The Winter Long

TWENTY

I SAT UP WITH a gasp. The quality of light in my living room had changed, going from the brittle brightness of early morning to the deeper, calmer light of the afternoon. My lips felt sticky; I wiped them and my hand came away dark with blood. Still more blood cracked and fell away from my mouth, long since dried into a hard crust. I looked down. My fresh shirt was even bloodier than the last one had been, courtesy of what appeared to be a multi-hour nosebleed.

My brain was waking up slower than my body. I blinked at my bloody shirt for several seconds, trying to remember why a nosebleed that lasted for several hours was a bad thing—apart from the obvious dizziness and mess. Tybalt was going to be so annoyed when he saw that I had managed to get myself covered in blood again—

And just like that, I understood what was wrong. My heart plummeted into my stomach as I scrambled to my feet, looking wildly around the room. “Tybalt? Tybalt, are you here?” He wouldn’t have left me voluntarily, he would never have left me voluntarily, not with me bleeding and Simon in the house. He had to be hurt, or missing, or—Oberon forbid—I couldn’t even finish the thought. “Tybalt!”

“Pipe down, he’s fine.” The voice was familiar, yet so incongruous I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it until I had finished my turn and saw the Luidaeg standing in the living room door. “Your kitty-cat is in the kitchen, sleeping off Simon’s whammy. I tried to stop the bleeding a few times, and then I realized your body was purging whatever that Torquill asshole had done to you, so I let you be. You really shouldn’t drink people’s blood unless you’re sure you’re stronger than they are, October. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.”

I stared at her, trying to figure out which of my questions I should ask first. None of them wanted to coalesce into anything coherent.

The Luidaeg frowned, the gesture calling my attention more properly to her face. She looked as human as ever, but her bone structure was subtly different, and her eyes were the driftglass green she normally wore when visiting her Selkie step-descendants. There was something different about the texture of her skin, and when I realized what it was, my eyes got even wider.

She no longer looked like she was on the verge of becoming something else. She looked, instead, like she was only and entirely herself. Somehow, she had settled in her own skin.

“Toby, are you listening to me? Tybalt is fine, but you’ve lost a lot of blood, and you need to eat. Come on.” She turned and walked back out into the hall. I stayed frozen for a few seconds more and then hurried after her. The kitchen door was swinging, and so I pushed it open, stepping through.

The kitchen smelled of hot soup and fresh-baked bread. Tybalt was curled on the table in cat form, sleeping in a nest formed by my leather jacket. The Luidaeg was standing between us. As soon as the door swung shut behind me, she whirled, moving too fast for me to react, and clasped her arms around me, pulling me into a tight and uncharacteristic hug. I froze, blinking, unable to make myself return the gesture—unable to make myself do anything, honestly, except stand there.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled by my shoulder. My eyes got even wider, until it felt like they were going to fall clean out of their sockets. The Luidaeg pushed me out to arm’s length, looking at me gravely. “You have no idea what you did for me. Thank you. I owe you a debt that I may never be able to repay. You understand that, don’t you?”

I kept staring at her. Between the hug and the forbidden thanks, it felt like something inside my brain had broken.

“You need to say you understand,” she said, some of the old familiar impatience seeping into her words. “That’s how you accept the debt.”

“I—I understand,” I stammered.

The Luidaeg sagged, making no effort to conceal her relief. “Oh, thank Mom.”

“Luidaeg, how did you . . .”

“I can’t get into the Court of Cats under my own power, but I can get out,” she said. “I thought you might need the backup. Since I got here to find you bleeding out and the cat unconscious on the floor, I was right. Do you know who you’re up against yet?”

“Evening,” I said. “She’s not dead.”

“She never was,” agreed the Luidaeg, nodding enthusiastically, like a teacher trying to prompt a reticent pupil. “She can die—anyone can die—but Devin’s method was never going to succeed. He didn’t have certain information, and without it, there was no way he would have used the right tools for the job.”

“He needed iron and silver,” I said, eliciting another nod. “But . . . how can you tell me this? I thought you said the geas still held.”

“Oh, it does, it does,” said the Luidaeg, with almost giddy gleefulness. “I can’t say her name. I can call her all sorts of unpleasant things, as long as they’ve never been her name. But I don’t need to. You figured her out.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said.

The Luidaeg sighed. “She’s always been a pushy one. Most of my half sisters are, or were, but she was the worst of a bad lot. It’s because her mother encouraged that sort of behavior. ‘Prove you’re worthy of my love’ and all that crap.” She walked over to the stove, where a large pot of something that smelled like rosemary and fish was simmering. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“Tybalt fed me before we came here,” I said.

She turned to give me an assessing look. “Uh-huh. And was that before or after you spent half a day bleeding on your living room floor? That shirt’s ruined, by the way.”

“You could have at least stuffed some tissues in my nose,” I snapped, and walked past her to run a hand along Tybalt’s side. He was breathing regularly, and stretched in response to the touch. “Hey. Wake up. I need to know that you’re okay, and you need to keep me from killing the Luidaeg. Again.”

She snorted in amusement. “I’d like to see you try. How did he get you to sit still and eat?”

“I fainted,” I admitted. “I sort of did too much blood magic on too little sleep and even less food.”

“I swear, October, my sister’s not going to need to have you killed. You’re going to kill yourself and save her the trouble.” She took two bowls from the cabinet, moving as easily as if this had been her kitchen for years. “Wake up your kitty. You’re going to eat while we talk.”

“Because food is more important than stopping Evening?” I snapped.

The Luidaeg glanced at me again, a wave of blackness moving across her driftglass eyes like a shadow crossing the moon. Then it passed, and they were just eyes again. “No. Because when you’re at war, you eat every time you get the chance. There’s no way of knowing when you’ll have another opportunity. Now sit, and I’ll tell you everything the geas allows.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I grumbled, and stroked Tybalt again. “Wake up.”

He lifted his shaggy tabby head, opening his eyes, and blinked at me blearily. Then he blinked again and flowed to his feet, jumping to the floor where he became a man. A naked man. I’d seen it all before, but the Luidaeg hadn’t, and she whistled appreciatively.

“Very nice.”

Tybalt whirled. “Luidaeg! You’re—”

“Go put on pants, please, for the love of Maeve, I cannot have this conversation if you are not wearing any pants,” I snapped, pushing him toward the door before he could get over the shock of the Luidaeg’s appearance and notice that I was once again covered in blood.

Tybalt glanced back, eyes narrowing. Oh, great. He’d noticed the blood. “I will return,” he said ominously, and stepped into the hall.

“I hate this, I hate this—why wasn’t he wearing pants?” I bolted for the sink and grabbed a handful of paper towels, attempting to scrub off the worst of the blood.

“Because for Cait Sidhe, transforming their clothes takes focus and will, and he didn’t change forms voluntarily,” said the Luidaeg, getting down another bowl. “I found him on the floor when I got here. I thought I would do well to keep an eye on him.”

