Chimes at Midnight
Page 86

I stared at her for a few precious seconds before turning my attention to the knives in her hands. They gave no external clues, nothing that might help me know which one I wanted.
But then, I’ve never been very good at choosing just one. I reached out and grabbed both knives before she had a chance to react, pulling them from her hands. The motion left her fingers cut and bleeding, freeing the smell of blood to invade the room. I took a deep breath, letting the blood strengthen me, turned the knives around in my hands, and drove them into my stomach in a single gesture. I never did see which was which. It didn’t seem to matter.
The pain was sudden and immense, expanding to fill the entire world. The last thing I saw before I fell was my own face smiling at me from the doorway. She looked approving. I wanted to yell at her. If there was a right choice, why couldn’t she just tell me that and skip the stupid riddles? But falling seemed much more important than arguing. I hit the floor on knees I could barely feel through the pain washing through my body.
The knives. The knives. I needed to . . . I needed . . . I yanked the knives out of my stomach before the blackness could take me. And then I closed my eyes, letting myself go limp. Dying hurt. I did not approve. I did not—
A hand closed on my shoulder, fingers surprisingly solid despite the remaining haze. “Toby? October? Are you all right?” Dianda sounded worried. I couldn’t blame her. From the smell of things, there wasn’t much blood left in me, but there was a lot of it around me. “Hey. Don’t be dead. I’m pretty sure it’ll count as a declaration of war if you’re dead.”
“No such luck,” I rasped. Until I spoke, I hadn’t been quite sure I still had a mouth. It tasted like blood, just like everything else. I swallowed, trying to clear the taste away, and opened my eyes to find Dianda—still finned and scaled—on the floor next to where I’d fallen. I blinked. “Did you crawl here?”
“I need water before I can shift back,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” I sat up, waiting for a flare of pain. Nothing happened. I reached for my side, slipping my hand through the cut in my clothing to feel smooth, undamaged skin. Sitting up a bit straighter, I pulled my hand free, wiped it on my jeans, and reached up to brush my hair back.
My fingers hit the sharp edge of my ear. Not pureblood-sharp, but the angle I was used to. I took a deep breath, swallowing the urge to shout with joy. “I think I’m—” I began, and stopped as pain shot through my left side. I doubled over, clapping my hands over the wound I knew had to be there.
They found the hilt of my iron knife. Fighting to focus, I wrenched the blade from its scabbard and flung it across the room. It clattered against a pile of golden coins before vanishing behind them. I pulled up my shirt and pulled down the waistband of my jeans. There was a welt where the knife had been close to my skin, and unlike the rest of my injuries, it wasn’t healing.
“I’m definitely back to normal,” I said, and stood, tucking the hope chest under my arm. Maybe more than normal. I felt less human than ever before, although I’d managed to hang on to some of my humanity. I knew the balance of my own blood well enough to be sure of that.
Worrying about what I’d done to myself could come later. For the moment, I had allies to worry about. “I’m going to get you some water,” I said.
To my surprise, Dianda shook her head. “No. There’s bound to be something in here,” she waved a hand to indicate the treasury, “that makes water out of nothing, or never dries up, or whatever. I’ll find it. Go save your cat.”
Tybalt. Fear washed over me, and I nodded. “All right,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I didn’t wait for her response. I was off and running, my feet squelching through the blood trail I’d left earlier. Even in her current form, Dianda could fight off any guards that came for her. She was a Duchess in the Undersea; they based titles off the ability to hold them. She’d be fine. Tybalt needed me.
How long had it been? How long had it taken me to change my blood back to normal, how long for Dianda to pull herself across the treasury floor to where I was huddled around the hope chest? How long? I ran, heading as fast as I could for the dungeon door. My feet slid on the blood-slick stone floor. I slammed my hip against a corner and kept on running, feeling the pain first spread through me and then recede, pulled back by the power in my blood.
I couldn’t properly enjoy my body being my own again. I was too busy running, my mind already playing through the worst possible scenarios. Most of them were terrifyingly simple: I’d get there and the night-haunts would be gone, and the next time I saw the flock, there would be a diminutive figure with Tybalt’s eyes among their number.
The door to the dungeon was unguarded; the guards Dianda and I had taken down were gone. Whether gone meant “away” or “down,” I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I yanked the door open and ran into the dark without care for how badly I might hurt myself. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting there in time to save him.
The door to Dianda’s cell was open. That was a good sign: if the guards had been down here, they would have closed it. I kept running until I turned the final corner and stopped dead. The bottom seemed to drop out of the world, leaving me alone in the darkness. Tybalt was there, unmoving, lying in exactly the position he’d been in when I left him.
But the night-haunts were gone.
Moving slowly now, like the air had been replaced by thick goo, I walked toward him. He still looked fae. Night-haunts usually replaced the dead with human-seeming shells. Would they have bothered with that here, in a knowe, where his body would never be seen by the mortal world? It didn’t make sense, from a logical standpoint—but since when was Faerie logical? Maybe they’d left one just to mess with me.
“It isn’t fair,” I whispered.
“It never is,” replied Devin’s voice. I whipped around to find the two night-haunts hovering behind me. Connor’s haunt wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I managed to fight the urge to slap them out of the air. “Is he alive?”
“For now,” said the Devin-haunt, looking me up and down. “I see you’ve found yourself again. Our part in things is done. Whether he lives or not, you owe us.”
“I know,” I said, and turned my back on them. I walked the last few steps to Tybalt, kneeling beside him on the cold stone floor, and reached out to stroke his cheek. My fingers left bloody trails behind them. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, you need to wake up. It’s time to save the Prince, defeat the evil Queen, and go on a vacation. I hear Hawaii is nice this time of year. I’ll go there with you. I’ll go anywhere with you. Come on, kitty-cat. Wake up.”