The Winter Long Page 32

  Then, voice almost inaudible, the Luidaeg said, “Ask me again.”

  I smiled, showing bloody teeth. Third time’s the charm, especially in Faerie. “Help me,” I said.

  And the Luidaeg moved.

  There was nothing violent about the way she crossed the marble floor; she didn’t descend like an avalanche or strike like a thunderstorm, but there was something so primal about it that for those few seconds, she didn’t look like flesh—she looked like nature itself coming to life and stepping in to intervene. She was a wave on the ocean, she was a ripple on a pond, and it only seemed to take the blink of an eye before she was in front of me, leaning down and offering her hand.

  “You are my niece, and I am your aunt, and when you ask my help, it is within my power to give it,” she said, smiling. Her teeth weren’t bloody, but they were sharper than they had any right to be, more like the teeth of some deep and unspoken sea beast than anything that should be allowed to wear a human shape and walk in human cities. She spread the fingers of her outstretched hand a little wider. “All you have to do is let me.”

  “Sure thing, Auntie,” I said, and slid my fingers into hers.

  If touching Evening had been like touching a cloud, touching the Luidaeg was like touching a corpse. She was cold and felt waterlogged under my clutching hand, as if bearing down too hard might cause her to burst open and melt across the floor. She pulled me easily to my feet, Evening’s ropes of wind dissolving back into the air that they were made from.

  The Luidaeg smiled at me again as we straightened up, our eyes almost level with one another. Those terrible teeth still distorted the shape of her mouth, although they didn’t seem to be making it any harder for her to talk. Her eyes were the same as they usually were, warm and very, very human. If not for that, I’m not sure I could have kept looking directly at her.

  Then Evening’s hand caught my shoulder, whirling me around to face her. The Luidaeg hissed, yanking me back, out from under Evening’s hand. Evening sniffed dismissively, her eyes traveling from my bloody face to the blood-soaked front of my shirt before finally settling on the Luidaeg.

  “I see you’re just as beastly as ever, Annie,” she said. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that it’s easier to be beautiful in this world? Beauty opens oh so very many doors.”

  “I never wanted those doors to be opened in the first place, Eira,” snarled the Luidaeg.

  “Then it’s a good thing that what you want has never mattered to me, isn’t it?” Evening shook her head. “I was here first, darling sister. Do yourself a favor, calm yourself, and remember your place.”

  “I was there before she chose Faerie,” said the Luidaeg. “Can you really claim to have beaten me to her cradle?”

  Evening’s smile was a terrible thing to behold. I shrank back against the Luidaeg, suddenly glad for her terrible teeth, for the solid beastliness of her. She was something I could understand, and if she wore her knives on the outside, that just meant that I was better able to see them when she finally chose to use them on me.

  “I was at her christening, dear one,” said Evening. “I saw her father hold her in his arms, little red-faced screaming thing that she was, and say that they could call her Olivia when she got older, if the other kids teased her too much about her name. I saw pretty, simpering Amy playing faerie bride, and when she asked if I believed that she was mortal, I told her yes, yes, oh, yes, my darling, you are so believable as something frail and temporary. I beat you to October by a matter of years. You have no claim here.”

  The Luidaeg’s hand tightened on mine. “That’s for October to decide, don’t you think?”

  “She’s a changeling. She has no decisions on her shoulders. Only duty.” Evening focused on me again. “She’ll work herself to death to be what I order her to be.”

  “No, I won’t,” I said, licking my lips to get the last of the half-dried blood and the strength that it promised me. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it still helped me keep my grip on the Luidaeg’s hand, even as the part of me that remembered the taste of Evening’s blood murmured about loyalty and legacies and why I needed to go to her now, before she grew angry with me.

