A Killing Frost Read online

  It hurt. It felt like I was losing my entire family in one moment, and all for the sake of a man too clumsy to stay out of the sea.

  There was a splashing sound from behind me. As I was already standing still, I did not outwardly freeze, but inwardly, it felt as if everything I was had been replaced by a sudden block of ice. My heart did not beat; my lungs did not move.

  “Simon? Why are you here?”

  The voice was Patrick’s; the question was sincere. I whipped around, dislodging the pixies from both shoulders as they slung themselves into the air and raced for him, ringing and sobbing at the same time, shedding glitter like tears as they spun through the air around him. And Patrick, who was dry as a bone despite his recent drowning, actually laughed, spreading his arms to let them swirl more freely around him.

  I stalked toward him, my grief washed clean away by my anger, which was a roaring fire extinguishing all in its path. “I’m here,” I spat, “because you fell into the sea after an argument with your lover, the mermaid, and were gone long enough that the pixies panicked. They came for me. They thought you were dead and drowned. And so did I.”

  He did not laugh, but he was smiling as he spread his hands and said, “As you can see, I’m not.” His smile faded. “I am sorry to have worried you. I had no sense of how long I would be gone.”

  There was a second splash as Dianda’s head broke the surface, followed by the rest of her, already on two legs as a column of gleaming, seemingly solid water. It lifted her to the level of the pier, and she stepped off to stand next to Patrick, looking at me with wide, guileless eyes.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  The taste of rotten oranges was heavy on my tongue. I wanted to yell. I wanted to spit every profanity I knew, to tell her that she had dragged my heart down into the deeps as if it were nothing.

  But the Daoine Sidhe are meant to be elegant and composed. To stand above when all others would drag us below. I squared my shoulders and replied, as calmly as I could, “The pixies thought Patrick had been drowned. They conveyed their impressions to me.”

  Unlike Patrick, she looked genuinely startled and unhappy at this declaration. The taste of oranges receded. “I am so . . . I didn’t know they had followed him, I’m so sorry. I would have brought him back sooner if I’d been aware that anyone had noticed his absence.”

  Even the ghost of Patrick’s smile was gone, replaced by the dawning understanding of how badly he had frightened me—how badly he had frightened us. The pixies were still circling his head, ringing furiously. I sighed.

  “I was on my way to tell the Countess Winterrose that you had stopped your dancing when you saw fit to return, you utter brute. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

  “I am,” he said. “I shouldn’t be—I would rather not be, for it was never my intent to hurt you in any way—but I am.” He glanced to Dianda, and then back to me. “My lady has agreed to become my lady wife. It is an honor I will spend my nights fighting to deserve from now until the night-haunts come to claim me.”

  “Stop,” said Dianda. “None will speak ill of my husband in my hearing, and that includes my husband.” The fondness in her voice was bald and unfettered, and it made the taste of oranges rise in my throat again, for my own wife had never once sounded so in love with me.

  It was not a realization that any man should have to suffer, nor was it one I welcomed, not even as my time with my lady caused my eyes to become more and more open to the casual cruelty of the Firstborn, and how little they thought of those they believed to be beneath them. It was impressive that I had believed for so long that Amy could actually care for me, but now, with poison burning holes in my stomach on a weekly basis, such self-deception was increasingly beyond me.

  And Patrick was to leave me, to marry his mermaid and go down into the depths by her side, dependent on her love if he was to stave off drowning. He would be a kept man, even more than I had been, with no hope of escaping.

  Love is a lie. There are only varying stages of indenture holding people in their places. I should have learned that lesson when my parents and my sister left me, but alas, I have never been a quick study.

  “My apologies,” said Patrick. He turned his attention back to me. “I would that you had been elsewhere when my pixies went looking. This is a joyous occasion. Please be happy with me?”

  I have always been an excellent liar. Since the days when I ran wild through my parents’ halls and had to cover for both myself and my brother in times of trouble, and even into the present, I have always been an excellent liar. Marriage to Amandine and service to my lady have only honed my natural skills to a razor’s edge, leaving me prepared to slice the throat of the world with a word if such is demanded of me. I reached down deep, past the part of me that wanted to wail that he wasn’t allowed to leave me, that someone should love me enough, just once, to stay, past the part of me that wanted to parrot my lady’s words despite my protections and tell him that he was tainting his bloodline forever—a thought which I knew was not my own, but the potions which protect me can only do so much when set against a will as great and unyielding as my lady’s. I could not trust that part of myself, and if I couldn’t trust it, how could I trust any other part of me? I was a broken mirror reflecting pieces of two Firstborn, and neither of them played gently with their toys.

  I forced a smile to my face, despite the turmoil I contained, and said, “Of course I will be happy for you. You have finally done as I’ve bid you on so many occasions and met a woman foolish enough to have you. I assume, as she is landed and you are not, that you will be retiring to live in her demesne, down full fathom five below the sea?”

  Patrick’s smile flickered. “I will still come to see you, my friend, and the pixies. I could never leave any of you completely.”

  “The pixies and I have already made such arrangements as are necessary for their continued safety. I will see them settled, and well out of the path of any who would do them harm.”

  “And yourself, my friend?”

  I shrugged. “I have my Amy, and my service to the Countess Winterrose, and I’m to see my best friend married to the woman he loves. What more could I ask the world to give me? What more could I even desire?”

  Patrick slipped his hand from Dianda’s, and she let him go willingly, looking at me with odd concern as he crossed the pier between us and took my hands in his own. His fingers were cold from the seawater, and slightly sticky with salt. He held me tightly—more tightly than anyone had held me for years—and looked anxiously into my eyes, his smile entirely lost now, washed out to sea with my hopes for the night, even if I couldn’t have said what those hopes were.

  “Simon,” he said. “You know I love you more than almost anyone, yes? If not for the timing of our first acquaintance, our lives could have followed very different paths.”

  “I know that you are the best friend I’ve ever had, and I’m going to miss you as I’d miss air,” I said, and pulled my hands free. “Go with your lady. Go to the depths of the sea. I will care for your pixies.”

  “We’re to wed on the land,” said Dianda, stepping up behind him. “If your king will marry us, we’re to wed on the land.”

  One more break with tradition, then, if they were asking Gilad and not the highest-ranking Daoine Sidhe in the fiefdom to perform their marriage. But then, that might be for the best, considering the couple in question. I nodded.

  “Then we’ll move the pixies together, and I’ll welcome a new sister into my heart, as the man you are marrying is as dear to me as family.”

  And when they left, I would be alone with the two Firstborn who waged their silent war for my soul, and with the daughter I had already failed to save. As Dianda laughed and folded me into her arms in a sister’s embrace, I closed my eyes.

  It was better this way. I could never have been worthy of him, even if I were not already a married
man.

  I could never have been worthy of either of them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Seanan McGuire lives and works in Washington State, where she shares her somewhat idiosyncratic home with her collection of books, creepy dolls, and enormous blue cats. When not writing--which is fairly rare--she enjoys travel, and can regularly be found any place where there are cornfields, haunted houses, or frogs. A Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula Award-winning author, Seanan's first book (Rosemary and Rue, the beginning of the October Daye series) was released in 2009, with more than twenty books across various series following since. Seanan doesn't sleep much.

  You can visit her at www.seananmcguire.com.

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