A Killing Frost Page 20

  Her words stung all the more because I knew they were true. The Luidaeg can’t lie. She can be sarcastic, and she can omit things to force people to fill in the blanks themselves, but she can’t tell an outright untruth. It can make conversations a little fraught sometimes, especially since I know that when she says something casually cruel, she means it.

  I paused before saying, in a small voice, “Uncool. I’m just trying to fix things.”

  “What, exactly, were you trying to fix by haring off after Simon Torquill without sufficient backup or, I’m guessing, a solid plan for how you were going to deal with him if you found him? I said I needed you to find him. He still doesn’t get his way home back until the terms of August’s debt are fulfilled, which means someone finds my father.”

  I was reminded again that part of why I’d taken off the way I had was to prevent the Luidaeg from ordering me to find her father. No one, hero or not, wants to be ordered to find the missing King of Faerie. I figure someone that infinitely powerful only goes missing because he wants to, and considering what I’ve seen of his kids, I couldn’t blame him. I probably would have done the same thing in his place.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I said, as patiently as I could manage, “I know that. I also know my debts to you are currently balanced, which means you can’t order me to go looking for Oberon, and I have no intention of going back into debt until after my wedding. Tybalt has been waiting for long enough. He’s starting to think I’ve got cold feet.”

  “Don’t you?” She sounded genuinely interested, and the shock of her question was enough to make me pause again. This was a conversation defined by awkward silences, made even more awkward by the fact that Walther and Cassandra were listening in as intently as they could while pretending not to eavesdrop on my private business. Having friends is awesome and great and never complicated at all. Honest.

  “Of course not,” I sputtered. “I want to marry Tybalt. But Patrick Lorden came to see me, and he made sure I knew Tybalt and I couldn’t get married without inviting Simon to the wedding, or we’d give him an opening to claim offense against my household. And Karen had a dream where she saw us on the Rose Roads.” Saying it all aloud, in such simple terms, made me feel a little foolish for haring off the way I had. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and May had agreed at least enough to come with me—but May and I shared enough of the same memories that sometimes, we were fundamentally the same person, and that person could be wrong.

  Had this whole thing been a huge mistake? Had I put the people I loved in danger for no good reason, and a lot of really, really bad ones? No. The threat of Simon Torquill, a man who believed manners were best when they were weaponized, turning pureblood etiquette against me and using it to push Eira’s agenda in the wake of my marriage, was all too real. If listening to Patrick and Karen had been a silly decision on my part, it was because I was surrounded by people who lived and died according to silly decisions. I was just following the crowd.

  “Toby, remember, Devin talked to me, because he considered me to be in his debt.”

  “Weren’t you?” According to Devin, he’d prevented the Luidaeg from being burned to death by an angry mob. He’d been a liar and a thief and a cheat for as long as I’d known him, but he’d never been stupid enough to lie about the sea witch. That’s the sort of choice that gets you killed.

  Of course, so was getting into a fight with Eira Rosynhwyr, and he’d done that, too. It was difficult to say whether one of those things had been responsible for putting the gun in the hands of the young changeling who’d shot him, or if that had been on Devin himself. His habit of playing games with the desperate, emotionally fragile children he surrounded himself with might have worked if he’d truly been the Peter Pan figure he’d pretended to be, but reality is never as easy as an archetype.

  The Luidaeg snorted. “Please. I’m Firstborn, remember? He stopped me from being burnt at the stake. Literal stake, literal fire. Burning won’t kill one of the Firstborn. It’ll make us uncomfortable as all hell for a while—regrowing your skin isn’t fun, and I don’t recommend you try it any time soon—and we won’t be pretty until our bodies finish putting themselves back together, but it won’t kill us. Not without some very specific ritual steps, and those of us who are still around have gone to great lengths to make sure those rituals aren’t remembered.”

  I didn’t even know the necessary steps for killing one of the Firstborn with fire. Iron and silver, I could do, but then, I’ve always had an affinity for stabbing things. Even things I probably shouldn’t be close enough to stab. “Huh,” I said.

  “He did intervene, and I don’t know if you’ve forgotten this or what, but I was really lonely for a long time.” Her voice took on a peevish note toward the end of the sentence; that wasn’t something she’d wanted to say. Being under a geas that forces you to tell the truth is even less fun than it sounds. “As long as he believed I was in his debt, he was careful about what he asked me, because he didn’t want to accidentally square up our accounts. I think he thought I’d kill him the second he did.” The peevishness faded, replaced by amusement. “So he didn’t ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do, and I got someone to talk to. I would have been furious at you for letting him get himself killed if you hadn’t started coming to see me right afterward. You’re better company than he ever was, and I like you more. But he told me how easy it was to convince you not to marry your mortal man, even when you’d believed you loved him with all your heart. You should have fought like a wildcat, demanded your freedom, and reminded him he didn’t own you anymore. And instead, you just gave in. Why do you think that was?”

  “I . . . we’re getting away from the point. Which is that Simon knows who Quentin is and why he’s important, and he’s planning to use him to get his hands on the elf-shot cure. We can’t let him wake Evening up!”

