A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  “Very good,” said Jason, managing to suppress his moue of disapproval at my steak order. I’d been to the restaurant often enough that both he and the chef understood why I needed my steak just a few steps shy of becoming a charcoal briquette, much as it pained everyone involved. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Not right now,” said Tybalt.

  Jason might be practicing his best customer service obliviousness, but he was still Cait Sidhe, and he could hear the unhappiness in his King’s voice. “I’ll get your orders in,” he said, and fled.

  Good. I wanted this next part to be semiprivate. I looked across the table to Tybalt. “You knew,” I accused, and he flinched away from the bitter betrayal in my voice. “Don’t try to pretend you didn’t. You’re a pureblood, you knew Simon was legally my father, and you didn’t tell me this could happen. How could you keep something like this from me?”

  “As long as you had no idea of the implications of your relationship to him, you had a defense against him making any claim of offense,” he said. “You could argue that because you were raised human, human law had a greater authority over you, and he had no right to demand niceties you had never been taught. Queen Windermere would have been able to rule in your favor.”

  “An argument the Lordens just blew out of the water,” I said glumly. “You know how much I hate people keeping secrets from me.”

  “I do.”

  “Yet you did it anyway.”

  He looked down at his empty plate. “Will it help to say that I had only the best intentions, and meant no harm?”

  “Sylvester lied to me with the best intentions and look how that turned out.” I tried to force my anger aside. It wasn’t budging. “What the hell would make you think it would go differently this time?”

  “I love you?” he ventured.

  “Love isn’t going to be enough if we’re lying to each other.”

  Tybalt sighed. “What Sylvester did, unfair and cruel as it was, was of no benefit to you. He kept secrets solely to benefit himself, to salve his own feelings of betrayal over how things had ended between his brother and your mother. I withheld information because it was the only means of protecting you—and ignorance is a valid defense. Every time I have personally witnessed a charge of offense being refused, it was because the one who had given it could successfully argue that they didn’t know. Arden would be inclined to take your side, especially if you had the truth behind you. I would have told you after we were married, when the offense had been given and forgiven, and your ignorance was no longer protective.”

  I wanted to believe him. I just wasn’t sure I could. “You know how I feel about people keeping secrets from me.”

  “And you know how I feel about your safety. I will always protect you if I have it in my power to do so. Even if it may cause us problems afterward.”

  I narrowed my eyes, glaring at him. “And how were you planning to deal with situations like the one we’re in right now?”

  “I wasn’t. Simon has so few friends left, I never anticipated one of them ambushing us like this.”

  That was putting it mildly. Simon was practically public enemy number one in the Mists, and Patrick might be the last person in the Kingdom who gave a damn about him. Patrick, who was going to have a lot of groveling to do to get back into my good graces. Dianda would have to do slightly less, but only slightly, and only because I knew this hadn’t been her idea. I sighed. “No more secrets. No more lies. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” he said, with some relief, before looking up again and saying, “It seems the time for another quest is come upon us.”

  “There’s no ‘us’ in this one,” I said. “You haven’t stepped down from your throne yet, and that means wherever I have to go to fix this, I can’t take you with me.”

  “You can’t go alone,” he said, tone imperious. “I will not abide it.”

  “Gosh, you bounced back fast from pissing me off. That was a good choice of words. Dangerously close to ‘I won’t allow it,’ which you know would get these flowers thrown at your head, but you managed to swerve at the last second.” I snagged another roll, trying to keep my expression as mild as possible. There was no point in being doomed and hungry. Might as well fix the one I had some ability to deal with. “We knew I was going to have to go looking for him eventually. The Luidaeg made me promise, and Karen called earlier tonight. She said she had a dream about me going on a quest with Quentin and May, but not you. If I bring anyone else, I fail. You can’t come with me.”

  “I don’t care for your niece’s gift of prophecy being turned against me so.”

  “And I don’t care for being lied to, so let’s call it even for right now, okay?” I glared at him across the table. He met my eyes for a few seconds before sighing and turning his face away.

  “As you say,” he said. “I have one further concern. You can find his body without too much trouble, I’m sure; I have faith in your ability to locate things that have been lost. What about his heart?”

  “That’s . . . going to be more difficult,” I admitted.

  “Indeed.”

  Simon was a lot of things. At the moment, he was a villain, lost in the darkness and unsure of how to find his way back. Maybe incapable of finding his way back because—once—he’d been something a lot closer to a hero. Heroes run in the Torquill family, after all.

  He’d originally turned to dark paths in an attempt to find his daughter, August, and bring her safely home. What he hadn’t known was that August had traded her way home to the Luidaeg for a path she believed would lead her to Oberon. She’d been hoping to find him and bring him back to Faerie, making herself a greater hero than her uncle had ever been. Making herself more of a legend than our mother. She’d failed.

  She’d failed, and in the process, she’d managed to get so lost that she couldn’t find her way back on her own. Without Oberon to redeem her way home, she couldn’t recognize the landmarks of her own heart, and her father’s face might as well have belonged to a stranger. And Simon—poor, sweet, overly devoted Simon—had exchanged his own way home for hers, so she could be reunited with our mother while he took his turn wandering lost through a world turned suddenly strange and unforgiving.

