No one but me. I turned to Tybalt, one eyebrow raised in question.
He smiled. “That was my opposite number, Shade. She keeps mostly to herself, but she felt the disturbance when we fell off the Shadow Road. She had heard rumors of the coming challenge to my authority, and while she is not allowed to interfere on my behalf, she does not support the challenge. Her Court will watch this area while we rest. If anything comes, they’ll hold it off as best they can and make sure we’re warned. My opponent made that permissible when you became involved. They should never have touched you. October…” His expression sobered. “October, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I walked over and sat down next to him. “I think I understand.”
If Shade was Tybalt’s opposite number, that made her a Queen of Cats. Kings and Queens of Cats never live together. They don’t share Courts, they don’t share territory, and they don’t—according to gossip, anyway—share beds. Every Court of Cats has a single regent who rules according to his or her own laws. Queens tend to be more private than Kings, but they pay attention to what happens in their lands. Failure to notice a King of Cats showing up would probably lead to her having a very short reign.
Tybalt closed his eyes, sighing. “I don’t think I can do that again today. Not even if…”
“I understand that, too.” I dug the cell phone out of my pocket, looked at the display, and scowled. “My battery’s dead. We’re not calling for help.”
“That would have been too convenient.”
“I guess that’s true.” I replaced the cell phone in my pocket and put my hand on his knee. “Thank you anyway. For everything. For trying.”
Tybalt put his hand over mine and didn’t say anything about being surprised by my thanks. We sat in silence for several minutes. His fingers were cold and had barely started to warm up when he spoke again. “Did I ever tell you about my wife?” His tone was light and conversational, as if he were commenting on the weather.
I didn’t have to feign surprise. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not married anymore. It was a long time ago.”
That was oddly reassuring. I pushed the thought away. “I’m not sure this is a good time to—”
“This is the only time.” The weariness was back in his voice. “You know as well as I do that we may die here. If those who attacked us follow our trail before my strength returns, we won’t be able to run. There are ways of tracking where someone goes when they travel in shadow.”
“You’ll get better.”
“Not if they kill me properly. And you won’t get better regardless.”
I frowned, biting back further protest. “Okay. No. You never told me about her.”
“We met over two hundred years ago, in New York. Her name was Anne O’Toole.” His lips curved into a smile I’d never seen before, soft and wistful and almost longing all at the same time. “She was Irish when it wasn’t fashionable to be Irish, and a woman when that wasn’t fashionable either. She was all impulse and sharp words.” He opened his eyes, looking at me. “I think you would have liked her. You’re similar in some ways. Mostly in your habit of charging headlong into danger while swearing you’re doing no such thing.”
I looked at him but said nothing. After a moment he looked away, still smiling.
“We hated each other, of course. She thought I was arrogant and boorish. I thought she was common and dull, like every other human. But we…learned otherwise, and I loved her. She burned so bright—she raced through every day like she knew they wouldn’t last. She wanted me to remember her.” He stopped.
The cats yowled in the distance, marking out their territory. I brushed my hair away from my face with my free hand and asked, “Did she know?”
“That I wasn’t human? Of course she did. She wasn’t stupid.” The implied criticism of Cliff stung. “She knew before the first time she let me touch her. She said she loved me all the more for knowing I’d be here after she was gone. I was her immortality, she said. ‘The Sidhe have always been immortal for the sake of the Irish,’ that’s what she told me. And she laughed, and I laughed, because I was young and foolish and in love, and she was never going to die.”
“What happened?” The words seemed too bald, but I knew he’d never finish his story without prompting. We’d sit in silence until it was time to run again, and whatever demon he was trying to cast out with his recollection would stay with him.
“She died.” This time his smile was bitter. “She became pregnant, as women do, and it proved too much for her. Medicine of the time was…the human world lacked the skills she needed to survive. The Cait Sidhe have no talent for medicine, and I couldn’t find a healer among the Divided Courts who’d tend my ‘mortal slut.’ I begged. I bent my knee and I begged, like any penitent. And still they refused me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Anne died in my arms, and the only mercy of it is that she was gone before she knew the baby wouldn’t live. I buried my wife and daughter, and I swore I’d never trust the Divided Courts again, or love anything that came from the mortal world.”
