The Winter Long

“I’m the only one here who withheld anything, Toby, and I did it because you never asked—and yes, because it was a little bit in your best interests, although I would have answered if you’d ever figured out what questions you needed to ask. I’ve always had a plan, and you’ve always been part of it.” The Luidaeg shrugged. “You running off and getting yourself killed stupidly didn’t have a good enough payoff for me.”


“Okay,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose again. “We’re not only getting off topic, you’re making me want to throw things at all of you. So let’s move on for right now and I can be pissed off later. Simon said something about having been hired to do what he did to Luna and Rayseline, and not expecting me to be a part of his job. Do you know who his employer was?”

“Yes,” said the Luidaeg.

“Can you tell us who his employer was?”

“No.” She opened her mouth like she was going to continue, and froze for a long moment, visibly struggling. Finally, she sagged back in her chair and spat to the side, looking disgusted. “Fuck. I can’t tell you anything. I can’t even get so far as animal, vegetable, or mineral. Simon’s employer is off limits.”

“Okay.” I frowned, lowering my hand. “So whoever hired Simon is alive, and you can’t say their name, right?” The Luidaeg nodded. “Did this person cast the geas on you themselves, or was it cast by someone else?”

“They cast it themselves,” said the Luidaeg. She paused, looking both surprised and pleased. “I wasn’t sure I could tell you that. Yes. This geas was created by the person whose name I can’t say.”

If learning this person’s name was as important as I was starting to think it might be, we had a way of doing that. I just didn’t want to suggest it until we’d exhausted all other avenues, since it would involve me sampling the Luidaeg’s blood. The blood of a Firstborn is nothing to mess around with. No matter how strong my magic got, I was never going to forget how weak I was compared to them. “Could I create a geas powerful enough to bind you?”

The Luidaeg snorted. “No. You’re a changeling. Even if you weren’t, you’d have to get me to drink your blood if you wanted to bind me like that. And that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

“Who could?”

There was a pause as she sorted through the words that she was allowed to say. Finally, she said, “Any of my siblings, if I let them get close enough; any son or daughter of Titania. Oaths are a form of illusion, after all. Your squire would have a better chance of binding me than you would, because at least he has the Summer Queen’s blood, if not her blessing.”

“. . . right.” There were too many descendants of Titania to rattle off in a list; even if I named every single one I knew, there were hundreds more within the Kingdom. It didn’t help that she didn’t formally claim all her descendant lines. Some of them were considered children of Oberon, thanks to the whole “fae children can only inherit from one parent” structure inherent in our society. “Is it someone I know?”

“Yeah.”

The Luidaeg and I both froze. It had been a softball question, one I expected to have lobbed back at me with an immediate refusal; something to keep the conversation going.

“What do you—”

“You have to leave now.” For a moment, I would have sworn I saw genuine fear in her face. The moment passed, but the memory of it lingered. “I mean it. Get out.”

“Luidaeg—”