Page 38 of A Killing Frost

“Oleander de Merelands?” asked Quentin. “But she—” He caught the pleading look on my face and the way I was subtly but frantically shaking my head as I tried to signal him to silence. “Um,” he said.

Simon narrowed his eyes. “Do you know where she is?” he asked.

May coughed into her hand. The sound was dry and somewhat alarming. “She’s with my family now,” she said.

Simon swung around to aim his bow at her. “Ah, yes, the little Fetch. Still following our dear October like a lost puppy, I see. Haven’t you figured out yet that she doesn’t know how to stay dead?”

“If she did, I wouldn’t be here,” said May. “I thought you wanted her to survive. Isn’t that why you pushed her into the water instead of leaving her to choke to death on the air?”

For the barest of seconds, Simon looked confused. Then smug assurance crowded out the expression as the Luidaeg’s spell asserted itself, leaving him as malicious as before. “I wanted her to suffer. Turning her into an animal rather than a tree was the best way I could think of to guarantee she’d have time to understand and agonize over what had happened. Changelings are scarce better than beasts to begin with. It was a small enough change to make.”

May narrowed her eyes. “That’s revisionist history if I’ve ever heard it. I was there, remember? I remember everything about that day, and you didn’t look at us like you wanted us dead. It was scary. It hurt. But you helped us into the water. You saved October’s life. I wouldn’t be here if she’d died that day, so you saved mine, too. You’re a good man, Simon Torquill. Your so-called ‘lady’ is a monster, like all the Firstborn. You’re better than this. Be better than this.”

“Shut your mouth,” said Simon. He pulled back the string on his bow. Not enough to fire, but enough to make it clear that he was primed to do so. “You have no right to say such things about my lady. She is the heart of my regard.”

“What about Mom?” I blurted. Simon swung his attention—and his arrow—around to me. May sagged as the threat of another elf-shot slumber was removed, then tensed as she realized I’d put myself into the line of fire. I had so little human blood left that ordinary elf-shot probably wouldn’t kill me, but what Simon had brewed wasn’t ordinary elf-shot.

He’d learned to make the stuff at the knee of Eira Rosynhwyr, the woman who’d ensured it would be fatal to anything mortal, and he’d brewed it from ingredients harvested from her land. Not only was it likely to be stronger than normal, but there was no telling how it would interact with my remaining humanity.

“What about your mother?” he asked, a sneer in his voice.

“Mom. You know, Amandine the Liar? Yourwife.”

“Your jests are not amusing ones,” he said. “I never married. Amandine chose another. And if Ihadmarried the woman, one such as you could never call her ‘mother,’ for no wife of mine would ever have had cause to seek a mortal man’s bed and company.”

That was interesting. When the Luidaeg had taken August’s home away, she’d known who her mother and fatherwere. That was part of what had made it a punishment—she was allowed to know she wanted to go home, wanted to go back to her parents, but she couldn’t find them, or recognize them when she did. The same spell, applied to Simon, seemed to have stolen most of his memory of who he’d been.

But how could he justify selling himself to Evening if it hadn’t been in an effort to find his daughter? It didn’t make any sense. “If you never married Amandine and your own daughter never existed, why do you work forher?” I gestured toward Evening. “How did she possibly talk you into selling your soul when she didn’t have that to hold over you?”

Again, that momentary flash of confusion. The Luidaeg is incredibly powerful, but the spell she’d used to rob August of her way home had been tailored to her, and when the Luidaeg had moved it over to Simon, it had been forced to find a new way to do what it was designed to do. It was struggling. His expression hardened.

“My relationship with my lady is none of your concern,” he said. “Only the fact that you have yet to let your filthy mouth pollute her name keeps me from shooting you.”

“Okay, cool, we’re back to threatening me, but I think you don’twantto, or you’d have done it already, so let’s change directions—why are you here?Howare you here? We had to petition Maeve to open a path.”

“My lady trusts me so profoundly that she granted me a gift of her blood many years ago,” he said. “I accessed a Rose Road using blood taken from my shame of a sister-in-law, and once there, it was a simple thing to call a door to lead me to my lady.” His face lit up with brief smugness, then fell. “But it seems I mistook how attached this place was to keeping what it claims, and I’ve been unable to find a way out. Imagine my surprise when I heard your voices through the fog. Really, you should learn to be more subtle.”

“I think Toby’s allergic to subtle,” said Quentin. “It makes her break out in hives or something. There’s not another good explanation for why she is the way she is.”

“Quiet, you,” I said. “We’re in mortal danger right now. This isn’t the time to be mean to me.”

“We’re pretty much always in mortal danger. When is the time to be mean to you?”

“How about next Tuesday?”

Simon, who had been glancing back and forth between us through this whole exchange, scowled and pulled his bowstring back a little further. “Both of you,be quiet,” he snarled. “You’re not taking me seriously. I hate it when people don’t take me seriously. My lady takes me seriously. She would silence you forever if she were awake.”

“Wait a hundred years,” I suggested. “You have the time. In the meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d take a trip with us. Not a long one. But it will help clear some things up for you.”

Simon blinked. “What?”

“I just need to take you to see the Luidaeg, so we can discuss a tiny little insignificant spell you’re currently laboring under. Once that’s cleared up, you can come right back here and sit by your lady’s side until she wakes up and lays waste to Faerie in Titania’s name. Won’t that be nice? Just put down the bow and come with us.”

Simon narrowed his eyes. “Isthatwhy you’ve come seeking me?To convince me I should leave my lady undefended? I won’t be tricked by my brother’s dog, however much he might believe I can be.”

“Oh, oak and fucking ash, Simon, will you getoveryourself?” I snapped. “Sylvester didn’t send me. He’s barely speaking to me right now, and that’s mostly because of you, so if you could cut me a little slack, I’d appreciate it. I know you’re a bastard, and right now that’s all you can even conceive of being, but you were a good person once, and I hope he’s still in there. The man who saved Patrick Lorden’s pixies wouldn’t shoot me just for talking back.”

“Patrick...?” Simon hesitated before doing something I would have considered inconceivable.

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