I shuddered involuntarily as the memory of my bath in Golden Shore struck me. “I wish I could say the same,” I said, putting a reassuring hand on the side of his neck. “But fuck, it’s good to have you back.”
“Yes,” he said. Then he hesitated, glancing down at my midsection, and swallowed. “October . . .”
“Yeah. I know.” I held out my hand, palm toward the ceiling, index finger extended. “I know one of the things you’re worried about, and I’m worried about it too, and if we’re going to get out of here, you need to not be worried,” I said. “Prick my finger.”
He jerked like I’d shocked him, eyes widening for a moment before he narrowed them and glared at me. “I will not hurt you.”
“I’m not asking you to hurt me, just to draw blood,” I said. “I could bite my own cheek, but I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. I’ve had other people’s blood in my mouth and I haven’t brushed my teeth. So please, prick my finger.”
Slowly, Tybalt nodded, pupils narrowing to slits as he extended his claws, and tapped the tip of my index finger, very gently, barely hard enough to break the skin. Quick, before it could heal, I stuck my finger into my mouth and swallowed the tiny bead of blood that had formed there.
I wasn’t looking for power or specific memories this time. I was looking for a truth Titania had forbidden my body to communicate with me, something baked deep into blood and bone, something hidden but soon to be revealed.
I closed my eyes while I listened to what the blood had to tell me, shutting out everything but this brief communion between my body and myself. It wasn’t the sort of familiarity I sought very often, and my body had plenty to say about how much I’d slept—or hadn’t—in the last few days, along with some salty comments about hydration, eating properly, and doing too much blood magic without sufficient time to recover.
And then it told me something else.
Opening my eyes, I smiled at Tybalt, hoping my relief would come through in that expression alone. In that moment, I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried.
He swallowed, hard, watching my face. “Truly?” he asked.
I said nothing, only nodded.
Slowly, he raised one hand to rest beneath my chin, nudging it ever so slightly higher before he moved his fingers to my cheek, running them softly down to the curve of my jaw. I shivered.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “I would never have blamed you. But I would have set myself to destroying her.”
“Here I thought we were going to do that anyway,” I said, and before I could say anything else, he pulled me close again, and kissed me for a second time.
It took us longer to pull apart now that we were no longer reuniting but reunited, and felt like we had the luxury of knowing this kiss wouldn’t be our last.
When we finally did pull apart, the Luidaeg made a huffing sound. “If you two are finished trying to suck each other’s faces off like a pair of hormonal teenagers, there is the little matter of being locked in an iron-barred dungeon while Titania is preparing to Ride for the Heart,” she said, sharply.
I turned to face her, leaning back until my shoulders hit Tybalt’s chest. He responded by putting his hands on my upper arms, holding me there. The Luidaeg was watching us with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and disgust, like she’d never expected our reunion to play out any other way.
I mean, if my father, sister, and brother hadn’t all been in the room, there might have been more nudity, but that was beside the point.
“How are we getting out of here?” I asked. “The last time I had to escape from an iron-laced dungeon, I had a Tuatha de Dannan’s blood to borrow. Or, I guess, technically, the last time, a pair of Tuatha came and got me. I’m thinking of the time before that. How did they manage that, anyway?”
“I helped them,” said Simon, voice dull and resigned. “We knew you’d been arrested, and had gone to Golden Shore hoping we could claim clemency on your behalf. There is no extradition between the Mists and the Golden Shore. I wanted your freedom more than I wanted my own safety. I was able to brew a draught that helped the Windermeres to overcome their normal issues with distance and break through the dungeon wards. I don’t have access to my equipment, or to the Windermeres.”
“So that’s out,” I said dryly. “Tybalt?”
“Much as I would love being your savior in this matter, little fish, I couldn’t carry this many people through the shadows, even were I inclined to make the attempt. The roads degrade when unused, and most of my Court has been unable to access them for months. They are unsafe for passage.”
“Ginevra took me via the Shadow Roads,” I protested.
His expression turned briefly murderous. “And we’ll be discussing that, once she has been recovered from wherever she’s being held. She should have known better than to risk you so.”
I turned to the Luidaeg. “I still have the Summerlands key,” I said, a note of desperation in my voice. “Could we take one of the old roads?”
“Accessing them with this much iron nearby would be a complicated trick, and not one that I’m sure would play out the way we want it to,” she said. “There are a lot of roads under the heading of ‘old roads.’ We could wind up on the Road of Rust, that was opened for the Gremlins, and die in a place where our bodies would never be found. I have a slightly better idea.” She gestured toward the door. “Does that thing look like it contains any silver to you?”
I blinked. “No. Why?”
“Because bound and limited as I am, I remain Firstborn, and I know how the Firstborn die,” she said. She held up one hand, fingernails growing long and wickedly pointed, like the talons of some great bird of prey or prehistoric creature of the depths. “We die by iron and silver. We don’t die by iron alone. Go comfort your father-failure. He thinks he’s lost you all over again.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Tybalt as she moved toward the door. He nodded, and so I stepped away, heading for Simon, still huddled in the corner.
When I got there, I found that he wasn’t alone: Garm was with him, back to the wall, face wan as whey beneath the natural gray pallor of his skin. Gwragen always bore a faint resemblance to human corpses. That resemblance was much more pronounced now. He had his knees drawn up, hugging them to his chest, and looked less like a knight than like a frightened child as he warily watched my approach.
“Hey,” I said, and the way he flinched from that easy familiarity told me, clearly, that he hadn’t had his real memories unlocked yet: this was still a version of Garm who expected me to be polite and biddable, unable to even consider being informal with a titled pureblood. Well, this was going to be fun for him.
I knelt next to Simon, putting a hand on his shoulder. He tried to cringe away from me and lean in my direction at the same time, which was a heartbreakingly impossible combination, and in the end had to settle for looking at me with sheer misery in his eyes. “Hey,” I said again. “Simon? You okay?”
“Not by any definition of the word,” he said, voice dull.
“Yeah. It’s a shock to the system, that’s for sure.”