Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel (31 page)

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 strength 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.

“Toby!” squawked Quentin. Li Qin said something in startled-sounding Chinese. Then both of them were next to me, working together to try to pull Tybalt off the floor.

Between the two of them, they were able to lever him off me. I scrambled out from under him, terrified that every move I made was just going to make things worse. He didn’t move. I took off my—his, it was his to begin with, and, oh, Maeve, he couldn’t die on me—took off my jacket and folded it into a pillow, sliding it under his head before fumbling with blood-sticky fingers for his pulse. It was there, but it was nowhere near strong enough for my liking.

“We need a healer,” I said, standing. “This isn’t going to be fixed with aspirin and gauze.”

Li Qin looked sick. “We have no healer. The closest we ever came was Yui, and she…”

“Died the same time January did, I know.” Tybalt wasn’t moving. The closest healer I knew of was Jin, at Shadowed Hills.

Shadowed Hills.

“I’m an idiot,” I said. “Quentin, give me your phone. Mine’s dead.” Quentin fished his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to me. I clicked it open, scrolling to the contacts. As I expected, Shadowed Hills was second on the list.

The phone only rang twice before Etienne picked up, beginning, “Shadowed Hi—”

“I need you to grab Jin and get to Tamed Lightning
right now
,” I interrupted. “It’s an emergency.”

Etienne hesitated. “October? I don’t…”

“Tybalt’s hurt! Don’t argue with me, just get over here.”

“I can’t run off with the Duke’s personal physician without better reason than a friend of yours being injured.”

“How about he got hurt because we were looking for
your
daughter, huh?” That wasn’t strictly true. For the moment, it was close enough. Etienne didn’t say anything, and so I pressed on, saying, “There’s no healer here. I can’t drive him to a place where he can get cared for. Duchess Riordan is one of the people who snatched Chelsea, and she has her right now. Now please, get Jin, and get over here.” I glanced at Tybalt. He was so still…“Please. We don’t have much time.”

“Tell Countess O’Leary to open the wards,” said Etienne. Then the line went dead.

I clicked Quentin’s phone shut, handing it back to him. April was nowhere to be seen. I cleared my throat and said, as calmly as I could manage, “April, I need you.”

There was a popping sound, accompanied by the strong smell of ozone, before she said, from behind me, “Yes?”

There was a time when that would have been enough to make me jump. How times have changed. “I need you to open an exception in the wards,” I said, turning to face her. “Sir Etienne is going to be teleporting in, accompanied by an Ellyllon healer. I apologize for inviting them without checking with you first, but it’s an emergency.”

“Ah,” said April. Her gaze went to Tybalt. She frowned. “Is he damaged?”

I nodded, trying to deny the sinking feeling in my chest. “I think he is, yeah,” I said. “Can you please open that exception?”

“Of course,” said April. “I do not want anyone else to leave the local network. We are too sparsely distributed.” Then she was gone, leaving the air to rush back into the place where she’d been standing.

I stayed where I was, eyes going to Tybalt. He hadn’t moved. There was a bloody fingerprint on his cheek that I recognized as my own, standing out in vivid red against the pallor of his skin. Mine. This was my fault. If it hadn’t been for me distracting him, Samson wouldn’t have decided Tybalt was neglecting his Court. Tybalt wouldn’t have been running through the shadows; he wouldn’t
have been vulnerable to an attack. He got hurt because of me. This was mine, and I had to own it, just like I had to own what happened to Connor. This was my fault.

“October.” Li Qin touched my wrist. I whipped around so fast I almost hit her; the wind from my motion actually ruffled her hair. She looked at me impassively and said, in a low, firm, tone, “This is not your fault.”

“What—how did you—?”

“I’m not a mind reader, but I spent quite a few years married to the kind of woman who thinks the best way to adopt a daughter is to break the rules of nature. Jan took responsibility for everything that happened within a mile of where she was standing. In the end, I think that’s what killed her.” A flicker of sorrow crossed Li Qin’s face, only to be wiped away by sternness. “You don’t have much in common with her, and that’s for the best—she could never have done the work you do—but you share her fondness for taking blame. You didn’t do this.”

I took a breath, letting it slowly out before I said, “I guess we’ll see about that. I’ll let you know whether it’s my fault or not when we know whether or not he’s going to live.”

“He’s going to be okay,” said Quentin. “He has to. He’s
Tybalt
. You’d be all weird and irritating if he wasn’t around.”

“Weird and irritating?” I raised an eyebrow. “What gives you that idea?”

Quentin shrugged. “That’s already how you get when he isn’t around.”

The smell of cedar smoke and limes swirled through the air, saving me from needing to reply. I turned to see Jin stepping through a circle in the air, her gauzy mayfly’s wings buzzing anxiously until it looked like she might actually leave the ground from sheer nerves. It wasn’t going to happen—adult Ellyllon are too heavy to fly without using magic—but it was the sort of reflex that told me how little she enjoyed traveling via teleportation portal.

Etienne stepped through behind her, closing the portal with a wave of his hand.

“Where’s the—” Jin began, and stopped when she saw the state of my clothes, her eyes going wide.

Etienne was less restrained. “Maeve’s teeth, October, did you bleed to death and just not notice? You’ve got more blood outside than you have room for inside!”

“Hello to you, too,” I said, too relieved to get annoyed. “Jin…” I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I just stepped aside, pointing mutely toward Tybalt. He still wasn’t moving.

“Ah,” said Jin softly. Her wings stilled their buzzing as she studied Tybalt, assessing his condition from a distance. She’s been Sylvester’s personal physician for a long time—long enough to see most of the damage that a body can sustain and still survive. So it was more than a little unnerving when she shook her head and said, “You should have called for me sooner.”

My mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you should have called for me sooner.” She stepped toward me, reaching out to touch my wrist, much as Li Qin had. Unlike Li’s touch, hers sent a wave of serenity washing over me, dimming and dulling my fear. Ellyllon can secrete both sedatives and stimulants through their skin. It’s what makes some of them such great healers, even as it makes the rest of them such great hedonists.

I glared at her, or tried to, anyway. With her artificial calm spreading through my body, the most I could manage was faint peevishness. “Don’t drug me.”

“Would you rather I knocked you out? Because I could do that. And I will, if it looks like you’re going to interfere.” She took her hand away, leaving tingles of chemical peace dancing over my skin. “Etienne, Quentin, get over here. I’m going to need the two of you to help me lift him onto the table. I need him higher.”

“Sure,” said Quentin, moving to join her. Etienne didn’t say anything. He just went.

Li Qin was abruptly at my side, taking my elbow and
turning me away from the sight of Jin and her makeshift assistants descending on Tybalt’s unmoving form. “Let’s make some coffee,” she said, soothingly. “Wouldn’t you enjoy that? You like coffee.”

“Yes, I do,” I agreed. My voice sounded distant. I was aware, in an almost academic fashion, that I should be more upset than I was—that I should be doing something to help, not going to fix myself a cup of coffee. Now that Jin wasn’t adding to the calm, I could feel the shape of it in my blood, smooth and foreign. I could remove it if I wanted to. I might not have seen that if I hadn’t been so relaxed, but I was too calm to get in my own way. If I wanted it to stop, it would.