  Stripping away Simon’s way home had also taken everything he’d done to break free of Eira Rosynhwyr—also and sometimes better known as Evening Winterrose, Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe. She’d been the one to convince Simon he could find his daughter if only he’d allow himself to be tempted into more and more acts of unnecessary cruelty. I wasn’t going to call him my favorite person, but the Simon Torquill I’d glimpsed without her influence had been a kind, thoughtful man who protected pixies for the sake of his friends and doted on his wife. He’d been doing his best to survive in a world that didn’t always consider kindness a virtue.

  And if I wanted to get him back, I might have to find Oberon himself. No big.

  I reached for my water glass, only aware that my hand had started shaking when the contents sloshed over the lip and onto my fingers. Tybalt was looking at me with open despair in his eyes. I forced a smile.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. Like I said, the Luidaeg already told me I had to do this. It’s not news.”

  “Yes, but you were meant to do it with me beside you, to keep you safe,” said Tybalt. “Not on your own. Not leaving me behind.”

  “I don’t think I could do this on my own if I wanted to,” I said. “There’s no way May and Quentin would let me, even if Karen hadn’t seen them in her dream. The only reason Raj won’t insist on coming anyway is that he’s stuck here, learning how to be King for after we get married. No matter what else happens, I won’t be doing this alone.”

  Tybalt didn’t look as reassured as I’d hoped he would. If anything, he looked even more miserable, slouching in his seat and reaching for a pretzel roll, which he began ripping into smaller
and smaller pieces, until they were barely large enough to be considered crumbs. He let them fall onto his bread plate, watching his own hands as he worked.

  Finally, I leaned across the table and put my hand over his, stopping him before he could mutilate the poor bread any further.

  “Stop,” I said. He raised his head and looked at me, eyes wide and wounded. His pupils had expanded again, drowning his irises in darkness. He had never been more handsome. This was the man I was going to marry. This was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and raise my children alongside, whenever we decided it was safe enough for us to risk having them.

  More importantly, this was the man who’d learned to open up to me when he was confused or frightened or lost, telling me what was in his heart and trusting me to tell him what was in mine. I had never had that kind of relationship before. I’d loved Gillian’s father enough that I’d been prepared to leave Faerie behind for his sake, loved him enough that I’d found the strength to walk away from the only Home I’d ever really known, but we’d never talked. Not the way Tybalt and I did.

  If we had, he might not have been so quick to have me declared dead and replace me with another woman when I disappeared.

  “That bread didn’t do anything to you except for tempting you with its deliciousness,” I said gently, and removed the remains of the roll from his hand, dropping it back into the breadbasket with a soft thump. “Look at me, okay? Just at me.”

  Tybalt swallowed hard, eyes still locked on mine. He gave the very slightest of nods.

  “Remember when you hated me?”

  “October, be fair. I never hated you. I thought you were a distraction to my adopted niece, who needed to devote herself more cleanly to the Court, and I believed your mother had been fairer with you than she ever was.” He swallowed again, folding his fingers around mine. “I thought there was no possible way she could have left you ignorant of your family history, and that you raced through our world like a wrecking ball because you didn’t care, not because you didn’t know.”

  “Okay, so remember when you thought the worst of me and never bothered to ask me so I could tell you what was really going on?” The door opened again as Jason returned and approached the Lordens, who were blessedly staying at their own table. Tybalt flinched, starting to turn. “No, don’t look at them. Eyes on me, kitty-cat, until I’m done talking at you.”

  “I . . . my apologies,” he said, voice gone thick and tight with a combination of fear and amusement that I recognized more clearly than I wanted to. “I will do as my lady bids me.”

  “Awesome.” I squeezed his hand. “And remember how we got to know each other better, and you learned you’d been wrong about me, and I learned I’d been wrong about you? It took a long, long time, didn’t it? Longer than it would have if we weren’t two of the stubbornest people in Faerie. We had to figure out so many of the places where we were standing on the wrong assumptions before we could even start moving toward each other.”

  “I remember,” said Tybalt softly.

  “And do you remember how many times it could have all gone wrong? How many times we should have missed each other? Hell, how many times I could have died before my magic got strong enough to make that virtually impossible?”

  From the way his hand clamped down on mine, he remembered all too well. “I do,” he said, voice suddenly stiff.

  The way he was crushing my fingers hurt, but it wasn’t going to do any lasting damage. He would have needed to start chopping pieces off of me for that, and even involuntary amputation didn’t guarantee he could do anything I couldn’t recover from. In the last few years, I’d bounced back from breaking every bone in my body, having a knife jammed through my heart, and having an actual chunk of my physical spine yanked out of my body. Jin, Sylvester’s resident Ellyllon healer, had been unnervingly delighted about that last incident, making a house call after Quentin told her about it, so she could verify for herself that the missing bone had grown back. Pain is pain, even if I know it’s going to be fleeting. I still didn’t try to pull away.