“Good plan,” I agreed grudgingly, as I dropped my wad of bloody paper towels into the trash. My shirt was a lost cause. I slouched to the table and sat, too tired and dizzy to argue with her. “We need to be figuring out how to stop Evening, not sitting here and eating soup.”

“If we don’t sit here and eat soup, you’re going to collapse,” said the Luidaeg, setting a bowl of what smelled like fish chowder in front of me. “You lost more blood than you realize. You need to get your strength back up.”

“It’s been a bleeding sort of day,” I grumbled, and took the spoon she handed me.

The kitchen door swung open as Tybalt returned, now fully clothed. “You are covered in blood,” he accused, pointing at me.

“I noticed,” I said.

“She noticed,” the Luidaeg said. “Everyone noticed. Now sit down. You need to eat some soup.”

Tybalt blinked at her, nonplussed. “I beg your pardon?”

The Luidaeg groaned. “You know, sometimes I miss the days when all I had to do was tell people to do something and they did it, out of fear that if they didn’t, their skeletons would be outside of their bodies. The soup is going to help. Simon whammied you both, and his magic is all over you. This will purge it. It will also taste delicious, because I have been making medicinal chowder longer than either of your family lines has been alive. It’s my own recipe. Toby, I used all your potatoes.”

“Um, that’s okay,” I said, and took a bite of chowder. It was, as promised, delicious, sweet and savory at the same time, with chunks of potato swimming in the creamy broth. I thought I’d eaten too recently to be hungry, but my stomach roared at the taste, making it clear that my body had other ideas. Also, as promised, I started feeling better almost immediately.

“While you were asleep, I took the liberty of redoing the wards on your house,” said the Luidaeg. “My beloved sister won’t be able to tell that I’m here. And you shouldn’t need to recast them for a century or so.”

“So your magic has returned?” asked Tybalt.

“My magic never went anywhere,” said the Luidaeg. “I wasn’t dead long enough for the spells I’ve been maintaining for years to collapse, thank Dad. There are some lovely palaces at the bottom of the sea that would have dissolved into foam, and at least one Cetacea who’s currently enjoying life on two legs who would’ve stunned the crowds at Sea World. Until the night-haunts came for me, there was still a chance. My beloved sister did a great job of killing me. October did a better job of bringing me back.”

“It’s always nice to be good at something.” I took another bite of chowder, swallowing quickly. “Luidaeg—”

“I don’t think you understand what you’ve done.” The Luidaeg pulled out a chair and sat down at the other side of the table, looking at me gravely. “It’s been a long time since anyone in Faerie raised the dead. It isn’t something we do often, or that should ever be done lightly.”

“Technically this was my second time,” I said. “Alex Olsen was dead too.”

“That was your little Gean-Cannah?” she asked. I nodded. “That was different. He was a living man sharing a body with a dead woman. I was a dead woman sharing my body with no one. Bringing me back was a larger step than you could have known, or you might not have done it. Please, don’t get me wrong,” she held up her hand, palm turned toward me, “I’m grateful. I’d rather be alive than dead, and I have a great deal left to do. But you’ve tampered with the order of things. Keep that in mind, and don’t let this become a habit.”

I scowled at her. “How about you don’t let dying become a habit, and I won’t need to bring you back again?”

“Fair enough,” said the Luidaeg. “About my sister. She’s harder to kill than anyone you’ve ever dealt with. It’s part of her nature. She seems to die, and then she comes back stronger, like a weed.”

“Well, right now, that weed is taking root at Shadowed Hills, and I need to know how willingly her descendants will follow her orders, and how much control she has over people who aren’t descended from her,” I said grimly. “Sylvester didn’t bat an eye when she showed up and said that she wasn’t dead and needed him to let her in. Dean Lorden was more resistant. He’s also only half Daoine Sidhe. But a lot of the other people at Shadowed Hills who aren’t Daoine Sidhe seemed perfectly willing to let her tell them what to do.”

“My sister can control almost anyone if she puts her mind to it. As for Sylvester’s people, she’s playing on their fealty,” said the Luidaeg. “They’re sworn to Sylvester, Sylvester is of her line; all she has to do to control them is control him. Didn’t you ever wonder why the Daoine Sidhe aspire to power the way they do? No other line holds so many thrones, or wants to wear so many crowns. The Daoine Sidhe would rule the world if they could, and all for the sake of that beautiful spider at the center of their web.”

I frowned. “She told them to seek power?”

“Yes. Said ‘if you love me, rule the world,’ and then she walked away, leaving her descendants hungry for her love the way she had hungered for the love of her mother. I doubt many of them would remember her face—most of her children died young, in the questing for kingdoms to rule, and their children didn’t live much longer. Your Sylvester’s father was her grandson. She was already gone by the time he was born.” The Luidaeg’s expression hardened. “Some people should never have been parents.”

“So she can control Sylvester because he’s her descendant, and she can control the people who are sworn to him through their fealty,” I said slowly. “Can she control me?”

“If you allowed her to, yes, but it would have to be your choice,” said the Luidaeg. “You’re too aware of her now. She’d have to work harder to have you, and if there’s one thing she can’t abide, it’s hard work.” She paused, appearing to finally realize that our little duo should have been at least a trio. Fear crept into her voice as she asked, “Toby, where’s Quentin?”

“I left him in the Court of Cats,” I said. “Even Evening is going to have trouble getting to him there. You would have seen him if you’d stuck around after you woke up.”

“My Court was sealed to my kind by Oberon himself, and none among the Daoine Sidhe holds fealty over any of the Cait Sidhe. He will be safe,” said Tybalt.

“He’ll be safe until she finds a Cait Sidhe of Erda’s line. Don’t discount the part Titania played in the making of your kind. My sister has the most control over her own descendants, but anyone she shares blood with is vulnerable, to a degree,” said the Luidaeg. Tybalt looked uncomfortable. She turned her attention to me. “You know my sister wants your squire.”

“I do,” I said grimly. Quentin was the Crown Prince of an entire continent. There was no way someone as interested in power as Evening apparently was could ignore the potential of a game piece like my squire. “But let’s get back to figuring out her limits. What about Dean? Or Etienne? Shouldn’t she have been able to control them?”

“Again, that would be harder for her,” said the Luidaeg. “Etienne is descended purely from Oberon, which makes him more resistant to my sister’s charms. If he felt he had something more important to defend, he’d be able to avoid her snares, at least for a time. As for Dean, he’s only half Daoine Sidhe, and his fealty is sworn to the Mists, which means Queen Windermere. She’s Tuatha de Dannan, like Etienne, so my sister has no openings there. Before that, he would have been sworn to his mother.”

“Who’s Merrow,” I said thoughtfully. “Got it. Blood makes him hers, but fealty doesn’t, and we’re back to hard work again. She’d have to want him enough to take him.”

