There are multiple powers in Fairy but three are of near-equal strength.
The Winter Court is led by Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. Winter is violently beautiful, characterized both by stark clarity and indulgence in the basest of desires. Winter’s nature is to fight and to live even when there is no warmth and quarter given.
Titania, the Lady of Light and Life, rules the Summer Court. Summer is growth and fire, survival and passion. But they are not the good fairies, for to think such a concept as good and evil existed among the Fae would be the last foolish thought of an equally foolish man.
The two courts are on opposite sides of the chessboard, their very conflict providing balance to the world. The Fairy Queens, though immortal and unspeakably powerful, are bound by magical rules and limitations. They cannot, for example, personally kill anyone outside of their Court. For this they have their Knights, the Winter Knight and the Summer Knight, mortals chosen to be the Queen’s sword. The Queen bestows a mantle upon her Knight that heightens their strength, speed, and magic. But to become a Knight is to bargain your soul, for it is a life sentence steeped in convoluted fairy politics and bloody battle.
(The third power is the Wyldfae, a conglomeration of unaligned fairies that only seem inclined to answer to the Erlking. They rarely step from Fairy, except on the nights of the Wild Hunt. On those nights the mortal realm trembles with the thunderous hooves of their steeds and the baying chorus of their hounds. The Erlking, Hellequin, the King of Goblins, is an intimidating figure of few words, excepting a rare but booming laugh. He wears the skins of his kills and a horned helmet. One hardly ever sees him without his hides and armor, though it is rumored that there is thick scarring on at least one arm. The Erlking has many names, all as terrible as they are powerful, but there is one sly fairy in the Winter Court who sometimes calls the Wyldfae king “Mick”.)
Barry Allen is a mortal in the mortal realm. He works for the police and, on the side, helps solve cases for the various magical folk in Central City. He’s a low-level mage. A one-trick pony, really. Big spells and conjurings he has to go the long way ‘round with magical artifacts and intricate spells or potions.
So, he has no idea why Titania, the Summer Queen, has long solicited him to service her as her Knight. Especially when she already has a Knight. The Knight’s mantle can only serve one Knight at a time, and can only be passed on after a Knight’s death. He suspects she wants him because she knows something about him, his heritage and powers, that he does not. She has visited him since his youth, all warm skin and touches, smelling of flowers with a smile like the dawn. In truth, he did not know her as Titania for several years.
She appears to him as a friend, and he may think of her in that way, deep down in a safe place where no one—especially Titania—can take advantage of it. But one time, on a very dark day, he once saw her as she is. A burnished goddess of flame and shadow, with a smile like poison and a touch like thorns. He knows what he gives up if he takes her bargain—his soul, for one, and perhaps his very identity. He wants to help people, not be the instrument of their doom.
(What he doesn’t know, and may never learn, is that there is more than the Knight’s mantle at play. Titania—this Titania, because there have been a few—was once mortal before she had the Queen’s mantle thrust upon her. It was a long time ago, when the known world was smaller and younger. Back then she had a mortal name, too. That of a flower. Iris.)
But one day Barry gets himself too deep on a dangerous case. He lies dying with blood on his lips as he whispers, “Titania. Titania.”
It is Mab who comes instead.
The Winter Queen, the White Lady. Barry’s only seen her twice before. Once in the glamour that she wears in the mortal world, which is that of a blonde woman all in white with piercing blue eyes. He’d thought then that her very presence burst at the seams of her glamour. Even then when he’d looked at her he hadn’t seen a mortal disguise but Other and Predator. He’d been put in the mind of a snow leopard, eerily still and quiet as it stalked its prey.
The other time he’d seen her had been that same dark day he’d seen Titania. Mab as she is shone in cold brightness, like the sun on snow, a being of ice and darkness.
(What he doesn’t know, but will learn, is that she, too, was once mortal. She doesn’t speak her mortal name but one night, away from the reaches of her of power, Len will whisper to him that she was once Sara.)
“Where’s Titania?” He asks on the day he barters his soul away.
“You bargain with me, Bartholomew Henry Allen,” she says and because Names have power, even mortal ones, he feels it when she draws in and leashes the threads of his magic. “Will you be my Knight?”
Bleeding out, alone in a dim and filthy alley, Barry doesn’t have a choice but to say, “Yes.”
“Speak thrice and done, child.”
“Yes,” he says with Death rattling hollowly beneath his breastbone. “Yes.”
The Winter Court is vast, beautiful, and unfamiliar. Arctis Tor, the Queen’s stronghold, is as devastating and remote as Mab herself. Though Barry’s seen some combat in the mortal world, he was never much of an actual fighter, and his training is horrific and painful. His nights are endless and lonely. The Lords and Ladies of the Court are treacherous, Mab unfathomable. He misses his family. His little apartment and his job and his cases and his friends.
Some nights he even thinks he misses Titania. At least she was a danger he thought he knew.
Perhaps foolishly, he starts to find some solace in the guide Mab assigns to him. Once he thought his guide was a lowly courtier, but quickly learned that Cat Sith is second only to Mab. Assigning such a powerful being to assist Barry makes him even more suspicious as to what Mab (and Titania, previously) might want from him. Also, it explains why Cat Sith can get so annoyed at him—it must chafe to be so powerful and be allotted a butler’s task.
“Were I not obliged by My Lady to be courteous to thee,” Cath Sith tells Barry on his first day in Arctis Tor. “There would be no greater pleasure afforded to me than that of slicing your spine into little coasters.”
Cat Sith is The Cait Sidhe. The King of Cats. Soul-Stealer. The First Witch. On most days he hardly resembles a cat, or any other beast in the mortal realm. He is an enormous creature made up of tooth and claw, shadow and sinew. His grin gleams like a wicked moon. His eyes are like the very heart of a glacier. He is mercurial with a biting wit and blood on his whiskers.
But it is Cat Sith who comes to keep him company during the long nights at Court. Sporadically, at first, and only for a few minutes at a time. Whether the passing attention was out of a sense of obligation or predatorial fascination, Barry couldn’t say.
One night, when the weight of loneliness is beyond endurance, Barry starts talking to Cat Sith. And Cat Sith stays and listens. The visits become more frequent until Cat Sith spends hours at Barry’s window, draped on his chair, or pacing the shadows of the room while Barry talks.
Cat Sith has many forms. One is a smaller form, the one that mostly resembles a cat, if you squinted and ignored every instinct in you that screamed to run away. It is this form that Cat Sith most often adopts at night when he sits at Barry’s window. Many Fae can adopt a human-like form, so Barry isn’t sure why he’s surprised one night to see Cat Sith sitting at his window in man-shape. He greets Barry silently with those familiar blue eyes and wicked grin, the light of the Fairy moon caressing his shoulders.
“This form’s name goes by Leonard, My Knight.”
“Why do you keeping calling me that? I’m Mab’s Knight, aren’t I?”
“You are Winter’s Knight,” Leonard says, his voice suddenly behind Barry because Cat Sith can move quicker than thought wherever there is darkness and shadow. Barry whirls to find Leonard close, close enough for Barry to see that the pupils in his blue eyes are still cat-like slits. “So, you are mine as well.”
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