  “Which is why you went to find him in the first place, so he couldn’t use claiming offense as a lever to force you to help him wake her,” said the Luidaeg. “I know. I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. I’m going to torment you for days when this is all cleared up, because Tybalt isn’t the only one who’s noticed your reluctance to let that boy marry you. But I understand. You thought you were protecting your family—you were protecting your family—and there’s not much that matters more to you than that. Get over here, and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .” I glanced at Walther, who was bent over May with a scalpel in his hand, trying desperately to pretend he wasn’t paying attention to anything I was saying. “I’m in Berkeley. At Walther’s office. I’m actually using his phone. And my car is back in Pleasant Hill, and I lost Spike somewhere along the way, and I don’t want to call Tybalt, since I made him stay home while we went looking for Simon, and he’s going to be pissed off that I lost Quentin and let May get elf-shot . . .”

  “Can’t Walther fly you here?”

  “No, he’s working on May. The elf-shot Simon used was brewed from plants grown in the sub-realm where your sister’s sleeping.”

  “How did you even get there?”

  “I asked your mother for help.”

  There was a clatter as Cassandra dropped the dish she’d been holding for Walther and turned to stare at me. She knew as well as anyone who the Luidaeg’s mother was. I waved for her to stay quiet, trying my best to focus on the phone.

  In a low, dangerous voice, the Luidaeg said, “You asked my mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she answer you?”

  “I think she did. The roses on the Rose Road changed. They got darker and older-looking, and the next opening we found led to exactly where we needed to be. And I smelled something familiar, roses, like the last time you asked her to help us.”

  “Oh, you smelled roses on the Rose Road? You should be very proud of your
self.” Her tone was sarcastic. Her words were, of necessity, sincere.

  “I am. But Walther’s going to be busy for a while, and I need May awake before I have to tell Jazz she’s been elf-shot. I can take BART into the city if you want, but I’d rather not; it would take such a long time.”

  She sighed heavily. “Hang up.”

  “What?”

  “Hang up. I’ll send someone to get you as soon as I can.” Her end of the line went dead, and I lowered the phone, staring at it blankly.

  Well. Oak and ash, but this was getting complicated.

  THIRTEEN

  “TOBY, YOU WANT TO TELL us what you meant by ‘Simon knows who Quentin is’?” asked Walther, still bent over May. “I ask purely out of curiosity and intellectual interest, and not because I’m afraid you’ve led a homicidal, mass-murdering monster to my door.”

  “We don’t actually know that Simon killed anyone in Evening’s name,” I protested. “We know Oleander did, and we know he was sheltering her, but that doesn’t mean he held the knife.” It was a pale distinction, and I felt bad even uttering it. It still mattered.

  If Simon committed a single murder himself, he could be held responsible under Oberon’s Law, if anyone could prove he did it—something that’s rendered functionally inevitable by blood magic, since only the Firstborn can change what blood remembers. I wasn’t happy with the man, but he’d been starting to atone when the Luidaeg’s spell had undone all of his progress. I didn’t want him to die before I could really get to know him as himself, and not as Evening’s puppet.

  “Well, he may have committed one entirely on his own,” said Walther grimly. I shifted my attention to him, blinking. He looked back at me, stone-faced and serious. “I’ve never seen elf-shot this strong, and it’s interfering with May’s ability to breathe. It’s a miracle she isn’t dead already.”

  “We don’t think she can die,” I said. “Fetches are indestructible until their targets die, and then they fade away on the spot. Now that we’re not tethered to each other the way we were in the beginning, the thing that kills her can’t happen.”

  “I bet she can still suffer brain damage if she’s deprived of oxygen for long enough.”

  I wasn’t actually sure of that, but it wasn’t something I wanted to gamble with. “Can you make the counteragent?”

  “It would be easier if I had an uncontaminated sample of the original elf-shot, but I can do it using what I already have as a base.” Walther removed his glasses, setting them to one side as he allowed his human disguise to dissolve into a thin mist and the scent of ice and yarrow. His eyes somehow managed to get even bluer without the illusion to blunt them.

  Cassandra sighed. “Date night’s over, huh?”

  “Date night’s over,” he confirmed.

  “So you’re officially dating now?” I asked. “Cass, did you tell your parents?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Did you tell your mother before you started hooking up with the local King of Cats? I’m eighteen. I don’t live at home anymore. I don’t have to tell them what I’m doing unless I’m planning to drop out of school—and even then, technically, I don’t have to tell them, I just know it’s going to get back to them, and I’d rather control the way they find out something that life-changing. Yeah, we’re going out. Officially, or as officially as we can when he’s faculty and I’m a student.”

  “She’s not in any of my classes; I have no power over her or influence over her grades,” said Walther hurriedly, like he was reassuring me about a whole series of infractions I hadn’t even gotten around to imagining yet.

  I shook my head. “I don’t actually care. It’s just weird to think of Cass as old enough to date—and you’re like, more than a century old. Isn’t she a little on the young side for you?”

  “The War of Silences was barely a hundred years ago,” he protested. “I was a child when it happened—I would never have been able to escape the Kingdom if I’d been recognized as an adult member of the royal family. The age difference between you and Tybalt is much more extreme.”

