“How many troops did the Queen leave to hold the knowe?” I asked.
“Thirteen,” said the guard. “I am the ranking member of the guard still here.”
“Good. Then you can let the rest know that there’s been a regime change.” I smiled thinly, aware of just how ghoulish that had to look, considering my current condition. “If the old Queen tries to retreat, she’s going to find herself with nowhere she can retreat to.”
“Impressive as it is to watch you erode the loyalties of everyone around you, can I get that water now?” asked Dianda.
“Of course.” I walked over and handed her the vase. Dianda dumped its contents over her head, washing away some of the blood—and all of her scales. Her tail disappeared as the water ran along her body, replaced by bare, bloody legs.
“Much better.” She dropped the vase to the floor. It shattered. She climbed to her feet and said, “As the ranking noble—no offense, Tybalt—”
“None taken.” He sounded amused.
“Good. As I was saying, as the ranking noble currently present, I claim this knowe in the name of Arden Windermere, rightful Queen in the Mists. Do not challenge me. I am out of patience, and I have such a headache.”
“That’ll be the iron,” I said. I turned to the guard. “We need an alchemist. She’s been in your dungeon long enough to get sick, and since she’s not committing treason by backing the rightful monarch, that’s technically a declaration of war against the Undersea.”
“You people are certainly fond of declaring war against the Undersea by mistake,” said Tybalt. “I am pleased the Court of Cats has not managed to do this during my tenure.”
“We live in interesting times.” I moved to stand beside him. The guards were groaning as they woke up. “We found the hope chest and Dianda, and we technically just conquered the Queen’s knowe.”
“Yes. Not to mention the rest of it.” Tybalt ran a finger along the sharpened peak of my ear.
I smiled. “Yeah, there’s that, too. I’m hungry, even.” And not for goblin fruit. I wanted a steak. Rare, if not raw. My body had a lot of blood to build back up. “So let’s find Nolan while Dianda gets patched up, grab a sandwich, and then head back over to Muir Woods. We have ourselves a war to win.”
Tybalt looked surprised. Then, slowly, he smiled back.
“Why, October,” he said. “I thought you’d never ask.”
TWENTY-SIX
FINDING NOLAN MEANT RETURNING to the dungeons. It hurt this time, the iron in the walls singing to my blood and sending a bruised ache through my entire body. It probably hurt when I was going back for Tybalt, too, but I’d been too panicked to notice. Stress is helpful that way. When I need to ignore something unpleasant, I just work myself into a fine frenzy and charge. I realize it was stupid later, when I have time.
Dianda stayed in the treasury while Tybalt and I followed one of the Queen’s guards—or former guards, if they were serious about defecting, and not just trying for a double-cross—into the dark. There’s not much iron in the Undersea. She was putting on a stoic face, but I knew it had to be hurting her, and more exposure wouldn’t have done anyone any good.
As for the guard, he looked uncomfortable about the fact that I hadn’t wiped the blood off myself. It was drying in a thick, slightly tacky film. I could feel it cracking at the corners of my mouth every time I spoke. As long as I didn’t have to look at it, it didn’t bother me. I might need it, and I didn’t feel like cutting myself again if I was already conveniently coated in gore. Besides, this was one of the men who’d imprisoned me—and Dianda—without hesitation when he was given the order. Faerie is a feudal society. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Tybalt matched my stride. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to assess his condition. He’d apparently been waiting for that. He met my gaze, giving a small, imperious lift of one eyebrow. I smiled wryly, the blood around my mouth cracking again.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little, you know. Shaken.”
“It’s good for you to sample your own medicine from time to time,” he said. “Perhaps the memory of your current feelings will motivate you to run heedlessly into danger with a bit less frequency.”
I thought about that as we walked. Finally, I shook my head. “No, probably not.”
Tybalt smirked.
Further conversation was cut off as the guard at the lead of our small procession stopped. There was a narrow, iron-banded door on the other side of the hall. “We’re here,” he said.
