Page 17 of A Killing Frost

Goldengreen hadn’t always looked like that. When Eira had held it, it had been cold, unwelcoming, and virtually unlived-in. It had looked more like a showroom or a theater set than a place where people were allowed to be. Dean had changed that.

Dean had changed a lot of things. I let my fingertips trail against the wall as I gestured for May to follow me down the hall toward the kitchen. The stone was warm and the air was sweet, and it was good to be back, even if this wasn’t home for me anymore.

I’ve always believed knowes were alive. They just don’t exist at the same speed people do, probably because there’s no need when you’re an immortal faerie building existing partially outside the rules of normal geometry. With that in mind, it made sense that Goldengreen would be glad to see me. I’d always tried my best to do right by it, and that’s more than I can say of a lot of landholders.

“You don’t look as off-balance as you used to when you made that transition,” said May. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m not as human as I used to be, either,” I pointed out. Moving between the human world and the Summerlands is disorienting for humans, which means it’s also hard on changelings. Harder whenthey’re using a door that isn’t opened all that often, which used to apply to literally every door into Goldengreen. “I feel fine. I just want to get this over with so I can go home and reassure Tybalt that I’m not going to throw myself willy-nilly into the first woodchipper I see.”

“You’d probably get better,” said May.

“I don’t think ‘probably’ is going to make him less tense about the whole situation,” I countered. As we got closer to the kitchen, the light got brighter, until the hall was almost at what I would consider normal levels of illumination. I didn’t hear anyone. I frowned and raised my voice, calling, “Marcia? Are you here?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, there was a sound like someone ringing a hundred jingle bells, and what looked like an entire flock of pixies burst through the kitchen door, multicolored wings chiming with every motion. They swarmed around us, wings tickling our cheeks, and settled on our arms and shoulders, or tangled themselves contentedly in our hair.

“Hello to you, too,” I said. They could understand me, even if they were too small and their voices too high-pitched for us to understand them. “We’re looking for Marcia. Do you know where she is?”

One of the pixies—male, about six inches tall, glowing a deep cherry red, like cough syrup in sunlight—launched himself off my shoulder and hung in front of my nose, an imperious look on his face. He snapped his wings together with such force that the sound was more like a thundercrack than a bell, something I hadn’t known pixies could do, and shook his head.

“Oh,” I said. “Are you saying you don’t know where she is, or that you won’t take us to her?”

He scowled at me and shook his head again, harder this time. I sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re too small for me to understand, and I’m too big to understand you. We’re really here for Dean and Quentin, so if you’d lead me to them...?”

The pixie shook his head again. This was getting annoying. May put a hand over her mouth, visibly concealing a grin.

“Don’t help,” I snapped at her.

She laughed. “I’m sorry, but you should see the look on your face,” she said. “They’re pissed because you haven’t come to see them. They feel abandoned. You should be able to understandthat, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying. You start to feel abandoned when one of us goes to the store for too long.”

I focused on the pixie, rather than giving in to the urge to yell at my Fetch for knowing me too well. “Is she right? Are you messing with me because you’re mad?” I asked. “I’m sorry. This isn’t my knowe anymore, and you know how it is with the big folk. We get territorial and weird sometimes.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re unwelcome,” said a voice. The pixies scattered as I turned. Marcia was standing in the hall behind me, arms folded, looking at me with bland amusement.

Marcia. A thin-blooded changeling, barely a quarter—and that was if I was being generous—with bottle blonde hair that was nonetheless completely natural so far as I could tell. She was casually dressed in jeans and a long tunic-style sweatshirt, the arms of Goldengreen pinned to her collar like a badge of honor, which technically I suppose they were. Marcia is the only thin-blooded changeling in the Mists to stand as seneschal to a noble court, even if many people would argue that Goldengreen only counts as a noble court on a technicality.

She was my seneschal before she was Dean’s, and she was my friend Lily’s handmaid before she worked for me. She has always been, unfailingly, kind. If there’s a person in Faerie who personifies doing their best, it’s Marcia.

“I know,” I said, and smiled at her. “I’m here for Quentin.”

“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of that, can I?” she asked, her own smile fading. “Dean’s going to be spending the next week hunting kelpies along the coast—they’ve been breeding faster without the Selkies there to keep their numbers down, and until things stabilize, they’re a problem. He really needs a little quality time with his guy.”

“Sadly, no, you can’t. Dean’s parents decided to remind me of some of the finer points of pureblood marriage law, and now I need to take Quentin on a quest neither of us is going to enjoy.”

“Can’t it wait a few hours?”

I wanted to say yes, and that was the problem. Karen’s dream aside, Tybalt was already worried about me trying to delay our wedding on purpose. If I allowed an actual barrier to us getting married to exist until I felt like it was the right time to tear it down, he was never going to forgive me. Oh, he might say he would. He might even think he would. But I know rejection, and I’d seen thepain in his expression. This would eat at him if I didn’t do everything I could, as quickly as I could, to make it better.

Besides, the very vague outline of a plan that I was formulating was absolutely terrifying, and terrifying things don’t get easier when I put them off until tomorrow. “I’m sorry, but no.”

Marcia frowned. May stepped forward, shrugging broadly.

“Dean knew what he was doing when he got involved with a squire in active training,” she said. “If Quentin’s knight calls, he has to answer. That’s the deal. Just like if there’s something wrong in Goldengreen, Dean has to handle it no matter how inconvenient the timing is. It’s lousy, but it’s the way things work. Where are they?”

“Follow me,” said Marcia, and sighed as she turned and walked down the hall. May and I followed. It wouldn’t have made sense to do anything else.

Marcia led us to a door that had appeared after I gave up the knowe, adding further credence to my belief that knowes are alive. It had recognized Dean’s need for a private way to spend time with his parents, and it had provided what everyone now referred to as “the receiving room.” She opened the door, revealing a stone staircase winding down into a cavernous, well-lit room. Gently glowing abalone shells were set into the sides of the stairwell.

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