Page 28 of A Killing Frost

Trying not to show my gratitude too openly and risk changing her mind, I dug into my pocket and produced the braided metalkey that had once belonged to Evening Winterrose, before she was supposedly murdered and my life changed forever. “I did.”

“Give it to me.”

I took three steps forward and dropped it into her palm. As always, I felt a slight pang of loss at the act of giving it to someone else. It wasn’t like my knife, something that mattered to me and was always close to hand, but it was something I’d had longer than almost anything else at this point, and it represented a time in my life that was over. Things had been simpler then.

In a way, it represented the transition between things being simple and things becoming very, very complicated. And when I looked at it that way, my attachment made no sense at all. I should want the thing as far away from me as possible because the last thing I needed was more complication.

Luna turned the key over in her hand before holding it up to the light as if she’d never seen it before. “I do wonder who made this,” she said. “I know where you obtained it, but my aunt was never fond of working metal or making her own jewelry. Mother could have done it once, but she didn’t; this isn’t her handiwork.”

As the daughter of two Firstborn, Luna shares the same sort of queasy, overly familiar relationship with them that I do. Her mother is a child of Titania, however, whereas most of my acknowledged family comes from Maeve and Oberon. It’s a very different sort of relationship.

Her father was a son of Maeve, and an actual monster, unlike the stories Titania’s children spread about the Luidaeg and her other siblings. Blind Michael alone was enough to justify many of their lies about the children of Maeve. He preyed on children.

I killed him. I sleep better at night knowing he’s dead, and never coming back, and even knowing that, I can’t stand the flicker of candlelight. He took that away from me, possibly forever.

“Someone may come to take this back from you someday,” said Luna, almost dismissively. “When that happens, I want you far from here.” She turned the key over one more time before she shoved it into the air, grimacing slightly.

It slid smoothly into a keyhole I couldn’t see, that probably hadn’t existed at all until Luna needed it, vanishing to a point halfway up its shaft. Luna raised her eyes to mine, and I recoiled involuntarily from the loathing I saw there.

“Whenever you touch this family, we lose something,” she said.“Sometimes things that can’t be recovered. I can’t be the one to banish you, and my husband refuses to take that step on his own behalf, even as I tell him it would benefit us all.”

Sylvester winced and looked away. So he was still defending me, at least a little. That was good. I hadn’t been counting on it.

“I don’t want you coming back here until it’s time for you to speak in Rayseline’s defense,” she continued. “I don’t want you—any of you—anywhere near my family.”

I blinked. “Quentin has to come here for his training,” I said. “The High King insists he be properly trained to serve his people one day, and there are lessons I can’t teach him.”

Luna shrugged. “He should have thought of that before he agreed to damage his future prospects by being squired to you.”

The urge to defend both my squire and myself, to point out all the errors and lies in what she said, was strong. I tamped it down, grinding my teeth and holding my tongue. Not easy.

“I’m quite sure Queen Windermere will be happy to take over the remainder of my training,” said Quentin, in what I thought of as his “crown prince voice”—calm, measured, and polite. He was reminding Luna without reminding her that he represented the trust of his parents, and once he removed himself from their custodianship, they would lose that trust. Possibly forever.

I wasn’t sure alienating the future High King of the Westlands to score points against me was a good move, politically speaking, but in that moment, Luna didn’t seem to care. She grasped the key again, this time twisting it sharply to the left. There was an audible click, which seemed odd only because there were no visible locks. Luna took her hand away.

“Do you agree?” she asked.

“I can only speak for myself, but yes, I agree,” I said. “Unless my liege summons me, I won’t come back until you wake Raysel and it’s time for me to speak at her trial.”

“I agree,” said May, and the judgmental regret in her voice was deep enough to drown in.

“I agree,” said Quentin.

“Good. Then I’m finally rid of you.” Luna twisted the key further. There was a second click, softer than the first, and she opened a door none of us could see, revealing a long tunnel lined with roses. She pulled the key out of the air and held it out to me. “Now go.”

“Promise me we can come back.”

She frowned, key still held out. “I just banished you, and you agreed.”

“Not to Shadowed Hills, necessarily, but from the Rose Road. Swear on the root and the branch that this road will lead us home again.”

She sighed, frown fading. “Fine. I swear, this is a road from here to someplace else, and home again, although it will not return you here.”

“Good enough,” I said, and took the key.

Sylvester, who hadn’t said a word in my defense while his wife was effectively exiling me, turned his face away and didn’t watch us walk into the opening in the air.

I guess as far as he was concerned, I was already gone.

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