A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  As the Luidaeg spoke, Officer Thornton stood up straighter and straighter, and he changed. It was a subtle thing at first, a lengthening of the spine and a shedding of what seemed to be layer upon layer of weariness. Then the subtlety melted away, and with it, his humanity.

  Antlers sprouted from his brow, many-pointed as an ancient stag’s, brown as weathered bone. They didn’t bleed. There was no velvet to soften or gentle them, but as they reached what I assumed was their full span, flowers bloomed along their points, small and white and smelling strongly of a forest’s sweetness. The part of my magic responsible for recognizing and cataloging smells couldn’t put a name to them. Maybe they were something that only existed when Oberon did.

  His eyes remained brown but grew darker, irises spreading to devour his sclera, pupils dwindling until they were a dot of black amidst the layered brown. Predator’s eyes. His ears shifted as well, growing sharply pointed before elongating, becoming as flexible and responsive as a stag’s.

  His body didn’t change in any measurable way. I suppose it would have made a certain sense for him to have the lower body of a stag, given the rest of him, but how could Faerie have wasted so much time and energy hating anyone they viewed as bestial if their forefather had been a beast himself? I’m sure we would have found a way—the fae are nothing if not self-contradictory—but it would have required effort, and purebloods tend to also be profoundly lazy.

  The bones of his face shifted under his skin, until he looked like the same man and not the same man at all, humanity replaced by something impossibly beautiful, impossibly feral, glorious and terrifying. Looking at him felt the way looking at my mother used to feel, back when I was so much closer to human. I would have collapsed if he hadn’t been holding tightly to my hands, blunt claws denting the skin without breaking it.

  “Lady, let alone,” he said, and smiled radiantly, showing me the razor points of his incisors. Then he let me go, and I did fall, or began to. Simon was there to catch me, wrapping his arms around my waist and giving me something to lean against. Together, we watched in silence as the lost King of Faerie turned to face his daughter. The Babylon candle guttered out, its purpose finally fulfilled, and the room was suddenly cold.

  The Luidaeg bit her lip as she stepped toward him, black tears escaping from her eyes and running down her cheeks. They left tarry streaks behind, like she was crying off her mascara, but she was actually weeping the color out of her irises, leaving them driftglass green and clearer than I’d ever seen them.

  “Daddy?” she asked, in a voice that was barely bigger than a whisper. It shook on the second syllable, breaking.

  “Hello, my little Annie,” he said, turning to face her, and then he took her into his arms and held her against his chest while she wept into the white tank top that had carried over from his time as Officer Thornton. The fabric drank her tears, and it, too, changed, becoming a doublet of rough brown velvet over a long-sleeved poet’s shirt. She couldn’t possibly have cried enough to transform his sweatpants, but they grew tighter and more fitted, becoming simple brown breeches. He didn’t need any ornamentation. He was Oberon, crowned in horn and flower. That was enough.

  That had always been enough.

  Simon made a choked sound, loosening his grasp on me. I pulled away before Oberon could look my way again and root me to the floor, flinging myself into the open space between me and the person who needed me most in all the world.

  Tybalt met me when I was barely halfway across the room, pulling me into a crushingly tight embrace and surrounding me with the scent of musk and pennyroyal. He held me so close that for a moment it felt like I wasn’t going to be able to breathe, and for the same moment, I didn’t care. If this was how I died after everything I’d been through, that was fine by me.

  By the couch, Oberon and the Luidaeg were holding each other just as tightly, being stared at by Simon on one side and Quentin on the other. Neither of them looked like they were capable of moving. Unsurprisingly, it was Danny who spoke first.

  “Titania’s fucking ass, is that actually fucking Oberon?” he asked, in a tone that managed to remain reverent, despite the mortal profanity.

  I choked on my own laughter, pulling away from Tybalt just enough to lean back, look at Danny, and say, “I know who you are, so yes, it is.”

  “And don’t think we’re not going to discuss that, at length, later,” said Tybalt, voice low and menacing. I turned back to him. His eyes were narrowed, pupils hairline slits against the green, and he was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “There are things you do not gamble with. My heart is one of them. Your memory is another. By gambling with the second, you could have destroyed the first.”

  “I know.” I freed a hand to touch his cheek. “Will it help at all if I say I wasn’t gambling? By the time I traded my way home for Simon’s, I was already sure I knew where Oberon was.”

  “It would help if not for the fact that you and the Luidaeg had clearly already begun the conversation, and she knew what you would want. Did you know where Oberon was then?” He could see the answer in my eyes, because he grimaced, a pained look flickering across his face, and turned away. “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Tybalt, I—”

  “Don’t you have someone you need to save?” he asked, and opened his arms, and let me go.

  I stumbled a few feet back, looking at him with wounded bewilderment. I knew he didn’t like it when I risked myself, but this had been for us. If I didn’t save Simon, we couldn’t get married. I hadn’t been trying to get hurt. Had I?