“Exactly,” said the Luidaeg. “It’s much better if she can push her hard work off on someone else. She probably didn’t feel like she needed to make the effort for a half-breed son of a Merrow and a man who willingly gave up the chance at ever holding a position of his own. She’s always been . . . focused . . . when she truly wanted something.”

I looked at the Luidaeg, and then at the warm, homey kitchen around us, with the pot of chowder still bubbling on the stove. I’d never seen her look so domestic. It had to have come from somewhere. I hesitated, the question burning on my lips. She met my eyes and nodded marginally, giving me permission to ask what I needed to know.

“You told me once that one of your sisters betrayed you,” I said slowly. “That she was the one who put the knives into the hands of the people who would become the Selkies.”

“Yes, I said that,” said the Luidaeg.

“Was it Evening?”

Silence followed my question. That wash of black danced across the Luidaeg’s eyes again, crossing them so quickly that it was almost like she was blinking an eyelid made of nothing but darkness. Then, finally, she nodded.

“I loved my children. They loved me. They didn’t want power, or to be part of any noble court, or anything but each other, and me, and the open sea.” The Luidaeg leaned back in her chair, fixing her eyes on the ceiling. “I think that’s what condemned us in her eyes. We were too happy, and nothing happy could ever be genuine. Not to her. She thought we were pulling some elaborate ruse . . . or maybe she was just jealous. I don’t honestly know, and I’ve never been willing to ask her. I can’t raise a hand against the children of Titania, after all.”

“Why is that?” asked Tybalt abruptly.

“Because my children were slaughtered like animals, and the people who killed them kept their skins as souvenirs.” The Luidaeg turned back to Tybalt. This time when the darkness flowed into her eyes, it didn’t flow away again. “My darling sister went to our parents—they were still with us in those days, remember, and they still controlled so much of what we did—and cried that I was blaming her for the actions of the merlins. She said she feared I would harm her. My mother refused her. My father denied her. And her mother bound me. I was forbidden to spread lies—literally forbidden. If I try to tell a lie, my voice stops in my throat and my lungs burn with the need for honest air. I was forbidden to raise a hand against any descendant of Titania’s line. And I was forbidden to refuse my favors to anyone who would meet my price.”

“You became the sea witch because of her?” I asked, unable to keep the horror from my voice.

The Luidaeg spread her hands. “I am what she made of me. I wonder sometimes whether she’s sorry. I don’t think she is. I don’t think she’s capable of that. My mother . . . she took what vengeance she could. Do not ask me what it was. I can’t tell you yet.”

“Yeah, well.” My chowder was half gone, and my bones no longer felt like they were made of Jell-O. I pushed the bowl away. “Evening is at Shadowed Hills. She has my friends. She has my liege. The wards are closed—no one can get in or out. How do I get them back? How do I . . .” I hesitated, the words seeming too large for my mouth. Evening had been my friend for years, or at least I’d believed that she was. “How do I kill her?”

“Honestly, Toby, I don’t think you can.” The Luidaeg stood, gathering our bowls and carrying them quickly to the sink. “But I’ll come with you. I may not be able to fight her directly; I can help you at least a little. And we need to move now. The longer she has Sylvester in her thrall, the more likely it becomes that he’ll never throw off her power. The man you know will be gone, replaced by a shell of loyalty and cold.”

The idea sickened me. “She’s had more than enough time already,” I said. “I can drive us to the park, but I have no idea how we’re going to get through the wards.”

The Luidaeg’s eyes narrowed in chilly amusement. “Oh, don’t worry. There’s more than one way to cross an ocean, and more than one way to crack my sister’s wards. She thinks she’s the smartest of us. She’s not. She’s simply the least scrupulous.”

I looked at her for a moment before shaking my head and saying, “You know, just once, I’d like my life to be all about spending Sunday afternoon in my pajamas, instead of all about racing around the Bay Area trying to stop one of the Firstborn from committing a hostile takeover.”

Tybalt put a hand on my shoulder. “To be fair, this is the first time this particular issue has reared its head.”

“Somehow, not helping,” I said.

The Luidaeg rinsed our bowls and turned, wiping her hands on a dishtowel that she summarily dropped on the counter. She picked up a rose stem that had been lying next to the dish drainer—all that remained of one of Simon’s melted winter roses—and grabbed an apple from May’s bowl of fruit. “Let’s go. I’ll help you get us there. And don’t bother with disguises; no one’s going to see either of you.”

It was better not to ask when the Luidaeg said things like that. I just nodded and followed her out the back door, Tybalt sticking close behind me.

The car waited in the driveway. The Luidaeg walked over to it and put the rose stem down on the middle of the hood, setting her pilfered apple on top of it. “Stand back,” she suggested mildly. “Sometimes this doesn’t work out exactly as I planned it.”

“And it just keeps getting better,” I muttered, pressing myself against Tybalt. “Well, it’s been a while since one of my cars died horribly in the line of duty.”

The Luidaeg clapped her hands together. All sounds from the street stopped. No horns honked, no birds sang. There was only the soft sound of the Luidaeg singing in a language I didn’t know, but which sounded vaguely like the snatches of Scots Gaelic that I’d heard from some of the older fae I’d crossed paths with. The apple rocked. The air chilled. And then, like something out of a Disney movie, the apple and the rose stem dissolved into glittering mist that swirled around the car, etching what looked like patterns of frost onto the otherwise dingy brown paint job. Bit by bit, my car’s true colors were concealed by an ice-white sheen. The smell of roses hung heavy in the air.

The Luidaeg stepped back and flashed me a smug smile. “Apples and roses. My sister’s signatures. She’ll never see us coming if we’re surrounded by things she believes belong exclusively to her. Her ego won’t allow it.”

I stared. “That’s . . .”

“I know.” She turned to Tybalt. “I need a distraction, cat; I need her to think we’re coming down a road she knows. Can you take the Shadow Roads and meet us in the parking lot?”

“Can you promise me that you will keep October safe?”

Her expression softened a bit. “As safe as I can. We both know that absolute safety and October are never going to cross paths.”

He snorted. “True enough. Very well, then: I will go. For all that I dislike what you ask of me, I will go.” He turned to face me. With no more preamble than that, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me close for a kiss that should probably have caused damage to the polar ice caps. He kissed me like he was never going to see me again, crushing his lips against mine until I tasted pennyroyal and musk under the veil of his desperate need for contact. I returned the kiss as best as I could, until he pulled away, leaving a void between us where his body should have been.

I must have gawked at him, because he smiled, the expression almost eclipsing the worry in his eyes.

“Now you will miss me,” he said. “Let the sea witch care for you. I will see you in Shadowed Hills.” He turned, stepping into the shadow formed by the corner of the house, and was gone.

I looked back to the Luidaeg. She was smiling, standing next to the open passenger side door. I guess Firstborn don’t care whether something is supposed to be locked. I scowled and walked past her, the taste of Tybalt’s magic clinging to my mouth as I slid behind the wheel. The Luidaeg got in next to me, slamming the door. She was still smiling.

