The Winter Long

A STUNNED SILENCE fell over the room. It lasted almost a full minute before Quentin said, “She’s my First? How can you . . . I mean, wouldn’t we know?”


“The Firstborn have proven remarkably skilled at disappearing from the lives of their children,” said Tybalt, in a careful tone. “Most of us are not even certain whether those who founded our lines are alive or dead. Why should the Daoine Sidhe be any different?”

“The Luidaeg said the Firstborn all stopped using their proper names with their descendant races, going to honorifics instead,” I said. “She never used Evening’s name when we were talking about her. It was always ‘the Winterrose.’ ‘Eira’ means ‘snow,’ and ‘Rosynhwyr’ means ‘the frozen rose.’” I was stretching the translation a bit there, but I didn’t think Mags would mind.

“That’s not proof,” said Quentin. He was starting to look distressed. I guess finding out that your First is the kind of person who just might be your worst nightmare come to life isn’t exactly easy.

“No, but it fits,” I said. “It makes a lot of other things fit, too. Like the fact that everyone else who’s died since I came back from the pond has shown up among the night-haunts, but Evening was never there.”

“The people who died at ALH never joined the night-haunts,” said Quentin stubbornly.

“Because their souls were digitized and uploaded to a locked server,” I countered. “Evening should have been there. She wasn’t. So why not? It can’t be because she didn’t want to see us. Devin and Dare joined the night-haunts, and they didn’t want to see us either. Joining the night-haunts isn’t a choice, unless you’re not as dead as you want everyone to think you are.”

“How was Evening killed?” asked Tybalt.

“They used iron,” I said. “That’s another thing: you need iron and silver if you want to kill one of the First.” I hadn’t known that when Evening “died,” but I’d learned it all too well from Blind Michael. If I hadn’t used both iron and silver when I killed him, he would have just gotten back up and kept coming after the people that I loved, no matter how badly I’d hurt him.

Evening had been shot with iron bullets. Her throat had been slit with an iron knife by Devin, the man who’d taught me how to survive in the tangled border country occupied by the local changeling population. I’d tasted the damage, ridden it far enough to be afraid I was about to share her death—but I hadn’t seen her die, had I? Her heart had still been beating when I’d pulled myself out of the blood magic that had been letting me follow what I’d believed to be her final moments. Even her injunction to “find the ones who did this” had never mentioned finding her killers.

She had known there weren’t going to be any.

“We’re so screwed,” I said again, softer this time. Tybalt looked at me with concern. I shook my head. “Evening was there when I was knighted. She knows too much about me and the way I react to things. We can’t surprise her.”

“Yes, we can,” said Raj. “She won’t have expected you to come here. No one expects anyone who isn’t Cait Sidhe to come here, because our doors are generally sealed against all others. I don’t care whether she’s the Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe or the Queen of France; she’s not going to be able to follow us. You’re safe as long as you stay here.”