  Sometimes that’s the hardest question of all to answer, and at the moment, it wasn’t the important one, because my answer didn’t matter as much as Tybalt’s, or as Quentin’s. We still had messes to clean up. May. All the people at Goldengreen who had yet to be returned to their original forms. The question of whether or not I had screwed things up with my fiancé could wait until I had the space to breathe and give it the attention it deserved.

  I took a deep breath and turned to Simon. “Can you undo the rest of the transformations you performed in Goldengreen so that the Luidaeg doesn’t have to?” I asked.

  He shook his head, looking sheepish. “Not without more of what enabled me to cast them,” he said.

  “You mean blood.”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean Evening’s blood.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’ll kill you if you don’t stop using it.”

  “I suppose it’s a yes to that as well,” he said, and shook his head again. “Addiction is a terrible thing. I can’t say I’m not addicted to the power she has to offer me, or that I wouldn’t be glad to have a reason to give in to the temptation one more time, but the risk of her getting her hooks into me again is too high. I finally have my way home.”

  He said that last word with so much longing that I stopped, really looking at him for the first time since I’d agreed to take his place under the Luidaeg’s spell. He looked exhausted, wearied and worn away by what he’d been through; he was too thin, and while the fae don’t age the way humans do, I would have sworn he looked years older than his brother. But he was standing up straighter than he had been before, and he wasn’t cringing from every little sound in the room. He was a free man.

  Free to make his own choices, and his own mistakes. I turned to Walther. “Hey, Walther,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  Unlike Tybalt, he didn’t sound angry; if anything, he sounded almost amused, like this was part and parcel of an ordinary day.

  “Where are we with waking May up?”

  “Cassandra’s working on her now. The elf-shot is still interfering with her breathing, and it’s hard to keep her stable long enough to administer potions. Someday I’m going to figure out how to make a lot of these things injectable without also making them harmful, and then this will all
be so much easier.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you.” It felt almost sacrilegious to be having such an ordinary question in front of Oberon, like the lost King of Faerie appeared in the Luidaeg’s living room every day, but maybe that was why we needed to have it. Oberon’s return changed everything, and it changed nothing. May was still asleep. Tybalt was still angry with me. Life went on.

  “I’ll get back to work as soon as I get back to my office,” agreed Walther. “It’s going to be fine.”

  “I hope so.” I couldn’t get to Quentin without approaching Oberon and the Luidaeg, which meant it was time to bite the bullet and interrupt two of the most powerful beings in the world. No pressure. I stepped forward, knees only shaking a little, and cleared my throat.

  Neither of them moved.

  “Um, excuse me?” I managed. “Luidaeg?”

  She didn’t lift her head from her father’s shoulder as she replied with a sullen, “What is it?”

  “We need to restore everyone who’s still transformed in Goldengreen, and Simon can’t break the spell without drinking more of your sister’s blood, which will make it easier for her to influence him again. We just got him back. I think Patrick will kill me if I let her mess this up.”

  “You just got him back? He’s been running around playing at evil for what, a handful of years? I’ve been missing my father for five centuries. You can give me an hour.”

  “I . . . right.” I had no idea what Oberon’s return would mean for Faerie. I didn’t think any of us did. But he was back, and that meant things were going to change. There was no way to avoid that anymore.

  Everything was going to change.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MY CAR WAS PARKED in the alley outside. I looked at it wearily before deciding I didn’t want to know how it had come to be here. None of the options I could think of were particularly appealing, save for maybe “Bridget drove it here, and then Etienne opened a portal to take them both home.” My keys were in the engine, protected by the soap bubble shield of a ward that burst with the faintest scent of salt as I approached. The Luidaeg had been looking out for me, as she so often did.

  “I’ll take Walther back to campus,” said Danny gruffly, careful to stand far enough back as to not place himself between me and Tybalt.

  “I appreciate that, Danny,” I said, biting my tongue before I could tack on a “thank you.”

  “I’ll get back to work waking May,” said Walther. The edges of the sky were starting to burn with the approach of dawn. He looked at them and grimaced. “So much for date night. I’m going to have to make this up to Cassie.”

  “I’ll buy your next pizza,” I said.

  He smiled, lopsidedly. “Aw, you know she loves you, but she’ll really appreciate someone else picking up the tab.”

  “Doesn’t Arden pay her?”

  “Sure she does, and Berkeley pays me, but wow, that girl can put away a slice. We go through a lot of pizza. And alchemical supplies and physics textbooks aren’t cheap, either.” He grimaced. “Sometimes I think Faerie adopting human ideas of currency and capitalism was a bad idea.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “Most of the time I know it was a bad idea.” He stepped over and hugged me. “Welcome back. I know you had a plan, but that was terrifying, and if you ever do it again, I’m going to kick whatever your boyfriend leaves of your ass. Got it?”

  “Got it.” I looked past him to Danny. “Can you hang around campus until May’s awake and then give her a ride home?”

  “I was already planning on it,” he said.

  “I’ll put a pot of coffee on.” Danny won’t let me pay him for driving, citing a favor I did for his sister almost twenty years ago as a debt that he’s still trying to pay off. I don’t actually remember what I did for her that was so impressive, but at this point, if anyone’s in debt, it’s me. Coffee was the least that I could do.