  “You see, this is why I didn’t want her anywhere near you,” said Evening, throwing up her hands in a gesture of frustration that was as familiar as it was out of place in this setting, in this scene. She should have been wearing a business suit when she threw her hands up like that, not a dress better suited to the wicked queen from a fairy tale. “You always spoil everything, Annie. That’s your entire role in my life. The spoilsport.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” said the Luidaeg. She gripped my hand even harder. “Don’t trust her, Toby. Don’t let her take you back. She’s not worth it, and you’re worth so much more than she is.”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Annie. She doesn’t know me. She never did. You told her, and she thought she heard you, but she didn’t understand. They’re so frail, these changelings, and so slow to catch on to what’s happening around them. Leave her alone. She belongs to me.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” The Luidaeg gripped me even harder, until a small gasp escaped my throat, summoned by the pain of her nails against my skin. “If she doesn’t know you—and you’re insisting that she doesn’t—then she can’t give herself to you. You know the rules.”

  “Oh, yes, the rules,” said Evening mockingly. “Mustn’t forget the rules. Who branded those rules across your heart, dearest sister? Who made you what you are today?”

  “And don’t think I’m not intending to kill you for that when I get the chance,” said the Luidaeg.

  “You’ll have to catch me first,” said Evening. She returned her focus to me, smiling so sweetly and so warmly that my heart leaped in my chest like a salmon trying to swim upstream. She looked like safety. She looked like home. “October—Toby. I know you missed me while I was gone, and I’m so sorry that I had to leave. Can you forgive me? Can you just come over here, come to me, and forgive me?”

  “I—” The sentence dissolved into a wordless yelp as a sudden, piercing pain lanced through my hand. I looked down and saw that the Luidaeg’s nails—which were more like talons, really, making a matched set with her teeth—had gouged into my flesh, opening cuts that ran all the way down to the brutal whiteness of bone. “What the hell, Luidaeg?” I jerked my hand away, sticking the side of it in my mouth as I sought some small measure of relief in that most mammalian of gestures.

  The taste of blood hit my tongue and I froze, the scene around me suddenly becoming clear. Still sucking on the open wound I turned to Evening, eyes wide. She didn’t look like home anymore. She looked like the deep, dark wood where little girls and boys went to find wolves of their very own, the place that no one returned from. Her coloring was as fairy-tale extreme as ever, but it didn’t seem comforting or familiar: it was alien and garish, her lips too red for her skin, her skin too pale for anything that wasn’t dead.

  I took a breath, scenting out the magic in the room. It had all faded away under the taste of blood and the compulsion that was rolling off of Evening like a wave. Now that I was looking, though . . .

  The smell of ice and roses was everywhere, nearly burying the smell of marsh water and the sea that rolled off the Luidaeg. My own cut grass and copper didn’t stand a chance. Neither did Tybalt’s musk and pennyroyal, but the fact that I could taste it told me that he was still fighting. That was a good thing. If she’d hurt him, if she’d killed him, I would have been forced to find a way to kill her. I wanted time to think about that before I actually tried to do it.

  “I’m not yours,” I said. “I won’t be yours. I refuse you and everything that you stand for. Now get the fuck out of my liege’s knowe before I get mad.”

  “You really think it’s going to be that easy?” demanded Evening. “You drank my blood, you stupid little mongrel. You’re mine.”

  “Oh, is that
all?” I turned to the Luidaeg. “How much of your blood have I consumed since we met?”

  The corner of her mouth turned upward as far as her terrible teeth would allow. “At least a quart. You’re a thirsty little vampire when you want to be.”

  “Uh-huh.” I turned back to Evening. “I am not a descendant of Titania. I am not yours by blood. I have tasted your blood once, and once only. I am not yours by mistake. And while Sylvester Torquill may be my liege, I am a hero of the realm, so named by Arden Windermere, the Queen in the Mists. Kingdom trumps Duchy. I am not yours by fealty. I refuse your claim on me.”

  She blinked, looking briefly surprised. Then she rolled her eyes. “It’s not that easy, October. It never has been.”

