Page 30 of A Killing Frost

“Follow my voice!” I kept feeling around, until my fingers brushed against something soft. I grabbed it, hooking the fingers of both hands into the fabric of Quentin’s shirt and yanking him toward me. He responded by wrapping his arms around me. I did the same with him, trying to shield his body with my own as much as I could. He clung tightly, clearly aware of what I was doing.

It would be traumatic for him if we hit the ground and I splashed all over him, but not as traumatic as dying would be.

There was a soft crashing sound below us. I didn’t have time to react to it before we hit what felt like the crown of a mature willow tree, broad and soft and cushioning. It was so much less violent than I’d expected that I relaxed, allowing my grip on Quentin to slacken.

Which is when we fell out of the tree.

I tightened my hold immediately. We fell the rest of the way to the ground—less than fifteen feet, all told—Quentin landing solidly in the middle of my chest and knocking the breath out of me. Also breaking at least one of my ribs, based on the snapping sound and the stabbing pain that lanced through my left lung. I wheezed, tasting blood, and pushed him away.

“I’m sorry!” squawked Quentin, rolling away and stopping himself before he could get too far. Everything around us was still pitch-black, and it would be far too easy for us to lose each other. “Are you hurt?”

Of course I was hurt. I just took a teenage Daoine Sidhe to the sternum. I breathed as deeply as I could, swallowing bloodand spit, and tried to focus on something other than the pain. It wasn’t easy, since there was nothing to look at except for endless darkness, but the pain was already fading, whisked away by my body’s ludicrous gift for putting itself back together. I could feel my broken rib bending back into its original position, giving my lung room to heal. Not the most comfortable sensation ever. I swallowed again, catching my breath, and managed to croak, “I’m fine. Areyouhurt?”

Because that was the real question. May didn’t heal as quickly as I did, but she could walk off almost anything, thanks to her nigh-indestructible status. I’d be back to fighting strength in a few more seconds. If Quentin had a broken leg, we’d be carrying him.

“No. I landed on you.”

Thank Oberon for small favors. I wiped my eyes, more out of habit than anything else, and pushed myself into a seated position, squinting into the blackness. Nothing. Oh, this was going to be fun. “I can’t believe you followed us into that hole.”

“I can’t believe youjumped.” There was a weariness in his tone that told me clear as the missing daylight that he was lying. Of course, he believed I would jump. There was nothing else I could have done, and everything we’d been through together supported that.

“Yeah, you can.”

He sighed. “Yes, I can.”

There was a rattling sound somewhere nearby, more subdued than normal, followed by a tiny chirp.

“Hey, Spike,” I said. “I know it’s dark, buddy. It’s okay. Sounds like this isn’t where you meant to be, huh? Just follow the sound of my voice, and we’ll take care of you.”

The rattle came again, closer this time, and something spiny rubbed against my leg, moving with the grain of the thorns, so as not to stab me. I only know one rose goblin who’s that careful with people.

“Hey, bud,” I said, and ran a hand along its back. It was trembling. “Okay, we need to find some light, and we need to get out of wherever this is. Hopefully, we haven’t lost the Rose Road completely with this detour.”

“My phone doesn’t work.” Quentin sounded miserable, and a little scared. “I have a flashlight app, but the screen won’t eventurn on. I had a full battery when we got to Shadowed Hills. There’s no reason for my phone not to work.”

No reason, apart from “we were in a dark pit somewhere unknowably deep inside Faerie, having fallen from an ancient road that cut through boundaries set by Oberon himself.” April’s good, and her upgrades to our personal technology have been amazing, but she’s still only a Dryad. She’s not playing on the same field as the Firstborn, or worse yet, the Three, and I had asked Spike to follow a trail originally opened by Maeve in order for us to make it this far. We were in a hell of a lot deeper than our consumer electronics were intended to go.

“Breathe,” I said. “Just breathe. Okay. We’re looking for the place where that woman is sleeping.” Purebloods put a lot of stock in names, and sometimes even saying the name of a powerful enough pureblood can attract their attention. Eira was elf-shot and helpless, but she’d been able to reach out through her dreams to harass Karen. I didn’t know how close we were to her now, and I didn’t want to find out by breaking some magical rule and having her decide to possess one of us.

I also didn’t want to find out that Karen was having dreams about me solely because of the threat Eira posed to her family. If I was the only thing standing between the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn and the Browns, this was not going to go well.

“Yeah,” said Quentin.

“Well, we’re also looking for the places Simon has been, and hopefully for Simon himself. We know that when he kidnapped Luna and Rayseline, he placed them in a formless void of utter darkness. A bubble of space he’d created and suspended between the worlds. And we know he must have been able to access itsomehow, and he’s a magic-borrower. He could have used their blood to open a Rose Road.” His void had to have been anchored somewhere. This seemed like as good a place as any.

“But this isn’t formless,” said Quentin, sounding horrified. He was doubtless remembering that Luna and Raysel had been trapped there for fourteen years, despite all the tricks they’d had at their disposal to try making an escape.

“No. But it’s dark. And maybe Raysel was speaking hyperbolically when she said it was formless—there doesn’t seem to be much around here, and it’s not really safe to go feeling around for more.Which reminds me.” I sat up straighter, taking a deep breath, and was pleased to feel both lungs expand to their usual limits. Take that, blunt force trauma. “Yo,May! We want to get the hell out of here! Where’s my Fetch at?”

There was no echo from my shout, which told me more about our surroundings. Wherever we were, it wasn’t the bottom of a gulch or gully. See? We were learning things even as we sat on our asses and hoped the dark wasn’t full of hungry monsters!

The pause was longer than I liked before May rasped weakly, “Up in the tree. I, um. I landed badly.”

That didn’t sound good. I pushed myself to my feet, academically relieved when I didn’t bash my head on anything. “Keep talking. I’ll follow the sound of your voice.”

“Are you sure that’s,” a pause to cough, “a good idea?” I really didn’t like the bubbling undertone to her words. I had the sinking suspicion that we were about to test just how far her indestructability went, and neither of us was going to be thrilled with the results.

“Nope,” I said, with forced cheerfulness, and held my hands in front of me as I began inching forward into the darkness.

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