The Winter Long

“It took me a while to get used to that,” I said. “How much danger are we walking into?”


“I honestly don’t know.” The Luidaeg shook her head. “She should still believe that she’s killed me, which is an advantage for us: having me walk in will throw her off balance, at least a little bit, and that can’t help but benefit us. At the same time, if she holds the knowe completely, she may be willing to do a little heavy lifting.”

She didn’t need to explain her meaning. “I’ll fight her.”

“It may not matter,” said the Luidaeg. “Oberon was her father. That gives her a blood connection to you, even if it’s not a strong one. That, in conjunction with your oaths to Sylvester, and the blood binding you once created between yourself and her, means there’s an opening that she can exploit.”

“Wait . . .” I frowned. “Luidaeg, your parents . . .”

“I am the oldest daughter of Oberon and Maeve,” she said. “Which makes me their first-born Firstborn, but that’s confusing, so we don’t usually put it that way.”

“And Evening is . . . ?”

“The oldest daughter of Oberon and Titania.”

There it was again: the subtle sense that I was missing something. Frown deepening, I asked, “Who are my mother’s parents?”

Much to my surprise, the Luidaeg smiled like I had just asked the five hundred dollar question on an afternoon game show. She leaned forward and tapped my chin with her thumb as she said, “Oberon’s her father, making her the youngest of my siblings, but her mother is not my mother, nor my father’s other bride. Who her mother is I can’t say, but if you go looking, you might find some interesting truths hidden under some equally interesting lies.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” I asked.

“Can’t, can’t, always can’t,” said the Luidaeg. “You should know the difference between those two words by now, especially as you’ve started wearing gold in your hair.”

“I do, but—” The smell of pennyroyal drifted over on the wind. I stopped mid-sentence, turning to see Tybalt standing next to my car with a baffled expression on his face.

“How did you beat me here?” he asked, walking over to us. “I came as fast as I might, and expected to spend no small amount of time lurking in shadows, watching to see that the way was clear for your arrival.”

“You know us, we’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,” I said airily. “Half the Bay Area in ten minutes is a piece of cake.”

“I see,” said Tybalt. He stopped next to me, offering a half bow to the Luidaeg. “I appreciate the fact that I left my lady with you and returned to find her neither bleeding nor running for her life. It’s a charming change from what normally occurs when I turn my back.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” I said. “We’re all here now.”

“Yes,” said Tybalt. “I suppose we are.”

We started up the hill, the Luidaeg in the lead. Getting into Shadowed Hills from the mortal side of things usually requires a complicated series of actions, all of them designed to be virtually impossible to perform by accident. The Luidaeg ignored them completely. She just climbed straight toward the summit of the hill, never turning, never looking back. We mimicked her. The worst that would happen was we would need to go back down and start over, but I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. The Firstborn have a way of shaping Faerie to fit their needs.