Page 57 of A Killing Frost

Goldengreen was going to be in mourning soon if we didn’t do something about it. We stepped out of the hallway, into the courtyard, and the Luidaeg made a sound barely shy of a gasp, a strangled inhalation that sounded entirely alien coming from her. The air was even thicker with the cloying smell of Simon’s magic, forcing me to breathe through my nose to stop it coating my tongue and the back of my throat. Debris littered the floor, weapons, cooking implements, and other, less martial artifacts—books and eyeglasses and tumblers, all the things people would have been carrying in their hands when they were unexpectedly interrupted by Simon Torquill and his captive.

There was no blood. There were no bodies. But the lowest tier of the gardens, usually reserved for Marcia’s kitchen herbs and easier-to-grow vegetables, like zucchini and tomatoes, was suddenly clogged with trees. Oak and ash and hawthorn and yew, all the sacred woods of Faerie were growing there, where I knew for a fact they hadn’t been on my last visit.

I could see screaming faces pressing against the bark, distorted by the grain of the wood, but recognizable all the same. Nothing else about them was recognizable. Looking at the trees, I couldn’t say which one was Dean, or who any of the others might have been.

The soil around them was dense with red-capped toadstools and even larger mushrooms with purple-and-yellow caps. The toadstools glowed faintly, in a variety of colors that didn’t match the red of their caps. I turned back to the Luidaeg, pressing a hand to the base of my throat as both a signal of distress and an attempt to keep myself from vomiting.

“Did Simon really doallthis?” I whispered.

Marcia, meanwhile, had drifted over to stand in front of the largest of the new oaks, her hands clasped in front of herself like a very small child and her eyes filling with tears. “He told me to run,” she whispered. “He saw what was happening, he saw he wouldn’t be able to stop it, and he told me to run. So I ran. Maybe if I’d stayed, this wouldn’t have... maybe I could have...”

“Hey,” said the Luidaeg. “No. Don’t do that to yourself. My ownmother couldn’t have stopped this. The magic that shaped this was Simon’s, but the power beneath it belonged to my sister. She should never have given it to him.”

“Because he’s using it irresponsibly?” I asked.

“Because it’s destroying him! You think I don’t just hand out bottles of my blood because I’m being greedy? Sweet daddy’s ass, Toby, you’ve had to use my blood. You know how strong it was, and that was under controlled circumstances, when I spilled it to save your life. He’s flinging her powers around like there won’t be any consequences. Taste the spell. You’ll see for yourself.”

I frowned before taking a shallow breath, this time trying to taste Simon’s magic, rather than shutting it out. There was the smoke, and the flavor of rotting oranges, and the absolute absence of anything approaching mulled cider, which would have told me Simon was coming back into himself...

And there, under all the rest of it, was a hint of snow, of cold, of the winter’s incipient descent. For all the Luidaeg’s protests that Evening was a summer creature, her magic had always held the scent of snow and roses, like she was the purest part of winter given physical form and malicious intent. Now that I was looking for it, it was everywhere. It was freezing the rest of his magic, encasing it from the inside out. What would happen when it took over completely? What happens when Simon Torquill’s magic grows red with roses?

It’s a question I doubt anyone has needed to ask in a long, long time, not since the Firstborn were common and Faerie was learning to cope with the size of their powers. I’ve known more Firstborn than anyone needed to, really, but I’ve never used their blood the way Simon was using Evening’s. He was using powers that had never been his to channel, that his body wasn’t equipped to handle, and people were going to be hurt. Very, very badly.

I stared at the Luidaeg. “We have to find him.”

“I know.”

“We have to stop him.”

“I know.”

“He’ll be trying to get to Saltmist next, since he can’t find Shadowed Hills and he’s forgotten the tower is even relevant to him and ugh, Luidaeg, next time you need to ruin someone’s entire life in exchange for a candle, can you do it by turning them to stone or something like that? So they don’t go around making things harder on the rest of us?”

“I’ll do what the magic allows,” she said stiffly. The Luidaeg set her own prices, yes, but sometimes they were too strange and too specific to have been her own idea. Taking August’s way home when she really wanted my sister to find Oberon wasn’t just steep, it was cruel, in a way the Luidaeg usually wasn’t. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that I didn’t fully understand the geas she’d been forced to live under.

“Speaking of what the magic allows, this is Simon’s spell, though spun from my sister’s strength,” she said, turning her attention to the nearest tree. She reached out and ran the tip of her finger along a seam in the bark, expression turning contemplative. “The world isn’t meant to bear this sort of strength, not the way it used to. We’ve left this pain behind.”

“Can I help?” I tried to see the spell the way I’d seen the one Simon used to weave his shard realm, the way he’d woven the spell that had almost turned Jazz into a fish in my kitchen the first time he’d approached me after the pond. I got a brief, wavering glimpse of what looked like macramé, only to lose sight of it as soon as it appeared, wisping away into the air. A bolt of pain lanced through my head. I winced.

The Luidaeg turned to me, and her expression was barely shy of outright sympathy. “Hurts, doesn’t it? You’re not supposed to behold our workings so directly. The ways of the Firstborn are subtle and dreadful, and sometimes even our own parents couldn’t contain us, although they were far more equipped for the attempt than you could ever be. No, this isn’t something you can unmake. I can try, although my sister’s involvement means it may or may not work.”

“And if it doesn’t—”

“Either you or Marcia is going to wind up becoming the new custodian of Goldengreen. Which means probably you, since I doubt even Arden could be convinced to put a thin-blooded changeling in charge of a county.”

I stared at her, mouth going dry. Finally, I swallowed and asked, “Are you really saying Dean and the others could belost?”

“Look at this room.” The Luidaeg waved her hands. “No windows. No skylight. The plants are sustained by the knowe’s magic, but dawn will never find them here, and without dawn to weaken the transformation, if I can’t tear it down, you’d need to wake my sister and convince her to do it for you. I know you like to wake upsleepers and ask them to do you favors, but I think this one would be a little bit beyond even you.”

“Believe me, she’s the last person in the world I want to see wake up.” I shook my head. “I need to get out of here. I need to find and stop Simon. You’re going to stay here and break the spell?”

“If I can.”

“Then there’s just one more thing I need for you to do.”

“What’s that?” she asked, warily.

Good for her. A little wariness was justified, under the circumstances. I took a deep breath, refusing to allow myself to look away.

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