Page 35 of A Killing Frost

“But aren’t we doing all this because you want to get married?” asked May, a note of amusement in her voice.

“You’re pretty free with the backtalk for someone who’s literally gutless right now,” I said, approaching the opening.

“Sometimes guts are in the soul,” she replied piously.

I almost turned to look at her, but it would have meant looking back and breaking the rules of the Rose Road. With the way we’d been running back and forth and chasing Spike, it was something of a miracle that we hadn’t already been kicked off the road for looking back. Instead, I snorted and kept walking, trusting Quentin to guide her onto the stairs.

And theywerestairs, made of woven rose briars, the thorns tucked down and under, so that when I stepped onto the first tread, nothing jabbed into my foot. It was solid enough to hold my weight without protest. “You’re safe to follow,” I called, and took another tentative step downward, into the gloom.

It wasn’t darkness, exactly, especially not when compared to the infinite dark inside Simon’s reality bubble. It was more like a natural, heavy gloaming, when the sun was down and the moon was hidden behind the clouds. I could see better than I expected, something which caused me to blink several times before attributing it to my recently shifted blood. Fae have excellent night vision when compared to humans, which makes sense, given that they’re nocturnal by nature. The more fae I’ve become, the harder it’s gotten for me to get out of bed in the morning. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

At least my head had almost stopped hurting as my body recovered from what I’d involuntarily done to it. It was nice to know that I wasn’t going to be punishing myself forever, although I sort of dreaded what was going to rise around me the next time I actually needed to call on my own magic, instead of using the edges of someone else’s. When I was a kid, teetering on thin-blooded thanks to what my mother had done to me, it had smelled of fresh cut grass and cleanly polished copper, and that was still the scent I thought of as my own.

The more I trended toward fully fae, the bloodier that copper became. My spells were going to be blood and grass before much longer, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Uncomfortable, mostly. Very, very uncomfortable.

The stairs wound downward in a gentle curl, like the twining of a fern frond, surrounded by walls of roses. Still black—some of the light came from the glowing centers of the ones with charcoalpetals—and still lovely. Their perfume hung heavy in the air, which was the other problem. My mother’s magic is blood and roses. If I had to cast anything here, it would smell like my mother was coming, and that was the last thing we needed.

Quentin and May stepped onto the tread next to me, May’s arm slung around Quentin’s shoulders so that he could support her. They both looked at me. “Down?” asked Quentin.

“That seems like the best option we’ve got,” I said. “Also, the Luidaeg’s mom made this path for us. It would be unthinkably rude not to use it.”

He grimaced. “Could you stop saying that?”

“Why? It’s true.”

“Maybe. Maybe it’s not. Either way, it makes me really uncomfortable to think Maeve is still out there—close enough to hear when you call for help—and not coming home. She’s supposed to come home.”

“I don’t know,” said May. “Her sister raised her kids to kill as many of Maeve’s descendants as possible, her husband refused to rein Titania in even as she was advocating for mass murder, and she wound up pulled into some unknown void or something when Toby’s grandmother broke her last Ride. If I were her, I might not want to be any closer to Faerie right now either.”

“Let’s not remind the nice Faerie Queen who I’m descended from when we’re standing on her magical staircase and she might still be listening okay?” I started descending a little faster. “I don’t want to take another big fall today.”

“At least this time we’d be able to see where we were going to land before we hit the ground,” said Quentin, with forced brightness. “That’s something, right?”

“I think May lacks structural integrity as it is. We’d wind up carrying her home in two pieces, and I don’t know how we’d stick them back together. It’s weird enough to be walking around with her while she doesn’t have a middle.”

“You think that’s weird, try not having a middle,” said May.

Quentin looked alarmed. “Don’t say that to Toby! She might actually try it.”

“I wouldn’t be able to try it for long.” Spike went trotting past us, descending the stairs with a rattle of thorns. “I’d heal too quickly.”

“Yeah, yeah, brag about how fast you can grow a liver.”

We continued gently teasing each other about May’s injuriesand my tendency toward self-destruction as we followed Spike down the stairs. A thick fog began to gather, making it difficult to see more than a few feet in front of ourselves. Still, we kept on going, until I stepped down onto the next tread and realized I was standing on solid ground.

“Guys, I think we found the bottom,” I said, and turned to help May and Quentin off the stairs. Wherever we were, we weren’t on the Rose Roads anymore.

As soon as we were all clear of the stairway, it pulled away from the ground, rolling itself up like the world’s most elaborate rope ladder. It took the smell of roses with it, somehow removing it entirely from the air, until all I could smell was the hot, humid vitality of the primal, fog-draped forest surrounding us.

The fog was thick and white and cool, at odds with the heat of the air around us. It felt like I was standing in someone’s description of Florida. Trees appeared through the fog as sketched charcoal lines, dark against the whiteness. Thinner, looping lines told me where the briars were. Nothing visibly moved out there in the gray, and that was a good thing. I’d only been here once before, and then I’d had the Luidaeg to protect me from this place’s natural dangers.

Quentin moved closer to me, seeking comfort in the presence of something he knew would stand between him and even a rumor of danger. “Where are we?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“You know how Blind Michael had his skerry?” I asked.

Quentin nodded silently.

“Well, this is like that, only it doesn’t belong to Blind Michael. It belongs to your Firstborn.”

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