A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  “Nothing I did was against the Law!”

  “We have access to Oberon now,” I said reasonably. “We can ask him for more Laws, if you think we need them. But you’ve been a bad man, and if we leave you to your own devices, someone’s going to elf-shoot you and stuff you in a closet just so they don’t have to think about you anymore. And that means you’re technically my prisoner, until I hand you off to someone else who’s willing to take responsibility for your actions. Normally, I think that would be Mom, but let’s be realistic; she doesn’t take responsibility for her own actions, and I’m also sort of not speaking to her on account of how she kidnapped my fiancé to blackmail me into finding my sister. So I’m just going to carry you down the stairs to the nice man who’s been worrying about you, okay?”

  “I’m the fiancé, and I’m going to help her,” said Tybalt.

  Simon looked at me bleakly but didn’t struggle, and after a few more steps, even began walking again. I was grateful for that. He wasn’t the largest man I’d ever met, but it had been a long day, and my upper body strength has never been the best in the world.

  Quentin tumbled off the banister as he reached the bottom of the stairs and bolted for Dean—no longer a tree—who was standing at the edge of the water. Patrick and Dianda were with him, Patrick standing, Dianda seated on the dock, her fins dangling in the shallows.

  Quentin slammed into Dean, wrapping him in a hug far more enthusiastic than most of their public displays tended to be. Dean slipped his arms around Quentin in return, and for a long moment, the two boys stood there, clasping each other tightly, and no one moved, or said a word.

  Then Dianda glanced toward the stairs, and froze before standing, scales falling away, her sapphire-colored shirt growing longer, until it formed a diaphanous dress that stopped just below her knees. Patrick gave her a startled look, then turned to see what she was looking at. He straightened, paling as the blood ran out of his face. Dianda fumbled for his hand. He gripped hers, holding it fast, and neither of them moved.

  Dean finally let go of Quentin, the two of them pulling a little bit apart—only a little—so that Dean could see what his parents were looking at. His expression was one of dismay and displeasure, but not fear or outright loathing. I suppose growing up in the Undersea, where any sort of political conflict can be resolved with actual violence, made getting turned into a tree seem like the kinder, gentler option for someone who was invading someone else’s territory.

  Simon was walking on his own as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Tybalt and I kept hold of his arms, pulling us with him as we approached the Lordens. Neither Patrick nor Dianda moved, and when we were only a few feet away, we let Simon go. He looked down at his feet almost immediately, like he was afraid anything else would be seen as inappropriate. No one said a word.

  Well. That wasn’t going to work for me. “Simon says he’ll come to the wedding, which means no one gets to claim insult against me and try to use it to ruin my life or fuck up my honeymoon,” I said bluntly. “Not that we’re going to get a honeymoon, since someone is inevitably going to try to murder or abduct or transform one of us into something unpleasant, so right now, I’ll settle for damage control and being allowed to get married.”

  Simon didn’t say anything. Neither did Patrick or Dianda, both of whom were staring at him like he was the most impossible thing ever to walk the earth.

  Right. “If you don’t want him, we can take him back to Mom, who doesn’t know we’ve found him yet, but I figured since you were the ones who cared enough to make me invite him to the wedding, and he turned your eldest son into a tree earlier tonight—sorry about that, Dean, how are you feeling?—you might want to see him before she disappears him into her tower.”

  Simon paled as Dean looked him square in the eye, “I’m feeling much better now. I much prefer being a mammal. I’ve had a lot of practice, and I think I’m pretty good at it.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “I prefer being a mammal, too. How about you, Tybalt? Are you pro-mammal?”

  “I’ve never been anything else, so I suppose I must be,” he said, sounding decidedly entertained by this entire situation. “I do like warmth.”

  “Then maybe you’d make a good lizard,” I said, and turned my attention back to Patrick and Dianda. “Should we get him out of here?”

  “Please don’t,” said Patrick, voice beginning to shake. “Please don’t return him to that woman. He deserves better than to be passed from Firstborn to Firstborn like some sort of trinket.”

  “You know, then?” asked Simon.

  “Your Amy grew less subtle after you were lost to her,” said Dianda. “She started behaving more like her father’s daughter all the time. At this point, I doubt there’s anyone left in the Kingdom who doesn’t know her for a Firstborn.”

  “I got the memo pretty late,” I said mildly.

  “Even so,” said Dianda. “She hid it better once, when she cared more about being a part of fae society and less about having her own way in all things.”

  “It’s time to be finished with Firstborn, Simon,” said Patrick. “You deserve better than their poisoned fruits. You deserve your freedom. It’s been absent for so long.”

  Simon’s face fell. Not all at once; it was a slow process, like watching a sandcastle undermined by the incoming tide. It nibbled around the edges at first, until finally everything collapsed, and he began to cry, wailing, “I thought you were dead. I thought the earthquake took you, too, and I had to find my daughter, I had to find her before Amy went mad and left me alone, and Ei—” He caught himself before he could finish saying the name. “The woman I worked for told me she could help me bring August home if I’d only do as she said and let her take care of everything else. It sounded so simple. It sounded so easy. It couldn’t bring you back, but you were better off without me, always had been, and my little girl was lost, and my wife was losing her way, and I agreed. I agreed to everything she said. Until I gave the Luidaeg my way home to ransom August’s, my choices were my own. I did what I did because I thought that it was right, and not because anyone was holding a knife to my throat. I don’t deserve anything better than I have. I don’t even deserve what’s already mine. I did what I did because I wanted to do it.”

