The Winter Long

Quentin seemed to understand that, because he didn’t look annoyed. He just nodded, and said, “I’m sure. She was like something out of a story, you know? I was a fairy prince being raised in a castle hidden on an island outside of Toronto, and she still looked like something out of a story to me. I kept expecting wildflowers to grow in her footsteps. But not pretty ones, not daisies or poppies or anything like that. Poisonous ones. Hemlock and blooming wolfsbane and other things that can hurt you.”


“That sounds like Evening,” I agreed. “What happened?”

“She told my father that rumors of my impending fosterage had reached her, and that while she wouldn’t reveal her sources, she had come to plead the case for her home kingdom of the Mists. She told him Goldengreen wasn’t really an appropriate place to foster a child, but that the Duchy of Shadowed Hills was an excellent place to learn humility and service.” Quentin shook his head, frowning. “He should have told her ‘no.’ He should have said that if she knew I was going to be fostered, she was a danger to the line of succession, and refused to let me go anywhere near her. I was only a kid, and I knew that.”

“That clearly didn’t happen, since you’re here,” I said.

“That’s my point. My father is a good king and a good man and he loves me. He sent me away because he loves me. So why would he send me somewhere that had already heard rumors about the Crown Prince being sent into blind fosterage?” Quentin turned to look at me, still walking. “As soon as she said ‘send him to us,’ he should have replied ‘get out of my court,’ and instead he asked his Seneschal to contact the Duke of Shadowed Hills and start arranging my fosterage. I was in Pleasant Hill, presenting myself at the old oak tree, less than a month later.”

I frowned. “Evening wanted you here.”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.” He looked back to the hall. “I was sad when she died, because I remembered her coming to my father’s court, but it never seemed important, somehow. It was like it had all happened in backstory, and now the story had actually started.”

“That’s a really weird way of putting it,” I said.

“I know,” said Quentin, sounding frustrated. “That’s the problem. It’s like I always knew how strange it was for me to be a blind royal foster placed in a Duchy that was in the process of recovering from horrible tragedy. Duke Torquill was barely speaking to anyone when I arrived at the court. Duchess Torquill was a ghost, and some nights, Rayseline wouldn’t stop screaming . . . why would my parents have sent me there? They had no good reason to banish me to a Duchy that was both provincial and chaotic, but they did.”

“Because Evening told them to,” I said slowly. I had never wondered overly hard at the exact timeline of Quentin’s arrival in Shadowed Hills. Maybe I should have: he’d been fourteen when I met him, and he’d been there roughly two years. Luna and Rayseline Torquill had been released from their own captivity two years before I came back to the Duchy. “How did she get Sylvester to agree?”

This time, Quentin’s chuckle was almost bitter. “Toby, when the High King tells you to do something, you do it. Even at his absolute worst, Duke Torquill was never so divorced from reality that he forgot that.”

“Apparently, reality has taken out a restraining order on me,” I grumbled. Putting a hand on Quentin’s shoulder, I asked, “Are you okay? Are you sure you want to stay with us if we’re going to be potentially facing your First? You could stay here with Raj while Tybalt and I go on ahead. I wouldn’t think any less of you.”

“I’m your squire,” he said, with the note of familiar stubbornness that I’d long since become accustomed to hearing in his voice. “Where you go, I go.”

“Then perhaps you should both prepare yourselves for a long, cold transit,” said Tybalt. I looked up. He and Raj had stopped in front of a plain oak wall, decorated only by a line of hardwood molding along the upper edge. It didn’t match the hallway around us, or either of the rooms that it connected to.

I didn’t know how anyone could lose a single wall out of their home, and I didn’t really feel like taking the time to ask. “This is the border?”

Tybalt nodded. “My Court extends no further.”