Page 39 of A Killing Frost

He lowered his bow.

“How do you know that name?” he asked.

I blinked. “He and his wife are friends of mine. And my squire is courting his son.” I wasn’t sure Simon had had enough recent interaction with the human world to have picked up on the concept of “dating,” and I didn’t want to confuse the matter when we were finally getting through to him. “Dean’s a good kid. A lot like his dad, thankfully, since I’m not sure San Francisco is set up for a land-dwelling version of Dianda.”

“You’re lying,” said Simon, sounding more than a little lost. “Patrick Lorden has stopped his dancing.”

“What?” asked Quentin, sounding baffled.

“What?” echoed May.

“No, he isn’t,” I said, a horrible picture starting to form. Simon had been absent, presumably mourning Oleander, when Patrick and Dianda had come to the land courts for the first time in my lifetime. It was Rayseline who’d kidnapped Dean, Peter, and Gillian. Simon hadn’t been involved. Eveninghadbeen, but why would she have felt the need to tell one of her toys what another of them had been tasked to do? Especially after Simon had failed to kill me, his estranged wife’s daughter, how could he be trusted to know that the children of his former friend were in danger?

Simon was titled but not landed, and he hadn’t been a part of the political structure of the Mists for at least a hundred years, if he’d ever been one before. Evening had been controlling where he went and what he did since August’s disappearance, and there had never been any indication that she’d sent him to the Undersea.

How much had he lost in the earthquake? How much had heallowed her to take away? And how much more had the Luidaeg taken when she took his home out of his chest, leaving his heart an empty hall? He’d known Patrick was alive when we’d walked together through my mother’s lands. But Patrick was part of his home, and it would have been far too easy to excise him from memory.

“I swear, Patrick’s alive,” I said. “If you’ll come with me, you can see him for yourself.” He owed me, after the stunt he’d pulled at dinner. A little quality time with his former bestie was really the least that he could do.

“You would take me to him?” he asked dubiously. “Me, who is your enemy?”

“I know you’re my enemy right now, Simon, but I assure you, I’ve never been your enemy. Not before today, and not now.” I quirked a shadow of a smile. “This is a one-sided rivalry, and I’m not planning to start playing along.”

He adjusted the aim of his arrow, keeping it trained firmly on me. That was better than aiming it at Quentin.

“Dude, if you shoot me, no one’s going to take you to Patrick,” I said. “May and Quentin certainly aren’t going to do it. I’m telling you, Patrick and Dianda are alive. They’re in Saltmist. They have two sons, and they’re happy. Patrick misses you. I think your lady told you a few fibs to make sure your loyalty would remain focused on her and her alone.”

His obsession with finding August would have been a useful tool for her to use. His isolation from Amandine would have been a lever. But his attachment to Patrick, a genuinely nice person who wouldn’t have approved of the things Simon was being manipulated into doing, would never have been anything but a barrier to complete control.

“Keep my lady from your lips,” said Simon, but his aim was wavering. He wanted to know what I was offering to show him. He wanted it more badly than I had ever seen him want anything.

Slowly, I raised my hands, palms up, in the traditional gesture of surrender. “So come with us,” I said. “Let me take you to him.” And if we happened to make a little pit stop at the Luidaeg’s first, well, that was only to be expected, really. It didn’t make me his enemy.

“I don’t think so,” said Simon. “I have a better idea.” He relaxed his grip on the bowstring, allowing it to return to neutral withoutfiring the arrow, and dipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out half a dozen rose thorns and scattering them on the ground between us.

I tensed immediately. It’s never a good thing when the magic-users start throwing random bits of natural debris around. “What are you—”

That was all I had time to say before thick rose vines erupted from the ground, growing rapidly until they were several inches in diameter. They whipped out and wrapped themselves around the three of us, pinning my arms to my sides without breaking my skin. May and Quentin were similarly cocooned, and I didn’t smell blood. Thankfully. Simon was being careful.

He smiled a little as he walked toward me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t trust you not to attack me, or to tell me truly what I need to know. Words deceive. Only one thing tells the complete and honest truth.”

I fought the urge to struggle against the vines. I couldn’t break free, and hurting myself wasn’t going to make this any easier. “I pinky promise that none of us was planning to attack you!” I protested. “My squire’s unarmed, and my Fetch is currently hard at work growing herself a new liver. How’s the regeneration going, May?”

“Slow but steady,” she said, sounding utterly unconcerned about our current predicament. The break to argue with Simon seemed to have done her some material good; her color was better, and while I couldn’t be positive, what I could see of the hole in her abdomen through the vines looked like it had gotten smaller. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t have the strength to rush you, and I’m not the stabby one. That’s October’s job.”

“I’m not worried about any of you now that you’re properly secured,” said Simon as he lowered his bow and walked toward me. His steps were slow and deliberate, and it would have been easy to read them as arrogant, but as I watched, I saw them for something else:

Simon was afraid. He was afraid that if he left us with the freedom to move, we’d attack him. He was afraid we were setting him up for some sort of ambush, and it hurt my heart to watch him. He was like this because he’d cared more about saving his daughter than anything else in the world. When things got bad, he’d been unwilling to give up on family.

I didn’t know when it had happened, and I didn’t entirely understandhowit had happened, but somewhere along the way, he’d become the Torquill brother I felt safer trusting. That didn’t mean I was actually going to do it, especially not when he had me wrapped in rose vines and held immobile, but unlike Sylvester, he had never betrayed me without good reason, and that made all the difference in the world. As Simon approached, I tensed, but forced myself not to start fighting against the vines. If I cut myself on the thorns, I’d heal almost immediately. That was the good part.

Since he didn’t believe I was my mother’s daughter, the speed with which I healed might convince him I was lying about everything, and that I was actually a Toby-shaped thing trying to trick him.

Given that I had always been reasonably sure he was one of the people responsible for sending a Doppelganger to my doorstep shortly after my escape from the pond, the idea had a certain beautiful irony to it. Not enough to force my hand, but enough to make me smile a little. Everything was silent as he made his way toward me. Even Quentin and May were biting their tongues for once, while Spike huddled against my vine-wrapped ankles.

The rose goblin had an excellent sense for when I was in danger. If this had been Simon trying to trick me, Spike would have been rattling wildly. The fact that he wasn’t made me relax still further, until Simon was right in front of me, superficially cocky expression doing nothing to blunt the fear in his eyes.

“Only one thing tells me the truth,” he said again, and made a complex gesture with his hand. The vines around me immediately constricted, thorns piercing my skin.

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