The Outsiders wanted in.

“When?” I asked. “When did this start?”

“Oh, Harry,” Mother Summer said gently.

“What?” I asked. But I had noticed something. Those layers and mounds of shale? They weren’t shale.

They were bones.

Millions and millions and millions of fucktons of bones.

“What the hell is going on here?” I breathed. “Where are we?”

“The edge of Faerie,” she said. “Our outer borders. It would have taken you a decade to learn to travel out this far.”

“Oh,” I said. “And . . . and it’s like this?”

“In essence,” Mother Summer said. She stared sadly out over the plain. “Did you think Mab spent all her days sitting in her chair and dealing with her backstabbing courtiers? No, Sir Knight. Power has purpose.”

“What happens if they get in?” I asked.

Mother Summer’s lips thinned. “Everything stops. Everything.”

“Holy crap,” I muttered. “Does Summer have a place like this, too, then?”

Mother Summer shook her head. “That was never its task. Your Council’s estimate was fairly close, counting only those troops protecting the hearts of Winter and Summer. Mab has more than that. She needs them—for this.”

I felt like I’d been hit repeatedly in the head with a rubber hammer. “So . . . Mab’s troops outnumber yours by a jillion.”

“Indeed.”

“So she could run you over at any time.”

“She could,” Mother Summer said, “if she were willing to forfeit reality.”

I scanned the length of the wall nervously. It looked like it went on forever—and there was fighting all along its length.

“You’re telling me that this is why Mab has her power? To . . . to protect the borders?”

“To protect all of you from the Outsiders, mortal.”

“Then why does Titania have hers?” I asked.

“To protect all of you from Mab.”

I swallowed.

“Titania cannot match Mab’s forces, but she can drag Mab personally into oblivion with her—and Mab knows it. Titania is the check to her power, the balance.”

“If Mab dies . . .” I began.

She swept a hand along the length of the wall. “A spoiled, sadistic, murderous, and inexperienced child will have control of all of that.”

Hell’s bells. I rubbed at my eyes, and as I did, I connected some dots and realized something else.

“This is a siege,” I said. “Those guys out there are attacking the walls. But there are others trying to dig their way in so that they can open the gates for their buddies. That’s what the adversary is. Right? A sapper, an infiltrator.”

Mother Summer said, “There, you see? You possess the potential to be quite intelligent. Do stay beside me, dear.” And she started walking firmly toward the massive gates.

It didn’t take us long to get there, but as we came up to the base of the wall and walked along it, we started drawing the eyes of the wall’s defenders. I felt myself growing tenser as a marching column of armored Sidhe soldiers came stepping lightly along the ground behind us, catching up quickly.

Mother Summer guided me slightly aside so that we weren’t in the column’s way, and they started going by us. I didn’t think much of it until someone at the front of the column called out in a clear voice, and as one the Sidhe came to a halt with a solid, simultaneous stomp of a couple of hundred boots. The voice barked another command, and the Sidhe all turned to face us.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

Mother Summer touched my hand with hers, and reassurance bathed me like June sunshine. “Shhh.”

The voice barked another command, and as one the Sidhe lowered themselves to one knee and bowed their heads.

“Good morrow, cousins,” Mother Summer said, her voice solemn. She took her hand off my arm and passed it in a broad, sweeping arch over the kneeling soldiers. Subtle, subtle power thrummed delicately in the air. “Go forth with my blessing.”

One of the soldiers in the lead of the column rose and bowed to her, somehow conveying gratitude. Then he snapped out another loud command, and the column rose, turned, and continued its quickstep march.

“Huh,” I said.

“Yes?” asked Mother Summer.

“I was sort of expecting . . . something else.”

“Winter and Summer are two opposing forces of our world,” she said. “But we are of our world. Here, that is all that matters. And showing respect to one’s elders is never unwise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

Mother Summer gave me a small, shrewd smile.

We continued our walk in their wake, and soon reached the gates. There I saw a smaller set of gates—sally ports—built into the main gates. They were the size of the garage doors on a fire station. As I watched, someone shouted a command and a pair of heavily armored ogres each grabbed one of the sally ports and drew it open. The column that had passed us stood waiting to march out, but they did not immediately proceed. Instead, a column of carts and litters entered, bearing the groaning wounded of the fighting outside, being watched over by several dozen Sidhe dressed in pure white armor, marked with bold green and scarlet trim—Sidhe knights of Summer. Medics. Despite the massive numbers of troops I’d seen moving around, there were fewer than a hundred casualties brought back to the gates. Evidently the Outsiders were not in the business of leaving enemies alive behind them.

A lean figure came down a stairway built within the walls framing the gates, at first a shadowy blur through the layers and layers of crystal. He was a couple of inches taller than me, which put him at the next-best thing to seven feet, but he moved with a brisk, bustling sense of energy and purpose. He wore a dark robe that looked black at first, but as he emerged into the light, highlights showed it to be a deep purple. He carried a long pale wizard’s staff in one weathered hand, and his hood covered up most of his face, except for part of an aquiline nose and a long chin covered in a grizzled beard.

He spoke to the Summer and Winter Sidhe alike in a language I didn’t understand but they evidently did, giving instructions to Summer’s medics. They took his orders with a kind of rigid, formal deference. He leaned over to scan each of the fallen closely, nodding at the medics after each, and they would immediately carry the wounded Sidhe in question back behind the wall, into what looked like a neat triage area.

“Rashid,” I murmured, recognizing the man. “What is he doing here—”

I froze and stared up at the massive gates rising above us.

Rashid, a member of the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizards, had another title, the name he went by most often.

The Gatekeeper.

He finished with the last of the wounded, then turned and approached us with long, purposeful strides. He paused a few steps away and bowed to Mother Summer, who returned the gesture with a deep, formal nod of her head. Then he came the rest of the way to me, and I could see the gleam of a dark eye inside his hood. His smile was wide and warm, and he extended his hand to me. I took it and shook it, feeling a little overwhelmed.

“Well, well,” he said. His voice was a deep, warm thing, marked with an accent that sounded vaguely British seasoned with plenty of more exotic spices. “I had hoped we would see your face again, Warden.”