A Killing Frost Read online

  “Yes, but . . . if my Firstborn made this place, she should have made it perfect for the Daoine Sidhe, and this is not perfect! This is like something out of one of Chelsea’s creepy horror movies, and I don’t like it!” He sounded personally offended, like Eira’s terrible taste in environments existed purely to spite him.

  I couldn’t resist. I reached over and ruffled his hair with one hand, something that was a lot easier back when he was shorter than me. “Kiddo, if you think that woman has ever done anything in her life to benefit someone who wasn’t herself, I haven’t been training you well enough. She’s the worst.”

  “No, your mom’s the worst.”

  “Fair point. Can we agree that they share the title, and get moving?”

  “Please,” said May. She was leaning against one of the charcoal-sketch trees, a hand pressed to the gaping hole in her belly. “I’m getting tired, and while this isn’t going to kill me, I should probably be in a bed by now. Holding very still, while someone spoon-feeds me pear sorbet and potato soup. So if we could get this over with before any more of my organs decide to fall out of the gaping cavity that was my abdominal wall, that would be peachy-keen.”

  “Right.” I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and sniffed the air.

  There wasn’t much wind, and I was willing to bet that this deep into Faerie, in a shard realm that was only accessible via one of the old roads and with a helping hand from a missing Queen, there wasn’t an ordinary day-night cycle either. That meant magic that would have long since dissolved in the mortal world might still be hanging around for me to find.

  All I could smell was the green, mossy loam of a healthy forest. No roses, and no magic apart from the faint scent of cotton candy and ashes that surrounded May as her body fought to keep itself together. I adjusted my stance, bracing my feet to balance myself better, and took a deeper breath, inhaling through my nose until my lungs ached.

  And there, on the absolute edge of what I could detect, was the faintest scent of snow.

  I let the breath I’d been holding out and pointed in the direction the scent had come from. “She’s that way. If she’s awake, she’s not slinging magic around yet. Let’s go.”

  Quentin hesitated. “Won’t she be able to take me over if she is awake? Daoine Sidhe can’t argue with her.”

  “If she tries to tell you what to do, I’ll punch her in the throat,” I said solemnly. “You’re my squire. I’m not going to share.”

  “Trust Toby to punch the unstoppable force of chaos,” said May. “You know she’ll do it.”

  “Yeah,” said Quentin uncomfortably, and started walking again.

  I couldn’t blame him for his discomfort. I’d completely forgotten Eira’s impact on her descendants in my hurry to reach Simon. It’s like that for most of the Firstborn. Amphitrite, the First among the Merrow, triggers either violence or unconsciousness in her descendants. The Selkies always trusted the Luidaeg, no matter how ridiculous the lies she was telling them should have seemed. I don’t know what Mom inspires in her descendants—she mostly makes me want to slam doors in her face these days, and while I desperately wanted to please her when I was a child, there’s nothing unusual about children wanting to please their parents. That’s practically what it means to be a child.

  Still, if Eira tried to mess with him, I’d find a way to stop her. She was powerful and awful, sure, but she wasn’t omnipotent. Firstborn can be defeated. They can even be destroyed. I’ve done it before. If this one wanted to test that, I’d be happy to oblige.

  The fog didn’t thin as we worked our way deeper into the forest, assuming “deeper” was the right word when we’d started in the middle of the place. We could be moving toward the forest’s edge. I didn’t think we were. The possibility still existed, and we kept moving, dodging the tangled heaps of briars, trying not to run into trees. The farther we walked, the more frequently May had to stop and brace herself against a tree, breathing turning increasingly ragged. I moved toward her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Do you need to wait here?” I asked. “Because we can handle the next part without you if we have to.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said, panting. “You don’t know what the next part is. You’ve gone haring off without a real plan before, and it never ends as bloodlessly as you think it’s going to. No. I’m your Fetch. I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re not my Fetch anymore,” I corrected. “You’re my sister. Sisters are invited, but they’re not required.”

