The Winter Long Read online

  She was tall, with the kind of curves that would have made her a star if she’d ever cared to try her hand in Hollywood, and a face that looked like it had been refined by a hundred great artists before it was given to anyone to wear. Her white-gold hair was held away from her face with a simple circlet, and fell otherwise loose down her back, like a river of molten metal. I looked at her through his eyes, and wondered if the false Queen of the Mists had gotten her fondness for long, pale hair from my mother, who made it look like the only style worth wearing.

  I hadn’t seen her since I’d learned that she was Firstborn. Looking at the memory image of her, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it from the very beginning. She looked nothing like the Daoine Sidhe. She looked only and entirely like herself.

  Amandine looked around the room (ballroom in the great palace of Londinium, and not a jewel in the Queen’s crown could shine any brighter than her smile) until her eyes settled on me/Simon. She started toward me/Simon, her smile broadening.

  “Simon. I had hoped you would do us the honor of attendance this day. My lady, the Queen, has remarked often on your absence.” She had an accent. Since when did my mother have an accent? She sounded Scottish, rolling her r’s and burring her t’s in a sweet, lilting rhythm.

  She’s never had an accent, I thought fiercely. The scene took on a red tint as I resisted it. Accents don’t just disappear. Don’t lie to me, Simon. Don’t you dare.

  I can’t. Not here, not in the blood. The thought was wistful, and almost intrusive in its immediacy. This was no memory: this was Simon answering me without saying a word. Her accent faded, and then she put it aside like a toy she no longer wanted to play with. Centuries and the desire not to stand out as foreign when walking among the humans will work wonders on even the deepest habits. But when I first loved her, when she was Amandine of no particular family line, she was born in Scotland, and raised there for the better part of her youth.

  The ballroom had frozen, Amandine still smiling at Simon’s memory of himself. This must have happened centuries ago. She hadn’t aged a day.

  Okay, I thought. I believe you, but . . . we can’t linger here. I need to know what I need to know. The fact that you thought my mom was hot doesn’t really matter.

  I felt his laughter. Oh, October. The fact that I thought your mother was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen matters more than you can know. Let go. Come back.

  Letting go of my confusion and diving back into the blood memory was almost impossibly hard. The smell of smoke and mulled cider assaulted my nostrils as the ballroom scene blurred and disappeared around us, replaced, briefly, by Simon and my mother standing in front of a man that Simon’s memory identified as the then-High King of North America, their hands joined, their eyes fixed only on each other. More than a hundred years had passed between those memories: I knew that, even if I didn’t know how I knew. It was just . . . obvious.

  The scene dissolved. Amandine’s tower appeared, the door standing open to reveal a garden riotous with color. Red roses, golden daisies, purple spires of love-lies-bleeding—it was like looking into an amateur version of one of Luna’s projects, fiercely alive and just as fiercely beautiful. Mother’s gardens had never looked like that while I lived with her . . . but this memory was long before me, wasn’t it? Because there was Amandine, her belly huge with a baby I had never met, smiling indulgently at Simon.

  She chose me, she chose me out of everyone she could have chosen in the world, and I will not disappoint her; I will be the man she needs, and the father that our child deserves. I will always be there for her. I will be there for both of them. Nothing in this world or any other could make me fail them.

  Another flicker, and the Amandine who raced through our/my field of vision wasn’t pregnant anymore. The little girl she pursued had silvery braids that glimmered red, like the reddish gold I sometimes saw in wedding rings. Amandine pounced, and the little girl laughed, twisting in her mother’s arms to bury her hands in the pale waterfall of Amandine’s hair.

  The scene froze.

  “Even here, there are holes in what I can say.” The voice came from beside me, not inside my own head. I turned. There was Simon—but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on his wife and daughter, and there was a look of heartbreaking yearning on his face. I think that if I had killed him in that moment, looking at that scene, he would have died thanking me. “The bindings I am under are very strong. She made sure of that.”

  “You can say ‘she’ without flinching now,” I said. “Can you tell me if I get something wrong?”

  “I believe I can, yes.” Simon sighed deeply. “We were so happy. What happened to us?”

  “Near as I can tell, Evening Winterrose happened to you.” I didn’t mean to snark: it was almost automatic at this point. I still hated him for what he’d done to me—I wasn’t sure there was anything that could make me hate him any less—but I was also starting to feel strangely sorry for him. Maybe that was a sign of growing maturity. Maybe it was a sign that I was just too tired to care. “She’s the one who geased you, right? Just so we’re absolutely clear.”

  “Yes.” The scene changed. In an instant, the little girl was a long-limbed teen, sitting at the table with her mother, a smile on her face as they shared a plate of fruit and cheese. Looking at them, I felt sorrow, and an overwhelming jealousy. Amandine had never been easy with me. Not like that. Not like she was with the daughter that she’d lost.

  “Did you know Evening was the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn?”

  “Not at first.” Simon’s voice took on a new level of bitterness. “I had my suspicions—things she’d said, things she’d done. Even the way she looked at my wife. I asked Amy once if—” He stopped speaking.