“Don’t say a word,” I said, jamming the key into the ignition.

“I wouldn’t,” said the Luidaeg. “Love is love. It’s rarer in Faerie than it used to be—rarer than it should be, if you ask me. If you can find it, you should cling to it, and never let anything interfere. Besides, he has a nice ass.” Her lips quirked in a weirdly mischievous smile. “I mean, damn. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to wear leather pants. He’s one of them. He’s a clear and present danger when he puts those things on. Or takes them off.”

“And now you’re creeping me out,” I said. “It’s a long drive to Pleasant Hill. Maybe you could save the creepy for the halfway point?”

“Oh, no,” she said. Her eyes had gone black again, and as I watched, they faded to white, like the sun rising behind a bank of thick fog. Her smile remained. “We’re going to take a little shortcut.”

I fastened my seat belt, checking it twice before I asked, “Should I even bother starting the car?”

“It helps, believe me. Just drive normally and don’t freak out.”

“Oh, because people saying ‘don’t freak out’ never freaks me out at all,” I muttered, turning the key in the ignition. The car rumbled to life around us. I pulled out of the driveway, trying to focus on the road, and not on whatever the Luidaeg was doing in the seat next to me.

She wasn’t making it easy. She began chanting under her breath in that same unknown language, and the smell of brackish marshes and cold, clean ocean air rose around her, filling the car. My own magic stirred in response to the flood, and was quickly drowned out by the power that the Luidaeg was putting into the air. Her ice-white eyes were fixed on the road ahead.

And then, with no more preamble than that, the road was gone, and we were driving through the dark with nothing beneath us or around us. It was like plunging into the Shadow Roads, and not like that at all, because it wasn’t freezing cold, and there was still air; I could breathe. That was a good thing, since I let out a rather audible gasp when the transition occurred. The Luidaeg slanted me what I could only interpret as an amused look, despite her continuing chanting. The darkness shivered—there was no other word that could encompass the ripples that spread through the black, shadow on shadow and yet somehow still visible—and then fell away, replaced by an overgrown forest of creeping vines and heavy-branched trees that seemed to grab for our vehicle as it rocketed along the narrow horse trail that had replaced the road.

“Don’t slow down don’t look too closely don’t stop the car for any reason,” rattled the Luidaeg, her words coming staccato fast and without pauses between them. She chanted another line in that unrecognizable language before breaking back into English to say, more slowly, “This road was my sister Annis’ once, to hold and to keep open. She died a long time ago. No one keeps the byways here anymore.”

“And we’re driving a forgotten road belonging to a dead Firstborn exactly why?” I couldn’t stop my voice from cracking with half-contained panic at the end. This was the sort of situation that called for a certain amount of terror.

“Because it’s the fastest way, and because no one can find us here, or stop us, or keep us out,” said the Luidaeg. The smell of her magic surged again, filling the car until there was no space for anything else. “Let my frozen bitch of a sister hunt as long as she likes. She’ll never be able to find the doors to this place, much less pry them open.”

“Is it safe?”

The Luidaeg didn’t answer me. She just laughed. That was somehow more unnerving than anything she could have said. I tightened my grip on the wheel and turned on the headlights, illuminating the rocky, hard-pressed dirt in front of us. Eyes peered out of the brush to either side of the road, shining in the reflected halogen glare. That didn’t help. I didn’t know what kind of creatures could or would exist in a place like this, and I was pretty sure that finding out would involve a lot of blood on my part.

“There’s a left coming up ahead,” said the Luidaeg. “Take it, and for my mother’s sake, don’t slow down.”

“Oh, that’s not helping,” I muttered, and focused harder on the road, trying to spot the break in the trees. Even watching for it we nearly overshot our goal before I could haul on the wheel and send us rattling down a second, even narrower trail. Thick ropes of thorns overhung this stretch of road, scraping against the roof and slapping the windshield as we drove.

“If we slow down, we could get stuck,” said the Luidaeg, who either didn’t know that she wasn’t helping or—more likely—didn’t care. “This isn’t a place that’s used to people anymore. We’re a curiosity here. Something that can be kept and used as it chooses.”

“Not making me feel any better about the situation!” I yelped, as I swerved to dodge a particularly hefty-looking branch.

“Wasn’t trying to,” said the Luidaeg. She dipped her hand into her pocket, pulling out a key that gleamed in the dimly-lit cabin with a faint rosy sheen, like it was an independent source of light. I glanced at it for only an instant, but an instant was long enough to tell me what I was looking at. It was silver, shaped from a single ingot and then inlaid with copper, bronze, and gold, until the rings of ivy and roses carved from its substance seemed to take on life of their own, chasing each other around and around the key’s head and handle. They tangled like real vines, like living things, almost obscuring the shape of the key in their riotous overgrowth. But the key knew what it was. It had always known.

It had known on the day when I had taken it from the rose goblin that would become mine, the one that had been entrusted with the key’s keeping by one of Evening’s servants. The Luidaeg had claimed the key from me almost as soon as she had seen it. I’d traded her a game of questions for the prize, and I’d never really expected to see it again. I’d never really wanted to.

“Luidaeg . . .”

“Trust me,” she said—and the worst part of it was, I did trust her. She was the sea witch. She was the monster under our collective beds. And it didn’t matter, because I trusted her, and I always would. She had earned it time and time again, even when she had no reason to.

She held the key up, its rosy light growing in strength. I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, and that was more than enough; I had the distinct feeling that if I looked any closer it would blind me, that it wasn’t a thing intended to be seen by anyone but the Firstborn. Its glow grew stronger, shading from pink into red, until the car was filled with a bloody brilliance that made my eyes burn. I squinted, fighting to see the road. I didn’t want to lose control of the vehicle. Not here, not now.

“Mother, if you can hear me, I’ve been very good,” said the Luidaeg. “I haven’t killed anyone who didn’t deserve it, not even my sister, who should probably have been killed a hundred times over by now. I haven’t stolen any hearts or broken any vows, and I’m only calling on you now because I need you more than I’ve ever needed you before. Mother, I am your oldest living child. I am your eternity made flesh. Now please, hark to me, heed me here, and open the door before we die a horrible and lingering death in the darkness.”

The smell of her magic surged again, this time underscored by roses like I had never smelled before—not the cold, snowy roses of Evening or the perfect hothouse roses of Luna; not even the bloody-thorned roses of my mother’s magic, which used to define my entire world. These were wild roses, untouched by any gardener’s shears and untamed by any horticulturist’s design. They grew where they wanted, thrived where they chose, and would never be anything but their own truest selves, unable to conform to anything else. They were the roses that had grown at the beginning of the world, and the roses that would grow at the end of it. There were a hundred other scents beneath the roses, loam and fresh-turned earth and the sweet decay that leads to new growth, but I knew that what I would remember was the roses. They would stay with me, because . . . because . . .

Because no one could smell Maeve’s magic and forget it.