“Tybalt…”
“That’s why I hated the changelings for so long. It was a changeling that killed my wife, intentionally or not, and doubled that…that pain by leaving me alone.”
I started to pull my hand away, but he caught it, pulling me back. “I wanted to hate you. Amandine got to keep her mortal lover and have her mortal child, even if she lost them eventually. I wanted to hate you because you made me think of Anne.”
“What changed?”
“I fell in love.”
Four words, simply stated, and impossible to believe. “You can’t mean that.”
“Can’t I? It’s been a long time since I’ve loved someone, but I know what it feels like. When you turn from me, it hurts. When you think badly of me, I think badly of myself. When you do stupid, suicidal things, I want to slap you upside the head and demand to know how you can be so brilliant and so blind at the same time.” Tybalt’s expression was calm. “If that’s not love, what is it?”
“Why are you telling me this?” I whispered.
“Because we’re probably going to die today.” He waved his free hand toward the street. “I’ve always tried not to lie to you; I’ve seen how you react when others do. Dying without telling you how I felt would be lying. I’ve been patient. I’ve given you time to recognize my feelings, and I’ve seen you choose a man who loved the girl you were, not the woman you are. Now he’s gone, and I can’t be patient anymore. I love you, October. I’ll be sorry if we die here, but I won’t be sorry I helped you…and I won’t be sorry I finally told you.”
“Tybalt…”
“Cats never regret anything,” he said, and he turned and kissed me.
The lingering chill from the Shadow Roads fled as my body reacted without consulting my mind, leaning forward and returning his kiss with a degree of eagerness almost as surprising as his admission. We’d kissed before, but those kisses weren’t like this one. Nothing had ever been like this one. He kissed me like a man who knew he’d been condemned to die and had chosen me in lieu of his last meal.
One hand stayed on mine, pinning it to his knee, while the other hand laced through my hair, pulling me closer. A flicker of common sense asked what I thought I was doing—there were people coming to kill us, Chelsea was missing, and Riordan was planning Oberon-knows-what, yet here I was, kissing the King of Cats like a human teenager sneaking out in the middle of the night.
Tybalt’s thumb outlined the true edge of my ear through the gauze of my human disguise. I dropped the illusion, letting him touch my skin without magic getting in the way. At the same time, I placed my free hand against his cheek and leaned closer, until there was no space left between us. We were generating a stronger heat than I would have expected, and it wasn’t sudden. No, it wasn’t sudden at all. So many things he’d said and done were starting to make sense to me, and as we pulled ea
ch other as close as skin would allow, all I could do was wonder what had taken us so damn long.
A cat screamed from the direction of the street, the sound cutting off as abruptly as it started. Tybalt and I were on our feet before the echoes faded. My heart was pounding, fueled by hormones and adrenaline. That sounded like a response to fear, not an intentional signal, and one glance at Tybalt confirmed my fears. His eyes were narrowed, lips drawn back to expose his teeth. He flexed his hands, and his fingertips extended into claws. There was no more running.
I drew my knife. I spared a brief, wistful thought for my sword, but didn’t dwell on it; there wasn’t time. We were going to stand. And we were going to die.
The rest of the cats had stopped their calling, leaving silence in their wake. Shade was only willing to defend us so far. That was fine. This wasn’t her fight. This was mine, and my only regret was that Tybalt was going to go down with me.
“Come on, you bastards,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
As if that were the signal they’d been waiting for, Cait Sidhe—some familiar, some not—poured out of the shadows. They formed a ring around us, hissing, snarling, and flexing their clawed hands. Tybalt hissed. The largest, a tiger-striped pureblood I recognized as a member of Tybalt’s guard, hissed back.
