The Winter Long
Page 51
“Uncle Tybalt thought the same thing,” said Raj. “He managed to save Quentin. He thought he’d lost you.”
I stared at him for a moment. Then I whirled, breaking the seal of his arms around my waist as I said to the people behind me, “I have to go.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Dean. “Don’t worry about Goldengreen. I’ll ask my mom to loan me some guards so that we can keep that woman from coming back.”
“And I’ll ask my son to tell me what in the name of Titania’s talons he’s talking about,” said Dianda, in what for her passed for a reasonable tone.
Marcia didn’t say anything. She just smiled, eyes bright and teary in their sheltering rings of fae ointment.
I turned back to Raj. “Take me to him.”
“Do you have a towel or something?” he asked. “You’ll freeze.”
I managed to resist the urge to grab him by the shirtfront and shake him until a doorway to the Shadow Roads fell out. “I’ll heal,” I said. “Take me.”
“Okay,” said Raj. He took my hands and pulled me into the shadow formed by the bodies around us, and then we were falling down into the freezing, airless dark, and I didn’t care.
They were alive. Nothing else mattered.
FOURTEEN
RUNNING THROUGH THE shadows with Raj was nothing like running through the shadows with Tybalt, despite the similarity of the empty space around us. We ran for what felt like an eternity, connected only by our hands. I’d gotten used to running side by side with Tybalt, guided through the darkness more than hauled. With Raj, it was back to square one: he pulled, and I came, because stopping would have meant a frozen death. We ran through a cold, lightless world, caught in the jaws of a winter that would never end. I just hoped we’d come out the other side.
The seawater soaking my clothes was freezing into sheets of ice that cracked and fell away as we ran. My strength was fading, and Raj couldn’t be much better off. It was hard for Tybalt to take me on the Shadow Roads, and he was an adult Cait Sidhe, secure in his powers. Raj was just a kid. Carrying me through the shadows had killed Tybalt once; what was it doing to Raj?
I was dwelling on that thought when Raj yanked me out of the darkness and into the dimly-lit hall of the Court of Cats. I threw my free arm over my eyes, squinting through the ice on my eyelashes as I tried to speak. It came out in a squeak. Raj pulled his hand away and dropped to his knees, retching. I stayed upright for a moment longer before I collapsed beside him, gasping for air.
“Let’s not do that again for a long, long time,” I wheezed.
“Okay,” Raj shakily agreed.
The feeling was rapidly returning to my fingers and cheeks, accompanied by the pins and needles sensation of healing frostbite. It was intense enough to keep me where I was for a few more seconds, and to make me very grateful that Raj and I hadn’t tried that particular run before I could recover quite so quickly from injuries. It definitely made me miss running with Tybalt.
Tybalt. The thought stiffened my spine. I pushed myself to my feet, demanding, “Where do I need to go, Raj?”
“Wow.” He managed a wan smile and raised his hand, pointing off down the hallway. “You stayed still longer than I expected. Just go that way. He wants you to find him, you won’t get lost.”
“Okay.” I hesitated. Every nerve I had was screaming for me to run until I found Tybalt and Quentin, but Raj looked so small lying there on the hallway floor . . . “Can you shift? I can carry you if you’re in cat form.”
Raj’s smile was bright enough to make me feel bad about even those few seconds of hesitation. “Yeah,” he said. The air around him blurred, the smell of pepper and burning paper lancing through the air, and he was gone, replaced by a young Abyssinian cat—but not, I realized as I stooped to gather him into my arms, by a kitten. He had grown into the length of his limbs and the size of his ears, making him a handsome creature even in this form. My boys were growing up.
“So you know, I’m putting you down as soon as I see Tybalt,” I said, and started walking, slowly at first, and then breaking into a jog.
Raj purred.
The Court of Cats is a patchwork kingdom, made from the lost pieces of the world around it. Mortal buildings and pieces of disused knowes, they’re all the same to whatever strange magic assembles and maintains the Court. The hallway where we’d landed was all aged, oiled wood, like something out of a medieval castle. As I ran, I passed through a white-tiled hospital and an empty, disused library, where the shelves were empty and the ceiling was so high above me that I couldn’t even hear the echoes end. There were windows, but after the first two we passed, I stopped looking their way—the things they showed were too skewed, and they didn’t help me get where I was going.
Raj curled loosely in my arms, showing admirable restraint for a cat; even when I tripped over a raised doorjamb or a bit of uneven brickwork, he didn’t dig his claws into my flesh. Much. The few times he did, the smell of blood put strength back into my wobbling legs, allowing me to keep up my pace.
“Did you intentionally drop us on the other side of the Court or what?” I asked. Raj, who didn’t currently have a mouth capable of forming human words, didn’t answer me. That was probably for the best.
Then I ran out of a plain hallway that could have been ripped from my first apartment building and into a large, stone-walled room with fireplaces on three of its four walls. It felt old, like it predated the world I lived in. Two long wooden tables were set up in the center of the room, big enough to seat thirty people between them. Only two people were actually there. I stumbled to a stop, barely noticing when Raj leaped down from my arms and went padding toward the nearest fireplace. My knees wobbled. I reached out and caught myself against the doorway.
That was what finally caught their attention: the small, mundane sound of my hand slapping against the stone. Even a Cait Sidhe could make noise running, but no Cait Sidhe would be so gauche as to slam their hand against the door. Cats only make noise when they want to.
Tybalt heard me first. His head snapped up, exhaustion written clearly in the lines of his face as he turned. There was a moment when that was all that happened: apart from that one small thing, he might as well have been a statue. Then, slowly, his eyes widened, exhaustion replaced by relief. It didn’t happen all at once; in fact, it was still happening when he stood—the movement attracting Quentin’s attention, causing him to finally turn as well—and walked toward me, moving with a frozen stiffness that spoke of both caution and minor injury.
