Page 29 of A Killing Frost

EIGHT

THE DOOR NONE OF UScould see slammed shut as soon as we were through, leaving us standing stranded in the tunnel of roses. I jumped but didn’t turn toward the sound. Quentin started to. May grabbed the sides of his face, locking his head in place. He blinked at her, obviously confused.

“You can’t look back when you’re on the Rose Road,” she said. “If you do, you’ll be dropped off it, and you’ll wind up wherever the road is running right now. We don’t know where that is, and these roads are old enough to bypass some of Oberon’s closed doors. Plus, I don’t know how we’d get you backonthe Rose Road. Luna’s unlikely to open it for us again.”

“You know, for someone who tried to put all his descendants under house arrest on his way out the door, he sure did leave a lot of loopholes,” said Quentin peevishly. “Am I allowed to look around?”

“Yes,” I said. “You just can’t look back, even if you drop something. You can’t—Spike!” The rose goblin had never come to join us in the greenhouse. I grimaced. “We left Spike behind. I hope Luna doesn’t prune it or anything.”

“She made the rose goblins, she’s not going to hurt one of them,” said May, who sounded about as confident of that as I felt.

“No, but she might clip back any new growth she doesn’t like,” I said. I sighed. “Maybe it can catch up with us. The first time I used a Rose Road, Spike led me to the Luidaeg’s place. We don’t know how much freedom of movement they have in here.”

“That’s true,” said May. “Let’s go.”

We started walking.

The roses forming the walls were from a hundred or more different cultivars, and their blended perfume was a dizzying mixture that made my already aching head hurt even more. I rubbed my temple with one hand as we walked, causing May to look at me with concern.

“It still hurts?” she asked.

“It always hurts when I change my own blood, and I’m barely human anymore,” I said. “I guess this is my human side giving me one last headache as a good-bye present.”

May frowned. “I know you don’t want to stop being a changeling...” she said, trailing awkwardly off.

“Even though it would make everything easier for everyone,” I finished. “I know. Tybalt brought it up while we were at dinner. He’s not going to try to force me to do anything, but he worries about me dying on him, even though I’m so fae at this point that it would take literal centuries for me to get old, and nothing else is going to kill me.”

“I’m pretty sure youcanbe killed,” said May. “Call it a feeling from someone who used to be your death omen. I think you can die and stay dead. It’s just not going to be easy.”

I shot her an amused look, despite the pain. “Gosh, you’re so optimistic, I should bring you onallmy ridiculous quests. It’s easier to do the impossible when I have someone around to remind me that it could kill me.”

“Do you actually know where we’re going, or did we just let a woman who currently hates us all put us on a road to nowhere without a map?” asked Quentin. “Not that I’m questioning your judgment—it’s a little late for that—but I’d like to know if we’re going to wander the rest of eternity through a flower shop from hell.”

“I’m pretty sure starvation is one of the ways Tobycandie, so I’ll be the only one of us wandering forever,” said May blithely.

Quentin gave her a horrified look. I snorted and was preparing to answer when something rattled ahead of us, loud as a maraca being shaken by an over-enthusiastic preschooler. I angled sharply toward the sound, and relaxed as I saw a small, roughly cat-shaped creature push through the wall of roses.

“Spike! There you are, my good goblin! I was afraid we’d left you in Shadowed Hills, but no, you followed us here, because you’resuch a genius, aren’t you?” Spike shook itself the rest of the way free, chirped, and trotted toward me, spines rattling with every step. The rules about never turning back were clearly more flexible for the rose goblins. I knelt, letting it climb into my arms. It chirped again. “Hey, buddy,” I said, and scratched it under its thorny chin. Spike half-closed its eyes, as content as a cat.

May shot me an amused look as I straightened. “You’re such a pushover,” she said.

“Only for family, and that includes Spike.” I looked at the goblin in my arms. “Do you know where we are, buddy? We’re trying to find Simon. That means we need to go to the place Maeve unlocked for her daughter. The place where the bad woman is asleep. Can you help?”

Spike chirped, louder this time, an obvious affirmative, and leapt out of my arms. It trotted a few feet ahead of us, waving its tail in invitation. It didn’t look back. It knew the rules of this place well enough not to look back for us, even if those rules were a little malleable where it was concerned.

“Come on,” I said, and hurried after it, gesturing for May and Quentin to follow. Not a second too soon: it transitioned from trotting to a flat-out run, racing along the thorny ground. I didn’t hesitate, but ran after it, the roses around us blurring into an undifferentiated wall of red, white, and pink, broken occasionally by streaks of yellow or orange. Spike didn’t vary its pace, just kept on racing.

The smell of roses somehow grew even stronger. I would have considered that an impossibility, since we were already surrounded by the things, but the harder we ran, the more cloying the scent became, until I couldn’t breathe through my nose without gagging.

Suddenly, and without warning, there was a gap in the wall ahead of us, a black slash among the colorful flowers, opening onto apparent nothingness. Spike chirped, still running hard, and leapt through the gap, into the darkness.

Hesitation wasn’t going to help us, and I had the genuine feeling that whatever this was, it was a limited-time offer. I fumbled behind me until I found May’s hand and gripped it fast. Then I leapt after Spike into the darkness, and fell, both of us plummeting into nothingness.

Someone screamed. It might have been me. May was laughing,sounding astonished and delighted at the same time. I guess knowing you’re genuinely impossible to kill makes falling an unknowable distance toward an equally unknowable landing a lot less terrifying. I wasn’t too terribly worried about hitting the ground—I’ve survived deadly falls before—but Quentin isn’t as resilient. I could hear him screaming, and he wasn’t far away.

“Quentin!” I shouted, letting go of May and feeling around helplessly in the black. “Quentin, try to find my hand!”

“It’s dark!” he yelled back, sounding more than a little freaked out. It made sense; we’d been falling for a long time, and purebloods aren’t used to being unable to see. Their night vision is so good that anything short of a closed cave is usually navigable for them.

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