The Winter Long

The net snapped with a backlash that was only half physical, but which sent me tumbling backward, smacking my head hard against the kitchen floor. I groaned, as much from surprise as from pain, and lay still for a few seconds before pushing myself upright again, expecting to see May flung sobbing across her girlfriend’s body.

I saw no such thing. May had pulled Jazz’s head into her lap and was stroking the other woman’s hair. She was crying, yes, but they were relieved tears; the smile on her face made that as plain as day.

“Jazz?” I asked. The pain from my head’s introduction to the floor was fading. The pain from breaking Simon’s spell wasn’t. It was almost a relief to have my limits so clearly delineated.

“She’s going to be okay,” said May. She looked up, smiling brilliantly. “If you can move, come over here.”

If I could move? That didn’t sound encouraging. I moved my fingers carefully, and found they still responded to my commands. If anyone noticed that I had a headache—something I tend to telegraph by wincing a lot—I could blame it on my impact with the kitchen floor. Blunt force trauma excuses a lot of things. I got onto my hands and knees and crawled over to them.

Jazz remained supine on the floor, eyes closed . . . but they were normal eyes, set in a normal face. What little I’d seen of her before I ripped the net away told me that this was a great improvement. I glanced downward. Thin red scabs ringed her neck, but the gills were gone. Her chest was moving normally, rising and falling in slow, shallow hitches as she breathed.

“She’s alive?” I whispered.

“She’s going to be fine,” said May, still smiling through her tears. “All you had to do was listen to me.”

“But . . .” I pushed myself into a standing position, reeling a little as my head throbbed in time with the motion. “I don’t even know what I did.”

“You know the trick with the dresses? The one where we’d take something the false Queen had transformed, and then you’d pull on the spell until it turned into something else?”

I nodded. I quickly regretted the motion.

May didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were back on her girlfriend’s face. She was looking at Jazz like she was some sort of miracle. Considering what had just happened, maybe she was. “You finally figured out how to unravel fresh spells the same way you reweave them. That’s what you did. That’s what you did for me.”

“. . . oh,” I said. I didn’t really understand, but I wasn’t sure that mattered. Jazz wasn’t going to die, and she wasn’t going to spend the next fourteen years of her life living in a fishpond. Those were the important things.

“Thank you,” whispered May.

Those words—those forbidden words—were enough to finally shock me out of my shock. I straightened. “I need to go,” I said.

“Go? Go where?”

“Sylvester. He has to be told that Simon is back. He has to . . . I have to go.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to, you know, call him?”

Yes: yes, it would have been faster. But I needed to see him. When I tried to picture Sylvester’s face, I kept seeing Simon’s instead, with those cold, hooded eyes staring at me, daring me to challenge him. I needed to see my liege. I needed to tell him what had happened, and let him put his arms around me and tell me that he would keep me safe this time. Even if it was a lie, it was a lie I needed.

So I told a lie of my own. “They’re identical twins, May. He may have gotten into Shadowed Hills already; who would stop him?” I shook my head. “I need to go to Shadowed Hills. I can’t know I’m actually speaking to Sylvester unless I can taste his magic.”

“At least take Quentin with you. He’s your squire.”

I started to take a breath to argue, paused, and tried pleading instead. “Jazz can’t be moved yet. You’ll need help if Simon comes back.”