Page 14 of A Killing Frost

Somehow, they never thought to knock on the door or ring the doorbell. It was like we were good enough to yell at, but not good enough to talk to. Jazz was the only member of her flock I’d ever seen in human form. That was interesting, and dwelling on it right now wouldn’t do me any good, not with May watching me with wary, slightly narrowed eyes.

As my Fetch, May has my memories up to the moment of her “birth”—inaccurate, but more correct than “creation,” since she was a night-haunt for centuries before borrowing my face and yoking herself to my survival. If I’d died when I was supposedly meant to, she would have winked out of existence and been lost forever, leaving the rest of the night-haunts to miss or mourn her. As it stands, she found a family and got to keep it, which is more than any Fetch before her could say. It may never happen again. She’s unique in all of Faerie, and she knows me too well to be fooled when I get flippant.

“All right, since you’re clearly not planning to volunteer the goods, what do you mean when you say ‘eventful’?” she asked.

“I mean Patrick and Dianda Lorden also dined at the Cat in the Rafters tonight, and they came over to our table to make sure I was aware that if I got married without inviting Simon, his family, or his liege—that being Eira—could claim insult against my household.”

May’s eyes widened. “They didwhat? Why would they do that?” She fell backward on the bed, groaning. “Pureblood marriage law isso stupid,” she said. “I knew that, Iknewthat, but I never thought anyone would care enough to make sureyouknew that.”

“You and Tybalt have been banking on my ignorance throughout this whole process, and now your reward is that you have to go with me to look for Simon Torquill, and Tybalt can’t come,” I said dryly. It was impossible to think of Karen’s vision and the visit from Patrick and Dianda and not see the two as connected. “So I guess you got a pretty quick ‘don’t keep secrets from Toby’ reminder here. Are there any other fun points of fae law that you’d like to remind me of, so we don’t get fucked unexpectedly?”

“Um.” May pushed herself up onto her elbows. “There’s a decent chance I’m legally your kid, so you and Tybalt may not be able to divorce unless I let you? I don’t think anyone’s ever tried to nail down exactly where a Fetch falls in the chain of inheritance.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, that’s... special. And probably good to know. But I’ll fight anyone who tries to say you’re not my sister.”

“If I’m your sister, then I also have to sound off if Simon ever wants to separate from Mom,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Not that he will. I remember enough from lives before this one to know he thinks the sun sets in her shadow and the moon rises in her eyes. Their love story may be terrible and bad for everyone around them, but it’s going to last a long, long time.”

“That’s not what Dianda’s hoping,” I said. “She seems to think if I bring Simon home, she can talk him into leaving his wife.”

“Is ‘talk’ mermaid for ‘threaten’?” asked May.

“I don’t know. It seems more likely than the alternative.” Whatever that was. I couldn’t think of anything. “So okay, you’re my sister every way but legally because we don’t need to make this shit any more complicated than it already is, fine. I still need you to come with me.”

“Why me?”

“Karen called and told me she’d seen you going with me in a dream, which means it definitely happens. Tybalt has to stay here and keep kinging, Raj can’t come, Walther will literally laugh in my face if I ask him to go on another wacky, potentially fatal quest right now, and I’d leave Quentin if I thought he’d let me get away with it. You’re literally unkillable—even more so than I am, since I can die, I just get better. You can’t die.”

“Why does that being a selling point make me so uncomfortable?”

“You’re smarter than we look.”

“Damn right I am.” May stood. “Okay, so what’s the game plan here? We go to the Luidaeg and—”

“No,” I said. “We go to Luna.”

May blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“But shehatesyou and, by extension, hatesme.”

“I know.”

Slowly, her look of shock became a scowl. “The Luidaeg would be, and I can’t believe I’m saying this in a serious, non-ironic manner, easier.”

“I know that, too.” The Luidaeg is the eldest daughter of Maeve, one of Oberon’s two missing wives. She’s one of the oldest people left in Faerie, and they call her “the sea witch” because there was a time when she was the only witch of the water in the entire world. She’s my mother’s sister, making her my aunt, and her magic is essentially boundless—whichisironic, because it’s been pretty tightly bound by Oberon’sotherwife, Titania.

The Luidaeg can’t lie. She can’t harm anyone descended from Titania, even if they’re trying to harm her. And she can’t say “no” when someone asks her to use her considerable magical powers to grant their heart’s desire. All she can do is set a price so high that no one with any sense would be willing to consider paying it.

It’s still surprising to me, even after everything I’ve been through, how many people think that when her prices are so high it hurts, it’s because she’s being cruel, and not because they’re asking for something they’d be better off leaving alone. The Luidaeg will give you anything. She doesn’t have a choice. She gets to decide how much you’ll have to pay, though, and she uses what little choice she has left like a surgeon uses a scalpel. When she cuts the flesh of your desires, it bleeds.

August had gone to the Luidaeg, looking for a way to find Oberon and bring him back. The Luidaeg’s price for giving her a chance had been her way home: her memory and ability to recognize anything and everything that anchored her to the life she’d had before her quest began. To save August from the consequences of her own actions, Simon had traded his way home for hers, and I’d stood powerlessly by and watched it happen. The Luidaeg had been able to see that he was clawing his way back to being a goodman. She hadn’t wanted to do it. She hadn’t been able to refuse. Not once he met her price. Unless he found Oberon somehow, he was a danger now and would remain one.

I was direly afraid that if I went to her for help, even if I did my best to play my cards close to my chest, she’d turn her previous order to find Simon into an order tokillhim—an order I wouldn’t be able to refuse. I didn’t know why she’d want him dead, but I didn’t know why she’d wanted him found in the first place, and the risk wasn’t something I wanted to take. He had been redeeming himself. He had been doing his best to come home, before August’s choices, combined with his own, had taken that option away from him.

I’d already lost my father. I wasn’t going to be the reason she had to lose hers as well. And I know that being a hero means I’m supposed to put Faerie first, always, but there are some costs that are personal, and too much to pay. I wanted to find Simon. I wanted to come home and get married.

And yes, I actually wanted him to be there when I did that, if it was even remotely possible. I had little enough family who could realistically be in attendance. If Faerie was going to make him my father, he could damn well act like it.

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