  “You didn’t hurt my son because you wanted to,” said Dianda. “That was the Luidaeg’s spell making the worst possible choices seem like the best ones—and even then, you didn’t hurt him. We use stones and turtles in the Undersea, not trees, but the idea of getting your enemies out of the way by turning them into something slow is an old one.”

  “Only because I had allowed a monster to become the only thing I had left that could substitute for a home.”

  “You think we don’t know the monster claimed you because you interceded on my behalf?” asked Patrick sharply. Simon turned to look at him. Patrick shook his head. “She never lived publicly as our Firstborn, but when Daoine Sidhe did things she didn’t approve of, they would take a meeting with the Countess of Goldengreen, and the misbehavior would stop. I had my own meeting with her, remember? I came out of it convinced Dianda was beneath me, and no good son of the Daoine Sidhe could find a future beneath the waves. I would have rejected her, and destroyed my own hopes for a happy life, if not for your intercession. You helped Dianda return me to my senses, and you spoke to the Countess, and she never interfered with me again. Honestly, I’m not sure she ever spoke to me again. She had someone more faithful to serve her. Someone who already knew what it was to serve one of the First, even if we didn’t know her for what she was.”

  “We should all have known long before we did,” said Simon, sounding more subdued. “We should have seen the way she bent the world by moving through it. She lied to us, and we allowed it, because something in us knew that any protest would see us slapped down and denied. She hated King Gilad because he stood outside her control. We should have known.”


  “You knew as much as any of us could.” Patrick took a cautious step toward him. “You knew about Amandine.”

  “Not until August’s birth,” said Simon. “I believed her when she told me she was Daoine Sidhe, before that. It didn’t matter. I had a human mother. That put us far enough apart not to be siblings, and so we could marry without concern of impropriety.”

  That was the first time I’d heard a pureblood even imply that incest might be frowned on. I blinked at him, suddenly putting the lists of surnames I associated with the nobility into a new context. There was always something to learn about Faerie, even now.

  “Amandine had a human mother, too,” said Quentin. “We’ve met her. She’s a weird lady.”

  “Five-hundred-year–old humans usually are,” I said. “I guess once you get cursed by the Faerie Queen you betrayed, you get a little squirrelly.”

  Simon turned to frown at me, snapped out of the shell of his reunion with Patrick. “Amy’s mother was a human?”

  “Oh, buddy, you have a lot left to learn about the family you went and married into, although I have the feeling someone here is getting ready to fix that little problem,” I said.

  Simon looked startled, then turned back to Patrick. “What is she talking about?”

  Patrick reached for his hands, and when Simon didn’t pull away, grasped them firmly, twining their fingers together and holding Simon fast. “Dianda and I have discussed this, at length, since you and October brought August home, and you lost your own way. We want you to divorce your wife.”

  “What?”

  “You can now,” said Dianda. “August being back means both your children can declare which parent’s bloodline they want to belong with. Her absence was the reason we didn’t bring this up a long time ago—not that you would have listened while you were still trying to find her. Amandine doesn’t treat you like she loves you. She treats you like a useful pet, and maybe that’s how she knows to love, but I wouldn’t tolerate it if Patrick treated me like that, and I won’t stand by while someone I care about is treated like that.”

  “What?” said Simon again, sounding even more puzzled.

  “You can divorce Mom now,” I said. “August and I can both approve it. No one can stop you. Mom never tried to get you away from Evening. When you went looking for August and she knew it was hurting you, she didn’t help. She never even told me about you. She cut you out of her family a long time ago. Now it’s your turn. Cut her free. Cut yourself free.”

  “You lost your way home and she did nothing,” said Tybalt. “I died today, watching October follow you into the dark. I can’t imagine sitting by and allowing her to remain lost as Amandine has done with you. Love can’t always save you, but love should always try to guide you home.”

  “I can’t leave Amy,” said Simon. “August would never forgive me. She must still be so confused after being lost for so long . . .”

  “Amandine already left you,” said Patrick. “A long time ago. You owe her nothing.”

  “I think your relationship with August might be improved if she didn’t have to worry about whether Mommy and Daddy are going to be fighting again,” I said. “And we don’t know what she’ll choose if given the opportunity to observe your divorce. Maybe she’ll go with you. The parent who kept looking for her after the other one had given up and moved on.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” said Simon. “My brother will have me elf-shot on a slab before I can finish telling him that I’m coming home to stay. I don’t have a home in the human world any longer; I sold the apartment after my patroness feigned her death and left me with no need for legitimate business ties. Amy’s tower is the only home available to me right now.”

  “That’s never been true,” said Patrick. “Even if you think it is, it’s not the case. I would have taken you with me from the start if not for Amandine. I love you.”