  A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “All sisters?”

  “Well, maybe not all sisters,” I said. “I think August would be something of a liability right now. And that’s compared to you, the gutless wonder.”

  “I still have my metaphorical guts,” she protested, swiping at me as she pushed herself away from the tree. I laughed and started walking again. May shuffled along beside me. Guess the tendency to keep pushing myself forward even when there was no point predates my developing the ability to heal from mortal wounds, since she and I split before there was any inkling that I would eventually be able to do that.

  I paused occasionally to sniff the air, tasting it for traces of snow, and found plenty. The smell of roses began to mingle with it, weakly at first, but growing steadily stronger. I frowned.

  “What is it?” asked Quentin.

  “Roses,” I said.

  “I don’t smell any roses.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s . . . everyone’s magic has a distinct smell.”

  “I know,” said Quentin.

  He did, too: blood magic is what makes that scent easy to pick out and decode. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that not everyone can tell who cast a spell by the way it smells, and that the stronger someone’s talent for blood magic is, the more information they’ll be able to get from a single sniff. I’d always been told that I was ordinary trending toward weak. Anything I could do couldn’t possibly be special.

  Or if it was special, my mother was a filthy liar. That had seemed like the impossible answer when I was a kid, so of course it had turned out to be the true one. As a Daoine Sidhe, Quentin could smell magic almost as well as I could, but he didn’t have the built-in database of scents that would allow him to recognize even things he’d never encountered before and couldn’t possibly know. I rubbed at my face with one hand.

  “Everyone’s magic has a distinct smell, and it’s at least partially influenced by who their parents were,” I said. “I wish I’d met Simon and Sylvester’s parents, because between the two of them they have two kinds of flower, one fruit, and one elemental scent. It doesn’t make sense. Most of the Daoine Sidhe I’ve known have had something floral about their magic. Simon doesn’t. He never did. Do you follow?”

  “Like my magic smells like steel and heather,” said Quentin. “My mom’s smells like fresh-cooled steel and dried hay, and my dad’s smells like heather—there’s a lot of different kinds of heather—and celandine poppies. So Mom doesn’t have a flower, but I got the metal from her.”

  “Right.” Maida Sollys had been born a changeling, with only one fae parent. I was willing to bet that her human parent was somehow where the metal had entered her magic, which was why Quentin could inherit the scent of something that could do him serious harm. “Well, the magic of the woman we’re walking towards smells like roses.”

  “Right,” said Quentin, puzzled.

  “And so does my mother’s. And Acacia’s children literally bond to roses so tightly that they can be killed by hurting those roses.”

  “But they’re all descended from Titania, so maybe they got the roses from her,” said Quentin. “The Luidaeg’s magic doesn’t smell like roses.”

  “Mom isn’t a daughter of Titania,” I said. “She’s all Oberon’s. And Amphitrite’s magic doesn’t smell like roses. But Maeve’s does.” />
  “This is fascinating, but could the magical theory class wait until I’m not leaking?” asked May. “I ask because I feel like we could potentially hurry this the fuck up.”

  “Language,” I said, in my primmest tone. “I’m asking important questions about the nature of Faerie here, and we’re still walking.”

  “We swear on the rose and the thorn when something’s really important,” said Quentin. “Maybe we do that because both Queens had roses in their magic . . . ?”

  “It would explain a lot,” I said thoughtfully. “But Mom isn’t descended from either of the Queens. She’s descended from Oberon and a human woman.” Janet’s name was another one I didn’t want to invoke when we were this far off the beaten path. It seemed like a good way to get hurt.

  The mingled scents of snow and roses were getting stronger, managing to coexist without becoming contradictory. I rubbed my nose, trying to dull the scent. It didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse.

  Then we stepped through a break in the trees, and there she was. Eira Rosynhwyr. Evening Winterrose. No matter what we called her, she was beautiful, and she was deadly.

