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 said. “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!”
“Annwn,” said Tybalt. “Some call it the land of the dead. Some call it the land of the blessed. Many centuries ago, a part of Faerie called it home.”
Chelsea froze. “We’re in Fairyland?” she whispered.
“You’ve been in Fairyland for a while, Chelsea,” I said. “It has a lot of different parts. The Court of Cats, for one, and the Fire Kingdoms, for another.”
“Is that where all the lava came from?” she asked.
“We wouldn’t call that the Snow Kingdoms,” I said, earning another of her brief-lived smiles. “You’re opening doors deeper and deeper into Faerie, and you have to stop. It’s not safe for you. It’s not safe for anyone.”
“Is that why there’s no one else here?”
“Among other reasons,” said Tybalt.
“I can’t control where we go. Mostly I wind up in places I’ve already been, whether I want to go there or not. We could wind up right back where we were, with those people who were trying to hurt you before.” Her eyes widened again. “Why were they trying to hurt you? What did you do?”
Maeve preserve me from the mood swings of high-strung teenage girls. “We didn’t do anything,” I began. “We…”
“I pursued an association with a woman outside my Court, and some of my subjects took umbrage,” said Tybalt. I stopped talking. He continued, “It is an unfortunate truth of the Court of Cats that we do not, as a rule, play gently with one another. When I did not oblige their request to focus my attentions on them, and them alone, they decided the appropriate course of action would be to depose me, that I might be replaced with someone more agreeable.”
“They tried to kill you because you liked a girl?” asked Chelsea.
Tybalt looked toward me. “Yes,” he said mildly. “They did.”
I reddened. Turning my attention back to Chelsea, I said, “We need to get out of here. Please, can you at least try?”
“We could end up anywhere,” she said miserably. “Totally anywhere.”
I paused. Chelsea hadn’t been coming to find us, but she’d found us all the same, just when we needed a miracle to get us out of the situation alive. She’d managed to take us back to one of the only truly safe, empty places in Faerie. Annwn had no resident monsters, not since Oberon sealed the doors.
And Li Qin, back at Tamed Lightning, bent luck.
“Try,” I said.
Chelsea swallowed. Then she raised her hands, the smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies gathering around her. When she spread her hands, a circle appeared, apparently cut out of the air. Through it, I could see the lawn at Tamed Lightning,
complete with picnic tables and frothy white lace-o’-dreams growing in the grass where you would normally expect to find mortal clover.
“Thank Oberon,” I muttered. “Come on. You, too, Chelsea. There are some people here you should meet, and we can call your mother and let her know that you’re okay.” And I could go out to the car while she was still calm, and get some of Walther’s power-dampening solution before she could jump away again.
We’d found her. We needed to keep her if we possibly could.
Tybalt was first through the portal, largely because I shoved him. He gave me a look that was half amusement, half aggravated dignity and stepped onto the lawn on the other side. I followed. Once I was through, I turned to beckon to Chelsea.
“Come on,” I said.
“Okay,” she replied, and stepped through. I saw her step through. She entered the glowing circle just as Tybalt and I had.
Unlike the two of us, she didn’t emerge out the other side.
The portal remained open for a moment, showing the moon-washed fields of Annwn. In that moment, I smelled apples and snowdrops. Then the portal vanished, leaving us looking at the rear of the company’s main building.
“Well,” I said. “That didn’t work.” Riordan has her. Riordan has her again, and I can’t tell Tybalt, because he needs medical care, and he needs it fast…
“No,” said Tybalt. “It did not.” He grimaced. “Loath as I am to distract from the important business of resuming our wild goose chase, might we find some soap and water first? I need to wash these cuts before I run the risk of infection.”
“We’re finding you a first aid kit,” I said firmly, taking his arm. “Come on. I think there’s one in the cafeteria.” If there wasn’t, April would notice our arrival and come to find out what we were doing back. She could tell me where to find some bandages and antiseptic cream.
There are times I wish Faerie had more healers, or that my particular healing talents extended to people other than myself. Since I still can’t stand the sight of blood, I’m basically useless for anything more involved than smearing Neosporin on a scrape and calling it good.
Tybalt wasn’t quite staggering, but he was close. I tried to tighten my grip on his arm without being too obvious about it. He shot me a sharp look. “I am not going to drop dead on the lawn. It would be crass to die without at least saying hello first.”
“Oddly, not that reassured.” I kept pulling him along. “Samson tried to kill us.”
“Yes,” said Tybalt dryly. “I noticed.”
“No, I mean—he really tried to kill us. Both of us. Not just you, which would be forgivable under the Law.” Succession in the Court of Cats is often fatal. As a consequence, the Cait Sidhe are considered exempt from Oberon’s Law as long as they stick to killing each other. A Cait Sidhe killed by another of his or her kind isn’t considered a murder victim so much as, well…bad timing. If Samson had killed me, on the other hand…“Even if the Queen wanted to hand out fiefdoms and cookies, I’m pretty sure Sylvester would insist on something being done.”
“Among others, yes. You have a surprising number of willing noble patrons. Even so, you must understand…Samson allowed you to be brought into the line of fire not because he thought he could get away with it, but because he didn’t care.” Tybalt’s expression turned grave. “The intent was almost certainly to send us both running into the shadows, where our deaths would go unremarked—and my death would be less likely to reverse itself.” Seeing my bewilderment, he explained, “A King or Queen who dies on the Shadow Roads—not after falling off them, but truly on them—remains dead. The magic that restores us can’t find us in the dark.”