It took everything I had not to turn and gape at the key that had somehow torn a hole in everything I thought I knew about our world, calling forth the magic of our missing Queen. Instead, I watched the road as beside me the Luidaeg murmured, “Thank you, Mother,” and raised the key to her lips.

As soon as they touched the metal, it exploded into light like I had never seen. The road, the trees, everything went away except for that glaring brilliance, which managed to be white and red at the same time, like it was bleeding as it purified. I slammed my foot down on the brake, fighting to keep control of the car as we reduced speed more quickly than the laws of physics would advise. The Luidaeg didn’t want me to stop. I was not willing to drive blind into a landscape I didn’t know.

I couldn’t force my eyes to stay open. When everything went from white to black, I realized I had shut them at some point to block out that horrible brightness. They were still closed when the Luidaeg put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey. October. Open your eyes, I put the key away.”

She couldn’t lie to me—I knew that—but I still cracked my right eye open with caution, in case some of the light had managed to linger. Natural light can’t do that, but that’s the trouble with magic: it does what it wants, and screw the laws of nature.

The cab was reassuringly dim, and the world outside the window was visible, painted in late afternoon shades of green and brown and gold. I opened both eyes and blinked, twisting in my seat as I realized that we were at Paso Nogal Park, the spot where Shadowed Hills was anchored to the mortal world. We were parked in the main lot, assuming you used the term very generously, since the car was sitting slantwise across three spaces. I blinked twice, and then took my foot off the brake as I carefully navigated us into a more proper parking place and turned off the engine.

The Luidaeg was quiet while I parked the car, possibly because she recognized that my battered nerves couldn’t take much more. Finally, once I was sure my heart wasn’t going to burst out of my chest, I twisted in my seat and asked, “Did we just drive from San Francisco to Pleasant Hill in less than ten minutes?”

“I told you, shortcut,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “Let’s go ruin my sister’s day, shall we?”

“In a second.” I undid my seat belt and slid out of the car, feeling better as soon as my feet hit solid ground. Maybe this was how Tybalt felt every time he had to take a ride. I’d have to apologize to him for not being as understanding as I could have been. Speaking of Tybalt . . . “I don’t want to go anywhere before Tybalt shows up. He’d freak out if we weren’t waiting for him when he arrived.”

“You do have a remarkable talent for getting yourself injured when your allies let you out of their sight,” said the Luidaeg.

I shrugged. “I heal fast.”

“Most of the time.”

I didn’t have an answer for that one.

Standing still felt obscurely like failing. Evening was a big enough threat that we should never have been allowed to stop long enough to take a breath, much less stand around a parking lot waiting for my boyfriend to show up. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to take that pause. The need to be moving, to act, would have sent me running into the knowe, even if I knew that I was running into certain danger. “I guess I’m growing up,” I muttered.

“No, but you’re maturing, and that’s more than I hoped for when we met,” said the Luidaeg. I glanced at her, blinking. The bones of her face had shifted during the drive, going from what I thought of as her Annie-face to the one that I was more accustomed to. They were very similar; she could have been her own sister. They weren’t quite identical. She met my eyes with a small shrug and said, “It’s true. I don’t lie to you, remember?”

“It took me a while to get used to that,” I said. “How much danger are we walking into?”

“I honestly don’t know.” The Luidaeg shook her head. “She should still believe that she’s killed me, which is an advantage for us: having me walk in will throw her off balance, at least a little bit, and that can’t help but benefit us. At the same time, if she holds the knowe completely, she may be willing to do a little heavy lifting.”

She didn’t need to explain her meaning. “I’ll fight her.”

“It may not matter,” said the Luidaeg. “Oberon was her father. That gives her a blood connection to you, even if it’s not a strong one. That, in conjunction with your oaths to Sylvester, and the blood binding you once created between yourself and her, means there’s an opening that she can exploit.”

“Wait . . .” I frowned. “Luidaeg, your parents . . .”

“I am the oldest daughter of Oberon and Maeve,” she said. “Which makes me their first-born Firstborn, but that’s confusing, so we don’t usually put it that way.”

“And Evening is . . . ?”

“The oldest daughter of Oberon and Titania.”

There it was again: the subtle sense that I was missing something. Frown deepening, I asked, “Who are my mother’s parents?”

Much to my surprise, the Luidaeg smiled like I had just asked the five hundred dollar question on an afternoon game show. She leaned forward and tapped my chin with her thumb as she said, “Oberon’s her father, making her the youngest of my siblings, but her mother is not my mother, nor my father’s other bride. Who her mother is I can’t say, but if you go looking, you might find some interesting truths hidden under some equally interesting lies.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” I asked.

“Can’t, can’t, always can’t,” said the Luidaeg. “You should know the difference between those two words by now, especially as you’ve started wearing gold in your hair.”

“I do, but—” The smell of pennyroyal drifted over on the wind. I stopped mid-sentence, turning to see Tybalt standing next to my car with a baffled expression on his face.

“How did you beat me here?” he asked, walking over to us. “I came as fast as I might, and expected to spend no small amount of time lurking in shadows, watching to see that the way was clear for your arrival.”

“You know us, we’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,” I said airily. “Half the Bay Area in ten minutes is a piece of cake.”

“I see,” said Tybalt. He stopped next to me, offering a half bow to the Luidaeg. “I appreciate the fact that I left my lady with you and returned to find her neither bleeding nor running for her life. It’s a charming change from what normally occurs when I turn my back.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” I said. “We’re all here now.”

“Yes,” said Tybalt. “I suppose we are.”

We started up the hill, the Luidaeg in the lead. Getting into Shadowed Hills from the mortal side of things usually requires a complicated series of actions, all of them designed to be virtually impossible to perform by accident. The Luidaeg ignored them completely. She just climbed straight toward the summit of the hill, never turning, never looking back. We mimicked her. The worst that would happen was we would need to go back down and start over, but I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. The Firstborn have a way of shaping Faerie to fit their needs.

When we reached the burnt-out old oak tree at the top of the hill, the Luidaeg stopped, sighed, and snapped her fingers. The sound was louder than it should have been, gathering echoes as it bounced off the trees around us and finally returned, remade by distance and the acoustics of the park into the sound of a key turning in a lock. The door to Shadowed Hills appeared in the hollow of the oak, swinging slowly open in silent welcome. The Luidaeg lowered her hand and smirked.

“See? All you have to do is know how to talk to them.” With that she stepped through the open door and into the hall beyond. I followed her, and Tybalt followed me, both of us tensed against the potential for attack.

The hall was empty. The air still smelled of roses—the air in Shadowed Hills always smelled of roses—but the floral perfume was underscored by a hard, frozen note, like it had snowed recently inside the knowe. That would be Evening’s doing. I could smell the traces of her magic everywhere, overlaid on the cleaner, less corrupt workings of Sylvester and his people.