  “See, I think it is. You’ve been arguing about this with me for a long time now, and you’ve sort of blown your cover—you were dead, then you weren’t dead, then you were trying to take back Goldengreen, then you were holing up at Shadowed Hills—even if that didn’t show a major lack of planning on your part, it would tell me one thing loud and clear: you’re desperate. You can’t go back to being Evening Winterrose, harmless Countess. Not after coming back from the grave.” Anger suddenly bubbled in my chest, and I let it, making no effort to swallow back the words that spilled from my lips: “You died! You left me, you left me with no allies and no idea of what to do and . . . and . . . and now I find out it was your fault? You’re the one who sent Simon after me, who ruined my life?”

  “You seem to have done fairly well for yourself,” said Evening, looking taken aback. “You have your friends, your house, your little squire—where is the boy, anyway? I can’t wait to introduce myself to him properly.”

  “He’s where you can’t touch him, and it doesn’t matter if I’ve built myself something better, because you’re the reason that I had to,” I snapped. “I shouldn’t have been forced to do that. You were supposed to be my friend.”

  “I never said I was your friend, October,” she said, all traces of bewilderment fading. “I said I was your ally. I was, at the time. I never harmed you directly.”

  “Because you weren’t allowed,” snapped the Luidaeg. “Don’t pretend your limitations are some kind of altruistic gesture.”

  “Why not? You do it all the time.” Evening looked past us to where Simon was holding Tybalt in wind-wrapped thrall. “They’re not going to listen to reason. Kill the animal, and come here.”

  “Yes, milady,” said Simon. I whirled in time to see him slant a regretful glance in my direction, and then he waved his hands in the air, a simple, almost graceful gesture.

  Tybalt screamed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I HAD NEVER MOVED so fast before in my life; I may never move that fast again. Tybalt’s scream was still gathering strength as I launched myself across the room, drawing the knife from my belt and charging straight for Simon. Behind me, I heard Evening shouting; I heard the Luidaeg shouting even louder, until their words blurred together in a senseless mass of sounds and syllables. None of it mattered. The only things in the world with any meaning to them were the men in front of me, one red-haired and frowning, the other screaming in evident agony.

  My knife wasn’t weighted for throwing, and even if it had been, I’d never thrown a knife before; I wouldn’t have known how to begin. So I settled for what I knew, flipping the blade around and slashing open my own palm as I ran. The wound flared pain up my arm. I ignored it—I’ve gotten surprisingly good at ignoring little things like that—and instead used the blood to call as much of my magic as I could summon from the marrow of my bones, calling and calling until the air around me was thick with the smell of cut grass and copper, burying all traces of roses and snow, smoke and oranges.

  Tybalt was still screaming. I was still running. All of this had taken seconds, barely enough to register on a clock’s face. It had been enough to accomplish one thing, however: it had been enough to get me close enough to Tybalt that I could slam my still-bleeding hand flat against his chest, transferring all the momentum of my run into his body. He rocked backward, held up only by the ropes of wind that still bound him, and I rocked with him.

  Simon cursed. I allowed myself a flickering instant of satisfaction. As I had hoped, when I hit Tybalt, the shock of the impact had transferred back to the man who cast the spell.

  That man was going to have to deal with me in a minute. Right now, I needed to deal with Tybalt, whose screams were tapering off as he choked and gasped for air. I pressed my palm down harder against his chest, praying that the wound would stay open long enough to give me the blood that I needed, and closed my eyes. Please let this work, I thought. Please let me remember how . . .

  Glowing orange-and-gray lines snapped into view on the inside of my eyelids, carefully and precisely twisted around each other in a net that a master craftsman would have been proud to call his own. They looked almost diseased to my mind’s eye, like they had been infected with something that might never come clean.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, not opening my eyes, and slashed my knife along the worst of the lines.

