased to be the King of the Sidhe Courts, and his power though diluted by his wretched bonds still lives on within us all and his wives the most, Mother Summer and Mother Winter. His boundary of iron spread like a curse onto all of his children as it poisoned his strength and through he to us!" She stated.

"These wounds I now bare are but the first sign that he is freed, Knight Dresden! Exactly where the wound was lined on the King so to does it appear on his descendants! Do you understand what that means?"

It was harder to hear through the pounding of my blood as it ran down and stained my shirt in thick splashes, but I managed a stark grimace in answer as the signs of madness Mab had demonstrated in meetings past manifested again, and the chill in the air sank deeper toward the freezing point. It managed to subdue the insane desires racing through my blood and granted me a brief respite of clarity again, and I was just able to lift my head up to meet her gaze. She stared down at me with her underlying fears suddenly shining through the cracked mask she had tried to maintain up until that moment.

Mab was more than just scared and angry.

She wasn't just panicked at the thought that Oberon was free.

She was utterly terrified, as a child slathered in their own blood and staring down an 800 lb grizzly bear from ten feet of distance would have been. My own fears felt suddenly insignificant beneath the presence and understanding that Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, the fucking Winter monarch over half of Faerie and a force to contend with practically any opposition I knew of, was losing control of herself.

I was swept away beneath a sudden, crushing realization of panic of my own as I understood the sheer power this guy commanded if Mab was reacting in such a way.

Hell's bells... I'm fucked.

Chapter one concluded.