Mab had me.

I hadn’t escaped her. I hadn’t escaped what she could make me become.

Oh, God.

And all the people who’d gotten hurt, helping me… They’d done it for nothing.

“Told me… I was dead,” I muttered.

“Dead is a grey word,” Mab hissed. “Mortals fear it, and so they wish it to be black—and they have but few words to contain its reality. It escapes from such constraints. Death is a spectrum, not a line. And you, my knight, had not yet vanished into the utter darkness.”

I licked at my lips again. “Guess… you’re kind of upset with me.…”

“You attempted to cheat the Queen of Air and Darkness,” Mab hissed. “You practiced a vile, wicked deception upon me, my knight.” Her inhuman eyes glittered. “I expected no less of you. Were you not strong enough to cast such defiance into my teeth, you would be useless to my purposes.” Her smile widened. “To our purposes now.”

The very ground seemed to quiver, to let out an unthinkably low, deep, angry growl.

Mab’s eyes snapped to Demonreach. “I have his oath, ancient one. What he has given is mine by right, and you may not gainsay it. He is mine to shape as I please.”

“Dammit,” I said tiredly. “Dammit.”

And a voice—a very calm, very gentle, very rational voice whispered in my ear, “Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.”

I struggled and twitched my fingers. “Five,” I muttered, “Six. Seven. Heh.” I couldn’t help it. I laughed again. It hurt like hell and it felt wonderful. “Heh. Heh.”

Mab had gone very still. She stared at me with wide eyes, her alien face void of expression.

“No,” I said then, weakly. “No. Maybe I’m your knight. But I’m not yours.”

Emerald fire flickered in her eyes, cold and angry. “What?”

“You can’t make me your monster,” I slurred. “Doesn’t work. And you know it.”

Mab’s eyes grew colder, more distant. “Oh?”

“You can make me do things,” I said. “You can mess with my head. But all that makes me is a thug.” The effort of so many words cost me. I had to take a moment to rest before I continued. “You wanted a thug; you get that from anywhere. Lloyd Slate was a thug. Plenty where he came from.”

Demonreach’s burning eyes flickered, and a sense of something like cold satisfaction came from the cloaked giant.

“Said it yourself: need someone like me.” I met Mab’s eyes with mine and curled my upper lip into a sneer. “Go on. Try to change me. The second you do, the second I think you’ve played with my head or altered my memory, the first time you compel me to do something, I’ll do the one thing you can’t have in your new knight.” I lifted my head a little, and I knew that I must have looked a little crazy as I spoke. “I’ll do it. I’ll follow your command. And I will do nothing else. I’ll make every task you command one you must personally oversee. I’ll have the initiative of a garden statue. And do you know what that will give you, my queen?”