Page 81 of A Killing Frost

“I take it I have your approval to leave the house like this?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” he said, and offered me his arm. “As your escort, I will absorb the envious looks of those who cannot touch you and keep them as my due.”

“Gotcha.” He and Quentin had both lived up to the night’s call for formal dress in their own ways. Tybalt was wearing his customary leather pants, this time in a deep gray that matched my dress, and a dark gray poet’s blouse, complete with lace at the cuffs and throat. His boots were black leather, knee-high, and much sturdier looking than my dancing slippers. It was a rakish overall look, and would probably offend my mother’s sensibilities, which made it perfect. Quentin was more subdued in gray linen and wine-colored velvet, and he could have appeared in any BBC period piece without raising an eyebrow. His cuff links and belt buckle were bronze, matching his hair well enough to make its odd metallic sheen seem more intentional. Pureblood Daoine Sidhe are experts in dressing to match their hair. They sort of have to be.

“Where’s Raj?” I asked.

“Already in Muir Woods,” said Tybalt. “May and Jasmine have just left, courtesy of Daniel. It seemed unreasonable to cram fivepeople into your car when we had another vehicle available to us and you wouldn’t allow me to carry you there.”

“If you carried me, we wouldn’t have a car when we were done, and we wouldn’t be able to stop for takeout on the way home, and our collection of teenage boys would be at active risk of withering away and blowing off in the first stiff wind,” I said.

“I starve, I fail, I fall,” said Quentin, deadpan. “If the rest of us can tolerate Toby’s driving, you can put up with it for a short trip.”

Tybalt hissed at him. I laughed.

“Come on, you dorks. We need to get to Arden’s before someone starts a diplomatic incident.”

“Is that likely?”

“We have a minimum of two Firstborn, reps from both the Mists and the Undersea, my sister, and all of Arden’s court. Also potentially Sylvester and Luna. It’s likely.”

I started for the door. They followed.

It was a beautiful night, the air crisp and cool without trending into actual coldness. Which was a good thing, considering how much of my dress the seamstress had forgotten about. I slid behind the wheel of my car, fastened my seatbelt, and turned to watch with a certain smugness as Tybalt got into the passenger seat. He waved a hand. The scent of musk and pennyroyal swirled through the air as he wrapped a don’t-look-here around the car, protecting us from prying human eyes. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, the nervousness that always accompanied rides in my car still lingering around the edges of his expression.

Which wasn’t fair, honestly. I’m a very safe driver. I hardly ever get into car chases or crash on purpose anymore. I started the engine and pulled out of the driveway, clicking on the radio. Quentin hadn’t been messing with my settings recently, and the soothing sounds of Toy Matinee blasted into the cab as I turned down the street and began the long, increasingly familiar drive to Muir Woods.

I know people who think anything outside of San Francisco is “the boonies” and not worth thinking about. There have been times in my life when I verged on becoming one of them and may only have been saved by the fact that my liege’s knowe is anchored in a small human suburb, and my mother’s tower is anchored nearby. I never had the option to shut myself away in San Francisco to theexclusion of all else, and that’s proven to be a good thing, since now that Arden’s back and holding her family’s throne, we’re back to attending formal Courts in Muir Woods at her knowe without a name.

Not all knowes have names, obviously, but most of the more modern ones do. They take their names from geographical features, like Shadowed Hills, or from rare treasures, like Goldengreen, or from the person who holds them, like Lily’s knowe, or the old Queen’s knowe. The knowe in Muir Woods was opened by Arden’s grandparents, and while I’ve heard people try to refer to it as something more specific than just “Muir Woods,” nothing ever seems to stick.

Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we’ve been narrowly guarding our own places and protectorates for too long, and we need to spend some time dealing with the fact that Arden’s responsibilities neither began nor ended at her doorway. If it happened within the Mists, it was her problem, and she was allowed to involve herself. I spent a lot of time as Arden’s problem.

It would still have been nice if it had been a slightly shorter drive.

The roads were clear. Tybalt relaxed enough that he no longer looked like he was getting ready to leap for the Shadow Roads if I had to hit the brakes harder than he approved of, and Quentin kept leaning forward, making rude comments about my taste in music and trying to get me to put a CD on. I finally snorted.

“You complain because you think the 80s are too ‘retro,’ but you want me to play a bunch of whaling songs that people have been singing exactly the same way for hundreds of years,” I said. “What do you call that?”

“Traditional,” he said. “Sea shanties are the heartbeat of the sailing man.”

“Do you even know how to sail?”

“Of course,” he said, sounding stung. “I don’t get to here, because none of the coastal demesnes were looking for a foster when my parents decided it was time to send me away—or maybe Evening convinced them they weren’t looking, since she wanted me in Shadowed Hills—but I sailed all the time back when I was home.”

“The Duchy of Ships was even better for you than I thought, huh?”

He beamed at me in the rearview mirror, all of us silently agreeing not to discuss what Evening had or had not wanted when she’d convinced his parents to send him here for his blind fosterage. Oh, we knew—she’d been trying to arrange a noble husband for her future use, someone she could mold to her liking while he was young, and then marry to legitimize a claim to the modern power structure of the Westlands—but it was disgusting from every possible angle, and so we did our best to pretend we didn’t.

Massive age gaps are common in Faerie. Not as much among changelings, since most of us only have a few centuries to play around with, which is a lot by human standards, and nothing when compared to the literal eternities the purebloods have access to, but fae reach adulthood at roughly the same rate humans do, which means there’s a lot of time for a few decades not to feel like they matter as much. Quentin wouldn’t be considered an adult in fae society until he was in his thirties, which gave him plenty of time to grow up and figure himself out before he had to worry about getting married and ensuring the lines of succession.

I had to admit, though, that I’m human enough to be glad he wasn’t going to be marrying a woman old enough to have personally witnessed continental drift. It would be like me getting into a romantic relationship with the Luidaeg. Not technically illegal, but imbalanced as all hell, and probably bad for both of us.

The lights were off as we approached the mortal side of Muir Woods, the state park having closed at sundown and all the rangers having long since gone home. Even the streetlights were off, presumably to dissuade local teens from breaking into the parking lot to sit in their cars and make out. I slowed down as we approached the chained-shut gates. Tybalt hopped out of the car as soon as it was safe to do so, trotting over and muttering quietly at the lock.

They used to use sturdy cast-iron padlocks on their chains, probably because the parks department has no budget to speak of, rather than out of any sincere desire to keep the fae away. Shortly after Arden reopened the knowe, the local office received a healthy security upgrade in the form of more modern materials. Chrome and stainless steel are iron derivatives. They don’t mess with fae magic or poison us nearly as dramatically as the pure stuff does. In a very short period of time, the lock clicked open and Tybalt swung the gates wide, gesturing for me to pull through.

I did so, laughing. Magic and people who are willing to use it onyour behalf can make life so much simpler. I should have learned about having friends and allies sooner than I did. It would have made things easier, if not always as overdramatic and violent.

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