I blinked. “That must have been a fun one to learn.”
“If it were not so, I could never have killed my father.”
My eyes widened before I could stop myself from reacting. Tybalt was a King of Cats. I’d always known what meant—that sometime in the past, he’d killed someone to get his throne—but I’d never really thought about it before. I hadn’t wanted to.
Tybalt shot me a very small, very tired smile. “I’m done with secrets between us, October. If I am asking you to let me court you—and to court me in return—I cannot pretend to be other than I am. I am a King. Kings gain their thrones in certain ways.”
I blinked again. This time, I didn’t have any words to follow the gesture. Admissions of love are one thing. One strange, scary, unexpected, potentially insane thing, but still, they’re self-contained. They can be ignored, if they have to be; they can be politely forgotten by both parties and never spoken of again. It didn’t seem likely, given the circumstances. It was still an option. Courting, on the other hand…
Formal courtship is common among the older purebloods, played at by the younger purebloods, and practically unheard of among changelings. It’s somewhere between the Victorian ideal of calling cards, chaperones, and romantic failure to even hold hands, and the fairy tale ideal of glass mountains, dragon-slaying, and the occasional curse. The whole concept was terrifying.
Tybalt clearly realized he’d managed to unsettle me. His next words made it plain that he didn’t understand why: “I thought you knew what I was.”
“I did,” I said. “I mean, I do. I mean…I don’t know what I mean.” I mean, I don’t know why you’d want to court me. I mean that I don’t know how to court you. I mean that I don’t know whether I want to be courted.
I meant a lot of things. I just didn’t know how to say any of them.
“Please tell me when you acquire the knowledge,” said Tybalt. He stepped away from me long enough to open the door into the next building. His shoulders were squared, and the effort that it took for him to stay upright unassisted was impossible to miss. I ached to help him. I didn’t move. Not until he had the door fully open and was gesturing for me to step inside.
“I will,” I said.
He followed me through the door and didn’t object when I took his arm again, shifting so he could lean on me.
“I promise not to make a habit of this,” he said.
“Tell you what. You don’t make a habit of this, I won’t make a habit of getting myself gutted, how’s that?”
His eyes went to the slashes across the front of my shirt. “I believe I can agree to that.”
“Agree to what?” inquired April, with what sounded like genuine curiosity. We both turned to see her standing a few feet away, head cocked to the side as she waited for our reply.
I frowned. “Why don’t I smell ozone?”
“Answering a question with a question is inefficient,” said April. “You do not smell ozone because I am not functionally here. This is a projection.” Then she smiled—an expression so joyful and sincere that it made my heart ache. She looked like her mother when she smiled like that. “Do you like it?”
“It’s very nice, April. It looks just like you.” April was made of solid light, rather than anything messy like flesh or bone. She’d always been questionably physical. This was just one more step along that illogical progression. “Where are the others, please? Tybalt’s injured, and I need to get someone to help me clean him up.”
“You have also been injured,” noted April. “The amount of blood on your clothing indicates a blood loss of approximately—”
“Please don’t calculate how much of my blood isn’t actually inside my body right now,” I interrupted. “I really, really don’t want to know. Where are Li and Quentin?”
April frowned. “In the cafeteria. I will alert them to your arrival.” She disappeared, as silently and scentlessly as she had appeared in the first place.
“Oh, Tamed Lightning, is there anything you can’t make creepier?” I paused, and added, “Don’t answer that. Come on.”
Tybalt and I walked to the cafeteria in the sort of silence that spoke, very loudly, to the effort he was making to stay on his feet. I wanted to suggest he shift to feline form and let me carry him, but I was afraid if he did that, he wouldn’t have the stre
ngth to shift back. Eventually, the bright blue cafeteria door came into view. Quentin pushed it open a second later and held it for us, a worried expression on his face. That expression deepened when he got a good look at my clothes.
“Toby…?” he said, in a small voice.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Could probably use some cookies and orange juice, but I’m okay. Tybalt needs help.”
“I assure you, I am less injured than I appear,” said Tybalt. “I am simply conserving my strength while I recover from the effort of holding October’s intestines inside her body.”
Quentin looked between the two of us, paling. Then he stepped aside. “Li’s getting the first aid kit.” He looked past us to the hall. “Where’s Chelsea?”
“Why would Chelsea be here?” I asked, leading Tybalt into the cafeteria. He was leaning on me harder all the time, and I could smell fresh blood again. He was bleeding somewhere under his clothes from an injury I hadn’t seen. That wasn’t good.
“Because I bent your luck and hers together,” said Li Qin. She was spreading the contents of a first aid kit out on one of the room’s oddly shaped white tables. “She should have gone right to where you were.”
“She did,” I said. “That’s why we’re alive.”
“What?” Li Qin looked up, and paled. “Oh, sweet Titania…”
“Hasn’t been seen in a long time, and wouldn’t help us if she were here,” I said grimly.
“I think I might want to take one of those seats,” said Tybalt, in a thoughtful tone. “They seem pleasant. They seem like a good place to wait while the room stops spinning…”
Then he collapsed.
People in real life never collapse like people in the movies, who always seem to fall like trees, or slump gently into whoever’s trying to support them. Tybalt pitched forward and folded up at the same time, turning from a man who was at least trying not to knock me over into more than a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight. I yelped, scrambling to get a better grip on him. All I succeeded in doing was cushioning his fall as he bore me down to the cafeteria floor.
Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel Page 23