The Luidaeg turned back to look at us, all traces of levity gone from her expression. Her eyes were solid black again, like the eyes of a shark. “From here, we must be careful,” she said. “Remember what she is. Remember what she can do.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded once, tightly, and walked past her as I started toward the throne room where Luna and Sylvester received their guests. It seemed like the most likely place to find a power-hungry Firstborn who had instructed her children to go off and acquire glory in her name. The Luidaeg and Tybalt walked behind me, forming the other two points of our small triangle. Having them there made me feel a little better—I wasn’t going into danger alone. Not this time.

There were no guards at the vast doors to the throne room. That didn’t strike me as a good sign. I pushed the left-hand door open, trying to keep my arms from shaking under its weight, and started into the familiar vast, over-decorated space on the other side. My sneakers were silent against the checkerboard marble of the floor.

And there, on the other side of the room, in the throne that was meant to belong to Sylvester Torquill, sat Evening Winterrose. The sight of her took my breath away. Even seeing her in Goldengreen hadn’t prepared me for this, for Evening in her element, strong and untouchable and restored to us, because even death couldn’t hold her, not Evening. I’d been foolish to think otherwise.

A small part of me—the part that had struggled against the mists in Blind Michael’s lands and the sweet spell of love cast by my Gean-Cannah almost-lover—screamed that the floor wasn’t really falling away, that Evening wasn’t really the most breathtaking thing I’d ever seen. This was all trickery, treachery, the sort of illusions that I’d encountered before.

She was wearing a red satin dress, the color of rose petals, the color of blood on the snow, the color of apple skins in the winter. It was a confection of floor-length layers and gathered falls. Her seamstress had been clever, because when Evening moved—even the slightest twitch—all that gathered cloth fluttered like feathers in the wind, revealing myriad small cuts and smaller dagger-points of deeper red silk, red as danger, red as dying. Against the cloth, her skin truly was as white as snow, and her coal-black hair seemed on the verge of bursting into flames. Then Evening looked at me and did the most terrible thing of all.

She smiled.

“There you are,” she said sweetly. “I was wondering when you’d find it in your heart to come and visit me. A little bird told me you’d stopped by the knowe and then left without even saying hello. Really, October, is that any way to treat someone who’s been your friend for as long as I have? It seems uncommonly rude. I always thought you were more polite than that. It seems I overestimated your mother’s teaching of you.”

The urge to abase myself was strong. I dug my fingernails into my palms, bearing down until the pain allowed me to center myself and say, in a tense voice, “That’s Sylvester’s throne.”

“What, this old thing? He said that I could borrow it for a time, since my own holdings have been closed to me.” A frown flitted across her face. “That was really most unkind of you, to help that half-breed stripling take my place as his own. What must his parents have been thinking? Land and sea together, it’s a mixture meant for disaster, don’t you agree?” Her words were directed to me, but her eyes went to the Luidaeg, making it clear who her message was really intended to reach.

“That’s Sylvester’s throne,” I repeated. “He didn’t give it to you willingly. If you have to compel someone to give you what you want, it’s not really yours.”

“Isn’t it? Because it seems pretty real to me.” She leaned back in the throne, resting her hands on the arms like she had been sitting there for years. “It doesn’t matter how you get the things you own. What matters is that you keep them.”

There was something very wrong with her logic. I swallowed hard, and asked, “Why are you here, Evening? You weren’t dead, but you let everyone in the Mists believe you were. You left us. Why are you back?” Tybalt and the Luidaeg were a silently reassuring presence at my back. I wondered why they weren’t saying anything, but only distantly; the bulk of my attention was reserved for Evening. Even though my head felt heavy and stuffed with cotton, I knew that taking my eyes off of her would be a terrible idea.

The smell of winter roses was so heavy in the throne room that it was cloying, worse even than the smell of the Luidaeg’s magic in the enclosed cab of my car had been. I dug my nails a bit deeper into my palms, trying to find that pure vein of agony that would grant me laser focus, even if it made me suffer later.

“Come here, October,” said Evening. “Let me see you.”

I had taken two steps before I realized I was going to move. “Why should I?” I asked, stumbling to a stop.

“Because you don’t want to make me come to you,” she said.

That was so reasonable that I started walking again. I tried to make my legs stop moving, and they refused me; they had listened once, and it wasn’t their fault if Evening made a better case than I did. My head was swimming, as much with the smell of roses and smoke as with the brute reality of her presence, and all too shortly I was standing on the dais in front of her, near enough that she could almost have reached out to touch me.

“Oh, rose and thorn, you’ve changed,” she said, and stood, stepping forward so that we were almost nose to nose. It was startling to realize that we were virtually the same height. She had always seemed like she should have been taller than me when she was standing on her own. “Do you even know how much you’ve changed? Don’t answer that.”

To my dismay, I found that I couldn’t. The Luidaeg had said that Evening would have to work hard if she wanted to have me; well apparently, I had been deemed worth the effort. Lucky, lucky me.

Evening reached out and ran her hands down my hair, the fingers of her left hand lingering on the tip of one sharply-pointed ear. Her skin was cool and faintly silky, like the petals of a rose that had been blooming entirely in the shade. Whatever masks she’d once worn for my benefit, they were disappearing now, washed away and replaced by the simple reality of what she was. Firstborn. Fairest of them all. “Look at you,” she mused aloud. “I’d never catch you so easily now. Your arrogance is the same, but your blood . . . do you know what you are?”

The feeling of her hands on my skin made me want to submit, to bow down and do anything she asked of me. I was no descendant of Titania; I shouldn’t have felt her presence that strongly, even through the bond of fealty I shared with Sylvester. Her blood, wailed that still, small place in my mind, the one that people like her never seemed to quite touch. You drank her blood, and that makes her hold on you stronger.

The things that voice was saying made me wish, more than anything, that I had a time machine and the ability to go back and punch my past self in the nose. I swallowed hard to clear the dryness from my throat and said, “I’m me.”

“You? What a charming statement of identity. What, precisely, are you?”

The smell of smoke was getting stronger, setting off alarm bells that weren’t connected to any specific danger. I swallowed again before I said, “I’m Toby. October Christine Daye, Knight of Lost Words. Hero in the Mists.”

“New titles won’t impress me, child. You’re telling me who you are—or who you think you are—but you’re not telling me what you are.”

I took a hard breath. “Changeling.” I had to get away from her. I was drowning in her eyes. Obedience is a hard habit to break, and her hands had held my strings for much too long, even before I had tasted her blood and given her another way of controlling me. There had been a time when I enjoyed being her plaything. At least she’d treated me like a person, most of the time. I was coming to see that all of that had been a lie, and it was the real Evening who stood in front of me now, in this room that smelled like smoke and roses.

Wait—smoke? Evening’s magic didn’t smell like smoke.

But Simon’s did.

“Changeling?” asked Evening mockingly, yanking my attention back to her. “Born of Faerie and human both? Is that what you are?”

“Yes,” I managed.

