Page 72 of A Killing Frost

Tybalt met me when I was barely halfway across the room, pulling me into a crushingly tight embrace and surrounding me withthe scent of musk and pennyroyal. He held me so close that for a moment it felt like I wasn’t going to be able to breathe, and for the same moment, I didn’t care. If this was how I died after everything I’d been through, that was fine by me.

By the couch, Oberon and the Luidaeg were holding each other just as tightly, being stared at by Simon on one side and Quentin on the other. Neither of them looked like they were capable of moving. Unsurprisingly, it was Danny who spoke first.

“Titania’s fucking ass, is thatactuallyfuckingOberon?” he asked, in a tone that managed to remain reverent, despite the mortal profanity.

I choked on my own laughter, pulling away from Tybalt just enough to lean back, look at Danny, and say, “I know who you are, so yes, it is.”

“And don’t think we’re not going to discuss that, at length, later,” said Tybalt, voice low and menacing. I turned back to him. His eyes were narrowed, pupils hairline slits against the green, and he was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “There are things you do not gamble with. My heart is one of them. Your memory is another. By gambling with the second, you could have destroyed the first.”

“I know.” I freed a hand to touch his cheek. “Will it help at all if I say I wasn’t gambling? By the time I traded my way home for Simon’s, I was already sure I knew where Oberon was.”

“It would help if not for the fact that you and the Luidaeg had clearly already begun the conversation, and she knew what you would want. Did you know where Oberon was then?” He could see the answer in my eyes, because he grimaced, a pained look flickering across his face, and turned away. “Of course you didn’t.”

“Tybalt, I—”

“Don’t you have someone you need to save?” he asked, and opened his arms, and let me go.

I stumbled a few feet back, looking at him with wounded bewilderment. I knew he didn’t like it when I risked myself, but this had been for us. If I didn’t save Simon, we couldn’t get married. I hadn’t been trying to get hurt. Had I?

Sometimes that’s the hardest question of all to answer, and at the moment, it wasn’t the important one, because my answer didn’t matter as much as Tybalt’s, or as Quentin’s. We still had messes to clean up. May. All the people at Goldengreen who had yet to bereturned to their original forms. The question of whether or not I had screwed things up with my fiancé could wait until I had the space to breathe and give it the attention it deserved.

I took a deep breath and turned to Simon. “Can you undo the rest of the transformations you performed in Goldengreen so that the Luidaeg doesn’t have to?” I asked.

He shook his head, looking sheepish. “Not without more of what enabled me to cast them,” he said.

“You mean blood.”

“Yes.”

“You meanEvening’sblood.”

“Yes.”

“But it’ll kill you if you don’t stop using it.”

“I suppose it’s a yes to that as well,” he said, and shook his head again. “Addiction is a terrible thing. I can’t say I’m not addicted to the power she has to offer me, or that I wouldn’t be glad to have a reason to give in to the temptation one more time, but the risk of her getting her hooks into me again is too high. I finally have my way home.”

He said that last word with so much longing that I stopped, really looking at him for the first time since I’d agreed to take his place under the Luidaeg’s spell. He looked exhausted, wearied and worn away by what he’d been through; he was too thin, and while the fae don’t age the way humans do, I would have sworn he looked years older than his brother. But he was standing up straighter than he had been before, and he wasn’t cringing from every little sound in the room. He was a free man.

Free to make his own choices, and his own mistakes. I turned to Walther. “Hey, Walther,” I said.

“Hey,” he said. “Welcome back.”

Unlike Tybalt, he didn’t sound angry; if anything, he sounded almost amused, like this was part and parcel of an ordinary day.

“Where are we with waking May up?”

“Cassandra’s working on her now. The elf-shot is still interfering with her breathing, and it’s hard to keep her stable long enough to administer potions. Someday I’m going to figure out how to make a lot of these things injectable without also making them harmful, and then this will all be so much easier.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you.” It felt almost sacrilegious to be having such an ordinary question in front of Oberon, like the lostKing of Faerie appeared in the Luidaeg’s living room every day, but maybe that was why we needed to have it. Oberon’s return changed everything, and it changed nothing. May was still asleep. Tybalt was still angry with me. Life went on.

“I’ll get back to work as soon as I get back to my office,” agreed Walther. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I hope so.” I couldn’t get to Quentin without approaching Oberon and the Luidaeg, which meant it was time to bite the bullet and interrupt two of the most powerful beings in the world. No pressure. I stepped forward, knees only shaking a little, and cleared my throat.

Neither of them moved.

“Um, excuse me?” I managed. “Luidaeg?”

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