Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

My heart hurt. My heart hurt so badly, and I was still trying to recover from Connor, and oh, Titania, I couldn’t do this again. The thought startled me. I froze where I was, still glaring.

Tybalt sighed. “I know.” He hesitated before adding, “This is not the time, and this is not the place, and my nephew needs us. But I ask you to consider this. I got better. I will always get better.” He hesitated again—possibly the first time I’d ever seen him pause more than once after he’d decided he was going to say something.

Finally, he said, “Some of us, October, will not leave you.”

I stared at him. Then I pushed myself to my feet, shaking the chill of his words from my skin, and dipped a hand into my pocket to pull out the Luidaeg’s charm. As I half-expected, it was glowing a brilliant foxfire green, like a Candela’s Merry Dancer, boiled down and concentrated. I held it toward the darkest part of the char. The glow dimmed.

“She didn’t open this door,” I said, and turned, relieved when the motion put Tybalt out of my sight. He was right; this wasn’t the time for that conversation. And he was also right that it was a conversation we needed to have sooner rather than later. Just not now.

The glow didn’t brighten again until I was facing an undamaged patch of wall. Even the cobwebs and ancient, tattered curtains were intact, marking this as one of the few places not touched by fire. I moved in that direction, careful to step around the spots on the floor where blood sang to me of injuries and anger. I didn’t want to get overwhelmed.

The curtains eddied in a half-felt wind as I approached, and I smelled a faint trace of calla lilies under the veneer of smoke. The rest of her magic was buried, blending into the background smell of the fire. That didn’t matter. I had what I needed.

I held the sphere out toward the source of the lily scent. There was a soft sound, somewhere between a sigh and the chiming of a bell, and the sphere changed from foxfire green to lambent white, dimming at the same time, until it seemed as if I had a hand filled with frozen starlight. Emphasis on the “frozen”: as soon as the light changed colors, a chill raced up my arm, wrapping itself around my heart. It squeezed once, long enough to make me gasp, and then it was gone…but the memory remained. Chelsea and I were tied now. No matter what else happened, I had to find her.

“October?” Tybalt’s voice was no closer than it had been a few moments before. He hadn’t moved. Smart kitty.

“Hold on.” I raked my hair back with my free hand, using the movement to cover my shudder, and stepped closer to the wall. The smell of lilies was stronger here. The smell of smoke…wasn’t. I frowned, twisting back around to face him. “I don’t think she opened a door to the Fire Kingdoms.”

“Much as I hate to argue with you, I believe the amount of lava that made an unexpected—and unrequested—appearance proves that the Fire Kingdoms were involved.” His mouth twisted into a shape that was half-grimace, half-smile. “Mortal lava doesn’t dissolve as it cools.”

“I’m not saying they weren’t involved, I’m saying she didn’t open a door to them. She wouldn’t have survived in the Fire Kingdoms for more than a few seconds. And I don’t smell her blood at all. Wouldn’t she have been hurt?” I looked at the dimly glowing sphere in my hand before tucking it back into my pocket. “The Court of Cats is where the lost things go, right? Is there some mechanism that determines what is and isn’t lost?”

Tybalt shook his head. “No. When something becomes ours, it finds its way here.”

“Well, in that case, I’d call a teenage changeling who can’t control her powers pretty damn lost. What if she opened a door looking for a safe place to hide and wound up here? Would anyone have noticed?”

“No members of the Divided Court have ever found the Court of Cats on their own before,” he said, hesitantly.

“Chelsea’s a special case. Maybe when she got lost, she saw the way. That’s all she’d need. Just one signpost telling her which way to go.”

“It’s…possible,” said Tybalt, still hesitantly—although it was the hesitance of a man facing an unfamiliar concept, not the hesitance of someone who was getting ready to disagree with me. “The doors are supposed to be sealed to all but the Cait Sidhe.”

“You brought me here.”

A smile ghosted across his face. “Like Chelsea, you’re a special case. Before today’s excitement, you were the only member of the Divided Courts to walk these halls in centuries.”

“That’s me—defying expectations wherever I go.” I took a breath. “What was this room used for? Why were you in here?”

“It was one of our dining halls. Many of us used it for napping, or for teaching kits to hunt.” Tybalt’s tone became tinged with fond remembrance. If it hadn’t been for the bruise on his face and the smoke in the air, it would have been almost sweet. “There is little more amusing than watching adult Cait Sidhe play rat-catcher in the mortal alleys for the sake of having live things to bring back here.”

That explained why there had been so many Cait Sidhe here to be hurt, if not why Chelsea would have suddenly decided to fill the room with lava. I walked to the worst of the burn, trying not to wince at the way the floor crackled under my heels. Tybalt watched me go, a curious expression on his face, but he didn’t stop me.

When I reached the point I judged to be the origin of the blaze, I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply. All I smelled was smoke. I sighed, hand going to the knife at my belt.

It always comes back to blood.

My mother’s line, the Dóchas Sidhe, draws power from blood in a way that no one else in Faerie does. Unfortunately for me, that means there’s no one to teach me what it is I can do and how I’m supposed to go about doing it. Oh, some of the lessons the Daoine Sidhe use for their children apply to me—that’s how I was able to pass for Daoine Sidhe for so damn long—but it’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. Just because a few things work out, that doesn’t mean you’re going about them the right way.

My mother knew how to use her magic. She could have shown me the way to use mine. She didn’t. So that’s one more thing for the long list of things my mother didn’t do, one more thing for me to figure out by guesswork and luck.

Goody.

I keep my knife sharp for situations just like this one. I ran the blade across the knuckles of my left hand, cutting barely deep enough to draw blood. The wounds were already starting to scab over as I brought my fingers up to my mouth. I didn’t open my eyes.

The taste of blood chased everything else away—the smoke, the scent of Chelsea’s magic, everything. Then every other trace of blood in the room rose, threatening to knock me on my ass. I forced myself to keep breathing. My magic rose around me, cut grass and copper barely sharp enough to distinguish itself from blood. The taste of blood receded, seeming to know what it needed to do, and a dozen more magical signatures announced themselves, ghostly memories of spells long since cast and illusions long since dispelled.

“Chelsea used her magic there and there.” I pointed blindly, eyes staying closed as I fought to focus through the overlapping traces left by the Cait Sidhe. Tybalt would see what I was pointing at. “She didn’t use it here. She didn’t come anywhere near here.”

“What are you saying?” Tybalt’s voice drew closer. His footsteps weren’t even whispers in my self-imposed darkness. If he hadn’t been speaking, I would never have heard him coming.

“Chelsea didn’t open this door.” I ducked my head, breathing in deep. There was the faintest distant trace of apples and snowdrops—but then it was gone again. “I…she didn’t. I’m sure she didn’t. There’s a ghost of her magic here, but it’s too thin. She didn’t do this.”