“Where’s here?” I asked, frowning at the door. “This isn’t a normal cell.”
“No,” he said. “The Queen’s . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to call her. My former liege’s instructions were very clear. The prisoner was placed in seclusion, to prevent his plotting further insurrection.”
“Um, one, Dianda was a lot more likely to plot insurrection, since she was pissed off and also technically isn’t under the jurisdiction of any Queen of the Mists, and two, Nolan’s been elf-shot. He can’t plot anything, unless it’s a really epic snore.” I glared at the guard. He squirmed. I glare well. I glare even better when I’m covered in blood. “What’s down there that makes it worse than the cells up here?”
“That is where prisoners who must be kept . . . calm . . . are confined,” said the guard. “The room keeps them . . . calm.”
He looked so uncomfortable, and so unhappy, that I yielded, asking, “You weren’t happy about putting him down there, were you?”
“Milady, had I been given any other alternative, I would have taken it.”
I nodded. “Arden may be more forgiving because of that, if we get her brother back alive. So what, exactly, is down there that keeps people euphemistically ‘calm’?”
Looking more miserable by the second, the guard said, “Iron.”
The whole dungeon was dripping with iron. My skin crawled even standing here, and I was part human. I frowned. “That’s not a sufficient answer.”
“Lots of iron.”
He was standing as far away from the door as it was possible to be while still existing in the same stretch of hall. I frowned again before eyeing the door.
“How much iron are we talking here?”
He didn’t answer.
Oberon’s Law says purebloods aren’t allowed to kill each other. But that law is enforced by the purebloods, and they’ve had a long time to find loopholes. It says nothing about torture, for example, or about accidental death—say, from an overdose of iron. “How did you get him down there?”
“The Queen retains changelings on her staff for matters such as these.”
I didn’t bother correcting him on the former Queen’s status. Seeing her get her ass handed to her would be correction enough, and I had other things to worry about. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” I muttered, and handed the hope chest to Tybalt. “Don’t let anyone touch this.”
He frowned. “October . . .”
“My father was human. I can do this.”
“Your father was human, but less than half your blood remembers that. Can you carry Nolan on your own?”
“We’re going to find out, because you’re not going down there.” I pointed to the door. “You were damn near dead before. I can handle that once in a night—I nearly die on you all the time, turnabout is fair play—but I can’t do it twice. I’m stronger than I look, I can get him into a fireman’s carry, and most importantly, I stand half a chance in hell of making it back alive.”
Tybalt shook his head. “Insufferable woman,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss me, ignoring the blood smeared around my mouth. I kissed him back, but only for a few seconds; just long enough to show that I meant it, not long enough that it turned into wasting time.
“Wish me luck,” I said, pulling away.
“If there is one thing I have never known you to need, October, it’s luck,” he said.
“There’s a first time for everything.” I turned to the guard. “
Open the door.”
“I don’t think you understand—”
“Look. Tonight, I have changed the balance of my own blood, brought my boyfriend back from the brink of death, and helped a mermaid kick all your asses,” I snapped. “And that’s just since I got here. You want to see me annoyed? Then go ahead, explain how dangerous this is. But if you want the nice, incredibly irritated woman to stop making you the target of her anger, you will open. That. Door.”
“Yes, milady,” he said, and moved to unlock the door. Tybalt snickered. I didn’t dignify that reaction by looking at him.
Besides, if I had, I’d probably have started snickering, too, and that would have undermined the aura of badass that I was trying to project.
A wash of cold air smelling of iron and rotten straw rushed out as the guard pulled the door open. It made the air in the dungeon hallway seem fresh by comparison. I choked, trying to wave the smell away, and turned to see what the way down would look like. Then I stopped, blinking.
“What in the name of Oberon’s ass is that?” I demanded.
