ONE

December 20th, 2012

For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep

Seeming and savor all the winter long.

Grace and remembrance be to you both.

—William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.

THE WOODS WERE DARK, filled with strange shadows. They twisted and swirled independent of any light source, making the space beneath the towering sequoias look treacherous and wild. Not much in the way of illumination could trickle all the way down through the tightly-laced branches to ground level; the few streaks of moonlight that had managed to reach us were washed out and thin, managing to seem almost darker than having no light at all. Everything was permeated by the smell of redwood sap and the sea.

We had arrived as a group, May, Jazz, and Quentin packed into the backseat like sardines, me behind the wheel, and Tybalt sitting rigidly next to me. He didn’t really like cars under the best of circumstances. He liked them even less when there were multiple other passengers, since that meant he couldn’t respond to an accident by yanking everyone safely onto the Shadow Roads. Call it a quirk brought on by being several hundred years older than the internal combustion engine.

I had parked the car in the mostly deserted Muir Woods lot, where May, Jazz, and Quentin had promptly gone on ahead, choosing retreat over dealing with my mood. This left Tybalt with the unenviable duty of trying to coax me into a party I had no interest in attending. I don’t like parties. Someone always tries to assassinate someone I actually like, and there are never enough of those little stuffed mushroom caps.

Right: this had gone on long enough. I stopped at the edge of the first trail leading up the slope, digging my heels into the dirt and refusing to be budged. “Nope,” I said. “I said I’d come; I came. These are the woods. I have entered Muir Woods. Now I’m going home. You have fun, I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Once again you underestimate my ability to move you, while simultaneously overestimating your ability not to be moved.” Tybalt caught my wrist, tugging me forward.

I dug my heels in deeper. “You’re the one who’s overestimating things here,” I said. “I don’t want to do this. I told you I didn’t want to do this. I told everyone I didn’t want to do this. Can we just go do something else? See a movie? Go out for a nice dinner? We could go back to the house and watch some BBC Shakespeare. I won’t even smack you for criticizing their pronunciation . . .”

Tybalt released my wrist and stepped back, looking at me with exasperated fondness. “October,” he said. “Do you consider me so easily bribed as all that?”

“I was hoping?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Everyone else will be here,” I said, trying another angle. “We’ll have the house to ourselves.”

“Ah. That does put a different spin on things, and were the matter mine to decide, it might even sway my response in your favor.” My Cait Sidhe boyfriend shook his head, the moonlight glinting off his tabby-patterned brown hair. This late at night and this far from any human residences, neither of us was bothering with a human disguise. Not that he was in any way unattractive when he was pretending to be mortal—far from it—but I preferred his real face, complete with the malachite-banded green eyes that were currently narrowed in amusement over my predicament. “Alas, the matter is out of my hands. I will deliver you to the Queen, or we will both face her wrath.”

I crossed my arms and scowled at him. “Arden isn’t all that wrath-y. She used to be a bookstore clerk.”

“She is, as you say, ‘wrath-y’ enough. She is a queen. That is sufficient to lend teeth to whatever wrath she chooses to express.” Tybalt leaned forward and took hold of my wrist again, effortlessly unfolding my arms as he resumed trying to tug me into Muir Woods. “Come. The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can depart. Besides, you dressed for the occasion. Shouldn’t you take the time to at least pretend to enjoy it?”

I scowled, but I couldn’t pretend he wasn’t right about the last part. We were dressed for the occasion, thanks to my having raided my old bedroom in my mother’s tower, and his possession of a seemingly endless supply of leather trousers. He was wearing a pair in tawny brown, accented across the legs with strips of darker brown that managed to imply a tabby’s stripes without turning into a costume from the latest revival of Cats. His cream-colored poet’s shirt was unlaced enough to be tempting, but still modest enough not to cross the line into romance novel territory, and his brown leather vest and boots matched the stripes on his trousers. He looked basically amazing. No one could have looked at him without seeing the King of Cats he truly was.

I don’t clean up quite as well. My dress was one-shouldered and long enough that I had to lift it whenever I was stepping over anything—I wasn’t looking forward to climbing up the side of the hill between us and the Queen’s knowe. The whole thing was made of spider-silk, which would have put it well outside of my price range if it hadn’t been commissioned for me when I was still living with my mother. It gleamed in the moonlight like liquid silver. Stronger colors have a tendency to wash me out, thanks to my complexion: I’m naturally pale, made paler by my primarily nocturnal lifestyle. My hair is the kind of straight that refuses to take a curl, and a shade of no-color brown that’s moved a thousand boxes of Clairol. Veins of pale gold run through it, courtesy of my increasingly strong fae blood.

Still, I had to admit the dress was a good cut for me, and it fit like it had been stitched yesterday. May had done my makeup, choosing subtle metallic shades to make it look like my fog-colored eyes were actually worth gazing into, and my hair was pinned into an artfully messy updo, woven with strands of black opal that matched my necklace and earrings. No one could say I hadn’t at least attempted to get ready for a formal ball.

That didn’t mean I had the slightest intention of actually going.

Tybalt apparently realized he wasn’t going to make me move, because he stopped pulling on my wrist and stepped closer, placing a finger beneath my chin and tilting my head back until our eyes met. “Do you truly intend to waste all the work of preparing for this event? You look astonishing, October. Perhaps I am a proud man, but I did so look forward to seeing others seeing you and realizing that they had overlooked your beauty while allowing their eyes to be clouded by the woman who once ruled in this demesne. Smugness excites me. I was even more excited about the prospect of taking you home after the ball, and showing you exactly how much I appreciate that you have chosen me over all of them.”