  And she was asleep.

  She was stretched atop a bier of brambles, their vines looped and tangled together until they were as snarled as a ball of yarn, impossible to pick or pull apart. Their thorns were longer and sharper than any I’d ever seen, some as long as my index finger. All of them pointed outward, away from her, protecting her from any threats that presented themselves. Not that I was sure anything in this mist-shrouded realm was capable of threatening her. Nothing but us, anyway.

  She was beautiful as always, with skin as white as snow, hair as black as the roses that led us here, and lips as red as the blood magic she’d passed to her descendants. Some people believe mortal fairy tales were inspired by actual encounters with the fae, and if they’re right, we can blame all those endless Snow White reimaginings on Evening, who started the whole messy monochrome myth. She was wearing a crushed velvet gown only a few shades darker than her lips, with red roses in her hair. She hadn’t been wearing that the last time we’d been here. She hadn’t been stretched out on a bier, either. I was willing to believe the briars could have arranged themselves that way to make her comfortable, but I didn’t believe they were capable of changing her clothes.

  “I know you’re there,” I said, raising my voice as I turned in a slow circle. “You can come out now.”

  “Why, October, I thought you’d never ask,” said Simon, stepping out from behind a nearby tree.

  He was holding a short recurve bow in his hands, an arrow already notched and pointed, not toward me or May, but directly at the center of Quentin’s chest.

  Well, shit.

  TEN

  SUPERFICIALLY, SIMON TORQUILL LOOKS exactly like his twin brother, Sylvester. Once you take the time to really look at them, they don’t look anything alike at all.

  Simon carried himself more stiffly, like he remembered and cared about the etiquette lessons Sylvester had abandoned decades ago. His shirt was frayed at the cuffs and collar, and his trousers fit too loosely. He’d clearly lost weight since the last time he’d been able to see a tailor, but as he had a belt, I knew we weren’t going to be saved by a well-timed pratfall. There was no softness in his expression. He looked at us like we were vermin, worthy of notice only in that he had to notice us in order to destroy us.

  That was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. Sylvester rejecting me was wrong; Simon forgetting how much work he’d done to begin making amends with me was wrong. It was wrong, and I hated it.

  “If you’d do me the immense favor of stepping away from my lady, I might see fit to do you the immense favor of not putting an arrow through the brat,” he said. “I mixed the elf-shot myself, and the ingredients available in this forest are more potent than the ones to be found in the Summerlands. I’m not entirely sure what they would do to someone of average magical strength. It might be a two-hundred–year slumber, instead of the normal one. Or it might be instant death. Won’t it be fun to find out?”

  “Whoa, whoa, let’s not be hasty here,” I said, putting up my hands and backing away from Evening’s bier as quickly as I dared. May did the same, more slowly, due to her injuries. “We’re not here to mess with your lady. We’re here because we were looking for you, and this is where the Rose Road led us when we asked it to take us to you.”

  “I can’t find Oleander,” he said, a brief, pensive look crossing his face. “I went to the apartment I bought for her, but she wasn’t there. There was no sign that she’d been there for years. It doesn’t make any sense. She always tells me before she goes on a long journey. She says it’s to make sure I don’t forget her.”

  “Oleander de Merelands?” asked Quentin. “But she—” He caught the pleading look on my face and the way I was subtly but frantically shaking my head as I tried to signal him to silence. “Um,” he said.

  Simon narrowed his eyes. “Do you know where she is?” he asked.

  May coughed into her hand. The sound was dry and somewhat alarming. “She’s with my family now,” she said.

  Simon swung around to aim his bow at her. “Ah, yes, the little Fetch. Still following our dear October like a lost puppy, I see. Haven’t you figured out yet that she doesn’t know how to stay dead?”

  “If she did, I wouldn’t be here,” said May. “I thought you wanted her to survive. Isn’t that why you pushed her into the water instead of leaving her to choke to death on the air?”

