The Winter Long Read online

  “Yes, and it should be ready for you by now. Were you aware that the mortal world contained establishments called ‘dry cleaners,’ which are capable of working feats that previously only Bannicks had been able to accomplish?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I knew about dry cleaners. I’m a little surprised that you do.”

  “In this case, the credit for wisdom should go to your squire. Your precious leathers are pristine.” Tybalt gave my food a meaningful look. “Now please. Eat, so that we may wake the boys and be on our way. I’m sure you’ll want that, once you’ve recovered sufficiently.”

  The roaring in my stomach was almost impossible for me to ignore at this point. I still forced myself to hold it off for a few seconds more. “Tell me what Luna said.”

  He sighed. “Do you swear to eat your supper even once you have what you desire?”

  “Yes. I promise that no matter what you say, unless it spells immediate disaster for someone I care about, I’ll sit here and eat before I go haring off, okay? Besides. You took my shoes.” And my knife, I realized: I was unarmed.

  Maybe that was intentional. Tybalt took a breath, looked at me solemnly, and said, “Your suspicions are confirmed. The woman we know as Evening Winterrose was born Eira Rosynhwyr, called the Rose of Winter, first daughter of Oberon, King of Faerie, and Titania, the Summer’s Queen. She did not return from the dead, because she never died. Of all the Firstborn, the Rose of Winter has been called the most difficult to kill.”

  “Ah.” It wasn’t as much of a shock as I’d expected it to be: I’d already been almost certain. This just confirmed it. “And Luna was able to resist her as much as she did because . . . ?”

  “Because she was not there when Evening first arrived. She remained surrounded by her roses, as she said, which allowed her to resist any call that Evening might send. Further, she had already been exposed at such great length to her own parents, whose Firstborn nature would normally have overwhelmed her—but most of all, because Evening was not Luna’s original. Any of the Daoine Sidhe would have trouble denying Evening if given a direct command.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I suspect that this was meant to make the Firstborn better able to control their descendants. I shall have to ask fair Amandine how well that has worked for her when I see her next.”

  “If my mother turns you into a lemon tree, I’m not going to yell at her,” I said, somewhat numbly. My mind was far away, and my body took advantage of that brief absence to shovel several bites of chicken and potatoes into my mouth. I barely tasted any of it. Swallowing, I asked, “So why couldn’t Grianne resist her? The Candela aren’t descended from Titania.”

  “No, but Grianne swears her allegiance to Sylvester, who is Evening’s to command.”

  “Etienne resisted. He swears his allegiance to Sylvester.”

  “I have no idea why he was able to achieve that state of grace. Wheels within wheels.” Tybalt sighed. “It’s all very troublesome.”

  “And it’s just going to get worse,” I said grimly. “Can we leave the boys here?”

  Tybalt blinked. “Quentin is a friend of this Court, and is well chaperoned by the presence of my nephew, but you’re generally loath to be parted from him. Why—”

  “He’s Daoine Sidhe. I don’t want that bitch telling him what to do.” There was a chance his exposure to so many other Firstborn—from the Luidaeg to Blind Michael—would make him resistant. I didn’t want to risk it. I took a bite of salad before adding, “I’d hide all the Daoine Sidhe I know here, if that wouldn’t be abusing your hospitality.”

  “I appreciate your concern for the limits of my charity,” said Tybalt dryly.

  “I try to be considerate,” I said, before inhaling another few bites of chicken. My hunger wasn’t abating. The magic I’d been doing had taken more out of me than I thought. At least the food seemed to be taking the edge off of my headache. “But yeah. I don’t want Quentin near her. If he can be hidden here for a little while, that’s for the best.”

  “He will object.”

  “He’ll lose.”

  Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “You sound remarkably sure of yourself. Raj—”

  “Is Cait Sidhe. Quentin is a squire and a prince of the Divided Courts. His upbringing was a little more hardcore on ‘listen to your elders,’ and while I’m aware that I’ve done a lot to damage his early training, I think some of it is still in there.” I shrugged. “He’s not going to be happy. He’s going to give in.”

