The Winter Long

I frowned, trying to find the line between what she was saying and what I knew her words actually meant. It had been so clear only a few seconds before, but now it was blurred and difficult to see. She had been my friend for so long. She had allowed me to enter her presence and treated me like I was almost worth something, despite my human heritage. She had hired me to do the things she didn’t want to do herself. She had . . .

She had ordered Simon Torquill to kill me. She had orchestrated the kidnapping of Luna and Rayseline Torquill, tearing wounds in the fabric of their family that would never really heal, just scab over and fester. She had treated me like dirt and, because I was a changeling, desperate for any sign of acceptance, I had allowed her to do it.

“You’re not my friend,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?” asked Evening.

“I said, you’re not my friend.” I forced my right hand into a fist, sending bolts of clarifying pain through my broken arm. It cleared the fog out of my thoughts as I raised my head, forcing myself to look at her. The air around her head crackled with the power she had gathered around herself, splintering and refracting the faint light until it seemed like she almost glowed. “You were never my friend. You were just using me until you didn’t need me anymore. I don’t know if you still need me. But I don’t need you.”

Evening smiled languidly. “You will,” she said, and let all that gathered power go, directing it straight at me, and at the thin cord of my fealty. What had been a faint glittering in the air exploded into true light, virtually blinding me. She was perfect, she was untouchable, she was above reproach, she was undying, she was everything I had ever wanted to be and everything I could never approach, she was—

—she was casting a spell, she was casting a spell on me, and spells could be broken—

Shaking from the effort, I forced my hands up, one balled into a fist and coated in my own dried blood, one holding Dare’s silver knife. My broken arm howled in protest. The pain was still helping me focus, no matter how much damage I might be doing to myself. I squinted into the brilliance, finding the individual threads of Evening’s compulsion. Then, before I could think about it too hard, I opened my right hand, grabbed a fistful of threads, and yanked them tight, slashing my knife down across them in the same gesture.

Evening shrieked with pain and surprise. The spell snapped, casting the clearing back into its previous darkness. And the faint smell of smoke drifted out of the trees across from me. That was my only warning before Simon Torquill stepped out of the tree line, a longbow in his hands, and fired the arrow that he had been aiming during our confrontation.

It flew straight and true, and would have embedded itself solidly in Evening’s back, had she not turned as fast as a striking snake, raising her hand in an imperious gesture. The arrow froze in midair, becoming completely motionless.

Simon’s eyes widened and he dropped the bow, turning to run. Not fast enough. With a small gesture, Evening sent the arrow flying back to him. He yelped with pain as he fell. I didn’t see the arrow strike, but I didn’t need to.

I could smell his blood.

“Simon!” He’d tried to kill Tybalt. He’d nearly killed me. But he was also Daoine Sidhe, and I had seen firsthand just how hard it was for Evening’s descendants to tell her “no.” When the chips were down, he’d tried to change sides. In that moment, in that place, that was good enough for me.

I ran across the clearing, heedless of the fact that I was putting an angry Firstborn behind me. Let the Luidaeg distract her; Simon needed me.

He was facedown in the brush when I reached him. The arrow protruded from the top of his left arm. I dropped to my knees, pushing him onto his side with my left hand. “Simon? Simon, look at me.”

“October.” His eyes were closed when I first rolled him over, but he opened them, offering me the most honest smile I had ever seen on his face. “Even now you’re trying to be a hero. Let it go, and run. Save yourself.” His eyes drifted closed again.

A horrible certainty stole over me. “You were trying to hit her with elf-shot, weren’t you?”

“Mmm,” he said. “I’d been meaning . . . to rest . . .”