  “We both lived,” I said. “We both lived, and you told me you loved me, and I was smart enough to get out of my own way and tell you I loved you back. We’ve navigated so much already, what’s one little quest that you can’t help me with? We’ve got forever, you and me. We’re going to be together, and we’re going to meet our kids, and they’re going to be amazing. There’s no way they could be anything else.”

  “And your mother will never be anywhere near them,” said Tybalt.

  “Not ever, not once,” I agreed. His grip on my hand began to loosen. “They’ll grow up surrounded by Torquills and Cait Sidhe and my weird collection of teenagers, and they’ll think of Raj and Quentin and Chelsea and Dean and Karen and all the others as siblings. Which means, much as we might both want to right now, that you can’t gut Patrick Lorden. He’s going to be an uncle to our children, and he didn’t make the laws.”

  “No, but he was happy to make sure you couldn’t claim ignorance of them,” said Tybalt bitterly. “I hope you won’t think less of me for holding that against him, because I’m going to. My forgiveness will take time and effort on both our parts.”

  I nodded. “I understand, and I love you, unforgiving as you are.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked upward in the beginnings of a smile. “I’m a cat,” he said. “Being unforgiving is a part of my job description.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Cat, I hope you’re not too dedicated to your work.” I reclaimed my hand. “I like it when you forgive me.”

  “Fickleness is also a part of my job description,” said Tybalt. “You shall always find forgiveness in my eyes. Others will not. Others have not pledged to be my wife.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, is this some Cait Sidhe thing where you expect me to share?” His mood was clearly lifting. If teasing could help that continue, I was all in. “No second wives for you. I’m a greedy girl.”

  “And I am not Oberon. We shall share our home with family, but not our bed.” Tybalt’s smile was real this time, and I allowed myself to finally relax. We were going to be okay.

  The next time the door opened, it was Jason returning with our dinners, which he placed in front of us before withdrawing from the dining room. I picked up my fork and steak knife. Tybalt watched. I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes?”

  “You have a knife. I find it best to pay attention when you feel the need to arm yourself.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him and commenced cutting up my steak. The food, as always, was excellent, and all conversation stopped for a few minutes while we enjoyed our meals.

  I was considering using the last pretzel roll to sop up the meat juice on my plate—too dark to be considered bloody, but still delicious—when the whisper of wheels against the floor caught my attention and I raised my head. Tybalt was already looking toward the sound, eyes narrowed and pupils hairline thin in his irritation.

  “Hello, Dianda,” I said wearily. “Do you have some other horrible point of Faerie law to bring to my attention? Because I’m sure you can understand why I don’t really want to hear anything else you have to say right now.”

  “No, and I’m sorry to interrupt you twice in one evening,” she said. Focusing on Tybalt, she added, “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable.”

  “You’re doing an excellent job,” he said.

  Dianda sighed. “See, this is one of those times when I wish the Undersea way of doing things had become the dominant way for the rest of Faerie. If we were at home, you’d punch me in the stomach, I’d kick you in the face, and then we’d move on. Instead, you’re going to be mad at me for days, if not weeks.”

  “I was thinking of years,” said Tybalt.

  “And if we could just punch it out, this would all be a lot easier, on both of us,” said Dianda. She shifted her focus to me. “I get that
you’re pissed, and you have every right to be. When Patrick and I decided to get married, it felt like everyone in Faerie had an opinion, and everyone’s opinion was ‘no.’ If not for Simon and King Gilad, I don’t think we would have made it.”

  “Gee, that’s an inspiring story,” I said. “Thanks so much for sharing! Good thing I’m marrying a literal king who doesn’t have to get permission from anybody, and I’m still a changeling, which means there aren’t that many people willing to claim the responsibility of telling me what to do.”

  “For once, your humanity serves a purpose,” said Tybalt direly.

  Dianda rolled her eyes. “Please. If you think I came back over here to tell you I don’t approve, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did. I approve. Not that my opinion matters. I came to say that all the resources of Saltmist are at your disposal on this quest. Whatever you need, you only need to tell me, and I’ll do my best to provide it.”

  I blinked at her. As a noble of the Undersea, Dianda technically lives in another realm, meaning Arden designating me as a hero of the realm in the Mists doesn’t mean anything in Saltmist. Arden would also supply me with whatever it was reasonable to need for a quest to bring one of her Kingdom’s wayward nobles and greatest criminals home. But I hadn’t been expecting the offer from Dianda.

  “I, uh, that’s very kind of you,” I said, fumbling my way around the urge to thank her. No matter how much time I spend in Faerie, I’m a child in the human world, and humans thank each other when they do things that are unexpectedly kind. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Patrick and Simon were like brothers once,” said Dianda. “If not for Simon’s devotion to your mother, things might have gone very differently for all three of us. He refused to believe any ill of Amy, and when the woman we knew as Evening Winterrose attempted to interfere with my engagement to Patrick, Simon intervened. I’ve always felt that was the beginning of his downfall. She would never have been able to get her claws into him as deeply as she did if we hadn’t opened the door for her manipulations.” She looked, and sounded, genuinely sorry for any part she might have played in Simon’s downfall, and some of my anger melted away like frost in the summer sun.