“I warned you,” said Samson’s voice. I turned to see him smiling at us, lips pressed thin. “You could have put her aside, but you let her interfere with the smooth running of the Court. You were weak. You deserve to fall.”
Tybalt didn’t even look. “You will never be King.”
“My son will.”
“And how? You know he isn’t ready to take the throne. What would you do? Take it for him and hold it against all challengers, you and your little band of traitors? You would pervert Cait Sidhe law so much as that? Because there will be challengers, Samson. There are always challengers, when the King is weak.”
Samson snarled. “My son will be a stronger King than you ever were, and who are you to speak of perverting the law? You perverted it the day you brought her here.” He jerked his head toward me. “My son will heal this Court. He will be the law.”
In that moment, I realized just how far gone Samson really was. He could never be King, but he had rationalized away the rules until he actually believed he had a right to what he wanted—Raj as a puppet King of Cats, with himself as the power behind the throne. He didn’t know his son very well; Raj would never let himself be used that way. I was about to say something nasty when the smell of calla lilies hit my nose. I jerked the Luidaeg’s charm from my pocket, eyes widening as I saw that it was burning a brilliant red, brighter than it ever had before. “Tybalt…”
“Please do me a favor, October. Fight first, argue later.”
I turned, eyes searching the underbrush—there. Standing to the left, behind the ring of Cait Sidhe, looking utterly lost and terrified: a dark-haired teenage girl with eyes the color of freshly minted pennies. Only three men stood between her and us.
I had an instant to make my decision, and I made it. Grabbing Tybalt’s arm, I lunged toward Chelsea, shielding his body with mine as much as possible. My wounds would heal in a matter of minutes, as long as they weren’t fatal. His wouldn’t.
My lunge had been surprising enough that we were almost out of the ring before the nearest Cait Sidhe snarled and raked his claws across my belly, freeing a flood of warmth down my front. It felt like more than just blood was trying to slip out of me. I forced myself to keep running. My wounds might heal fast, but no one ever said they wouldn’t hurt.
Chelsea’s eyes widened as she saw us running toward her. The smell of smoke and lilies grew stronger, her magic writhing through the air. She was getting ready to jump again.
“Chelsea, wait!” I shouted. “Take us with you! Your mother sent us!”
If I thought her eyes were wide before, it was nothing compared to what they were now. The blood loss was slowing me down. Tybalt surged forward, dragging me with him, and we reached Chelsea just before the smell of smoke and lilies became thick enough to be cloying. I slumped forward, my vision going blurry—and then it was the world that was going blurry, and it was the world that was gone, replaced by the short-lived, furious shrieks of the Cait Sidhe.
And everything was the smell of smoke and lilies, and there was blood everywhere, and I closed my eyes and let the darkness—the darkness, and Chelsea, who was finally found now that I was on the verge of being lost—carry me away.
EIGHTEEN
EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE BLOOD and nothing hurt when I opened my eyes on the star-splashed Annwn sky. The inside of my mouth tasted like blood and bracken—not the most appealing combination ever. I pushed myself to my elbows, trying to swallow the taste away, and realized I was lying on top of something Tybalt-shaped.
“Crap!” I rolled to the side, landing on my ass in the brush. Since nothing hurt, I looked down at myself, doing a quick check for injuries.
Claw marks shredded the front of my shirt, revealing pale strips of skin behind dark brown fabric that had been white when I put it on. My jeans were three shades darker than they’d been earlier, and my head was spinning. I heal fast. These days, I can recover from damn near any injury that doesn’t kill me. That doesn’t make me invincible, and the amount of energy it had taken my body to knit itself back together was clearly taking its toll.
I looked up again. “How long—?”
“I don’t know,” said Tybalt, sitting up and smiling at me. It was a pained, weary expression, but it looked real. “I was unconscious for the first part of it. Before you panic further, my injuries were superficial, unlike yours. Please try not to get yourself gutted again. It’s hard on my heart.” He closed his eyes.
