The Winter Long

“Toby, are you listening to me? Tybalt is fine, but you’ve lost a lot of blood, and you need to eat. Come on.” She turned and walked back out into the hall. I stayed frozen for a few seconds more and then hurried after her. The kitchen door was swinging, and so I pushed it open, stepping through.

The kitchen smelled of hot soup and fresh-baked bread. Tybalt was curled on the table in cat form, sleeping in a nest formed by my leather jacket. The Luidaeg was standing between us. As soon as the door swung shut behind me, she whirled, moving too fast for me to react, and clasped her arms around me, pulling me into a tight and uncharacteristic hug. I froze, blinking, unable to make myself return the gesture—unable to make myself do anything, honestly, except stand there.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled by my shoulder. My eyes got even wider, until it felt like they were going to fall clean out of their sockets. The Luidaeg pushed me out to arm’s length, looking at me gravely. “You have no idea what you did for me. Thank you. I owe you a debt that I may never be able to repay. You understand that, don’t you?”

I kept staring at her. Between the hug and the forbidden thanks, it felt like something inside my brain had broken.

“You need to say you understand,” she said, some of the old familiar impatience seeping into her words. “That’s how you accept the debt.”

“I—I understand,” I stammered.

The Luidaeg sagged, making no effort to conceal her relief. “Oh, thank Mom.”

“Luidaeg, how did you . . .”

“I can’t get into the Court of Cats under my own power, but I can get out,” she said. “I thought you might need the backup. Since I got here to find you bleeding out and the cat unconscious on the floor, I was right. Do you know who you’re up against yet?”

“Evening,” I said. “She’s not dead.”

“She never was,” agreed the Luidaeg, nodding enthusiastically, like a teacher trying to prompt a reticent pupil. “She can die—anyone can die—but Devin’s method was never going to succeed. He didn’t have certain information, and without it, there was no way he would have used the right tools for the job.”

“He needed iron and silver,” I said, eliciting another nod. “But . . . how can you tell me this? I thought you said the geas still held.”

“Oh, it does, it does,” said the Luidaeg, with almost giddy gleefulness. “I can’t say her name. I can call her all sorts of unpleasant things, as long as they’ve never been her name. But I don’t need to. You figured her out.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said.

The Luidaeg sighed. “She’s always been a pushy one. Most of my half sisters are, or were, but she was the worst of a bad lot. It’s because her mother encouraged that sort of behavior. ‘Prove you’re worthy of my love’ and all that crap.” She walked over to the stove, where a large pot of something that smelled like rosemary and fish was simmering. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“Tybalt fed me before we came here,” I said.

She turned to give me an assessing look. “Uh-huh. And was that before or after you spent half a day bleeding on your living room floor? That shirt’s ruined, by the way.”

“You could have at least stuffed some tissues in my nose,” I snapped, and walked past her to run a hand along Tybalt’s side. He was breathing regularly, and stretched in response to the touch. “Hey. Wake up. I need to know that you’re okay, and you need to keep me from killing the Luidaeg. Again.”

She snorted in amusement. “I’d like to see you try. How did he get you to sit still and eat?”

“I fainted,” I admitted. “I sort of did too much blood magic on too little sleep and even less food.”

“I swear, October, my sister’s not going to need to have you killed. You’re going to kill yourself and save her the trouble.” She took two bowls from the cabinet, moving as easily as if this had been her kitchen for years. “Wake up your kitty. You’re going to eat while we talk.”