  “You speak of ‘leaving the boys here’ and carrying on with your current quest, but I admit, October, I’m somewhat unclear as to what that quest is.” Tybalt leaned across the table to transfer half of his chicken onto my plate. I didn’t object. “Simon is in town, and this is troubling. Evening is returned from the dead, and was never dead to begin with. The Luidaeg is injured. We know these things are connected, and we know that they are terrible, but none of them provides a clear or immediate course of action. Running to the Queen in the Mists seems logical, except that it might draw our enemies to her, and while Evening is not her parent and original, she’s still no match for one of the Firstborn.”

  “I know. We need to keep at least one place aside from the Court of Cats safe for our allies, and since we know Evening could eat Arden for breakfast, that means we need to keep Arden off of Evening’s radar for as long as possible.” I put a hand over my eyes, taking comfort in the temporary darkness. “I’m happier when I have a bad guy I can hit. Okay. Let’s look at this logically: both Simon and the Luidaeg were geased by Evening. We know that Evening was able to somehow know when the Luidaeg said something she wasn’t supposed to—she shouldn’t have been able to confirm that the geas had been cast by someone I knew. And when the Luidaeg broke the rules, Evening punished her for it.”

  We both paused for a moment. I had no doubt that Tybalt’s thoughts were following the same dark path as mine, remembering the shattered condition of the Luidaeg’s apartment, and the condition she’d been in when we found her. The Luidaeg was one of the most powerful people we knew. The fact that Evening had been able to take her out was terrifying.

  “Wait.” I dropped my hand, looking at him. “Evening is Titania’s daughter.”

  Tybalt frowned. “Yes, and?”

  “Raysel was able to make the Luidaeg stand down just by saying she was a descendant of Titania. The Luidaeg can’t raise her hand against Titania’s children. She’s said so before, and she can’t lie. That’s how Evening was able to beat the holy crap out of her without bleeding all over the place and leaving me a trail to follow. The Luidaeg didn’t fight back.”

  Tybalt’s frown deepened. “If that’s true . . . someone must have bound her so. Someone who did not much care whether she lived or died, given what I’ve heard about the treatment of the children of Maeve by the children of Titania.”

  “Yeah,” I said. My plate was somehow empty again, and my stomach was no longer screaming at me. I took that as a sign that I was ready to get up, and stood, grateful to find that I was right: my legs took my weight without protesting. My headache was barely a throb. “I’m thinking it was either Evening herself, or her mother. I can’t see Oberon doing that to one of his own kids. But it doesn’t really matter either way, I guess: the Luidaeg is bound, and she couldn’t fight back.”

  “So our Evening is not only a liar, but a coward.” Tybalt shook his head as he stood. “Truly, it seems that I came into your life at precisely the correct moment.”

  I blinked. “Okay, you’re going to have to take that one back a few steps for me.”

  “It’s simple.” He didn’t walk around the table—he prowled, his feline nature surging to the forefront as he moved to slide his arms around my waist and pull me close to him. I wanted to object, to say that we were on a timetable. The trouble was, we didn’t know what that timetable was counting down to. We still didn’t know what Evening wanted
, and so I couldn’t think of a single objection to taking a moment and letting him hold me.

  I might regret that later, but later would happen in its own time. At the moment, I was busy looking into Tybalt’s eyes. He pulled one hand free, reaching up to tuck my hair back the way I so often did. His fingers lingered against the point of my ear, tracing the edges that had grown so much sharper in the past few years.

  “You were clearly keeping company with the wrong sort of people before I decided to take an interest in your keeping,” he said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “Anyone who would betray her own sister in such a manner is no fit friend for you.”

  “I have better friends now,” I said, and leaned up to kiss him, letting him pull me closer. If someone had told me this would happen in the days that followed Evening’s murder—excuse me, Evening’s disappearance—I would have thought they were pulling my leg. Now, I stood in the embrace of a man I had once sworn was nothing but an irritation, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else, ever again.

