Inhuman

you and be grabbed back! What, you won't lick my face now you have hands? Ah, but I've missed you, boy."
    Kai heard him. In her mind, she heard and understood him. But her ears heard different sounds, not what her mind reported. She shook her head as if she could shake free of the disconnect that way.
    Nathan's laugh rang clear. He rested one hand on the head of a hound who stood hip-high to him. Another hound butted him in the leg, wanting attention. He glanced down fondly. "Ardadamar, where are your manners? And you, sir, claiming you missed me. You've scarcely thought of me."
    "No, but I did… well." He scratched his ear. "Several times, yes, I did. Is my grief less for being inconstant, eh? I missed you. But why did you call me? You don't need me to come home."
    "I've a favor to ask." As the Huntsman's face darkened he added, "And stories for payment. Four hundred years' worth."
    "Stories. Well." He fingered his beard, then his gaze shifted. He saw Kai and the beast at her side. He nodded. "Ah. So you called me for this, but it's no favor. How could you think so? Queens' law, boy, and you were wise not to take this hunt on yourself." He reached into thin air—and withdrew a bow.
    "What? No," Nathan said. "I'm asking you to return the chameleon to her home."
    "Oh, the chameleon. Poor girl. No, she can't be sundered again. The hounds can deal with her, or you can. Better you," he decided. "You'll make it easy on her. But I'll take the binder, don't worry."
    "Binder?" Nathan said. His voice came out strangled. He glanced at Kai, emotions skittering across his face and spiking in his colors so fast she couldn't track them—but they ended in horror.
    He leaped—made one great, impossible leap, and he landed in front of her. He spun to face the Huntsman, a noise rising from his throat he couldn't have made, deep and inhuman, a growl rising straight from nightmare.
    The chameleon sprang to her feet, answering his growl with hers.
    Kai thought she might wet her pants. "Nathan?"
    The Huntsman stilled and said in a voice too much like Nathan's growl, "You defy me?"
    "Mine." Nathan crouched lower, hands out—a fighting posture. "She's Kai, and she's mine."
    The Huntsman tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. "Or you are hers. She's a binder, boy. She's caught you."
    "She's not. Not a true binder, though I… she thinks she's a telepath. I don't know what she is, but she's Kai. I can't let you kill her."
    "You can't stop me." All the humor—the fey, Robin Goodfellow pleasantry—fell away, and Kai was looking at death. Beautiful, implacable death was coming for Nathan and for her. The hounds—so friendly a moment ago—spread wide, hackles lifting, heads lowering.
    Nathan called out a name.
    Kai heard icicles and silence, and silently the air split open in front of them. A woman, all in white, stepped out of that slit in reality. It closed up neatly behind her. She took a single step forward—and Nathan abandoned Kai to reach for his queen, and he held her as she held him, both of them speaking in a liquid roll of syllables that made no echoes of meaning in Kai's head.
    Kai stood, stricken and staring. This wasn't the Queen of Winter. She
was
winter.
    Her skin was white. Not Caucasian, but truly white—like snow or alabaster or opals, for there was a sheen to it, as if colors played beneath the surface. Her hair was blacker than the hellhounds' midnight fur and spiraled in shiny curls to her waist. Her long, oval face angled in ways no human face would, and her tilted eyes were silver just kissed by blue. Tears spangled those eyes, glistening like melting snow in the lashes and on the white cheeks, as she and Nathan embraced.
    She had no colors.
    Kai blinked. She focused harder, but still saw none of the colors every living creature possessed. No shapes, intricate or otherwise. No thoughts. No emotions. Nothing. "She's not there," Kai said stupidly.
    The queen turned her head, her arm still around Nathan, to look directly at Kai. "Binder." Her voice wasn't bells or flutes or anything Kai had expected. No, it was husky and warm, the welcoming warmth of a fireplace on a winter's night. She spoke English now. Clear, unaccented English. "Did you think I would leave my thoughts dangling free for you to seize?"
    "My queen." Nathan inhaled on a shudder and stepped back from her, closer to Kai. "She is not a binder."
    Those tilted eyes swung toward him, and the queen spoke gently. "I see what you cannot."
    "Yes. But it may be