Page 68 of A Killing Frost

I turned to face Quentin. “I need my knife back.”

He looked at me mulishly, jaw jutting out at an angle entirely unbefitting someone who was going to be asked to rule a continentsomeday. “You could havedied,” he said. “You left me alone with Simon. If I hadn’t taken the knife, he was going to shoot me, too.”

“And if you think a knife was going to stop him from letting go of a bowstring, we need to call Etienne and arrange for more lessons,” I said. “Knife, please. Luidaeg? Can Quentin get up now?”

“Give the lady back her pokey toy, kid,” said the Luidaeg. “I want to see what she’s about to do.”

“I don’t,” said Tybalt.

He was right. He didn’t. If there had been a way to make him leave, I would have taken it, for distressing as this was going to be for the rest of us, I had no doubt it was going to be twice as bad for him. I didn’t turn. If I saw his face, I would probably lose my nerve. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, hand outstretched, waiting as Quentin sullenly stood, stomped across the room, and slapped the hilt of my knife back into my palm.

“I appreciate it,” I said. Something Tybalt had said finally clicked home, and I blinked. “Half of Goldengreen enchanted?”

“I had time to restore most of the larger occupants of the knowe to their customary forms before I got called away by the rolling emergency that is your ongoing existence,” said the Luidaeg dryly. “When this adventure is over, I’ll get back to work, and restore the rest of them. I’m sure someone will get around to paying me eventually, since the alternative is a pissy, ill-treated sea witch hanging around making nasty comments about people who don’t pay their bills.”

“Right.” That explained why Quentin looked sullen, not hysterical. If Dean was bipedal again, half of his problems were solved. Good thing for both of us that I was about to produce some new ones. I turned back to Simon. The Luidaeg snapped her fingers. He opened his eyes, stiffening when he saw his surroundings, and started to slide a hand over the cushion next to him in the time-honored “searching for a weapon” gesture.

I held up my knife, wiggling it at him. “Maybe chill,” I said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“I might,” said Tybalt.

“We can start a club,” said Quentin.

The Luidaeg didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The woman could radiate quiet malice like it was her job. Simon paled.

“Stop being terrifying, everyone, I know what I’m doing.” I approached the couch, kneeling in front of Simon as I pulled the candle stub out of my pocket. “You may not remember this, but you made a bargain with the sea witch,” I said. “You gave her your way home in exchange for your daughter’s freedom, a daughter you immediately forgot, because if you knew she was there to find, you could never be truly lost. You promised Antigone of Albany, daughter of Oberon and Maeve, born when the tide was a toy and the sea was a wonderland, that you would find her father and bring him back to her. Do you remember?”

Wordless and wide-eyed, Simon shook his head. He couldn’t seem to decide whether he should be looking at me or at my knife, which was an understandable dilemma. I have trouble figuring out whether to focus on the warrior or the weapon when someone’s that close to me with something that can do me harm. At the end of the day, though, a knife’s just a knife; what matters is the hand that holds it.

“N-no,” he said, finally seeming to realize I was going to wait until he gave me an answer. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember any of this.”

“You will,” I said, and placed the candle on the floor in front of me as I raised the knife, placing the point of it against my chest, right in front of my heart. A quick, hard thrust would be enough to drive it home. “Simon Torquill, by fae law, you are, and have always been, my father, whether we’ve accepted it or not. I spent most of my life not knowing what you were to me, and now you’ve forgotten what I am to you. But as your child, born of blood or no, I have the right to claim your debts as my own. Do you agree?”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You seem to have gotten the wrong idea. I assure you, if I had a child, I would know—”

“Do youagreethat a daughter has the right to take her father’s debts?” I hissed, between my teeth. I could hear Tybalt making an angry growling noise behind me, and I had little doubt that only the presence and obvious approval of the Luidaeg was keeping him from lunging forward and disrupting what I was preparing to do.

I had a man who loved me more than he loved his own safety. Who loved me enough to stand idly by while I did the wrong thingfor the right reasons. Oh, sweet Maeve, I hoped I wasn’t about to take myself away from him.

“I agree,” said Simon, in a puzzled tone.

“Good,” I said, and slammed the knife home as the candle lit itself.

NINETEEN

THE PAIN WAS LESSextreme than I expected it to be. It washed over me like a wave breaking on the shore, disappearing as soon as it passed across my skin. There was still a knife sticking out of my chest. It just didn’t hurt.

The candle burned a clear and lambent blue, the shade of swampfire, the color of magic.

Simon stared at me, horror and confusion in his eyes. Then he blinked, and while the horror didn’t disappear, the confusion did, replaced by something far worse: comprehension. “October?” he said, in a puzzled voice devoid of either hostility or dislike. “What have you—what have youdone?”

I could feel feathers in my throat, tickling and scratching me as something moved there. I coughed, trying to force them back down, and said, “I’ve paid for your freedom. Don’t worry, I have a plan. And Patrick is waiting for you.”

Now the confusion was back, leavened with a sliver of hope. “Patrick? My Patrick? I remember you saying—but that can’t be true, can it? He’s alive?”

“He’s alive, and the reason this is happening, so yeah, I’m telling the truth.” The feathers in my throat were getting harder to swallow. I bent forward, catching myself before I could fall, and vomited a live bird onto the floor next to the candle.

Unlike the bird I’d seen the Luidaeg extract from Simon, which had been lovely and swallow-tailed, designed to be admired as much as anything, my bird was a pigeon, wings of slate and breastgleaming with greens and purples. But it was beautiful all the same, even if it wasn’t a valued or refined beauty. It was beautiful. And it was mine.

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