The Winter Long Read online

  “October, the woman has been dead for years,” he said, leveling a flat look on me. “I attended her memorial. I remember the wounds you took in the course of seeking to avenge her. Everything she said struck me as odd, because she shouldn’t have been saying anything at all.”

  “I get all that, but did she say anything specifically weird?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know why I bother trying to use logic on you. It always ends poorly. I should save my strength for better pursuits.” We were walking down a hallway now, close and homier than I was used to seeing in Shadowed Hills. I recognized most of the pictures on the walls from Bridget’s home in Berkeley. They showed Chelsea at a variety of ages, sometimes with her mother and sometimes by herself. The most recent pictures added her father to the mix, smiling with awkward paternal pride. They looked good together. “She said ‘I claim the hospitality of this house, according to the law as it was written, and none shall raise a hand against me.’ It’s an old form. I was not expecting it.”

  “It’s a bad form,” said Raj abruptly. I blinked as I turned to look at him. He scowled. “Uncle Tybalt makes me learn all the stupid ways your nobility has defined hospitality over the years, because he doesn’t want me to get caught in something I didn’t know I was agreeing to.”

  “That’s smart,” I said. “What makes that a bad form?”

  “She’s calling on a law that was written back when the Firstborn were trying to kill each other all the time, that’s what,” said Raj. “Back then, if you harbored a son of Oberon or a daughter of Maeve, you were pretty much asking some descendant of Titania’s to kick your door in. So Oberon said they had to stop killing each other when hospitality was in force, and that anyone who claimed hospitality under that rule would be entitled to the full defense of a household for as long as the period of hospitality lasted. No matter what they did, if they did it while they were under hospitality, you had to defend them. It’s an ‘I have to put your interests above the interests of everyone I care about’ clause, and it’s awful.”

  I blinked at him. He shrugged.

  “What? I pay attention.”

  “Sometimes I forget that you’re a prince in training, and not just a pain in my ass,” I said. “Do either of you know what the period of hospitality is?”

  “Three days,” said Etienne. The hallway ended in a swinging door, which he pushed open with one hand, waving me through. “After that, she can be asked to leave. Based on what I’ve seen today, the Duke will make no such request. If she is actually his First as you claim—and I’m not saying I believe you, just that I have learned to indulge your mad suppositions—he may invite her to stay on permanently.”

  “Of course it’s three days,” I said disgustedly. “It’s always three days. Were long weekends the norm in Faerie or something?” I stepped through the door into the first room I’d recognized since exiting the servants’ halls: a small kitchen with rows of pots dangling above the butcher block island that occupied the middle of the floor. I had taken refuge here once, when Connor and I had been forced to sneak into the knowe due to my having been branded a traitor.

  Shadowed Hills had a tendency to rearrange itself to suit whatever it needed at the moment. Judging by the view from the low window above the sink, this kitchen was nowhere near the position it used to occupy in the knowe. Bridget was nowhere to be seen, presumably having exited through one of the other three doors branching off the kitchen. Chelsea was sitting at the island, a pair of outsized headphones on her ears and her attention fixed on a small laptop. Raj perked up and started toward her, craning his neck to see what was on the screen. Etienne cleared his throat.

  I grabbed his arm before he could let Chelsea know she had company. “Let them sort it out,” I said quietly. “Raj is a cat, remember? He’ll want to know how she reacts.” And if Etienne didn’t let him get a reaction out of her, he was likely to start slinking around, trying to surprise her. My own relationship with Tybalt—back when it had been a simple game of cat-and-mouse, before it turned more serious—had given me plenty of proof of the indefatigability of Cait Sidhe.

  Raj stopped directly behind Chelsea, almost resting his chin on her shoulder as he peered at the laptop. Chelsea leaned forward and tapped the space bar. That must have stopped the video, because she removed her headphones and said, without turning, “It’s called ReGenesis. It’s Canadian, you probably haven’t heard of it.”

  “My best friend is Canadian, and Ellen Page is extremely attractive, for a human,” replied Raj primly. “I have heard of it.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Fae hipsterism. Hi, Chelsea.”

  Chelsea flashed me a shy smile. “Hi, Toby,” she said.

  “Have you met Raj?” I asked.

  “Not officially.” Chelsea turned on her stool, giving Raj a brightly appraising look before sticking out her hand and saying, “Hi. I’m Chelsea Ames. Nice to meet you.”

  Raj looked nonplussed as he took her hand and gingerly shook. “My name is Raj. I am the Prince of Dreaming Cats, and an associate to October.”

  “Are you related to Tybalt?”

  “He is my uncle.”

  “Cool.” Tybalt had been involved in the rescue party that had finally been able to bring Chelsea home. She twisted back around on her stool, saying, “Mom went to dig out some sweaters. She said something about you looking like a drowned rat? I don’t think you look like a drowned rat, but you can borrow my hairbrush if you want. Your hair is sort of a mess.”

  “Brushing my hair has been low on my priority list so far today,” I said, amused. It was almost relaxing to deal with someone who had no idea what the fae community in the Mists had been like four years ago—and more, probably couldn’t care less. Chelsea was adjusting to enough without worrying about the centuries of history she’d managed to miss.