  The silence stretched on for long enough that I started to worry. I turned back to him, and he was gone, replaced by the tower wall. “Simon?” A red veil began to cloud my vision. Something was wrong.

  Spoke too soon can’t say can’t say can’t say her name . . .

  The scene in the tower accelerated, the teenager becoming a young woman, arguing with Amandine, storming out; Amandine following her, and then the tower itself disappearing, leaving me floating in the endless red . . .

  “Simon! It’s okay, you don’t have to say her name! Just focus, okay?” I tried to search through the red for the oranges and smoke combination of his magic, and as I did I realized that here, in his heart, there was no citrus sharpness or rot; just the sweet smells of mulled cider and extinguished candle flames. That was what his magic had been, once, before Evening corrupted him. “Come back to me.” I pulled harder on the blood, calling on the thin line of his magic.

  Beside me, Simon gasped. I turned to face him. We weren’t in the tower anymore: we were standing in the trees, vast evergreens reaching for the sky on all sides. He was breathing heavily, his hand pressed to his chest like he was trying to keep his heart from stopping.

  When he recovered his composure, he said, “My apologies, October. That was somewhat more . . . bracing . . . than I had expected.”

  “I’ll be more careful,” I said. “Just breathe, okay?”

  “I will do my very best,” he assured me.

  “Okay. So . . . you knew that Evening was Firstborn, or at least you suspected it. And this was after you and Mom were married. What changed? How did Evening get her claws into you?”

  There was a long pause. Then, in a voice that sounded like it was breaking into a million pieces right in front of me, Simon whispered, “There she is.”

  I looked to the trees. The girl with the gold-red hair was stepping into view, wearing a dress the color of corn husks, a candle in her hand. I recognized its mottled calico pattern. She’d gotten it from the Luidaeg. She lingered for a moment, looking around herself like she was waiting for a sign. Then she continued forward, disappearing into the tree line.

  “When August wa
s . . . lost . . . we both dealt with our grief in our own ways,” said Simon haltingly. His words sounded strange at first, until I realized there were traces of an almost British accent seeping into them, like some long-buried wound was being torn open. He was focusing so hard on what he was saying that he didn’t have the energy to focus on how it was being said. “Your mother was . . . it’s hard to be of the First, and she had it harder than her siblings, because she was born so soon before Oberon and his wives left us. Her father was not here to teach her how to manage her strengths, or how to compensate for her weaknesses. She was unprepared for the reality of a situation she couldn’t change.”

  “Parental abandonment seems to run in the family.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. To be fair, I didn’t try that hard.

  Simon took a sharp breath. I waited for him to say I was being unfair, but he didn’t; he just let it out again, and said, “Be that as it may, she couldn’t handle the shock of losing our daughter. She began rattling at doors, making bargains, trying anything and everything she could think of in her mad quest to bring our little girl home. And I . . .” His voice trailed off, turning weak and broken.

  The forest in front of us blurred, replaced by a room I knew all too well: the receiving room at Goldengreen, back when it had belonged to Evening. Back when it had been cold.

  “I thought it was wrong to leave my wife—my love, my Amy—to sell her soul while I kept mine. So I went to the devil I knew, and I asked if she could help me.” His voice dropped even lower. “I was a fool.”

  I hated to prod at what was clearly still an open wound, but I had to know. “Your daughter disappeared, and you went to Evening for help.”

  “Yes,” said Simon. The word was soft, and somehow broken. His voice gained strength as he repeated, “Yes, I did, and I would do it again, even knowing her as I do now. What she offered me was worth the cost. I will not deny that.”

  “Was it?” I looked back to the empty forest. The faint smell of cider hung in the air. “Was it really? Because your daughter’s still missing, and my mother’s still on a one-way trip to wherever the hell it is her mind’s been going for the past twenty years. It doesn’t seem like you got anything out of the deal at all.”

  “I got power.” The scene flickered, twisted: became the Japanese Tea Gardens. Any pity I had been starting to feel for the man dissolved, replaced by the sheer terror of returning to the place where my life had ended once already. I tried to step away. He grabbed my wrist, and the smell of smoke filled the air, mixed with a muddled combination of cider and rotten oranges. What felt like a rope of woven wind slithered around my throat and pulled itself tight—not choking me, but making the point that it could, at any moment, if that was required. Simon continued implacably, saying, “I got the strength to do whatever needed doing, and all I had to give up was my autonomy, my integrity, and the love of my brother, which I had never done a thing in my life to earn. There’s something tempting about power, October. I know you know that. I can see it in your eyes. They’re so much paler than they used to be. You’re burning your humanity on the pyre of your ambitions, because we’re so much stronger than they are, aren’t we? Sometimes it’s good to be the strong one.”

  “Let me go,” I said softly. “Simon, you need to let me go right now, or Oberon help me, I’m going to see if I can make every drop of blood in your body come out of your eye sockets.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  There was a long pause. The smell of smoke and oranges was so thick that it was becoming difficult to breathe. The smell of cider was completely gone. And then, to my surprise and annoyance, Simon started to laugh.

  “Something funny?” I asked tightly.

  “Peace,” he said, and the ropes dropped away. “I simply wanted to test—”

  I whirled and punched him square in the nose.

