Page 33 of A Killing Frost

I kept my distance as I studied the sphere, which looked like blown glass or sugar when compared to the threads around it. It had an orange sheen to it, but it smelled faintly of mulled cider and sweet smoke. Simon’s uncorrupted magic, the way it had been before Evening granted him power and twisted him to her own ends.

I took a breath and let myself rise up out of the spell. “The bubble is designed to keep the people inside it alive as long as it possibly can,” I said. “May, I’m assuming it left the branch you broke in place because pulling it out of a normal person would have killed them. But if we stayed here long enough, it would give us food, water, whatever we needed to survive. The idea is to drive us to despair and suffering, not to starvation. So we got a tree to keep us from splitting our skulls on impact with the ground.”

“That’s...” Quentin paused. “I can’t decide whether that’s really evil or really sweet.”

“Kid, I’m marrying a literal cat. He thinks playing with your food before you kill it is a totally normal thing to do. I think youstab it until it stops moving, you don’t prolong its suffering. Maybe don’t make me your moral compass.”

“Too late,” he said simply. “You’re my knight.”

I rubbed my face with one hand. “Okay, look, my head already hurts. Please do me a favor and don’t make it worse.”

Quentin beamed.

Now that I was reasonably sure the bubble was stable, even if I’d managed to turn on the lights, I returned my attention to May. “Are you awake, or did you pass out from the shock of not having a liver anymore?”

May cracked open an eye. “Am I not allowed to pass out from shock?”

“You’re allowed, but then I’ll have to carry you, and you know something’s going to try to kill me and I’m going to drop you on your head. Did you want to add a broken neck to all those missing organs?”

“I did not,” said May, and pushed herself laboriously into a sitting position, grunting with effort. When she was done, she looked down at the ruin of her stomach, grimaced, and asked, “Do you have any duct tape?”

“Not with me. I wasn’t planning to let the Luidaeg do my hair today.” The bubble had continued to grow lighter around us, until it was lit almost as well as a downtown 7-11 at three o’clock in the morning. The light had a similar artificial quality, although at least it wasn’t flickering like some fluorescents. Look as I might, there were no doors or openings, not even above my eye level.

There was also no ground to speak of. Now that the tree was gone, there was nothing. We had found Raysel’s featureless void. If the dark came back, we’d be able to experience exactly what she had for almost fourteen years of her life.

It was enough to make me sick to my stomach. We needed to get out of here. “Right.” I turned to pet Spike. “Hey, buddy. I know you can’t open a Rose Road on your own, but Luna opened this one using the key I took from Goldengreen, and Maeve may have been paying attention. Can you take usbackto the Rose Road we were on before?”

Spike rattled its thorns uncertainly.

“Look, I’m asking a lot of you. I get that. But I can’t open doors to anywhere, and if I collapse this place to escape it, we could windup someplace much worse. So it’s in everyone’s best interests for you to at least try. Can you try for me, buddy? Is that something you can do?”

Spike stood up in Quentin’s arms, looking more feline than ever in the moment before it leapt down and trotted away from us. It wasn’t heading for the wall or for the horizon; neither of those things existed. It was moving towardsomething. The three of us stayed where we were, Quentin and I on our feet, May on the invisible ground, poking gingerly at the edges of her wounded stomach with one finger.

She’s a Fetch and I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re sisters in every way that counts, but blood doesn’t make that list. She has neither my talent with blood magic nor my healing, although she still heals faster than someone who isn’t indestructible. It would probably take her months to regrow her missing organs. Shewouldregrow them, which put her well ahead of most people.

Spike stopped and looked over its shoulder, chirping an invitation. “Guess the prohibition against looking back doesn’t apply here,” I said, and turned to offer May my hands. “Come on. The rose goblin says it’s time to go.”

“I’m not sure I can walk,” she said, but pushed off against the ground before reaching for me, clinging to my forearms for leverage as she levered herself to her feet. The motion caused another sheet of blood to fall from her wounds, mostly clotted but dislodged by gravity. Something red and meaty fell out along with it, hitting the ground at our feet with a soft plop. We both looked at it. Quentin spoke first.

“Ew,” he said.

“Agreed,” said May. She took an experimental step, slow and unsteady. Her legs held her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m not sure how this is working, and I’m not going to question it too deeply,” she said. “As long as I can stand on my own, I’m going to be okay.”

“As long as we don’t have to run,” I said. “We’ll get you bandaged up as soon as we have the opportunity.” I don’t carry much in the way of first aid supplies. With the way I heal, I’d never have time to use them. Not that it would have made much of a difference if I’d been carrying an emergency kit; given the size of her wounds, she could have used all the gauze in an emergencyroomand still gone looking for more.

She leaned heavily on my arm as we moved toward Spike, Quentin following anxiously along behind us, ready to catch her if she fell.

“I’m hurt, not fragile,” she snapped, and promptly winced, adding, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. You’re not the one who hurt me.”

“No, Toby’s the one who dragged you into a hole in the fabric of the universe,” he muttered. When I shot him a sharp look, he shrugged, and said, “It’s the truth!”

“Way to have my back, squire,” I said.

Spike rattled its thorns impatiently at us. We kept walking, May’s blood unpleasantly warm against my hands. Was this how my friends usually felt about me? If so, I had some apologizing to do, because I didn’t like it. Not at all.

When we finally reached the place where Spike waited, it rattled its thorns for a final time before leaping into the empty air and disappearing. There was no hole or visible opening; the rose goblin was simplygone, winking out of view like it had never been there at all.

“Well, if I tore the spell enough to turn the lights on, it’s not so hard to believe that I could also have activated the emergency exit,” I said. “Simon must have gotten in and out at least once, and that means he’d need a door to do it.”

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