  She seemed to be adjusting well, at least. She shared Etienne’s deep tan complexion, and her skin was glowing with health, which was a nice change from her exhausted pallor when we’d first met. She no longer wore unnecessary glasses to hide the copper-penny color of her eyes, and she was growing out her glossy black hair, which she had pinned back to either side of her sharply pointed ears. Her magic had been suppressed for a year in the process of saving her, and so she left no traces in the air; when the potion that bound her powers wore off, she would smell like smoke and calla lilies, and her training would begin in earnest. For now, she was getting a much-needed rest, and getting it in the company of both her parents.

  Watching Raj size her up, his expression faintly wary in the way it always was when he was dealing with someone new . . . it made me wish we could have given that same luxury to all the kids I knew. “Here you are, sweetie, here’s a year where you can’t do anything for Faerie, and so it’ll leave you the hell alone.” It was a silly dream that could never be realized. That didn’t keep me from having it.

  Etienne’s eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. “October,” he said, in a tone which implied that he knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to appreciate my answer, “where did your troublesome swain and your squire go?”

  Guess Etienne hadn’t received the “Quentin is the Crown Prince” memo. Good. That was supposed to be a secret, no matter how bad we were proving to be at keeping it. While Etienne was currently as powerless as his daughter, his sense of etiquette had always been top-notch, at least where the power structure of the Divided Courts was concerned. “Oh, they just went to do me a little favor,” I said airily. “Don’t worry about it. Quentin knows the servants’ halls really well; they won’t get caught.”

  “And what, precisely, is the nature of this ‘little favor’?”

  “They’re getting the Duchess.” Etienne gaped at me. I sighed. “Come on, Etienne, did you really not see that one coming? Luna was raised by two of the Firstborn. My mother is Firstborn. I need to talk to Luna.”

  “But why?”


  “Because October believes the previously dead woman is actually the Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe,” said Raj, abandoning his study of Chelsea in favor of watching how Etienne took the news. “I am assuming she suspects herself of being resistant to Evening’s manipulations because she had to learn to ignore her own mother, and wishes to verify this with the Duchess.”

  “Something like that,” I said. Etienne was frowning at me again. I sighed. “Now what? I told you she was the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn.”

  “You’re serious,” he said. “You said that before, but I assumed it was some sort of strange jest. The Countess Winterrose may be an intruder, but she is not Firstborn!” He sounded affronted. I understood the feeling.

  “Well, why not?” I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. “The Luidaeg lives here. My mom lives here. Blind Michael’s skerry is anchored here. If the Firstborn are grouping together, it makes sense that there might be more than we’ve been able to identify.” There were so many other reasons for me to be right—and I knew they were true, I knew it, just like I knew that this answered a dozen questions I’d barely recognized about why Evening’s blood always tasted just a little different than the blood of the other Daoine Sidhe. I’d been too weak and too far in denial over my own nature to understand what was in front of me.

  That wasn’t true anymore.

  Bridget returned through one of the open doors, a burgundy sweater over one arm and a pair of socks in her hand. “I hope this will fit you,” she said, without preamble. “We’re not much of a size, but you can wear your sweaters a little large, and it won’t hurt you any.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said, automatically dodging the “thank you” the sentence wanted to contain. “Can I leave my jacket here for a little while? I’m going to want it back.” I hated to leave my jacket behind for even a short period, but wearing wet leather wasn’t doing anything for my core temperature—or my sense of smell, since the pungent odor of tanned hide dipped in ocean was trying to overwhelm everything around it.

  “There’s a drying rack,” said Bridget. “Now, what’s so important that it’s brought you here to visit us for the first time since we moved in? Not that we were ready for company, but we’d have been happy to have you regardless.”

  “I honestly don’t know where to begin explaining things,” I said reluctantly. “I mean, I can explain, but so much of it is rooted in the history of this Kingdom and what happened before I met you—I guess the short version is that there’s a woman here in the knowe who’s supposed to be dead. I investigated her murder. I nearly died because she cursed me so that I’d be forced to find the person who killed her.” Except that she’d never actually said that. She’d said I had to find the ones who “did this” to her. I’d done that. I’d found Devin, and while I hadn’t been able to bring him to justice, vengeance has always served Faerie well enough, when necessary.

  I’d fulfilled the terms of Evening’s curse, and it was my fault that I’d always assumed I’d been solving her murder, not investigating a robbery.

  “Dead woman, huh? Does that happen often?” Bridget looked to Etienne for confirmation. Apparently, she had learned to trust him to tell her the truth. Given that their relationship had been built on lies—most specifically the lie that he was human—this was a good thing. “Do I need to worry about dead folks popping up and asking me to do things for them?”

  “For the most part, no,” he said. “October is arguing that Evening was never dead at all. I feel we still need to confirm that the woman now holding Duke Torquill’s attention is actually the Countess Evening Winterrose, and not someone pretending at her name and station.”

  “I tasted her magic, Etienne,” I said wearily. “Just trust me on this one, okay? You can copy someone’s face and body, but if they use magic around me, I’ll know that they’re not really who they say they are.”