“Can you even remember what humanity felt like anymore?” she asked. The danger in her tone was impossible to ignore, and it triggered the part of me that was more interested in staying alive than anything else. I jerked away from her like I’d been stung, nearly falling off the dais.

At least that got her hands off of my skin. “I’m still part human! I remember my humanity.”

“How can you remember something you’ve never had? Humanity has never been your cross to bear, and as for the contamination in your blood, you’ve been giving it up freely, more and more with every day that passes.”

I took another step backward, my eyes narrowing. “I didn’t give it up freely.”

“Didn’t you?”

Her clear amusement made me pause. Had my humanity really been stolen from me, the way I told myself it was? The first time, when I was elf-shot and dying, maybe I hadn’t had much of a choice. When the options are “die” or “become a little harder to kill,” well. I’m not completely stupid. The second time, it had been to save myself from the goblin fruit that was eating me alive. I’d only changed to survive.

Standing a little bit straighter, I said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m myself. That’s who I’ve always been and who I’ll always be, no matter what my blood says about me.” The universe could do whatever it wanted to me—it would anyway, whether or not I gave it permission. But I always knew who I was.

Evening frowned sharply, and I fought back the impulse to cringe. She had always been commanding. Now, stripped of whatever illusions she’d used to make herself fade into the fabric of Faerie, she was terrifying. “Will you really be your own creature?” she asked.

I forced myself to meet her eyes, and not flinch as I watched frost spreading across her pupils. “I am Amandine’s daughter, and I belong to no one.”

“Things change, October. You belong to me. You used to be better about accepting that, but I suppose I left you without a leash for too long, didn’t I? I’m sorry about that. I know how confusing that sort of thing can be.” She smiled. “There’s no sense in fighting me. It won’t do you any good. Your fealty belongs to me, through the chain descending from your liege, and I have long since taught you to obey me.”

Pain is the body’s way of telling you to stop doing something. I dug my nails still deeper into my palms, and felt that glorious moment where the skin gave way and the pain became ten times more intense. The smell of blood assaulted my nose an instant later, strong and hot and all the better because it was my own.

I hate the sight of my own blood, and I’ve never been that fond of the taste, but when I brought my bleeding hand to my mouth, it tasted like freedom for the first time. I drank as deeply as I could before the wounds started closing, and then whirled, Evening still staring at me in slack-jawed disbelief as I flung myself from the dais—

—only to freeze when I saw Simon Torquill standing behind Tybalt, his hands raised in a gesture that I recognized as a spell in progress. Tybalt’s back was rigid, his arms pressed down at his sides like they were held by some invisible rope, and he looked like he was choking. That explained the smell of smoke. What it didn’t explain was the Luidaeg standing only a few feet away, a snarl on her lips and her hands curled into helpless fists at her sides.

I started moving again, running toward them with my bloody fingers outstretched. I’d ripped one of Simon’s spells to pieces already. I could do it again, if I could just figure out how to begin. I never got the chance. One of those wind-ropes drew suddenly tight around my ankles, and I was moving too fast to stop myself; I lost my balance, and gravity carried me down to the marble floor. I tried to raise my hands to catch myself, and discovered that I couldn’t move my arms, either.

That wasn’t as smart a move as Evening probably thought it was. My face bore the brunt of the impact, and I felt the squishy crunch as the cartilage in my nose gave way. Between that and my lips being smashed up against my teeth, there was suddenly more blood than I needed for any single spell right there where I wanted it: flowing into my mouth.

“Really, October,” said Evening, her words accompanied by the soft sound of slippers on marble. “You do get so worked up over things. What good did you expect this little rebellion to do? You’re not going to save your friends. You can’t even save yourself.”

Swallowing the blood that was seeping from my lips was easier than swallowing the blood running down the back of my throat from my battered nose: I almost gagged, but kept gulping. The pain was enough to keep me from falling back under Evening’s spell, at least for the moment. I knew it wasn’t going to last. I needed to gather my resources fast, and whatever I was going to do, I needed to do it before I stopped bleeding. Time to gamble.

“You’re not allowed to move against the children of Titania, but you are allowed to come to the aid of the children of Oberon!” I shouted, lifting my head off the floor and focusing on the Luidaeg. Her eyes widened slightly, despite whatever spell Evening was using to bind her. Now I just had to pray that I was right. “He’s my grandfather! Help me!”

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

I’ve never been a lip-reader. I took a split-second to think about what she might be saying, and then shouted again, “Help me!”

The Luidaeg coughed. It was a small sound, almost obscured by Evening’s scoffing and the slap of her shoes against the marble. She was almost on top of me. I was running out of time.

Then, voice almost inaudible, the Luidaeg said, “Ask me again.”

I smiled, showing bloody teeth. Third time’s the charm, especially in Faerie. “Help me,” I said.

And the Luidaeg moved.

There was nothing violent about the way she crossed the marble floor; she didn’t descend like an avalanche or strike like a thunderstorm, but there was something so primal about it that for those few seconds, she didn’t look like flesh—she looked like nature itself coming to life and stepping in to intervene. She was a wave on the ocean, she was a ripple on a pond, and it only seemed to take the blink of an eye before she was in front of me, leaning down and offering her hand.

“You are my niece, and I am your aunt, and when you ask my help, it is within my power to give it,” she said, smiling. Her teeth weren’t bloody, but they were sharper than they had any right to be, more like the teeth of some deep and unspoken sea beast than anything that should be allowed to wear a human shape and walk in human cities. She spread the fingers of her outstretched hand a little wider. “All you have to do is let me.”

“Sure thing, Auntie,” I said, and slid my fingers into hers.

If touching Evening had been like touching a cloud, touching the Luidaeg was like touching a corpse. She was cold and felt waterlogged under my clutching hand, as if bearing down too hard might cause her to burst open and melt across the floor. She pulled me easily to my feet, Evening’s ropes of wind dissolving back into the air that they were made from.

The Luidaeg smiled at me again as we straightened up, our eyes almost level with one another. Those terrible teeth still distorted the shape of her mouth, although they didn’t seem to be making it any harder for her to talk. Her eyes were the same as they usually were, warm and very, very human. If not for that, I’m not sure I could have kept looking directly at her.

Then Evening’s hand caught my shoulder, whirling me around to face her. The Luidaeg hissed, yanking me back, out from under Evening’s hand. Evening sniffed dismissively, her eyes traveling from my bloody face to the blood-soaked front of my shirt before finally settling on the Luidaeg.

“I see you’re just as beastly as ever, Annie,” she said. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that it’s easier to be beautiful in this world? Beauty opens oh so very many doors.”

“I never wanted those doors to be opened in the first place, Eira,” snarled the Luidaeg.

“Then it’s a good thing that what you want has never mattered to me, isn’t it?” Evening shook her head. “I was here first, darling sister. Do yourself a favor, calm yourself, and remember your place.”

“I was there before she chose Faerie,” said the Luidaeg. “Can you really claim to have beaten me to her cradle?”

