The Winter Long

When we reached the burnt-out old oak tree at the top of the hill, the Luidaeg stopped, sighed, and snapped her fingers. The sound was louder than it should have been, gathering echoes as it bounced off the trees around us and finally returned, remade by distance and the acoustics of the park into the sound of a key turning in a lock. The door to Shadowed Hills appeared in the hollow of the oak, swinging slowly open in silent welcome. The Luidaeg lowered her hand and smirked.

“See? All you have to do is know how to talk to them.” With that she stepped through the open door and into the hall beyond. I followed her, and Tybalt followed me, both of us tensed against the potential for attack.

The hall was empty. The air still smelled of roses—the air in Shadowed Hills always smelled of roses—but the floral perfume was underscored by a hard, frozen note, like it had snowed recently inside the knowe. That would be Evening’s doing. I could smell the traces of her magic everywhere, overlaid on the cleaner, less corrupt workings of Sylvester and his people.

The Luidaeg turned back to look at us, all traces of levity gone from her expression. Her eyes were solid black again, like the eyes of a shark. “From here, we must be careful,” she said. “Remember what she is. Remember what she can do.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded once, tightly, and walked past her as I started toward the throne room where Luna and Sylvester received their guests. It seemed like the most likely place to find a power-hungry Firstborn who had instructed her children to go off and acquire glory in her name. The Luidaeg and Tybalt walked behind me, forming the other two points of our small triangle. Having them there made me feel a little better—I wasn’t going into danger alone. Not this time.

There were no guards at the vast doors to the throne room. That didn’t strike me as a good sign. I pushed the left-hand door open, trying to keep my arms from shaking under its weight, and started into the familiar vast, over-decorated space on the other side. My sneakers were silent against the checkerboard marble of the floor.

And there, on the other side of the room, in the throne that was meant to belong to Sylvester Torquill, sat Evening Winterrose. The sight of her took my breath away. Even seeing her in Goldengreen hadn’t prepared me for this, for Evening in her element, strong and untouchable and restored to us, because even death couldn’t hold her, not Evening. I’d been foolish to think otherwise.

A small part of me—the part that had struggled against the mists in Blind Michael’s lands and the sweet spell of love cast by my Gean-Cannah almost-lover—screamed that the floor wasn’t really falling away, that Evening wasn’t really the most breathtaking thing I’d ever seen. This was all trickery, treachery, the sort of illusions that I’d encountered before.

She was wearing a red satin dress, the color of rose petals, the color of blood on the snow, the color of apple skins in the winter. It was a confection of floor-length layers and gathered falls. Her seamstress had been clever, because when Evening moved—even the slightest twitch—all that gathered cloth fluttered like feathers in the wind, revealing myriad small cuts and smaller dagger-points of deeper red silk, red as danger, red as dying. Against the cloth, her skin truly was as white as snow, and her coal-black hair seemed on the verge of bursting into flames. Then Evening looked at me and did the most terrible thing of all.

She smiled.

“There you are,” she said sweetly. “I was wondering when you’d find it in your heart to come and visit me. A little bird told me you’d stopped by the knowe and then left without even saying hello. Really, October, is that any way to treat someone who’s been your friend for as long as I have? It seems uncommonly rude. I always thought you were more polite than that. It seems I overestimated your mother’s teaching of you.”