  The bed I had so recently left beckoned, a silent reminder that he had been intending to let me sleep until I awoke, and that no one knew I was up—no one but him. We could spend a little time before things began to happen again. Like my unplanned nap, this was part of recuperation, and it mattered. It—

  My phone started ringing. I pushed away from Tybalt, realizing how close I had just come to committing myself to a lengthy—if pleasurable—interlude, and began looking around for the source of the sound. There was a large oak wardrobe against the wall across from the fireplace that looked like a good bet. I strode across the room and hauled on the wardrobe doors, which opened to reveal my shoes and leather jacket, both clean and waiting for me. My underwear, jeans, and newly bloodstained shirt were in the bottom of the wardrobe, discarded like the trash they had become.

  My jacket pocket was ringing. Stridently. I dipped my hand inside and pulled out my vibrating, ringing phone, bringing it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you dead? I ask because I really want to know, and am interested in your response, and not because I’m planning to murder you myself for not answering the last three times I’ve called.” May was using her murderously perky voice again, which meant that she was pissed.

  “I was asleep when you called before,” I said, directing a glare at Tybalt. He gave me his best innocent look, even going so far as to shrug, like failing to tell me that my phone had been ringing was no big deal.

  On the other hand, if I’d been asleep enough not to notice the phone going off repeatedly, he might not have been able to wake me. “Uh, whatever, that’s no excuse, even if you don’t sleep enough,” said May. “Where are you? Where have you been? Are you at Shadowed Hills?”

  “No, I’m not at Shadowed Hills, I’m in the Court of Cats,” I said. “I’ve been here for a while—not sure how long. I sort of ran myself ragged, and collapsed from overuse of blood magic, and then Tybalt put me to bed without asking me first.” The fact that I’d stayed there, and hadn’t even noticed being put there, spoke volumes. I paused, finally parsing her last question. “Why did you ask if I was at Shadowed Hills?”

  “Because they closed their wards like ten hours ago, and they’re not letting anybody inside, not even when they come from the Queen,” said May, sounding more bemused than frustrated. “I sort of assumed you were locked in a life-or-death struggle with Simon Torquill, and would eventually emerge bloody but intact. It’s like eight in the morning.”

  “Okay, we are canceling the cable,” I said. “If you think I’m behind a sealed ward fighting for my life, try calling someone other than me, okay? Like I don’t know, Danny.” He could ram the wards with his car.

  “I guess,” she said reluctantly. “It’s still weird that the wards are closed.”

  “Not that weird,” I said. “Evening’s there.”

  “Winterrose?”

  May didn’t sound surprised. Of course she didn’t sound surprised. She’d been among the night-haunts when Evening had “died.” She’d probably known all along that Evening wasn’t dead, but she hadn’t realized it was important, and I’d never had any reason to ask her about it.

  “Oak and ash, it’s the phone book all over again,” I muttered, before saying more loudly, “Yes, Evening Winterrose. She’s not dead—which you apparently knew, and we need to have a long talk soon about what I’m assuming is true and you know is false—and she’s got pretty much the entire knowe in her thrall.”

  “But how can she . . . ?”

  “She’s the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn, that’s how.” I paused to give May time to react. Silence answered me. I sighed, reading her lack of comment for what it was. “I’m sure, okay? Luna verified it. You need to tell Arden to keep her people in the knowe and close the doors. Evening can influence her descendants to do whatever she wants, and it doesn’t just work on them. There’s a good chance that anyone who gets too close to her is going to want to do what she tells them.”

  Except something about my words seemed wrong. Dean and his people certainly hadn’t seemed inclined to do what Evening said, and Dean was half Daoine Sidhe. I was going to need to figure out what differed between Goldengreen and Shadowed Hills. Maybe it was something we could use.

  Reluctantly, May said, “I’ll tell her, but Toby, this sounds . . .”

