Anna put her hand on Charles's arm. "Do you hear that?" she asked so urgently that everyone turned to look at her.

Charles didn't hear anything over the crowds of people, honking cars, and carriage-horse hooves.

Anna glanced around, standing on her toes to see over people's heads. There was still a crowd on the steps and hordes of reporters because serial killer plus senator's son equaled Big Story. Charles looked around, too - and then realized that he couldn't see any carriage horses.

He never saw when they appeared, or where they came from, but suddenly they were just there. After a few minutes, other people saw them, too, and fell silent. Traffic stopped. Les Heuter and his reporter were still wrapped up in his statement full of lies for the national news, but Senator Heuter was facing the street and put his hand on his son's shoulder.

Fifty-nine black horses stood motionless on the roadway in front of the courthouse. They were tall and slender, like thoroughbred racehorses, except their manes and tails were fuller - absurdly so. Silver chains were woven through their manes, and on the chains were silver bells.

Charles knew horses. There was no way fifty-nine horses would stand still, with neither a flick of an ear nor a twitch of their tails.

Their saddles were white - old-fashioned saddles with high cantles and pommels, almost like a western saddle without a horn. The saddle blankets were silver. None of them wore bridles.

Every horse bore a rider dressed in black with silver trim, as motionless as their horses. Their pants were loose-fitting, made of some lightweight fabric; their shirts were tunics embroidered with silver thread, the pattern of the stitching different for each rider. This one had flowers, this one stars, the other ivy leaves. Charles knew that there was magic at work because he could not discern a single face, though none of them wore a mask.

Just when the spell of their arrival started to thin, when people in the crowd started to whisper, they parted. The horses backed up and around to form two lines facing each other, and through this passage a white horse cantered slowly. As with the other horses, he wore no bridle - but this horse had no saddle, either. Just black chains strung through his mane and tail, covered in silver bells that jingled sweetly in time to the horse's steady movement.

On the horse was a man dressed in silver and white. In his right hand he held a silver short sword, in his left a sprig of a plant, blue green leaves, and small yellow blooms. Rue.

The white horse stopped at the foot of the stairs and Charles noticed two things. First, the horse had bright blue eyes that caught his and studied him coolly before the horse moved on to stare at Lizzie. Second, that the horse's rider was Lizzie's father.

"I told them," he said in a clear, carrying voice, "that they should not give someone as old and powerful as I a daughter to love. That it would end badly."

His horse shifted, raising one front leg and pawing at the air before replacing it exactly where it had been.

"Now we shall all live with the consequences."

The white horse rose on his hind legs, not rearing. This was a precise, slow levade, as balanced and graceful as any ballet movement.

"What was done today was not justice. This man raped and tortured my daughter. When he was finished, he would have killed her. But you all see us as monsters - so frightened of the dark that you cannot see truly your own monsters among you. Very well. You have made it clear that we and our children are not citizens of this country, that we are separate. And that we will receive a separate justice that has little to do with the lovely lady who holds the balanced scales - and has everything to do with your fear."

The horse came down to rest on all four feet again.

"You have made your choice. And we will all live with the consequences. Most of us. Most of us will live with the consequences."

The white horse started forward again, up the cement stairs. His silver-shod hooves clicked as he walked and Alistair Beauclaire crumbled the rue in his left hand and scattered it as they walked, leaving behind a trail of leaves that was too thick for the small sprig he had started with. The last of it fell from his hands as the horse stopped in front of Les Heuter.

Charles tried to move at last - but found he could do nothing except breathe.

"It is not meet that my daughter's attacker should live," Beauclaire said. He raised his sword and swung, scarcely slowing as metal met flesh and won. He beheaded Les Heuter in front of the television camera - and then spoke into it.

"For two hundred years I have been bound by my oath that I would not use my powers for personal gain, nor for the gain of my people. In return we would be allowed to come here and live in quiet harmony in a place unbound by iron."

He didn't say whom he'd sworn his oath to, though Charles rather thought it didn't matter. For one such as this fae, an oath sworn to a child was as valid as an oath sworn to a king or the pope.

Tipping his bloody blade toward the body on the ground, Beauclaire said, quietly, "The time of that oath is past, broken by this man and by those who freed him without regard to justice. I reclaim my magic for me and for my people. Our day begins anew."

Then he raised the dripping sword up toward the sky and announced harshly, "We, the fae, declare ourselves free of the laws of the United States of America. We do not recognize them. They have no authority over us. From this moment forward we are our own sovereign nation, claiming as our own those lands ceded to us. We will treat with you, as one hostile nation treats with another, until such time as it seems us good to do elsewise. I, Alistair Beauclaire, once and again Gwyn ap Lugh, Prince of the Gray Lords, do so determine. All will abide my wishes."

The white horse raised his front feet and spun, bounding down the stairs and back through the path the other riders had made for him. As the white horse ran, a white mist rose behind him, covering them all for a moment before dissipating, taking with it all the fae.

Senator Heuter dropped to his knees to mourn his son.

THE MARROK LET himself into his son's house. Charles had flown home the night before - all the way from Boston. He'd decided to quit taking commercial flights until security no longer required him to watch others pat down his mate. Bran couldn't argue with his logic, but they had arrived late and gone straight home. Bran had tried to let them sleep in, but the need to make sure they were safe had overridden his sense of courtesy.

He walked soundlessly down the hall to the bedroom.

Charles lay on the bed with Anna sprawled bonelessly on top of him, her hair covering her face. Bran smiled, pleased that his son was happy. No matter what else was wrong, and he was very afraid that a lot was going to be wrong in very short order thanks to the unexpected move by the usually cautious fae, the knowledge that Charles was going to be all right was satisfying. In that moment, watching his son sleep, he understood Beauclaire's actions entirely.