The Winter Long

“You have to understand, October, that time is different for the pureblooded.”


“I know that.” I’d always known that. From my mother’s inability to remember that my birthday was something important to the sad way most purebloods looked at changelings, like the fact that we’d die someday meant we were as good as dead already.

“Yes, but . . .” Sylvester hesitated again before he said, “I admit, I’ve often wondered about the nature of what he did to you. Transforming you into a creature with a long lifespan, using a spell you could someday break yourself . . . I think he may be telling the truth, disturbing as it is to consider. He may have transformed you as he did because the alternative was killing you, and he didn’t want to be responsible for your death.”

“Why the hell not? He’d already kidnapped Luna and Rayseline. It’s not like he could have done anything to make you angrier.” And he’d laughed. I remembered that so clearly. Simon and Oleander, laughing while they watched me gasp and struggle to breathe the air that had become poisonous to my body. How could that have been an attempt to save me?

“It’s not my wrath that he was worried about. Not in that moment.” Sylvester looked at me sadly. “Did you come here alone?”

“No. Quentin and Tybalt are waiting in the hall.”

“Good. That means you’ll have someone to rant at when I finish telling you what I’m about to tell you.”

I blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Sylvester paused for a moment before he continued. “Have you never wondered why the doors in Shadowed Hills are willing to acknowledge you as family, or why Luna could enter your mother’s tower uninvited, despite the wards Amandine has put in place over the years? I know you believe the knowes are alive, and I don’t think you’re wrong, but they’re normally inclined to follow their own rules.”

A horrifying picture was starting to form at the back of my mind, assembled from things people had said to me over the years. Arden’s confusion when I said my mother was married to a human; Oleander’s visit to the tower, all those years ago, when she’d taunted Amandine with her relationship with Simon. The way Sylvester cared for me . . . and then the last piece of the awful puzzle fell into place as I recalled Simon’s own words about my mother in my kitchen only a few hours ago.

“You’re not serious,” I half-whispered.

“I’m afraid I am,” he said.

“I want to hear you say it.” My tone was suddenly challenging. I didn’t try to rein it in. “Say it! I won’t believe it if you don’t say it.”

“You are my niece, October, in the eyes of the law, if not the substance of your blood.” Sylvester looked at me solemnly. “My brother took Amandine to wife long ago. Things were different then. He was different then. And no matter how much he changes, no matter how much he has changed, I truly do believe that he still loves her.”

“You are not serious.” I jumped to my feet, beginning to pace back and forth. “Why are you telling me this now? You don’t think this is something I should have known years ago, like, I don’t know, before you sent me after him? This is not okay! This is the new dictionary definition of not okay!”

Sylvester sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t expect you to take this well, but I had expected you to take it a little bit better than this.”

“You think I’m overreacting? You’re telling me your brother was married to my mom, and you thought I was going to do anything other than exactly what I’m doing right now?” I glared. “This is not okay.”

“According to fae law, my brother is still married to your mother,” said Sylvester, sounding apologetic.