  Simon stumbled back, looking startled. I hadn’t been sure that would work. He was just a blood magic construct, after all. But then again, so was I, and magic is really remarkable sometimes.

  “I’m not your daughter, Simon,” I said quietly. “My father was a human man, and he died thinking he’d lost me forever, but he’s never going to lose me, because I’m always going to remember him and honor his memory. I could never have been yours. Even if my mother had let you bring Evening’s stinking corruption to her bed, I would never have been yours.”

  Simon’s gaze hardened. Still, there was something satisfied there, like I was saying the wrong words with the right inflection. “I see.”

  “Here’s how this is going to be, Simon,” I said. “You have no allies. You’ve turned against Evening. Your own brother wants you punished for your crimes. Luna . . . I think Luna would gut you and use your blood to fertilize her roses if she got the chance, and hell, maybe Sylvester would give it to her. If you want to stay alive, you need to stay on my good side. That means no more tests. No more sneak attacks or attempts to test your boundaries. If you so much as think about using your magic on me, I won’t stop myself from hurting you. And don’t be concerned about the penalties we’d face for breaking Oberon’s Law. That only applies when someone gives enough of a shit to report your disappearance to the authorities.”

  Simon touched his bruised nose and smiled. “You are your mother’s daughter after all.”

  “And never say that to me again.” I glared at him.

  “As I was saying, power,” said Simon, after a pause. “The Daoine Sidhe have always had the potential to be among the most powerful people in Faerie. It’s simply that many lack the stomach for what must be done.”

  I knew what he meant. “You’re talking about borrowing other people’s magic through their blood,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “Blood magic is so much more flexible than most could ever dream.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said curtly. I knew full well what blood magic was capable of. I had seen Duchess Treasa Riordan use blood magic to force Chelsea Ames to rip open doors in the walls between the Summerlands and Annwn. I had borrowed the teleportation magic of both Windermere siblings—Arden when she was being controlled by the false Queen of the Mists, and Nolan when Tybalt and I were at risk of dying in a room made almost entirely of iron. I could see the appeal of having all the powers in Faerie at your beck and call. I just wasn’t sure the need to drink other people’s blood was a worthwhile tradeoff.

  “You think you know everything, October, but I assure you, you have so much more to learn. Things even your mother never took the time to learn. E—” He stopped before he even finished the first syllable of Evening’s name, making a thin wheezing noise. Finally, the sound tapered off. Simon coughed and amended, “My benefactor taught me so many things that you could never even dream of.”

  “Was it worth it?” I cocked my head. “Because it sounds to me like you’re trying to convince yourself almost as much as you’re trying to convince me right now.”

  “I admit, things didn’t go exactly as planned.” Simon sighed. “I thought I would beg a boon of someone more powerful than I, and be asked to give my life—or at least my fealty—in exchange for what I received. Instead, I found myself indentured against future rewards. I did whatever I was asked to do. I was a willing slave, and every morning I went to sleep with the faces of my wife and daughter in my heart, reminding me of what I did this for.”

  “And uh, where does Oleander fit into your nice little story of nobility and self-sacrifice? Because for a married man, you seemed awfully fond of her.”

  “The Lady de Merelands—for she was a lady once, even if she left her title years and miles behind her—had been a servant of our mutual benefactor’s for a long time. A service was apparently performed for her once: I do not know what it was. She never told me, and after a time, I stopped asking. It . . . amused Oleander to be with a man who had been with your mother, and by that time Amandine
and I were separated. So I was asked to go to Oleander’s bed, to warm her and to show that I was truly willing to do anything for the sake of my daughter’s return.” Simon spoke calmly, methodically, like he was giving a deposition in court. In a way, I suppose he was. “I won’t claim not to have enjoyed my time with her. She was capable of her own form of sweetness, when she felt the need, and I have never done well alone. But I did not seek her out. She was given to me, and I to her, by the one who held our loyalty.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The circumstances—” began Simon.

  I cut him off. “I don’t give two fucks about the circumstances. Yes, it sucks that my sister,” the words were still strange, “disappeared, but you don’t sell your soul because your kid is missing. You find another way. You go to the Luidaeg. You ask Luna to appeal to her parents. You walk away the minute the person you’re asking for help says ‘sure, but you have to pledge fealty to me and sleep with this lady who we’re pretty sure murders people for fun and also maybe some other stuff and the whole time your kid will still be missing, because I’m not getting her back for you until you prove yourself to me.’ How did you even know Evening could do what she was promising you?”

  “Not all of us are the darlings of the world’s remaining Firstborn, and with Amy lost to me, I had few options,” said Simon. There was a hint of bitterness in his tone. “I did what I had to do.”

  “Uh-huh.” The throne room was beginning to blur around us, fading under a veil of red. The memories my magic could draw from Simon’s blood apparently didn’t extend to actually letting me see Evening’s face. “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me before I lose my grip on this?”

  “I am . . .” He took a breath. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear from me, October. But I am so proud of who you have become. I only wish I could have been there to help you grow.” The smell of smoke and oranges was getting stronger.