—
We went out of the castle, turned left, and walked down the sidewalks. Some of them were still covered in snow—places where people weren’t living at the moment, I supposed. I wondered if the city would ticket them. All things considered, a little snow on the sidewalk seemed like the kind of thing no one would think was important. On the other hand, it might be something over which the city felt it could actually exercise some feeble amount of control, in the face of everything that had happened.The neighborhoods were quiet, lights of some kind burning in many homes. The old man and I made very little noise as we walked.
I waited for him to speak. I wasn’t the one who had acted shamefully.
It took him a quarter of an hour to find words.
“There’s history you don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Hngh,” I said, wittily.
“Your mother. And Raith.” He spat into the snow after he said the word. “I tried to get her away from him. She wouldn’t hear it. She was already…”
“Addicted?” I suggested.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Your mother liked to live dangerously. Lord Raith gave her plenty of that.”
“Maybe she liked him.”
“Maybe it would be hard to tell,” he said after several steps. “Even for her. Sometimes you just find your poison. The one that goes right past your reason. Your logic. Your morals. I’ve seen it plenty, over the years. Sex. Opium. Heroin. Alcohol.”
“This is a world that hurts,” I said. “Sometimes you get tired of that. You’ll take whatever you can get to get away from it for a while.”
Ebenezar bowed his head and nodded. “That’s true enough. God knows.”
“You think my mom found her poison in Lord Raith,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And I’m afraid for you.”
I held up a hand and said, “You don’t get to talk to me about the future. Not until we’ve gone over the past.”
The old man squinted against the night. It was cold, cold enough that I knew he’d have been settled in his chair by the fire with a book and a mug of hot chocolate if we’d been back at his cabin in Hog Hollow. I barely felt the cold. And when I did, it was pleasant.
“You killed me,” I said quietly.
“Not exactly,” the old man said. “You were already a step ahead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you didn’t know that at the time.”
He grimaced. “You’re right,” he said. “You’ve gotten stronger and better a lot faster than anyone expected. Even me. I have contingency defenses I never thought you’d push me hard enough to activate. I’vebeen dealing with cornerhounds for several years now. They like to come when I’m asleep. I need reflex-level spells to even the field.”
I grunted. “You’re saying that the spell that would have killed me was a compliment.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect to need it for anything but a war-level threat,” he admitted. “You fought that duel better than I would have thought possible.”
“I’m all grown up, I suppose,” I said.
“You’re getting there.” The old man sighed. “Damn the Merlin.”
I frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“For kicking you off the Council,” he said irritably. “For leaving you vulnerable to creatures like Mab. Like Lara Raith.”
I caught a whiff of lie by omission. He wasn’t saying everything.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why’d you come at me like that?”
“I was trying to stop you from throwing everything away for a goddamned vampire,” he said. “And…some things came back up for me. Ugly things. I don’t know if I can explain it to you.”