Evening’s smile was a terrible thing to behold. I shrank back against the Luidaeg, suddenly glad for her terrible teeth, for the solid beastliness of her. She was something I could understand, and if she wore her knives on the outside, that just meant that I was better able to see them when she finally chose to use them on me.

“I was at her christening, dear one,” said Evening. “I saw her father hold her in his arms, little red-faced screaming thing that she was, and say that they could call her Olivia when she got older, if the other kids teased her too much about her name. I saw pretty, simpering Amy playing faerie bride, and when she asked if I believed that she was mortal, I told her yes, yes, oh, yes, my darling, you are so believable as something frail and temporary. I beat you to October by a matter of years. You have no claim here.”

The Luidaeg’s hand tightened on mine. “That’s for October to decide, don’t you think?”

“She’s a changeling. She has no decisions on her shoulders. Only duty.” Evening focused on me again. “She’ll work herself to death to be what I order her to be.”

“No, I won’t,” I said, licking my lips to get the last of the half-dried blood and the strength that it promised me. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it still helped me keep my grip on the Luidaeg’s hand, even as the part of me that remembered the taste of Evening’s blood murmured about loyalty and legacies and why I needed to go to her now, before she grew angry with me.

“You see, this is why I didn’t want her anywhere near you,” said Evening, throwing up her hands in a gesture of frustration that was as familiar as it was out of place in this setting, in this scene. She should have been wearing a business suit when she threw her hands up like that, not a dress better suited to the wicked queen from a fairy tale. “You always spoil everything, Annie. That’s your entire role in my life. The spoilsport.”

“I’ve been called worse,” said the Luidaeg. She gripped my hand even harder. “Don’t trust her, Toby. Don’t let her take you back. She’s not worth it, and you’re worth so much more than she is.”

“Oh, leave her alone, Annie. She doesn’t know me. She never did. You told her, and she thought she heard you, but she didn’t understand. They’re so frail, these changelings, and so slow to catch on to what’s happening around them. Leave her alone. She belongs to me.”

“No, she doesn’t.” The Luidaeg gripped me even harder, until a small gasp escaped my throat, summoned by the pain of her nails against my skin. “If she doesn’t know you—and you’re insisting that she doesn’t—then she can’t give herself to you. You know the rules.”

“Oh, yes, the rules,” said Evening mockingly. “Mustn’t forget the rules. Who branded those rules across your heart, dearest sister? Who made you what you are today?”

“And don’t think I’m not intending to kill you for that when I get the chance,” said the Luidaeg.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” said Evening. She returned her focus to me, smiling so sweetly and so warmly that my heart leaped in my chest like a salmon trying to swim upstream. She looked like safety. She looked like home. “October—Toby. I know you missed me while I was gone, and I’m so sorry that I had to leave. Can you forgive me? Can you just come over here, come to me, and forgive me?”

“I—” The sentence dissolved into a wordless yelp as a sudden, piercing pain lanced through my hand. I looked down and saw that the Luidaeg’s nails—which were more like talons, really, making a matched set with her teeth—had gouged into my flesh, opening cuts that ran all the way down to the brutal whiteness of bone. “What the hell, Luidaeg?” I jerked my hand away, sticking the side of it in my mouth as I sought some small measure of relief in that most mammalian of gestures.

The taste of blood hit my tongue and I froze, the scene around me suddenly becoming clear. Still sucking on the open wound I turned to Evening, eyes wide. She didn’t look like home anymore. She looked like the deep, dark wood where little girls and boys went to find wolves of their very own, the place that no one returned from. Her coloring was as fairy-tale extreme as ever, but it didn’t seem comforting or familiar: it was alien and garish, her lips too red for her skin, her skin too pale for anything that wasn’t dead.

I took a breath, scenting out the magic in the room. It had all faded away under the taste of blood and the compulsion that was rolling off of Evening like a wave. Now that I was looking, though . . .

The smell of ice and roses was everywhere, nearly burying the smell of marsh water and the sea that rolled off the Luidaeg. My own cut grass and copper didn’t stand a chance. Neither did Tybalt’s musk and pennyroyal, but the fact that I could taste it told me that he was still fighting. That was a good thing. If she’d hurt him, if she’d killed him, I would have been forced to find a way to kill her. I wanted time to think about that before I actually tried to do it.

“I’m not yours,” I said. “I won’t be yours. I refuse you and everything that you stand for. Now get the fuck out of my liege’s knowe before I get mad.”

“You really think it’s going to be that easy?” demanded Evening. “You drank my blood, you stupid little mongrel. You’re mine.”

“Oh, is that all?” I turned to the Luidaeg. “How much of your blood have I consumed since we met?”

The corner of her mouth turned upward as far as her terrible teeth would allow. “At least a quart. You’re a thirsty little vampire when you want to be.”

“Uh-huh.” I turned back to Evening. “I am not a descendant of Titania. I am not yours by blood. I have tasted your blood once, and once only. I am not yours by mistake. And while Sylvester Torquill may be my liege, I am a hero of the realm, so named by Arden Windermere, the Queen in the Mists. Kingdom trumps Duchy. I am not yours by fealty. I refuse your claim on me.”

She blinked, looking briefly surprised. Then she rolled her eyes. “It’s not that easy, October. It never has been.”

“See, I think it is. You’ve been arguing about this with me for a long time now, and you’ve sort of blown your cover—you were dead, then you weren’t dead, then you were trying to take back Goldengreen, then you were holing up at Shadowed Hills—even if that didn’t show a major lack of planning on your part, it would tell me one thing loud and clear: you’re desperate. You can’t go back to being Evening Winterrose, harmless Countess. Not after coming back from the grave.” Anger suddenly bubbled in my chest, and I let it, making no effort to swallow back the words that spilled from my lips: “You died! You left me, you left me with no allies and no idea of what to do and . . . and . . . and now I find out it was your fault? You’re the one who sent Simon after me, who ruined my life?”

“You seem to have done fairly well for yourself,” said Evening, looking taken aback. “You have your friends, your house, your little squire—where is the boy, anyway? I can’t wait to introduce myself to him properly.”

“He’s where you can’t touch him, and it doesn’t matter if I’ve built myself something better, because you’re the reason that I had to,” I snapped. “I shouldn’t have been forced to do that. You were supposed to be my friend.”

“I never said I was your friend, October,” she said, all traces of bewilderment fading. “I said I was your ally. I was, at the time. I never harmed you directly.”

“Because you weren’t allowed,” snapped the Luidaeg. “Don’t pretend your limitations are some kind of altruistic gesture.”

“Why not? You do it all the time.” Evening looked past us to where Simon was holding Tybalt in wind-wrapped thrall. “They’re not going to listen to reason. Kill the animal, and come here.”

“Yes, milady,” said Simon. I whirled in time to see him slant a regretful glance in my direction, and then he waved his hands in the air, a simple, almost graceful gesture.

Tybalt screamed.