The Winter Long

Simon Torquill, my personal bogeyman and unwanted stepfather, took one look at me and realized that he had finally gone too far. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t try to defend himself. He just turned around and ran.

The wound in my arm was healing, but not as fast as it would have if I hadn’t lost a lot of blood, used a lot of magic, and generally exhausted myself. My head felt like it had been used as a punching bag. The sound of blood dripping from my fingertips to the floor punctuated my movements as I turned and knelt next to Tybalt. He raised his head as soon as I crouched beside him, and a pained smile crossed his face. There were red welts on his throat, and blood seeped through his shirt where I had misjudged my slices and cut shallow gouges in his chest. At least none of those wounds looked serious.

“I am beginning to feel as if we do not save each other in equal measure,” he said wearily, voice rasping a little from the strain he had put on it with all the screaming. “Next time you must let me save you, or I will start to feel I am not contributing to this partnership.”

“I’ll try,” I said, taking his hand and pulling him with me as I straightened. He didn’t shy away from the blood on my fingers. There was something to be said for loving a man who came from a part of Faerie that still settled its battles the old, brutal way.

Speaking of battles . . . I turned back to where I had left the Luidaeg and Evening, and was disappointed but unsurprised to find that both of them were gone.

“Oh, Oberon’s ass,” I muttered. “Tybalt, how are you feeling? Do you think you can walk?”

“I can walk, and I can fight, as long as I’m not caught in a coward’s snare again,” he said, before coughing in a way that gave the lie to his words. He looked sheepish. “It would, however, be best if I could refrain from fighting for a time.”

“Again, I’ll try. We’re missing two Firstborn. I think we might need to find them before somebody else gets hurt.” Find them, and find Simon. Even when I had no clear goals, it seemed I was still doomed to be forever running after something.

Tybalt stilled, expression going neutral as he sniffed the air. Then, with the solemnity of a man passing judgment, he said, “They are not here.”

“I can see that.”

“No. That isn’t what I meant.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his face with one hand, smearing blood across his cheek in the process. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t his blood, and that was really all I cared about. “The air smells wrong.”

“A lot of blood and a lot of magic just happened here.”

“The air smells like somewhere else. Somewhere that does not follow the rules of here. The air on the Shadow Roads is similar—it is air to the Cait Sidhe, or we would die when we ran there, but it smells of silence and of stillness, if you have the nose for it.” He opened his eyes. “They aren’t here.”

That changed things a little—but not as much as it once would have. “Right,” I said, digesting his words. Then: “Follow me.”

I made it halfway across the ballroom before I realized Tybalt wasn’t following. I stopped and turned just in time to see him crumple to the floor.

“Tybalt!” I shouted, running back over to him and dropping to my knees. The few spots on my jeans that hadn’t already been saturated with blood soaked through. I was too panicked to care. He was lying facedown and not moving, but when I fumbled for his neck, I found a strong, if somewhat irregular, pulse. Shock and blood loss, then, and not anything more serious. I breathed a sigh of relief . . .

...and froze as the point of what felt like a spear was pressed against the back of my neck.