Page 77 of A Killing Frost

He laughed, and the four of us began to descend the stairs.

Architecture and distance are fluid inside knowes. It felt like the descent took less time than it had in the past, Quentin and Simon all but racing one another in their hurry to be first to the bottom. Tybalt and I followed at a more leisurely pace, fast enough not to let them out of our sight, slowly enough so as to not create a total traffic jam. It was almost pleasant.

Then we came around the curve of the stairs and Dean’s private beach appeared beneath us, and two things happened at once. Quentin slung a leg over the banister and abandoned all pretense of walking down the stairs like a normal person in favor of sliding to the bottom, precariously balanced enough that if he hadn’t been plummeting toward sand, I might have been worried he was about to crack his skull open, and Simon froze dead where he stood, not descending any farther.

Tybalt and I exchanged a look, nodded, and as we caught up to Simon, each of us grabbed one of his arms and lifted, hoisting him neatly off his feet as we continued our descent. He looked first to Tybalt and then to me, before protesting, “Oh, no—no, I can’t. I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t—this isn’t appropriate, not with their son right there—”

“That’s cool,” I said. “You’re technically my prisoner right now, thanks to you having committed all sorts of crimes.”

“Nothing I did was against the Law!”

“We have access to Oberon now,” I said reasonably. “We can ask him for more Laws, if you think we need them. But you’ve been a bad man, and if we leave you to your own devices, someone’s going to elf-shoot you and stuff you in a closet just so they don’t have to think about you anymore. And that means you’re technically my prisoner, until I hand you off to someone else who’s willing to take responsibility for your actions. Normally, I think thatwould be Mom, but let’s be realistic; she doesn’t take responsibility for herownactions, and I’m also sort of not speaking to her on account of how she kidnapped my fiancé to blackmail me into finding my sister. So I’m just going to carry you down the stairs to the nice man who’s been worrying about you, okay?”

“I’m the fiancé, and I’m going to help her,” said Tybalt.

Simon looked at me bleakly but didn’t struggle, and after a few more steps, even began walking again. I was grateful for that. He wasn’t the largest man I’d ever met, but it had been a long day, and my upper body strength has never been the best in the world.

Quentin tumbled off the banister as he reached the bottom of the stairs and bolted for Dean—no longer a tree—who was standing at the edge of the water. Patrick and Dianda were with him, Patrick standing, Dianda seated on the dock, her fins dangling in the shallows.

Quentin slammed into Dean, wrapping him in a hug far more enthusiastic than most of their public displays tended to be. Dean slipped his arms around Quentin in return, and for a long moment, the two boys stood there, clasping each other tightly, and no one moved, or said a word.

Then Dianda glanced toward the stairs, and froze before standing, scales falling away, her sapphire-colored shirt growing longer, until it formed a diaphanous dress that stopped just below her knees. Patrick gave her a startled look, then turned to see what she was looking at. He straightened, paling as the blood ran out of his face. Dianda fumbled for his hand. He gripped hers, holding it fast, and neither of them moved.

Dean finally let go of Quentin, the two of them pulling a little bit apart—only a little—so that Dean could see what his parents were looking at. His expression was one of dismay and displeasure, but not fear or outright loathing. I suppose growing up in the Undersea, where any sort of political conflict can be resolved with actual violence, made getting turned into a tree seem like the kinder, gentler option for someone who was invading someone else’s territory.

Simon was walking on his own as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Tybalt and I kept hold of his arms, pulling us with him as we approached the Lordens. Neither Patrick nor Dianda moved, and when we were only a few feet away, we let Simon go. He lookeddown at his feet almost immediately, like he was afraid anything else would be seen as inappropriate. No one said a word.

Well. That wasn’t going to work for me. “Simon says he’ll come to the wedding, which means no one gets to claim insult against me and try to use it to ruin my life or fuck up my honeymoon,” I said bluntly. “Not that we’re going togeta honeymoon, since someone is inevitably going to try to murder or abduct or transform one of us into something unpleasant, so right now, I’ll settle for damage control and being allowed to get married.”

Simon didn’t say anything. Neither did Patrick or Dianda, both of whom were staring at him like he was the most impossible thing ever to walk the earth.

Right. “If you don’t want him, we can take him back to Mom, who doesn’t know we’ve found him yet, but I figured since you were the ones who cared enough to make me invite him to the wedding, and he turned your eldest son into a tree earlier tonight—sorry about that, Dean, how are you feeling?—you might want to see him before she disappears him into her tower.”

Simon paled as Dean looked him square in the eye, “I’m feeling much better now. I much prefer being a mammal. I’ve had a lot of practice, and I think I’m pretty good at it.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “I prefer being a mammal, too. How about you, Tybalt? Are you pro-mammal?”

“I’ve never been anything else, so I suppose I must be,” he said, sounding decidedly entertained by this entire situation. “I do like warmth.”

“Then maybe you’d make a good lizard,” I said, and turned my attention back to Patrick and Dianda. “Should we get him out of here?”

“Pleasedon’t,” said Patrick, voice beginning to shake. “Please don’t return him to that woman. He deserves better than to be passed from Firstborn to Firstborn like some sort of trinket.”

“You know, then?” asked Simon.

“Your Amy grew less subtle after you were lost to her,” said Dianda. “She started behaving more like her father’s daughter all the time. At this point, I doubt there’s anyone left in the Kingdom who doesn’t know her for a Firstborn.”

“I got the memo pretty late,” I said mildly.

“Even so,” said Dianda. “She hid it better once, when she caredmore about being a part of fae society and less about having her own way in all things.”

“It’s time to be finished with Firstborn, Simon,” said Patrick. “You deserve better than their poisoned fruits. You deserve your freedom. It’s been absent for so long.”

Simon’s face fell. Not all at once; it was a slow process, like watching a sandcastle undermined by the incoming tide. It nibbled around the edges at first, until finally everything collapsed, and he began to cry, wailing, “I thought you weredead. I thought the earthquake took you, too, and I had to find my daughter, I had to find her before Amy went mad and left me alone, and Ei—” He caught himself before he could finish saying the name. “The woman I worked for told me she could help me bring August home if I’d only do as she said and let her take care of everything else. It sounded so simple. It sounded soeasy. It couldn’t bring you back, but you were better off without me, always had been, and my little girl was lost, and my wife was losing her way, and I agreed. I agreed to everything she said. Until I gave the Luidaeg my way home to ransom August’s, my choices were my own. I did what I did because I thought that it was right, and not because anyone was holding a knife to my throat. I don’t deserve anything better than I have. I don’t even deserve what’s already mine. I did what I did because Iwantedto do it.”

“You didn’t hurt my son because you wanted to,” said Dianda. “That was the Luidaeg’s spell making the worst possible choices seem like the best ones—and even then, you didn’thurthim. We use stones and turtles in the Undersea, not trees, but the idea of getting your enemies out of the way by turning them into something slow is an old one.”

“Only because I had allowed a monster to become the only thing I had left that could substitute for a home.”

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