He was lying. I could smell too much of his blood for him to be telling the truth. And there was nothing I could do about it without getting us out of here. “We were both going to get worse than gutted if we didn’t run for—Chelsea!” I scrambled to my feet. My head throbbed, protesting the movement. “Where did she go?”
“Here,” said a meek voice. I spun to see the dark-haired girl with Etienne’s eyes standing waist-deep in the heather, a wary, hopeful look on her face. “Did my mother really send you?”
“Your mother and your father,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “My what?” she squeaked.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best approach. I’m never the most subtle person in the world. Massive physical trauma and blood loss turn out not to help. “Chelsea, look—”
“Are you working with the people who stole me?” she demanded. The smell of her magic was beginning to curl through the air around us.
If she jumped, not only would Tybalt and I be stranded in Annwn until we could find a way out, but we might never find her again. And Tybalt wouldn’t heal like I did. “Chelsea, wait. Please, wait. We’re not with the people who took you, I swear. We’re trying to help.” I pushed my hair back, showing her the point of my ear. “If we were kidnapping you, would I be showing you what I really am?”
“A better question: would she have felt the need to bleed quite so much to lend her claim veracity?” Tybalt climbed stiffly to his feet. At least he could stand. “While my dear companion is occasionally dense, she is rarely stupid to the degree that sort of gesture implies.”
“Nice ‘rarely,’” I said.
He inclined his head. “I felt that truth would be better received than polite falsehood.”
Chelsea giggled. It was a short-lived sound, and when I looked back to her, she seemed faintly stunned, as if her laughter were somehow surprising. She’d lost her glasses somewhere, between the kidnapping and the running away. Without them, her resemblance to Etienne was clear. No one who knew him would be able to look at her and not guess they were related.
“I’m October,” I said. “You can call me Toby. Most people do.”
“I don’t, as a rule,” said Tybalt.
“That’s because you’re not people,” I sai
d. “This is Tybalt. He’s a King of Cats. You can ignore most of the things he says.”
“I would bow, but given my current condition, I fear I would injure myself,” said Tybalt. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Chelsea. You have quite a few people direly concerned for your well-being.”
“What—what are you?” The smell of Chelsea’s magic faded. “You’re not like the ones who…you’re not like them.” It was clear from the way she stumbled and stressed her words that she was talking about her kidnappers. “But you’re not human, either. You’re like me.”
“Tybalt’s what we call ‘Cait Sidhe’—the fairy cats. Which explains the attitude. And the eyes.”
“Meow,” said Tybalt, deadpan.
I snorted, and continued, “I’m Dóchas Sidhe.”
“You’re Sidhe?” Chelsea asked. “Mom always said my dad was one of the Sidhe, and they’d come for me if we weren’t careful.” Her face fell. “I guess I wasn’t careful enough.”
“We’re related,” I said, inwardly cursing Etienne—again—for getting involved with a folklore professor. Human folklore gets too much right and too much wrong at the same time. It’s hard to tell people you’re not planning to curse their cows and steal their children when every fairy tale they’ve ever read tells them that’s exactly what you’re planning to do. “Your dad isn’t Sidhe, Chelsea. He’s Tuatha de Dannan, and he’s very worried about you right now.”
Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. “If he’s so worried about me, where has he been my whole life?”
“That’s something you’re going to need to talk to your mother about. Just please, trust me.” I looked to Tybalt. He was still bleeding, but not as much; I hoped that was a good thing. Turning back to Chelsea, I said, “We really appreciate you getting us out of there before, Chelsea. Do you think you could take us somewhere a little less totally deserted? My friend needs medical attention.”
“I didn’t know I was going to get anyone out of anywhere!” she protested. “I don’t even know where I’m going half the time! I just wind up there, and then people grab me, or try to stick me with needles, or tell me they’re my friends and don’t I want them to keep being my friends.” She spread her arms, gesturing to the landscape. “I don’t even know where we are now, but did you see those stars? This isn’t Earth! We’re not on Earth anymore!”
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