  Danny smiled, expression as rough-hewn as the rest of him, and lumbered toward his car. Walther followed, shoulders stooped, exhaustion showing in every line of his body. He’d had a hard day.

  I turned back to my remaining companions. Tybalt was still holding himself farther back than was his norm, unable to forgive me for the risk I’d taken. Quentin was balancing things out by standing closer than he usually would, like he was afraid I’d vanish if he took his eyes off me for a second. Simon was in the middle, weary and wary and too thin by half. I wanted to pause long enough to get the man to a warm bed and a square meal, but I was afraid we didn’t have the time.

  “The Luidaeg will break the spell on the rest of the people in Goldengreen once she’s done welcoming her father,” I said. “Dean’s already back to normal, which means you shouldn’t be in too much trouble when his parents find out.”

  “He’s still in trouble with me,” muttered Quentin.

  “You ate too much chowder,” said Simon. It was the first time he’d directly addressed my squire since recovering his way home. Quentin and I both blinked at him. “Even after it started making you feel sick, you kept eating it. Why?”

  Quentin didn’t answer. Simon frowned.

  “Why?” he repeated.

  “You put me under a compulsion spell,” snapped Quentin. “I couldn’t stop. Even when I knew I shouldn’t eat any more, even when it made me feel bad, I couldn’t stop, because you wouldn’t let me!”

  “And that’s why I hurt all of you,” said Simon. He looked from Quentin to me, to Tybalt. “I don’t claim to have no responsibility in what happened. When my former patroness offered power in exchange for service, I took it because my child was missing, and I was half-mad with the fear that I’d never see her again if I waited to find a better way. Power corrupts, and it ate away at me, making worse and worse choices seem like they were reasonable ones, but the fact remains that the first decision was my own, made when my mind was clouded by nothing more than grief.”

  “Much as it pains me to say this, you may be wrong,” said Tybalt. Simon and I both turned to him. He looked at Simon, shutting me out entirely. “You were Daoine Sidhe standing in the presence of your Firstborn. Anything she said or suggested would have seemed reasonable, whether or not you had good reason to resist her. Even that first choice may not have been yours to make.”

  “I want to accept that,” said Simon. “I want to be blameless. I want to lay all the horrible things I did and said and allowed at someone else’s feet. But to do that would be to admit I have no honor of my own, because some of those choices were mine. I’ve watched August and October fight their Firstborn for as long as they’ve been alive. Can I really claim a grace I would refuse to my own daughters? Either I made my choices, or Amandine has always allowed our girls to rebel. And she would never have risked August in that way.”

  “Mom’s going to be thrilled when she hears Grandma gave her the wrong name,” I said, with a sliver of satisfaction. “I just wish I could be there when she finds out.”

  “Regardless.” Simon returned his attention to Quentin. “I made the first choice either entirely or partially on my own, as you chose to follow your knight down a road that might not have a happy ending. And then I made the choice to save my daughter from her own choices, which were not necessarily good ones, and lost any chance I had to make the right choice in the future. Once the sea witch had my way home, all routes to becoming a better man were closed to me. I am genuinely sorry to have done you harm. It was unfair of me to target you. I swear the secrets I learned from October’s blood will be kept, and not used against you if I have any choice.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Quentin sullenly.

  “It means I still belong in part to a woman who does not easily give her toys away, and she has few enough of them in this time that she’s likely to come looking for me when she inevitably wakes.” Simon turned his gaze on me, eyes suddenly wide and borderline panicked. “When they el
f-shoot me, you mustn’t use the blend I brewed. Her blood makes too great a portion of it, and she’ll be able to find me in my dreams. She’ll twist me back into her creature, and I’ll do you harm. Please, please, put me to sleep with something your alchemist makes for you. You owe me nothing. I know that. But let me have the peace of knowing I’ll do no further harm.”

  I blinked, slowly. “Simon . . .”

  “I deserve little grace. Give me at least the grace of being kept from her.”

  Tybalt stepped forward, finally putting himself closer to me. “What you’ve done in the past may be unforgivable—I have no intention of forgiving you—but that doesn’t mean we’ll deliver you back into the arms of a monster. Such a thing would make us unforgivable, and we are better people than you are.”

  To my surprise, Simon actually smiled. “You always have been, Sir Cat. Even when you followed my sister more like a lost puppy than a prince, you were a better man than I.”

  I cleared my throat. “Simon, do you have any objection if Tybalt and I get married?”

  He looked startled at the idea. “Why would I think I had the right to object, even if there were anything to object to? It’s clear to anyone with eyes how much he loves you, and I’ve held your blood on my tongue. Your love for him flavors everything you are. If I’d tasted any doubt or absence of desire, I might answer differently, because I want you to be happy, but as it is, no, I have no objections. I just hope you’ll choose something pleasant for a cake. Some of the things you remember eating and enjoying are appalling.” He was clearly trying to lighten the mood.