The Winter Long
Page 16

This was only the third time I’d been in this part of the knowe. The first time, I’d been coming to warn Sylvester about an attempt on Luna’s life, and I’d been elf-shot for my troubles, nearly dying on the cobblestones I was walking along. I looked down, trying to find traces of the trauma in the stones under my feet. It wasn’t there. Even when I breathed deeply, looking for traces of the blood, it wasn’t there. There was no sign that anything bad had ever happened here. But I remembered, and I walked a little faster as I tried to outpace that memory.
If I remembered correctly, the gate to my right would lead to Rayseline’s quarters. I turned left, walking up to the gate and stopping, unsure how to proceed. “I don’t suppose there’s a doorbell somewhere on this thing, is there?” I asked, only half rhetorically. The gate didn’t answer me. I sighed and reached for the handle.
As soon as my fingers touched the metal of the gate it began to chime, quietly at first, but louder and faster with each passing second, until it was like I was standing in a forest of wind chimes. I yanked my hand back like I’d been burned. The chiming continued.
Then, with a final loud chord, the chiming stopped, the handle turned, and the gate swung open to reveal a tall, redheaded Daoine Sidhe in breeches and a sleeping shirt, squinting slightly in the twilight of the garden. An empty bed was partially visible behind him. I stepped forward and breathed in, catching the reassuring scent of daffodils and dogwood flowers. Only then did I allow my shoulders to unlock. I tried to settle my expression as I let out my hastily taken breath and bowed.
“Good day, my liege,” I said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it was genuinely important.”
“October?” He sounded confused, and when I straightened, I saw that he looked even more so. Then the confusion passed, replaced by growing wakefulness, and worry. “Of course you wouldn’t disturb me if it wasn’t genuinely important. Is someone hurt?”
I thought of Jazz. “Someone was, but I fixed it,” I said. “Sylvester . . .”
He raised a hand, cutting me off before I could finish the sentence. The worry in his expression deepened, turning slowly into a deep, burning fury. “I can smell him on you,” he said, voice honed to a razor’s edge. It could have drawn blood. “I should have known that if he ever came back here, he would come for you first.”
“My liege?” I said, reeling a little. When Oleander had come back, I hadn’t been able to convince anyone she was in the Kingdom. She’d managed to halfway convince me that I was losing my mind. It seemed almost perverse for things to be so much easier this time.
Then again, I had been throwing Simon’s spells around like they were softballs. It made sense that some of the stink of him might have clung to me, and if anyone was sensitive to the smell of the man’s magic, it was his twin brother.
Sylvester turned his cold, furious face toward me. I quailed, and he blinked, looking briefly surprised before his fury melted into resignation. “I’m sorry, October. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just . . . I didn’t think he’d really come back. Not like this. I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me for not being there?”
“You had no idea it was going to happen today,” I said, still shaky. My headache wasn’t helping. I heal so fast these days that I had become unaccustomed to lingering pain.
Sylvester stepped through the gate, pulling it closed behind him. The glimpse of the darkened bedchamber I had seen when the door opened disappeared, replaced once more by the empty air. Without another word, he stepped forward and folded me into a hug. I made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob and simply let him hold me, enjoying the safety and comfort of his arms. I lost my mortal father when I was seven years old. Sylvester had been the closest thing I’d had ever since.
“I am so sorry,” he said again, when he finally let me go. He started down the cobblestone path, and I followed, walking with him to the first of the marble benches. He sat down, motioning for me to sit beside him.
I sat.
“I knew he’d return one day. There’s too much for him in this Kingdom for him to stay away forever, and my brother has never been anything if not stubborn. Even when we were children, when his magic still smelled like smoke and mulled cider, he would have his way no matter what the cost.” Sylvester shook his head. Something like grief was lurking in his eyes. “He should never have come near you.”
“He said he transformed me to save me,” I said hesitantly. “I think there’s something wrong with him.”
Sylvester’s laugh was thin and bitter. “Oh, I know there’s something wrong with him. There’s been something wrong with him for a very long time. But . . .” He hesitated.
I frowned, eyeing him sidelong. “I don’t like the tone of that silence.”
“You have to understand, October, that time is different for the pureblooded.”
“I know that.” I’d always known that. From my mother’s inability to remember that my birthday was something important to the sad way most purebloods looked at changelings, like the fact that we’d die someday meant we were as good as dead already.
“Yes, but . . .” Sylvester hesitated again before he said, “I admit, I’ve often wondered about the nature of what he did to you. Transforming you into a creature with a long lifespan, using a spell you could someday break yourself . . . I think he may be telling the truth, disturbing as it is to consider. He may have transformed you as he did because the alternative was killing you, and he didn’t want to be responsible for your death.”
“Why the hell not? He’d already kidnapped Luna and Rayseline. It’s not like he could have done anything to make you angrier.” And he’d laughed. I remembered that so clearly. Simon and Oleander, laughing while they watched me gasp and struggle to breathe the air that had become poisonous to my body. How could that have been an attempt to save me?
“It’s not my wrath that he was worried about. Not in that moment.” Sylvester looked at me sadly. “Did you come here alone?”
“No. Quentin and Tybalt are waiting in the hall.”
“Good. That means you’ll have someone to rant at when I finish telling you what I’m about to tell you.”
I blinked. “What are you talking about?”