Page 27 of A Killing Frost

I was still bent double, mouth on my arm, although there was no blood and not even the healing remnants of a wound. I opened my eyes and straightened. Another wave of dizziness swept over me, strong enough this time that I fell backward, narrowly missing the nearest clump of roses as I landed on my butt in the dirt. A few thorns pierced my jeans, adding injury to insult.

Quentin rushed to help me to my feet. “Toby! Are you all right?” A pause. “What did you do to your hair?”

“I’m fine. How bad is it?” Reaching inward, I could feel what remained of my mortality cowering at the bottom of my blood, like a rabbit afraid of the hounds. Of course, it wasn’t really doing that—biology doesn’t work that way. Magic and science sometimes take very different snapshots of the same situations.

I was still a little bit human. Not enough. Maybe a quarter; probably substantially less. Tybalt wouldn’t be upset by that, but I was. This hadn’t been my intention. And even the thought of trying to shift myself back right now made my head spin and ache worse. This wasn’t the time.

May moved to put her hand on my other shoulder as Quentin let go of me. I leaned against her, scanning the room until I found Sylvester. He was in the same place; I was the one who’d moved. He stared at me like he was seeing a ghost. I guess watching my hair bleach itself in real time had been unsettling for him.

Raysel was motionless in her coffin. She couldn’t heal like I did, and the scratches on her arm were still gently bleeding. The scentof it hung sticky in the air, stronger to my specially attuned nose than the scent of the roses. I could taste the new makeup of her magic in the scent; it was still built on a base of hot wax, but the mustard flower was gone, replaced by crushed blackthorn fruit. Interesting. I still don’t fully understand what determines magical scents, but I know they’re partially a factor of heritage. She must have gotten the mustard from her mother, and now it was gone.

There would be time to think about that later. Right now, I had a quest to finish, and a stepfather to find. “She’s fine with you waking her up,” I said, voice low and a little rougher than I intended. “She knows she’ll have to stand trial, but she’s feeling better, and she’s ready.”

Sylvester blinked. “October, yourhair...”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I knew why they kept saying it. My mother looks like she’s been bleached. Everything about her has been drained of as much of its color as possible, leaving her a watercolor sketch of a woman who looks about as substantial as the morning mist. Every time my blood shifts away from humanity and toward the fae, I lose a little more of the coloration I inherited from my father.

“Anyway.” I shoved my knife into its sheath and folded my arms, glaring at the man who was my liege and had once been the person I trusted most in all the world. “Can I talk to Luna now? Because I’m not going in to talk to Rayseline again. I don’t have enough humanity left to pay for another visit.” That might or might not be true. In the moment, it felt entirely sincere.

“I... yes.” Sylvester bowed his head as he turned to the nearest cluster of flowers. “Dear, would you come to the state room, please? October needs to speak with you.”

The flowers rustled before turning away from him, exactly like a sullen teen refusing to look at a parent who’d displeased them. Silence hung in the room, almost as heavy as the scent of Raysel’s magic and the perfume wafting from the roses. I leaned against May, letting her steady, silent presence lend me the strength I didn’t presently have on my own. She’d be with me until the end. That was what it meant to have a Fetch.

To have a sister, too.

The roses shivered again before the vines began moving, curling and expanding to form a tunnel of sorts, like the sort fancy gardens like to make with carefully constructed trellises. There were notrellises here, just the roses holding themselves upright through sheer force of Luna’s magical will.

There was a momentary stillness, and Luna came walking down the tunnel.

She was beautiful in the way only the fae can be beautiful, like a natural disaster walking as a woman, and she was terrible in the same way, tall and willowy, with hair that hung past her knees in a riot of curls, pale pink at the crown of her head and darkening as it descended, until it was red-black at the tips. Her eyes were pollen-yellow, and her skin was white as bone or ivory, with no color to soften it. Luna Torquill might be one of the only people in Faerie who’s actually paler than my mother.

She wasn’t always like that. She was all soft browns and grays when I was younger, a warm and loving Kitsune shadow haunting the halls of her husband’s knowe. Changing the blood really does change everything, in Faerie.

She walked to her husband’s side and stopped, turning her dispassionate gaze on me. I fought the urge to flinch. No one can make you feel small and judged like the people who loved you as a child.

“Why are you here?” she demanded. “We have only one sleeper left for you to wake, and she isn’t yours to run away with on another of your mad quests.”

So don’t tell Luna about my plan to claim offense against Rayseline, check. “I’m here on another of my mad quests,” I said. “I need you to open a Rose Road for me.”

Luna looked momentarily nonplussed before she forced her expression of dispassionate disapproval back into her face. Neutrality was apparently easier for her. Well, it wasn’t easier for me, and it made me want to scream that we were better than this, that I’d done enough, risked enough, lost enough for the sake of her family that she owed me anger if she didn’t owe me anything else. “Why in Oberon’s name would I be willing to do that for you?” she asked.

“Because I have to find Simon if I want to get married, and he’s probably looking for his liege, and the last time I saw her, she was elf-shot and asleep at the end of a Rose Road.” I didn’t want to say Eira’s name in the presence of the roses. They might not be hers, but she controlled too many roses for me to feel safe bringing her up here. Even more, I didn’t want to tell her about Karen. I wanted Luna as far away from the members of my surrogate family aspossible. “I don’t know how he could have reached her there, or if he has, but I’m trying to avoid going to the Luidaeg for this one, and that means starting in the places I know he wants to go. Since he can’t go to Mom’s tower.” Privately, I doubted he could come to Shadowed Hills, either. He and Sylvester might have drifted apart, but they had loved each other dearly once, and Simon had helped to construct the anchors binding the knowe to the delicate membrane between the Summerlands and the mortal world. This place had been his home.

And right now, home was precisely what he didn’t get to have.

Luna’s nostrils flared as she took a deep breath and turned to Sylvester. “It’s unfair of you to allow her to ask this of me,” she said, voice mild. “You should never have let her back into our home.”

“Technically, it was Etienne who let us in, and he did that because nothing I’ve done has been bad enough for myliegeto ban me from the demesne where I’m sworn to serve,” I said. “I was told it would be better if I kept my distance. I wasn’t banished from the Duchy. I’d have to cross a lot more lines for that to become appropriate.”

From the burning anger in Luna’s eyes when she turned back to me, she didn’t think I needed to cross any more lines. I had already crossed them all as far as she was concerned, and I had no business being here.

“Perhaps my husband didn’t let you in, but he let you stay,” she said, voice measured. “That seems like quite enough offense to me.”

That word just kept coming up today. I took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before I let it slowly out. “Please, Luna,” I said. “Please. I always did my best to do whatever you needed or wanted me to do. When you got sick, I would have done anything to save you. I went into Blind Michael’s lands to keep you safe. I shifted Raysel’s blood because you asked me to. I just need a road. I just need a way to get to the sleeper, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

She frowned, and for a moment, I was sure she was going to refuse me. Then she held out her hand.

“I know you don’t want an ordinary Rose Road, because none of the places they can reach are the place you need,” she said. “That means you brought the key.”

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