The Winter Long

The field of roses was blackening around the edges. The part of my mind responsible for keeping me alive noted dispassionately that it hadn’t been that long since I raised the dead, nearly drowned, and sobbed myself to the verge of dehydration, all without eating or sleeping or doing anything else that would allow my body to replenish its resources.

This will hurt, I thought again, and then the last thin tendrils of Raysel’s Blodynbryd heritage snapped off in my hands, and I was falling down into the dark, and nothing particularly mattered anymore. Not even, I was relieved to discover, the pain.





EIGHTEEN


THE MIXED SCENTS of burning wood, warm fur, and roasting chicken assaulted my nose, drawing me up out of a sound sleep. I struggled to keep my eyes closed, dimly aware that as soon as I fully woke, I was going to have to start dealing with the world again—and given how long it had been since I’d slept, that wasn’t something I was in a real hurry to do. My head was throbbing, but nothing else hurt. That was a nice change.

Even forming that thought was too strenuous to be safe. The shredded remains of sleep wisped away into a sigh as I pushed myself up onto my elbows and opened my eyes on the Court of Cats.

This was one of the smaller bedchambers, and it was different from most of the others I’d seen in that it only contained a single bed. It was a huge, four-posted thing, with a clean, if moth-eaten, canopy stretching across the top of it. I was in the bed, naturally, covered by a thick patchwork quilt. The center of the room was occupied by a small dining table. A fireplace took up most of the far wall. Tybalt was crouched in front of it, prodding at a chicken on a spit.

I took a breath and said the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be, “A chicken? A rotisserie chicken? Could you get any more Renfair cliché if you really, really tried, do you think?”

“I’ve never actually been to one of your Renaissance Fairs. I think it would be an amusing, if frustrating experience,” said Tybalt, a relieved note in his voice. He twisted to face me without coming out of his crouch. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty—and before you protest the label, consider that I pulled you from a glass coffin in the midst of a riot of flowers. I believe a fairy-tale allusion or two is only fitting.”

The last thing I remembered was holding Raysel’s hands and yanking the Blodynbryd out of her one drop at a time. I blanched. “Oh, Oberon’s balls, did I collapse on top of Rayseline?”

“Yes, and her howling like a Banshee the whole time,” he said, twisting back to face the fire. He gave the chicken another experimental nudge with the fork in his hand. “There were a few moments where I thought you might actually awaken her from her enchanted sleep, simply because she was screaming so much. Alas, you did no such thing. That might have distracted her mother from the fact that you were lying on top of her like a sack of abandoned potatoes.”

“That metaphor got a little mangled somewhere in the middle,” I said, closing my eyes. My stomach rumbled. I ignored it as I asked, “So what happened?”

“Rayseline screamed, you collapsed, Luna shouted that you’d killed her daughter, I interceded before anything overly compromising could happen. I then stood between mother and coffin with you in my arms until she answered your questions.” There was a scraping sound as he presumably took the chicken off the fire. “Once I had the information I needed, I carried you to Etienne’s quarters, retrieved our charges, and brought you back here to the Court of Cats, where you would be safe.”

Our charges . . . my eyes snapped open, staring up at the threadbare canopy. “Quentin and Raj. Where are they?”

“They needed rest as much as you did,” said Tybalt. “They are in the room next door, enjoying the chance to slumber without fear of discovery. I’ll wake them after you and I have finished our conversation.”