Page 12 of A Killing Frost

“Fickleness is also a part of my job description,” said Tybalt. “You shall always find forgiveness in my eyes. Others will not. Others have not pledged to be my wife.”

“Hey, hey, hey, is this some Cait Sidhe thing where you expect me to share?” His mood was clearly lifting. If teasing could help that continue, I was all in. “No second wives for you. I’m a greedy girl.”

“And I am not Oberon. We shall share our home with family, but not our bed.” Tybalt’s smile was real this time, and I allowed myself to finally relax. We were going to be okay.

The next time the door opened, it was Jason returning with our dinners, which he placed in front of us before withdrawing from the dining room. I picked up my fork and steak knife. Tybalt watched. I raised an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“You have a knife. I find it best to pay attention when you feel the need to arm yourself.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and commenced cutting up my steak. The food, as always, was excellent, and all conversation stopped for a few minutes while we enjoyed our meals.

I was considering using the last pretzel roll to sop up the meat juice on my plate—too dark to be considered bloody, but still delicious—when the whisper of wheels against the floor caught my attention and I raised my head. Tybalt was already looking toward the sound, eyes narrowed and pupils hairline thin in his irritation.

“Hello, Dianda,” I said wearily. “Do you have some other horrible point of Faerie law to bring to my attention? Because I’m sure you can understand why I don’t really want to hear anything else you have to say right now.”

“No, and I’m sorry to interrupt you twice in one evening,” she said. Focusing on Tybalt, she added, “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable.”

“You’re doing an excellent job,” he said.

Dianda sighed. “See, this is one of those times when I wish the Undersea way of doing things had become the dominant way for the rest of Faerie. If we were at home, you’d punch me in the stomach, I’d kick you in the face, and then we’d move on. Instead, you’re going to be mad at me for days, if not weeks.”

“I was thinking of years,” said Tybalt.

“And if we could just punch it out, this would all be a lot easier, on both of us,” said Dianda. She shifted her focus to me. “I get that you’re pissed, and you have every right to be. When Patrick and I decided to get married, it felt like everyone in Faerie had an opinion, and everyone’s opinion was ‘no.’ If not for Simon and King Gilad, I don’t think we would have made it.”

“Gee, that’s an inspiring story,” I said. “Thanks so much for sharing! Good thing I’m marrying a literal king who doesn’t have to get permission from anybody, and I’m still a changeling, which means there aren’t that many people willing to claim the responsibility of telling me what to do.”

“For once, your humanity serves a purpose,” said Tybalt direly.

Dianda rolled her eyes. “Please. If you think I came back over here to tell you I don’t approve, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did. I approve. Not that my opinion matters. I came tosay that all the resources of Saltmist are at your disposal on this quest. Whatever you need, you only need to tell me, and I’ll do my best to provide it.”

I blinked at her. As a noble of the Undersea, Dianda technically lives in another realm, meaning Arden designating me as a hero of the realm in the Mists doesn’t mean anything in Saltmist. Arden would also supply me with whatever it was reasonable to need for a quest to bring one of her Kingdom’s wayward nobles and greatest criminals home. But I hadn’t been expecting the offer from Dianda.

“I, uh, that’s very kind of you,” I said, fumbling my way around the urge to thank her. No matter how much time I spend in Faerie, I’m a child in the human world, and humans thank each other when they do things that are unexpectedly kind. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Patrick and Simon were like brothers once,” said Dianda. “If not for Simon’s devotion to your mother, things might have gone very differently for all three of us. He refused to believe any ill of Amy, and when the woman we knew as Evening Winterrose attempted to interfere with my engagement to Patrick, Simon intervened. I’ve always felt that was the beginning of his downfall. She would never have been able to get her claws into him as deeply as she did if we hadn’t opened the door for her manipulations.” She looked, and sounded, genuinely sorry for any part she might have played in Simon’s downfall, and some of my anger melted away like frost in the summer sun.

“They were still brothers when Patrick came with me to the Undersea. Your mother... she wasn’t as bad then as she is now, but she was getting more and more unreasonable, and Evening had begun to make demands of Simon that made us very uncomfortable. We were trying to convince him to leave his wife when your sister disappeared.” She paused expectantly.

I picked up where she clearly hoped I would. “Meaning divorce was impossible until August was found,” I said.

“I’ll admit, when he first went looking for her sovehemently, we half hoped it was because he’d seen sense and wanted her to consent to his leaving her mother. We were willing to delude ourselves if it meant we weren’t losing him, and I was still adjusting to life in Saltmist with an air-breathing husband, and we allowed our attention to waver more than we should have. That’s our regret to carry.I won’t say we could have stopped or saved him, but maybe we could have done more than we did, and you’ve suffered because of the actions of a man I still have cause to love dearly. And then the earthquake came, and everything got too complicated to walk away from.” Dianda looked at me, dark eyes dry and solemn. “Bring him home. Whatever you need to make that happen, you’ll have it from us; you know you will.”

“There are things you can’t give me,” I said. “But I’ll remember that you offered. Good night, Dianda.”

She nodded, accepting my dismissal for what it was, and wheeled her way back to the table where Patrick was waiting. I turned and looked across the table at Tybalt.

“I don’t feel much like dessert, do you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I find that for once my sweet tooth has deserted me. Shall we return to the safety and comfort of home?” He held his hand out to me.

I took it as we both rose. “Don’t we need to wait for the check?”

“We’re not getting paid for dining here.”

“I meant—you have enough interaction with the human world to know what I meant, you dork. Don’t we need to pay for dinner?”

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