Page 64 of A Killing Frost

Eira was back in her Evening Winterrose guise, beautiful, yes, but no more so than any other member of the Daoine Sidhe. Her long black hair was unbound and filled with glittering oil slick rainbows that shifted and danced despite the absence of any clear light. Her skin was so pale that it would have looked completely white if not for the mist surrounding her, and her eyes were a deep, frozen blue, like jewels dredged up from the bottom of the sea. She was beautiful and she was terrible and just looking at her made it harder for me to breathe, like she was stealing all the air from the rest of the world.

She was draped in a dress that appeared to have been crafted from layers of mist, tied over her shoulders in careless ribbons that shifted and faded away at the ends. I will never fully understand what it is about the Firstborn and wearing the weather. Although I guess if I had that kind of power, I’d show off, too.

“Well, well,” she purred. “Amy’s little castoff. I’m not allowed to kill you myself, but it seems I’ll have the opportunity after all. I’m inside you now.”

“Since you weren’t invited, that’s a massive violation,” I said. “I’d go be in someone else if I were you.”

She laughed, sounding as giddy and delighted as she ever had, back when she’d been pretending to be my friend. “Still the same little October, I see. The most impatient month of the year.”

My knife was still at my belt. It would take nothing to slide it into her belly and spill her arrogant Firstborn guts on the mist-draped ground. It also wouldn’t do me any good. As a Firstborn, she couldn’t die unless her killer used silverandiron. I lost theability to carry iron without hurting myself a long time ago. My fingers still itched to make the attempt.

“You’re supposed to be asleep, remember? You invented elf-shot. The least you could do is let it do its job.”

“Oh,nowyou respect my work? You, who did everything in your power to do away with it? I don’t believe you get a say in how it’s used now.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be having a say in anything, since you’re currently asleep in a couloir at the end of the Rose Road, where no one’s ever going to find you or set you free again.”

“Of course they will. In a hundred years I’ll wake up, if nothing else changes, and I have the Torquill boy.” She waved a hand dismissively. “He’ll keep fighting for me forever, thanks to you and my briny sister. You know, she treats you as poorly as I ever did, the way she keeps sending you off on her errands with no concern for whether you can survive whatever you find. I don’t understand why you like her so much better than you do me.”

If not for how dark her hair was, she could have been swallowed entirely by the mist around her. She was almost the spitting image of my mother, which made me wonder why it had taken me so long to realize they were sisters. Well, half-sisters. They shared a father, but their mothers couldn’t have been more different if they’d been trying.

“The Luidaeg has never lied to me,” I spat. “Unlike you.”

“Ah, but she would, if she was able. She would tell you all the same pretty, self-serving lies you hated so much from me, because we’re Firstborn. We’re better than you. You’ve never done anything to earn the truth from either one of us—she gives it to you because she doesn’t have a choice, not after my mother cursed her.”

“Why did she do that?”

Evening shrugged, the edges of her dress blending into the mist. “She thought she had reason. Someone must have told her Maeve’s daughter was spreading lies about her, and about me, and about all her other children. Someone must have said there was a danger. And that someone must have gotten exactly what they wanted, because when we’re honest with you, our fragile little descendants, you realize too quickly that we’re not the same. We’re so far above you that you’ll never be our equals, even if you try forever, and so there’s no sense in trying.”

I had always known the Luidaeg’s honesty was a punishment. I’d never considered that it might have been a punishment intended to make us more afraid of our own Firstborn. Something had to have changed to take them from being beloved parents and family members and turn them into gods and monsters. Something had to have caused us to pull away. Was one curse on one woman that something? I stared at her.

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “How long have you been working to betray Faerie?”

“Oh, a long, long time,” she said. “Longer than your tiny mind is capable of comprehending. I work on a scale you can’t understand even in your fantasies.”

“Uh-huh.” I studied my fingernails. “Sure you do. But you know, here’s the thing: I know you can still lie.”

Evening blinked. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“If you had so much time, why would your dogsbody be working so hard to wake you up? Why would you even care about being put to sleep for a century? That’s no time at all to someone who works on a scale I can’t comprehend.” I lowered my hand and smiled at her. “I think you’re full of shit. I think you’re working on a much tighter timeline than you want me to believe. And I think you’redesperateto wake up before we manage to dismantle any more of your plans. When you faked your death to try and take me out you had, what, two kingdoms in your thrall? That’s not counting the nobles who owed you their positions, or Goldengreen, or Simon, oak and ash,Simon. That man only ever wanted to bring his daughter home, and you used that wanting like a knife you could slide between his ribs over and over again until he bled out on your floor. You had everything, and now you have what? A rose bier in a place none of your faithful can reach? One last servant, who’s killing himself trying to control your magic long enough to wake you? Simon’s about used up.”

“He was always weak,” she said dismissively. “Son of a human woman playing at being good enough to be a member of my bloodline, panting after my tainted baby sister like she meant something. My blood was always going to be the death of him, regardless of what drove him to start abusing it, because only purity can handle purity.”

It was my turn to blink at her. “Wow. I really hope this is somesort of messed-up hallucination, and you’re not really talking to me right now.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Because the Evening Winterrose I knew was arrogant and smug and thought too much of herself, but she was never this kind of bigot. Although I guess, with everything I’ve learned about the Daoine Sidhe since I stopped calling myself one, none of this should be a surprise. You are your mother’s daughter.”

“My mother’sfavoritedaughter,” she corrected. “You’ve met two of us now. Can you honestly believe Acacia would ever be as well-beloved as I was?”

The count was actually three: I had also met Amphitrite, the Merrow Firstborn, during our trip to the Duchy of Ships. Three daughters of Titania, one aligned to each of the three major schools of magic. It was interesting, and somewhat telling, that the only one of them I’d spend any time with socially was the most water-aligned of the three. Water is traditionally Maeve’s domain, but the lines aren’t hard and fast.

“I’m not sure I’d brag about being Titania’s favorite,” I said. “It seems like an honor with very few selling points.”

Evening scowled, red, red lips pursing in a moue of displeasure. “I’ll thank you to keep my mother’s name out of your mouth.”

“I’ll thank you to stop messing with my friends and family members because you think being Firstborn makes you better than us.” The pain in my chest was getting worse, radiating from the place where the arrow had pierced me in the waking world. I grimaced and touched the spot, trying to massage the pain away. It didn’t help. Evening’s scowl melted into a smile, as smug as the cat with a mouthful of canary.

---