  For the barest of seconds, Simon looked confused. Then smug assurance crowded out the expression as the Luidaeg’s spell asserted itself, leaving him as malicious as before. “I wanted her to suffer. Turning her into an animal rather than a tree was the best way I could think of to guarantee she’d have time to understand and agonize over what had happened. Changelings are scarce better than beasts to begin with. It was a small enough change to make.”

  May narrowed her eyes. “That’s revisionist history if I’ve ever heard it. I was there, remember? I remember everything about that day, and you didn’t look at us like you wanted us dead. It was scary. It hurt. But you helped us into the water. You saved October’s life. I wouldn’t be here if she’d died that day, so you saved mine, too. You’re a good man, Simon Torquill. Your so-called ‘lady’ is a monster, like all the Firstborn. You’re better than this. Be better than this.”

  “Shut your mouth,” said Simon. He pulled back the string on his bow. Not enough to fire, but enough to make it clear that he was primed to do so. “You have no right to say such things about my lady. She is the heart of my regard.”

  “What about Mom?” I blurted. Simon swung his attention—and his arrow—around to me. May sagged as the threat of another elf-shot slumber was removed, then tensed as she realized I’d put myself into the line of fire. I had so little human blood left that ordinary elf-shot probably wouldn’t kill me, but what Simon had brewed wasn’t ordinary elf-shot.

  He’d learned to make the stuff at the knee of Eira Rosynhwyr, the woman who’d ensured it would be fatal to anything mortal, and he’d brewed it from ingredients harvested from her land. Not only was it likely to be stronger than normal, but there was no telling how it would interact with my remaining humanity.

  “What about your mother?” he asked, a sneer in his voice.

  “Mom. You know, Amandine the Liar? Your wife.”

  “Your jests are not amusing ones,” he said. “I never married. Amandine chose another. And if I had married the woman, one such as you could never call her ‘mother,’ for no wife of mine would ever have had cause to seek a mortal man’s bed and company.”

  That was interesting. When the Luidaeg had taken August’s home away, she’d known who her mother and father were. That was part of what had made it a punishment—she was allowed to know she wanted to go home, wanted to go back to her parents, but she couldn�
��t find them, or recognize them when she did. The same spell, applied to Simon, seemed to have stolen most of his memory of who he’d been.

  But how could he justify selling himself to Evening if it hadn’t been in an effort to find his daughter? It didn’t make any sense. “If you never married Amandine and your own daughter never existed, why do you work for her?” I gestured toward Evening. “How did she possibly talk you into selling your soul when she didn’t have that to hold over you?”

  Again, that momentary flash of confusion. The Luidaeg is incredibly powerful, but the spell she’d used to rob August of her way home had been tailored to her, and when the Luidaeg had moved it over to Simon, it had been forced to find a new way to do what it was designed to do. It was struggling. His expression hardened.

  “My relationship with my lady is none of your concern,” he said. “Only the fact that you have yet to let your filthy mouth pollute her name keeps me from shooting you.”

  “Okay, cool, we’re back to threatening me, but I think you don’t want to, or you’d have done it already, so let’s change directions—why are you here? How are you here? We had to petition Maeve to open a path.”

  “My lady trusts me so profoundly that she granted me a gift of her blood many years ago,” he said. “I accessed a Rose Road using blood taken from my shame of a sister-in-law, and once there, it was a simple thing to call a door to lead me to my lady.” His face lit up with brief smugness, then fell. “But it seems I mistook how attached this place was to keeping what it claims, and I’ve been unable to find a way out. Imagine my surprise when I heard your voices through the fog. Really, you should learn to be more subtle.”

  “I think Toby’s allergic to subtle,” said Quentin. “It makes her break out in hives or something. There’s not another good explanation for why she is the way she is.”

  “Quiet, you,” I said. “We’re in mortal danger right now. This isn’t the time to be mean to me.”