The Winter Long
Page 43

I put my phone back in my pocket. “Wait here,” I said to Tybalt, before ducking into my room and yanking off my blood-crusted shirt, replacing it with a clean one. He was right: I did feel better with less blood on me. He smiled when I rejoined him in the hall, giving me an approving look. Together we walked downstairs and to the kitchen, where a clearly anxious Quentin was slapping together egg salad sandwiches with more force than strictly necessary. The roses from Simon were on the kitchen table. Patches of frost had begun to form around the bouquet, and some of the glacier-colored flowers looked like they were actually melting.
He whirled when he heard our footsteps. “Well?” he asked, gesturing toward us with his spoon, which was still full of egg salad. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s all good,” I said. “If Simon came into the house, he doesn’t seem to have touched or done anything.”
Quentin relaxed slightly. “Oh, thank Oberon. I don’t want to deal with magical booby traps in my own home.” He turned back to his sandwiches. “I didn’t like standing idle, so I figured I’d start putting together something for us to eat. We’ve been running hard with no food all day. That can’t continue forever.”
“See, October, the Crown Prince’s association with you has done him good after all,” said Tybalt. “It has taught him to force-feed his elders, as they cannot take care of themselves.”
“That’s going to serve him well.” My stomach growled, reminding me that Quentin was right: I hadn’t eaten since getting out of bed, and I hadn’t been in bed nearly long enough. I walked over and snagged a plate with one of the fully assembled sandwiches, carrying it with me as I crossed to the table and peered more closely at the roses. The chill coming off of them was enough to make me want to turn the heat up, but something told me that would just make them melt faster, and any message they might imply would be lost.
“Some of them are Duchess Torquill’s own creations,” said Quentin, as he went back to mechanically slapping sandwiches together. “Some were cultivars from the Snow Kingdoms, or from the deeper lands. People brought them along when all the doors were sealed.”
“Makes sense,” I said. That was how goblin fruit had been transported from the lands where it grew naturally into the mortal world. It was actually sort of nice to realize that we’d carried more than just deadly narcotics with us when we had to flee our ancestral homelands. “How long has Luna been growing this kind of rose?”
“As long as I’ve known her,” said Tybalt.
“It’s hard to grow roses from the Snow Kingdoms when it’s not always winter,” said Quentin. “They’re really delicate. There are a few in the palace gardens back home, and Maman refuses to let me or my sister near them, since she’s afraid we’ll offend the Snow Kingdoms by picking flowers and turning prize blossoms into snowmelt.”
“You mean like Simon has?” I asked. I stuck my finger into the water pooling around the bouquet. It was freezing cold. “Okay, so Simon mentioned the language of the flowers. Rosebay is a warning. White roses mean ‘I am worthy of you,’ which, fuck no, he isn’t. Even if he weren’t my stepfather. Blue roses mean . . .” I stopped, drawing a blank.
“Blue roses mean nothing, because they do not naturally occur in the mortal world, and the language of the flowers was borrowed, like so many other things, from humanity,” said Tybalt. “They are a flower without a definition.”
“Well, I’m just going to take a wild guess that roses made of ice are also outside the flower language, so . . . he gave me a bouquet that means both ‘warning’ and ‘nothing.’ What the hell, Simon?” I frowned at the flowers, taking another bite of my egg salad sandwich. There had to be something I was missing. Something—my eyes widened, and I swallowed my mouthful only half-chewed, to ask, “What if the point isn’t the message, but the contents of the bouquet?”
Tybalt frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not saying ‘beware, I am worthy of you,’ or ‘beware, no definition found,’ he’s saying ‘beware’ and giving me roses made of ice. Winter roses.” I dropped the rest of my sandwich onto the table, whirling. “He’s telling us that whatever’s coming next, it’s going to happen at Evening’s old knowe. We need to get to Goldengreen.”
“Are you sure?” asked Quentin.
I snorted. “Kiddo, I’m not sure of anything right now, but I’m sure we don’t have time to waste standing around and arguing about it. Tybalt?”
“Yes?”
“Much as I hate to leave my car behind, it’ll be faster if we take the shadows. Can you . . . ?”
He smiled a little. “You know, every time you request this of me, I laugh on the inside.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, once upon a time I freaked out at the idea of the Shadow Roads, and now I treat them like a faster version of the Monorail at Disneyland. The question stands. Can you get us both there without hurting yourself?” Tybalt was a King of Cats, but that didn’t make him indestructible. He’d died twice in the past three years, and while he’d recovered both times—it turns out the old “cats have nine lives” myth got its start with the Cait Sidhe—that didn’t mean I wanted to overtax him and go for a third.
Tybalt thought for a moment before he nodded. “Goldengreen is a friendly territory. I have passed through its wards before. I am more than willing to undertake this journey.”
“Good.” I offered him my hand. “Quentin, come on. We’re heading for Goldengreen.”
“I like field trips,” he said, and grabbed my hand, and Tybalt pulled us both with him, into the shadows.
The Shadow Roads seemed a little less cold than usual, as if the lingering chill from my contact with Simon’s roses was keeping the normal freeze at bay. That didn’t make me any more likely to linger, especially not with my head still pounding and my legs still a little weak from blood loss. Tybalt ran and I ran with him, keeping a tight hold on Quentin’s hand. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to his parents that I’d allowed him to become lost on the Shadow Roads for all eternity. Not to mention the fact that I would genuinely miss the kid if something ever happened to him.