  “Forgive me for being less confident than you are,” he said, standing up a little straighter as he pulled his dignity around himself. “I do not share your particular skills.”

  “Don’t put yourself back in the box, darling, it’s not good for you,” said Bridget, pausing to kiss Etienne’s cheek before handing me the socks and sweater. “I can’t say I’ll take her word over yours, but you’ve already admitted she has skills you lack. Maybe that means you should listen to her.”

  “I dislike the dead returning to life,” said Etienne, his shoulders slumping again. “It’s untidy and inappropriate.”

  “And that’s Etienne in a nutshell,” I said blithely. “Anything inappropriate should cease immediately, because otherwise it might disrupt the natural order in the course of killing us all.”

  Chelsea smothered a smile behind her hand. Raj simply watched, expression neutral. He was getting better at the Cait Sidhe trick of hiding his feelings behind a mask of vague disinterest.

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” said Etienne.

  I was saved from needing to reply by Quentin running into the room. He was faintly out of breath as he said, “The Duchess will see you, but she’ll only see you, and she wants to see you now.” Tybalt ran into the room a few steps behind him, not as out of breath, but definitely more annoyed. Then again, Tybalt had less reason to be forgiving of the Torquills than Quentin did, and he knew how complicated my relationship with Luna really was.

  “Let me change and I’ll be ready,” I said, holding up my dry clothes. I turned to Bridget. “Is there a place I can change without doing it in front of everybody?”

  Most of Faerie lacks a nudity taboo, but I was raised human for several years, and sometimes it’s nice not to strip in a room full of people. Luckily for me, Bridget understood my reluctance; she nodded and said, “Right this way,” before starting toward one of the doors out of the kitchen.

  “Be right back,” I said, and followed her.

  We walked down a short hallway to a half-open door. Bridget pushed it the rest of the way open, motioning for me to go inside. “You can change here,” she said. “Bring your wet clothes out with you, and I’ll get them on the rack to dry.”

  “Okay,” I said. I closed the door behind myself, leaving Bridget in the hall.

  The room contained a large, perfectly made bed, a wardrobe, a desk loaded to the point that I worried about its structural integrity, and several bookshelves that made the desk look empty. More books were stacked on the bedside table. The one on the top of the pile was called A Field Guide to the Little People. I blinked, unsure whether I should be insulted or amused. This was clearly Etienne and Bridget’s room; she couldn’t be blamed for her reading material. Most of it was probably for class, and it was a good thing if she was teaching her students some things that weren’t quite true. The last thing we needed was a bunch of overenthusiastic human college students showing up and asking to meet the local Fairy Queen.

  It only took a few minutes to swap my wet shirt and jacket for the dry sweater, remove my wet shoes and socks, and wipe my feet dry enough to let me pull the new socks on. Putting my wet shoes back on over them sort of canceled most of the benefit, but I’d take whatever I could get at this stage in the game.

  Bridget was gone when I emerged back into the hall; instead, Quentin was waiting for me, his hands shoved down into his pockets and a distressed look on his face. “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t like you going to see the Duchess by yourself,” he said.

  “Neither does Tybalt, I bet, so why are you the one telling me this?”

  He shrugged. “Because he doesn’t like the Torquills much these days—not like he used to—and he thought you’d be a little bit more likely to listen if it was coming from me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “How much more likely are we talking here?”

  Quentin raised his hand, holding his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart.

  “That may be a small exaggeration,” I said, and sta
rted walking back down the hall to the kitchen. “I am going to go and talk to Luna because with Mom being . . . well, Mom, and the Luidaeg out of commission, Luna is the person most likely to be able to tell me more about Evening. Assuming she is who I think she is.”

  “And what if she is?” demanded Quentin. There was an anguished note in his voice that actually made me stop and blink at him. He shook his head, repeating, “What if she is? What if she’s the mother of my kind, October? Do you honestly think I can stand against her? That I can side with you against the Firstborn of my entire race?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “My mother is the Firstborn of my entire race, and I do pretty good standing against her, but my situation isn’t the same as yours. I guess that if I’m right, we’re going to find out whether or not you can be on my side when I’m going up against the root of your tree. But either way, you’ll still be one of my best friends, and I’ll still love you. So don’t worry about it too much.”

  “Okay, Toby,” he said, with a smile wobbling at the corners of his mouth.

  “Besides, you know that if it comes to that, I’ll go easy on you.” I ruffled his hair before resuming my walk down the hall, leaving him to chase after me. It seemed like the only reasonable way to end the conversation. Because if I was being completely honest . . .

  There are a lot of Daoine Sidhe in power in the Westlands, from High King Sollys on down. If Evening was the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn, and her descendants couldn’t bring themselves to stand against her, I was in a lot of trouble.

  SEVENTEEN

  GETTING QUENTIN AND RAJ to stay behind was surprisingly easy after Chelsea revealed that she had an Xbox and a number of video games that allowed for cooperative play. The boys needed the break. Tybalt and I left Bridget and Etienne’s quarters to the sweet sound of teenagers arguing viciously over who was going to drive the blue car. I smiled despite the situation as I slipped through the open hole in the wall and back into the servants’ halls beyond.