  “We love you,” said Dianda. She stepped forward, resting a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, while Dean looked quietly horrified. “I’ve never forgotten how much help you were when I was courting Patrick. We could never have navigated the differences between our cultures if you hadn’t been there to encourage him to try and keep me from swimming away. You had his heart before I did, and part of it has always belonged exclusively to you. I’ve never tried to win it away.”

  Simon stared at her, speechless. I had to admit, I understood the reaction. I’d known they wanted me to find Simon because he and Patrick had been friends when Patrick still lived in the Mists. I hadn’t expected it to be because they were trying to get me to facilitate a threesome.

  Not that I minded, exactly. It was just a bit of a surprise.

  “Leave her,” said Patrick, voice low and urgent. “Walk away from that woman, who has never deserved you, not even for a moment. Let your daughters declare themselves one way or another, and you walk away. Come home with us.”

  “You’ll be safe in Saltmist,” said Dianda. “We’ll keep you safe, and well away from all the dangers the land has to offer you. And before Amy gets any ideas about coming for you, we’ll marry you ourselves, and keep you in the deeps forever.”

  “I . . .” Simon stopped, and simply stared at the two of them. Patrick and Dianda smiled hopefully back, Patrick never letting go of his hands.

  “Okay, gotta admit, this is a solution I never thought of,” I said, leaning closer to Tybalt. Dean still looked horrified, although confusion was rapidly overwhelming his expression. Quentin just looked confused.

  “It’s one that is not open to us,” said Tybalt firmly. “I refuse to share you, or to be shared.”

  “Wasn’t going to ask you to,” I said. “I’m still human enough to prefer the standard model of marriage. Also not a Firstborn, and not planning to let you wander off on some life-threatening quest while I hang out with another dude for a decade.”

  “Thank Oberon for that,” said Tybalt, and kissed me.

  It was a good kiss, not glancing, deep enough to distract me from the scene around us, as he gathered me into his arms and pulled me against his chest. The scent of musk and pennyroyal, once so unfamiliar, now so comforting, surrounded us, and I wondered briefly if he’d learned to love the scent of copper and grass as much. It would make sense if he had.

  In far too short a time, he let me go again. I understood why—neither of us was overly fond of making a spectacle of ourselves—even as I slightly resented it. I looked back to the others and smiled.

  Simon was kissing Patrick.

  They were still holding hands, but they were closer together now, their bodies pressed tight, like they were trying to make up for lost time. Dianda was beside them, one hand resting on either man’s shoulder, keeping their circle complete. Dean and Quentin had moved a little way down the beach, heads together, talking quietly. Dean still looked uncomfortable, but I suppose “hey, kiddo we want to open our marriage and include the man who just turned you into a tree” was a little awkward for everyone.

  “This is better,” I said, and it was. It really was.

  TWENTY-TWO

  SOMETIMES THE WORST PART of a life-changing adventure is the aftermath. I scowled at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out why my hairclips refused to stay level with each other. I’d done everything short of breaking out a ruler, but somehow they always wound up at least an inch out of true.

  “Toby? Are you ready yet?” May’s call was accompanied by a knock on the bathroom door. I transferred my glare to her direction. Maybe she couldn’t see it, but it was nice to have something else to glower at for a few seconds.

  “My hair is fighting me,” I said flatly.

  “I told you to call Stacy. Can I come in?”

  “I didn’t want to call Stacy just to make her come to my mother’s divorce proceedings, and you know Cassandra doesn’t want her there. Walther’s supposed to be showing up to speak on Simon�
��s behalf, and she’s still trying to keep him and her mother apart.” I opened the bathroom door, gesturing to my hair with my free hand. “Fix it.”

  “Oh, Toby, how are you so bad at this?” She shook her head and gestured to the toilet. “Sit. I fix.”

  “How are you so good at this? You have my memories.” I closed the lid on the toilet and sat down, tilting my chin up to make it easier for her to get to my hair.

  “Not only your memories, and I’ve been a couple of lady’s maids in my time,” she said, stepping over and starting to untangle the clips from my hair. They were twisted silver, meant to invoke the twisting shapes of rose canes without actually driving tiny thorns into my scalp. Blood rarely improves a formal outfit. “I know how to deal with hair way more complicated than yours. You just want it to stay out of your eyes today, right?”

  “Right,” I said, and gestured to the sink. “The rest of the clips are over there.” The other half of the set was a series of tiny silver chains studded with polished garnet chips, like falling rose petals or drops of blood. They connected to the clips with narrow loops, adding weight to the accessories, and matched the waterfall earrings I wasn’t wearing yet.

  “Tybalt get you these?” she asked, picking up a brush.

  “Simon.”

  May’s own hair was teased and fluffed into something that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a John Hughes movie, spangled with flecks of rainbow glitter that both enhanced and clashed with the electric blue streaks among the dishwater brown that was her natural color. It was held in place with a stasis spell, rather than an entire can of hairspray, but the effect was the same. She smelled of cotton candy and ashes, strongly enough that I questioned whether anything she was wearing actually existed. But she was less likely to get attacked over the course of the evening than I was, so if she wanted to wear a dress that could be dissolved with one misaimed spell, that was fine.