“The stairs, milady,” said the guard. Now that the door was open, he was back on the other side of the hall. I couldn’t blame him. I wanted to join him, really, but that option wasn’t available at the moment. “There is only one cell, at the bottom.”
At least I wasn’t going to be descending into the dark again. The stairs on the other side of the door were white marble that matched the main receiving hall, with a polished copper banister. They curved gently down into a stairwell that would have been dim before I used the hope chest, but now seemed reasonably well-lit. If not for the rancid, iron-soaked air rising from the bottom of the stairs, I would have thought it was just another hall.
“I’ve always wanted to try this,” I said, to no one in particular.
“Milady?”
I think Tybalt realized what I was about to do as I started running for the door. I heard him groan. Then my foot was hitting the top step, and I no longer had the attention to spare. I grabbed the banister, and slung my leg over the smooth copper path. I looked back as I started to slide. The last thing I saw as I accelerated down the stairs was the guard, staring at me in bewilderment, and Tybalt, shaking his head in obvious amusement. Then I turned, and focused on what was ahead of me.
Riding a banister down an unknown number of steps is more nerve-racking than I’d ever guessed it would be. I clung onto it with both hands, using the friction from my fingers to slow myself as much as I could. It wasn’t much. Gravity had me now, and gravity wanted me to pay for my sins.
Whatever they were, I hoped I’d be done paying for them soon. The sliding uncontrollably down into an iron-filled dungeon was unique enough to be interesting, but I’d be carrying Nolan back up every one of those stairs. Plus, I had no brakes. I was just going to have to wait for the moment when something stopped me.
“I hope it’s a wall,” I muttered. The wind generated by my slide whipped my words away, and I slid on in silence. I was just starting to think I’d made a serious mistake when the banister came to an end. For a few dazzling seconds, I wasn’t falling anymore—I was flying.
And then I slammed into the floor, cracking my head against it, and the world went away, replaced by a field of dazzling white agony. I groaned, struggling to sit up. My palms pressed flat against the floor, and a sizzling sound hit my ears a second before the pain raced up my arms. I scrambled to my feet, finally fully registering the hellish scene around me.
The room was made entirely of iron.
The stairs were marble, as was a narrow path wending from the bottom step to the room’s single door. Everything else, the walls, the floor, even the chandelier hanging above me, was made of iron. I dove for the path.
“What in name of the root and the branch?” I whimpered, taking only a trickle of comfort in the profanity. This much iron wasn’t cruelty; it was a passive assassination attempt. No pureblood could have survived the fall I’d just taken, even if they healed with my preternatural speed. The iron would have damaged them too much, and they’d never have made it back to the path. As it was, my head was throbbing, and my cheek felt like it was starting to blister. The iron in this room was thick enough that I wasn’t healing.
That just meant I needed to get out of here. Keeping my feet within the narrow bounds of the marble path, I started for the door.
“This is stupid,” I muttered. “This isn’t even good stupid. This is Bond villain stupid. This is Willy Wonka stupid. Who keeps a pit full of their personal Kryptonite in their own damn house? It’s stupid. If we weren’t already deposing her, I’d be tempted, just because this is so stupid.”
Muttering helped. It was easier to stay angry when I muttered, and staying angry helped keep me from focusing on the pain that was threatening to consume my entire body. My lungs hurt, too, aching from the iron I was pulling in with every single breath.
The door wasn’t locked. I suppose there was no good reason it should have been. Anyone who’d been in this place for more than an hour wouldn’t have had the strength to get up and open it.
The chamber on the other side was small, and like the room before it, was completely encased in iron. The marble path extended into the chamber, stopping and widening slightly at the center, into a circle almost large enough to let a human-sized bipedal adult sit down comfortably. Danny would have been forced to stand or burn if he’d been thrown in here.