  “I know how it sounds, okay? Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of only experiencing things that sound reasonable when you try to explain them to other people. Quentin is staying here in the Court of Cats. You and Jazz stay with Arden, where you’ll be at least a little bit safer.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  I smiled thinly. “I’m going to go be a hero. Open roads, May.”

  “Kind fires,” she answered.

  I hung up, looking at the phone in my hand for a moment before I dropped it back into my jacket pocket and eyed my clothes with distaste. The dry cleaner had been able to work wonders on my leather jacket. Nothing was going to save my shirt and jeans, both of which were blotched with dried blood. Behind me, Tybalt cleared his throat. I turned.

  “Was I really asleep for ten hours?” I asked. I ran a hand back through my hair, noting that it was soft and clean. Tybalt might not have been able to get the blood out of my jeans, but he’d been able to get it out of my hair. There was a time when I would have found that intrusive. Now it was just sort of sweet.

  “I believe it was closer to nine,” he said, looking obscurely relieved by the question. “I would have awakened you, but when your portable telephone rang without causing you to so much as stir, I realized how much you needed the rest. I am a selfish man. I will not have you kill yourself with exhaustion.”

  “There are much more entertaining ways for me to die; don’t worry,” I said. “Is the Luidaeg—”

  “My people are watching her. She has not stirred since she was brought here, although she has continued breathing, which I assume would have been your second question,” he said. “Gabriel has the current shift. He will alert me if anything changes.”

  “We need to keep a very close eye on her,” I said. Things were beginning to fall together in my head, things that had previously been kept apart only by my exhaustion and general feeling of being overwhelmed by everything around me.

  Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “There were wards on the Luidaeg’s apartment—we’re talking big time mega-wards. We could get in because she allowed us to get in, you couldn’t access the Shadow Roads if you got too close, all that fun stuff. Evening tore through them like they were nothing.” I picked up my jeans, giving them a disgusted look, and pulled them on over the leggings. The denim, bloody as it was, would add a little extra insulation when we inevitably left through the Shadow Roads. Tucking the chemise into my waistband did away with the need for a belt, even if it was all a bit pirate-esque for my t
aste.

  “All this is true, but I’m afraid I still don’t follow, and I certainly don’t understand why you’re putting your trousers on,” Tybalt said.

  “We can’t stay here forever, and I don’t want to be caught with no pants on when the alarm rings,” I said. “We brought the Luidaeg here on the assumption that Evening wouldn’t be able to follow, since Oberon gifted this place to the Cait Sidhe. We know that Evening has a measure of control over anyone that’s descended from her. But what if it’s not just them?”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” asked Tybalt. A crease was beginning to form between his eyebrows, signaling his dawning concern.

  “Not everyone in that hall would have been Daoine Sidhe,” I continued. “There aren’t that many Daoine Sidhe in the world. What if she gets absolute control over her descendants, but a measure of control over her relatives? There are Cait Sidhe who are descended from Titania.” I took my scabbard down from its hook and strapped it around my waist before shrugging on my leather jacket. “We have to assume the Court could be compromised.”

  Tybalt stared at me for a moment, stunned into silence. Finally, he said, “I knew loving you would be dangerous. I had no idea how dangerous.”

  “Sorry.” I grabbed my shoes and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. I didn’t have socks. That was really the least of my current concerns.

  “Yes, well. I suppose this is my own fault.” He laughed, a sharp, dry sound. “I will go and advise my guards that they should watch for any signs of odd behavior in their fellows. After Samson, they have started watching each other much more closely than they ever did before. If someone is compromised, they will know.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “When you get back, we’ll figure out what happens next.” I bent to start lacing up my shoes.

  Behind me, the door opened and closed again, marking Tybalt’s exit. I tried to focus, keeping my fingers as steady as I could. Tripping over my own shoelace and breaking my neck while I was trying to figure out how to stop a rampaging Firstborn would just be silly.