The Winter Long

“I can do this,” I said. “He isn’t going to be there, and even if he were, he’s not the bogeyman. He’s just a man. I can beat him.”


They may have been lies, but even lies have power if you repeat them often enough. I took a breath to steady myself, turned, and opened the bedroom door.

Quentin was leaning against the hallway wall, already dressed to go, with his own sword belted by his side. He raised his head and looked at me coolly. His bronze hair was wet and slicked back from his face, a concession to the shower he hadn’t had time to take. “I thought you might forget to wake me, so I got ready,” he said. There was no quarter in his expression: he knew damn well that I’d been thinking about leaving him behind, and he wasn’t having it.

Tough. “I didn’t wake you because you need to get some sleep. As your knight, it’s important for me to look out for your health.”

“You didn’t wake me because you don’t want me coming with you.”

“Oh, right, silly me. I didn’t want to drag my squire into pointless danger.”

Quentin narrowed his eyes. “You would have woken me before you knew I was the Crown Prince.”

That made me pause, but only for a second. Quentin was my squire, yes, but he was in the Mists under a blind fosterage: no one was supposed to know who his parents were, and even though I’d known him for years, I hadn’t learned their identity until recently. It turned out that was because they were the High King and Queen of the Westlands—a Kingdom better known as “North America” in mortal circles. He was going to rule a continent one day. Assuming he stayed alive that long, which was by no means guaranteed while he was living with me.

In the end, I decided to go with aggressive honesty. My headache was enough to make anything else seem like too much work. “Guilty as charged. I didn’t wake you because I don’t want you anywhere near Simon Torquill, okay? This is the man who turned me into a fish for fourteen years. Now he’s trying to feed me some bullshit line about how he did it to ‘save me,’ which means he’s delusional on top of everything else. So, yeah, you’re staying home. I’m not going to be the girl who gets the Crown Prince killed.”

“I’m still your squire. That comes first until my training is finished,” Quentin shot back. “I’m not staying behind. You know I can follow you. Do you really want to make me do that?”

I glared at him. “I hate you.”

“I know.”

“You will do exactly what I say at all times. That includes backing off if I say something is too dangerous for you. Do you understand?”

“You’re my knight,” he said, almost cheerful now that he knew he was getting his way. “I do what you tell me to do.”

“That’ll be a cold day in Mag Mell,” I muttered, and stalked toward the stairs. “Come on. We need to ward this place to kingdom come before we get on the road.”

We walked down the stairs side by side, our shoulders brushing the walls. I managed to swallow most of my relief—I wasn’t going out there alone—but I couldn’t swallow my dread. The only place I knew for sure that Simon wasn’t was the house. By leaving it, I exposed myself to him, wherever he might be lurking. I took some small comfort in knowing that the spell he’d thrown at me had hit him. Hopefully, the bastard was a pigeon or something by now.

May and Jazz were no longer in the kitchen. My former Fetch had dragged or carried her unconscious girlfriend into the living room, and was busy warding the windows while Jasmine slept on the couch. May looked around when Quentin and I appeared in the doorway.

“I didn’t wake him up on purpose,” she said. “He must have heard the noise from the kitchen, same as I did.”

“I’m a little insulted that you all thought you could have a major fight in the house and not wake me up,” said Quentin.

“You’re a teenage boy. You could sleep through a nuclear bomb. Now go ward the front door and the mail slot against intrusions.”