Ironically, Nolan’s elf-shot condition had put him into a better state than most. He was still asleep, and was stretched out on the path, with his head on the marble at the center of the circle. “Let’s go,” I muttered, grabbing his ankles. He could have died from iron poisoning. He still might, if he didn’t get care. But by not depositing him directly on the iron, the Queen’s men retained enough deniability that neither they, nor their mistress, could be charged with a breach of the Law.
It was conniving and spiteful, and I was going to have one hell of a time not hitting someone when I finally managed to get Nolan up the stairs.
My head was spinning from the iron, and dragging him along the marble path was a slow, difficult process, made harder by the fact that I was starting to have trouble breathing. I let go of him as soon as we were back in the main room, putting my hands against my knees and bending double as I struggled against the dizziness and gray blurriness threatening to overwhelm me. Everything was turning fuzzy, and my head was still throbbing. My feet had gone numb. That was probably a blessing in disguise.
“Think, October.” What did I have? I had a silver knife. I had a leather jacket. I had the remaining blood lozenges. I had—
Blood lozenges. The blood in my veins was thick with iron, but Walther had frozen some of it before I was exposed. The blood gems might be tainted with goblin fruit. That was okay. I had the hope chest now; I could fix it. I withdrew the baggie from my pocket, undoing the seal. I couldn’t seem to make my shaking fingers close on a single gem. Finally, I shook my head, muttered, “Fuck it,” and dumped the remaining contents of the baggie into my mouth.
As before, the blood gems dissolved when they hit my tongue, leaving behind the taste of mint and lavender. That was the only thing that was like before, because then, I’d been trying to keep myself standing. I’d been mostly human. Now, I was more fae than I’d ever been, and I was looking for strength. The blood, dilute as it was, was happy to give it to me.
Feeling flooded back into my feet and hands as the bruises from my impact with the floor healed. Unfortunately, since no amount of blood could make me immune to iron, the feeling consisted mostly of pain. I didn’t have time to worry about that. I could feel the blood flowing through me, strengthening me. I could also feel how little time I had. More of my strength than I’d realized was going toward keeping me upright against the onslaught of iron.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” I said, and bent, struggling to hoist Nolan into a fireman’s carry. He was a relatively short man, only a few inches taller than I was, and
he was slender—spending a few decades asleep is a hell of a diet plan, even for the immortal. That didn’t make it any easier to deadlift him from the floor onto my shoulders.
When he was finally in place I turned, staggering, and hissed as the edge of my foot slipped off the marble path onto the iron. I pulled it back, regarding the stairs with the sort of loathing customarily reserved for my worst enemies. In that moment, I hated them more than I’d hated anything else in years.
“You’d better be worth it, Your Highness,” I said, and started to climb.
It said something about the oppressive weight of iron at the bottom of the stairs that I actually started to feel a little better as I climbed. The air was still chokingly laced with the stuff, and it would kill me if I stayed too long, but it was better than what we were walking away from.
“Arden needs to fucking bury this place,” I muttered, forcing myself to take another step, and another step after that. Every time I put my foot down was agony, like I was walking through a field of broken glass. I kept going. I hadn’t come this far, and fought my way through this much, to fall to something as passively dangerous as a room full of iron and a Prince who seemed to be getting heavier by the second.
I didn’t know how long I’d been climbing, or how far I had left to go, but I knew this much: I was getting tired. “Hello?” I called, as loudly as I could. “A little help here?”
“October?” Tybalt’s answering shout sounded distant. Too distant. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m having a damn vacation!” The amount of iron exposure he could get by coming down and helping me carry Nolan the rest of the way would be negligible compared to what I’d already subjected myself to. “Help!”
“I’m coming!”
“Good,” I muttered, and kept plodding on. It was less a matter of thinking I could meet him halfway and more the simple fact that if I stopped, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to start again.
I’d gone ten steps when Tybalt came around the curve above me, the hope chest still tucked underneath his arm. He paused, swore, and moved to take half of Nolan’s weight onto himself with his free arm, relieving my burden enough that I was able to straighten up for the first time since, oh, the ground floor.
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