  The silver was coated in my blood, and my magic was sizzling in the air. When the blade hit the edges of Simon’s spell they withered, snapping and fraying with every pass. My headache—gone, but not forgotten—flared back to life, and I ignored it. I couldn’t be entirely sure that I wasn’t hitting Tybalt at least a little, but I hacked away at the center of the spell without allowing myself to hesitate. Better a few bandages than a single coffin.

  Simon cursed again, and more of the lines sprang into view, slithering to fill the spaces left by the ones I had cut away. I responded by changing the directions of my cuts. Instead of slashing at the spell, I brought the knife down on the inside of my arm, opening the skin from wrist to elbow. The blood came fast and dangerously heavy then, but I ignored the implications of that as I dropped the knife, covered my hands in sticky warmth, and began shredding the spell by the fistful, ripping it away like there was no tomorrow.

  When I yanked the threads from Tybalt’s throat he breathed in—a huge, whooping gasp of a sound—and the lines on his chest began to move as he panted. I took that as a good sign and ripped away chunks of spell even faster. The threads stung my fingers when they got through the insulating layer of blood. I didn’t care. I could handle a few small abrasions better than I could handle my boyfriend’s death.

  Then enough of the strands had broken for Tybalt to fall. He hit the ground hard enough that I heard the impact, and I opened my eyes, sparing only a brief glance down to see that he was on his hands and knees, not crumpled in an unconscious heap. Then I raised my head and looked at Simon, my teeth bared in a snarl.

  Simon Torquill, my personal bogeyman and unwanted stepfather, took one look at me and realized that he had finally gone too far. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t try to defend himself. He just turned around and ran.

  The wound in my arm was healing, but not as fast as it would have if I hadn’t lost a lot of blood, used a lot of magic, and generally exhausted myself. My head felt like it had been used as a punching bag. The sound of blood dripping from my fingertips to the floor punctuated my movements as I turned and knelt next to Tybalt. He raised his head as soon as I crouched beside him, and a pained smile crossed his face. There were red welts on his throat, and blood seeped through his shirt where I had misjudged my slices and cut shallow gouges in his chest. At least none of those wounds looked serious.

  “I am beginning to feel as if we do not save each other in equal measure,” he said wearily, voice rasping a little from the strain he had put on it with all the screaming. “Next time you must let me save you, or I will start to feel I am not contributing to this partnership.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, taking his hand and pulling him with me as I straightened. He didn’t shy away from the blood on my fingers. There was something to be said for loving a man who came from a part of Faerie that still se
ttled its battles the old, brutal way.

  Speaking of battles . . . I turned back to where I had left the Luidaeg and Evening, and was disappointed but unsurprised to find that both of them were gone.

  “Oh, Oberon’s ass,” I muttered. “Tybalt, how are you feeling? Do you think you can walk?”

  “I can walk, and I can fight, as long as I’m not caught in a coward’s snare again,” he said, before coughing in a way that gave the lie to his words. He looked sheepish. “It would, however, be best if I could refrain from fighting for a time.”

  “Again, I’ll try. We’re missing two Firstborn. I think we might need to find them before somebody else gets hurt.” Find them, and find Simon. Even when I had no clear goals, it seemed I was still doomed to be forever running after something.

  Tybalt stilled, expression going neutral as he sniffed the air. Then, with the solemnity of a man passing judgment, he said, “They are not here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “No. That isn’t what I meant.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his face with one hand, smearing blood across his cheek in the process. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t his blood, and that was really all I cared about. “The air smells wrong.”

  “A lot of blood and a lot of magic just happened here.”

  “The air smells like somewhere else. Somewhere that does not follow the rules of here. The air on the Shadow Roads is similar—it is air to the Cait Sidhe, or we would die when we ran there, but it smells of silence and of stillness, if you have the nose for it.” He opened his eyes. “They aren’t here.”

  That changed things a little—but not as much as it once would have. “Right,” I said, digesting his words. Then: “Follow me.”

  I made it halfway across the ballroom before I realized Tybalt wasn’t following. I stopped and turned just in time to see him crumple to the floor.