I stared at him for a moment. Then I whirled, breaking the seal of his arms around my waist as I said to the people behind me, “I have to go.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Dean. “Don’t worry about Goldengreen. I’ll ask my mom to loan me some guards so that we can keep that woman from coming back.”
“And I’ll ask my son to tell me what in the name of Titania’s talons he’s talking about,” said Dianda, in what for her passed for a reasonable tone.
Marcia didn’t say anything. She just smiled, eyes bright and teary in their sheltering rings of fae ointment.
I turned back to Raj. “Take me to him.”
“Do you have a towel or something?” he asked. “You’ll freeze.”
I managed to resist the urge to grab him by the shirtfront and shake him until a doorway to the Shadow Roads fell out. “I’ll heal,” I said. “Take me.”
“Okay,” said Raj. He took my hands and pulled me into the shadow formed by the bodies around us, and then we were falling down into the freezing, airless dark, and I didn’t care.
They were alive. Nothing else mattered.
FOURTEEN
RUNNING THROUGH THE shadows with Raj was nothing like running through the shadows with Tybalt, despite the similarity of the empty space around us. We ran for what felt like an eternity, connected only by our hands. I’d gotten used to running side by side with Tybalt, guided through the darkness more than hauled. With Raj, it was back to square one: he pulled, and I came, because stopping would have meant a frozen death. We ran through a cold, lightless world, caught in the jaws of a winter that would never end. I just hoped we’d come out the other side.
The seawater soaking my clothes was freezing into sheets of ice that cracked and fell away as we ran. My strength was fading, and Raj couldn’t be much better off. It was hard for Tybalt to take me on the Shadow Roads, and he was an adult Cait Sidhe, secure in his powers. Raj was just a kid. Carrying me through the shadows had killed Tybalt once; what was it doing to Raj?
I was dwelling on that thought when Raj yanked me out of the darkness and into the dimly-lit hall of the Court of Cats. I threw my free arm over my eyes, squinting through the ice on my eyelashes as I tried to speak. It came out in a squeak. Raj pulled his hand away and dropped to his knees, retching. I stayed upright for a moment longer before I collapsed beside him, gasping for air.
“Let’s not do that again for a long, long time,” I wheezed.
“Okay,” Raj shakily agreed.
The feeling was rapidly returning to my fingers and cheeks, accompanied by the pins and needles sensation of healing frostbite. It was intense enough to keep me where I was for a few more seconds, and to make me very grateful that Raj and I hadn’t tried that particular run before I could recover quite so quickly from injuries. It definitely made me miss running with Tybalt.
Tybalt. The thought stiffened my spine. I pushed myself to my feet, demanding, “Where do I need to go, Raj?”
“Wow.” He managed a wan smile and raised his hand, pointing off down the hallway. “You stayed still longer than I expected. Just go that way. He wants you to find him, you won’t get lost.”
“Okay.” I hesitated. Every nerve I had was screaming for me to run until I found Tybalt and Quentin, but Raj looked so small lying there on the hallway floor . . . “Can you shift? I can carry you if you’re in cat form.”
Raj’s smile was bright enough to make me feel bad about even those few seconds of hesitation. “Yeah,” he said. The air around him blurred, the smell of pepper and burning paper lancing through the air, and he was gone, replaced by a young Abyssinian cat—but not, I realized as I stooped to gather him into my arms, by a kitten. He had grown into the length of his limbs and the size of his ears, making him a handsome creature even in this form. My boys were growing up.
“So you know, I’m putting you down as soon as I see Tybalt,” I said, and started walking, slowly at first, and then breaking into a jog.
Raj purred.
The Court of Cats is a patchwork kingdom, made from the lost pieces of the world around it. Mortal buildings and pieces of disused knowes, they’re all the same to whatever strange magic assembles and maintains the Court. The hallway where we’d landed was all aged, oiled wood, like something out of a medieval castle. As I ran, I passed through a white-tiled hospital and an empty, disused library, where the shelves were empty and the ceiling was so high above me that I couldn’t even hear the echoes end. There were windows, but after the first two we passed, I stopped looking their way—the things they showed were too skewed, and they didn’t help me get where I was going.
Raj curled loosely in my arms, showing admirable restraint for a cat; even when I tripped over a raised doorjamb or a bit of uneven brickwork, he didn’t dig his claws into my flesh. Much. The few times he did, the smell of blood put strength back into my wobbling legs, allowing me to keep up my pace.
“Did you intentionally drop us on the other side of the Court or what?” I asked. Raj, who didn’t currently have a mouth capable of forming human words, didn’t answer me. That was probably for the best.
Then I ran out of a plain hallway that could have been ripped from my first apartment building and into a large, stone-walled room with fireplaces on three of its four walls. It felt old, like it predated the world I lived in. Two long wooden tables were set up in the center of the room, big enough to seat thirty people between them. Only two people were actually there. I stumbled to a stop, barely noticing when Raj leaped down from my arms and went padding toward the nearest fireplace. My knees wobbled. I reached out and caught myself against the doorway.
That was what finally caught their attention: the small, mundane sound of my hand slapping against the stone. Even a Cait Sidhe could make noise running, but no Cait Sidhe would be so gauche as to slam their hand against the door. Cats only make noise when they want to.
Tybalt heard me first. His head snapped up, exhaustion written clearly in the lines of his face as he turned. There was a moment when that was all that happened: apart from that one small thing, he might as well have been a statue. Then, slowly, his eyes widened, exhaustion replaced by relief. It didn’t happen all at once; in fact, it was still happening when he stood—the movement attracting Quentin’s attention, causing him to finally turn as well—and walked toward me, moving with a frozen stiffness that spoke of both caution and minor injury.