  That was something I hadn’t considered in my initial response to the idea of Cassandra dating. I blinked again, then shrugged. “You’re right. It’s none of my business, and as long as you’re both happy, that’s all that matters.”

  “That, and not telling my mom,” said Cassandra.

  “Why does that matter so much to you?” asked Walther.

  “She’s always been weird about the idea of any of us dating,” she said. “She saw me holding hands with a Hob changeling I went to high school with once, and she lost it. Like, complete maternal meltdown. Way out of proportion with a little completely innocent hand-holding. I never dated after that. Technically, I’d never dated before that.”

  I blinked. This was new information, but then, I’d missed most of Cassie’s adolescence and childhood, thanks to Simon and Evening. “Never?”

  “Never.” She shook her head. “Karen and Anthony are old enough to be thinking about it, but they’re afraid to even admit when they might have a crush on someone, because Mom gets all weird at them. Were her parents weird about her dating?”

  “No, her parents were dead.” Stacy had lived with her fae grandparents when we were kids. I never met them, because they didn’t like changelings, and didn’t want Stacy bringing her filthy friends home with her, and at some point in the intervening years, they had left, moving to a kingdom that didn’t harbor reminders of their lost child and unwanted granddaughter.

  Something about that story didn’t add up. I’d never really stopped to think about it before this, but it had never been my business. If Stacy’s grandparents wanted to wall themselves off from the only family they had left, that was their call. But Stacy was thin-blooded. For her to be as weak as she was, her fae parent must have been a changeling. How could two people who hated changelings so much that they refused to meet their grandchild’s friends have raised a changeling child?

  “Did she date?” pressed Cassie.

  “As much as any of us did, I guess. There were a few Hobs in the kitchen who liked to get handsy, and she’d get handsy right back at them, like it was some sort of game.” They hadn’t lasted long. Melly and Ormond didn’t tolerate disrespect from the staff, and the first time one of those boys had made a cheeky comment in Melly’s hearing, they’d been off to find another household to serve under. “This is really weird, Cass. I don’t know why she’d be like that. Unless your father—”

  “He used to ask me why I didn’t go to any of the school dances,” said Cassandra. “I think he was disappointed that he never got to intimidate any boys on my behalf.”

  “I am not volunteering to be intimidated,” said Walther. “Toby’s bad enough without adding your father to the mix.”

  Cassandra pouted at him briefly. “But you’re my boyfriend,” she said. “If anyone’s going to get intimidated, it should be you.”

  “And your father is a foot taller than I am and could twist my head off like a bottlecap if he decided it was necessary,” said Walther. “By the time I was your age, my sister and I had both gone walking out with a variety of suitors, with the full supervision and understanding of our parents, who wanted to see us happy.” His face fell. “They never had the chance.”

  Cassandra walked over to stand beside him, sliding an arm around his waist and resting her cheek against his upper arm. It was an intimate gesture, and it spoke more than anything else to how close they’d grown. I turned my face away, giving them what privacy I could while waiting for my ride to San Francisco. Walther’s early life hadn’t been easy. Born into the royal family of the Kingdom of Silences, he’d been old enough before the war to have started his studies in alchemy and etiquette, and to have a fairly decent sense of who he wanted to be when he grew up. On some level, the war had been of personal benefit to him, because it had made that person possible. If not for the Mists
invading his family’s kingdom, overthrowing their nobility, and installing their own puppet king on the throne, he would have been expected to stay where he was and be the perfect princess he’d been intended to be. The war had freed him.

  That didn’t mean it had been a good thing. His kingdom, his people, and his family had all suffered under the yoke of King Rhys and the nameless pretender Queen who’d been holding Arden’s throne through the whole thing. Yes, he’d been freed to live his own life, and not the life his parents would have mapped out for him, but it had cost more than anyone should have been willing to pay.

  Walther shrugged off his momentary melancholy, turning to kiss Cassandra on the forehead before he said, “I can keep May stable while I work on the cure. A sample of the elf-shot Simon used would make this go a lot faster, if you can find it.”

  “Check,” I said. “I’ll try to bring you the entire Torquill, if I can.”

  “Not if he’s wearing his evil pants, all right? I just got tenure; I don’t want to have to change schools because this one has been overgrown by enchanted roses that put all the students to sleep.”

  “I don’t think he has that kind of power. Not with his patroness out of commission.” The thought of him successfully waking Evening was too much for me to contemplate. It couldn’t be allowed to happen. No matter what else came out of this, she had to stay gone.

  Walther shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I’m just an alchemist. I’m here to mix potions, bandage wounds, and try not to die.”

  “You’re so much more than just an alchemist,” I objected, laughing a little.

  The laughter died in my throat when a perfect circle of glittering light opened in the air. It smelled like redwood bark and blackberry flowers, and I relaxed almost as quickly as I had tensed. Arden Windermere, Queen in the Mists, stepped through the circle half a breath later, wearing the blue jeans and Borderlands Books sweatshirt that served as her usual “I am not currently on-duty” attire.