Chapter Text
A snowflake lands on the girl’s cheek and makes her blink. Her partner pulls her close for the next turn and the snowflake drifts away. Eight couples move in harmony around the dance floor. They radiate grace and joy.
The dancers spin and Allison looks away.
All around the glen humans are having the times of their lives. The ball is full of splendor and ecstasy. For this one night of the year humans are welcomed to the eternal ball. The dancers are the stars - chosen specially as tribute to the queen - but Allison’s eyes catch on other humans at the fringes. There’s an old man open-mouthed and giggling, awed by something only he can see. Twin girls hold the attention of some dryads who feed them grapes with fervent focus. Allison feels sick to her stomach.
“That girl your sister or something?” Jackson, a fellow knight, asks the question innocently enough, but Allison is not oblivious to the hidden barb. Associating someone with humans is an insult of the highest caliber to the fae. It’s particularly cutting for Allison. After all, she was a human once - a long, long time ago.
Entering this conversation with Jackson would only be courting danger so she ignores the knight and keeps scanning the crowd, even if it means her eyes flicker over the dancers again.
fuck
For the last three decades Allison has been questing. Before that, she spent most of her time travelling the world tracking and executing rogue fae. In all this time she’s managed to avoid the Winter Court on solstice night. In fact, the last time Allison attended the solstice ball she was one of the dancers.
Ignoring the pain in her heart Allison focus on the job - protect the queen. As always, it’s mostly a decorative role. Queen Lydia values her personal guard more for their wit and beauty than their combat skills. She would never have become ruler of the Winter Court if she couldn’t fight her own battles. Lydia is the source and the anchor of all her court’s chaos - self-sufficient and apart. Allison would never have volunteered for duty as a pretty accessory to the queen’s outfit, but the assignment was a direct order.
Three days ago Allison had been covered in sweat as she sparred with Boyd when the Queen entered the training room, flanked by courtiers.
“Sir Allison,” Lydia acknowledged as Allison bowed, “we are making plans for the solstice.” The queen paused and Allison’s skin prickled as hazel eyes looked her over. “It seems long since you’ve attended, my knight. Perhaps you will accompany the guard. I should like to see you dance again.”
And that was it. After 180 years Allison was called back to the ball.
She looked to the queen now. Lydia showed no interest in seeing Allison dance tonight. The fancy, if that’s what it was, had passed. No, Lydia was distant and cold upon her throne - as beautiful and deadly as the ice she was born from. Another pang stung Allison’s heart. If she’d nurtured any hope that tonight would finally answer her lingering questions, that hope died now.
For 180 years she’d waited and wondered - why did Lydia choose her? Why did Queen Lydia of the Winter Court pluck stubborn, gawky, human Allison Argent out of the crowd that night? Why did she dance with Allison? Why had she promised Allison the world?
And why had they never spoken of it again?
The night she’d been given her immortality Allison went to bed with the faerie queen’s kisses staining her lips and eternity in her heart. In one night she’d been transformed from the lonely daughter of country gentry to a woman electrified by all she could feel and become. She’d tossed away the joys and limitations of her human life, ready for a new life built with Lydia at the center.
The next morning she’d been woken by a servant and shipped off for the long road with The Sheriff - a hobgoblin who served as the queen’s hand outside of Winter territory. For the first week they’d ridden in silence as tears flowed down Allison’s cheeks, The Sheriff a comforting presence at her side. When she’d pulled herself the began training and Allison learned everything she could about the freedoms and prisons of her new world.
Her upbringing as an Argent made Allison a quick study in the fighting arts and she built a reputation as the queen’s most fearsome warrior. Allison became honed steel - the mind and mutability of a human joined with the power and vision of the fae. For Lydia, without Lydia, she had remade herself in ice.
Tonight, though, she wondered if the human still lived beneath the ice. Tonight she felt raw and warm in an uncomfortably mortal way.
“Sir Allison?” A sprite bows to Allison, unusually reverent for the tricksy folk. “Have your feet been caught by the soil?”
The question is both metaphor and serious, but Allison is not sure what it is exactly that the fae creature wants from her so she answers carefully.
“Roots are a warrior’s strength, but flight is a life saved.” Allison thinks of those moments when speed is the rushing sound of a blade just missing it’s mark. In the same moment she recalls bodies heavily hitting the earth. “My feet are ever ready to fly.”
The sprite’s obsequious manners melt away to reveal mockery and glee. Apparently Allison has answered wrong - how, she doesn’t know. Her skin crawls and she is reminded once again how ill-suited she is for the Winter Court. Outside of Winter Allison is the dangerous power lurking in empty streets. She is the law and the avenger. At the court she is a formerly-human thug, only one mistake away from being consumed by one of the vicious plots Winter thrives on.
The sprite bares its teeth, but before it can speak whatever poison it has in mind Boyd’s steady voice interrupts.
“Fly away Nissa.” Boyd is intimidating in the same silver uniform as Allison and Jackson and the sprite exits readily. Allison nods in acknowledgement (not gratitude, vulnerability has no place in the Winter Court) and is surprised to see Boyd look uncertain. She waits, curious, until he appears to make a decision and speaks. “We fae were born to fly. The wind raises us even as she tears apart the earth itself.”
“She favors us,” Allison ventures.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not.” Boyd looks towards the dancers. The couples hold tightly to each other in the center of the glen. Allison can almost see a glowing aura around the flushed and vibrant humans. “Perhaps we are well-made for being torn apart.”
And isn’t that the truth, Allison thinks. There are unfilled expanses within her that grow every year and seem destined to freeze over.
On the fringe of the ball a body hits the ground and her twin screams. The sound cuts out - a staccato accent to the night’s dancing.