Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

No one but me. I turned to Tybalt, one eyebrow raised in question.

He smiled. “That was my opposite number, Shade. She keeps mostly to herself, but she felt the disturbance when we fell off the Shadow Road. She had heard rumors of the coming challenge to my authority, and while she is not allowed to interfere on my behalf, she does not support the challenge. Her Court will watch this area while we rest. If anything comes, they’ll hold it off as best they can and make sure we’re warned. My opponent made that permissible when you became involved. They should never have touched you. October…” His expression sobered. “October, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.” I walked over and sat down next to him. “I think I understand.”

If Shade was Tybalt’s opposite number, that made her a Queen of Cats. Kings and Queens of Cats never live together. They don’t share Courts, they don’t share territory, and they don’t—according to gossip, anyway—share beds. Every Court of Cats has a single regent who rules according to his or her own laws. Queens tend to be more private than Kings, but they pay attention to what happens in their lands. Failure to notice a King of Cats showing up would probably lead to her having a very short reign.

Tybalt closed his eyes, sighing. “I don’t think I can do that again today. Not even if…”

“I understand that, too.” I dug the cell phone out of my pocket, looked at the display, and scowled. “My battery’s dead. We’re not calling for help.”

“That would have been too convenient.”

“I guess that’s true.” I replaced the cell phone in my pocket and put my hand on his knee. “Thank you anyway. For everything. For trying.”

Tybalt put his hand over mine and didn’t say anything about being surprised by my thanks. We sat in silence for several minutes. His fingers were cold and had barely started to warm up when he spoke again. “Did I ever tell you about my wife?” His tone was light and conversational, as if he were commenting on the weather.

I didn’t have to feign surprise. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not married anymore. It was a long time ago.”

That was oddly reassuring. I pushed the thought away. “I’m not sure this is a good time to—”

“This is the only time.” The weariness was back in his voice. “You know as well as I do that we may die here. If those who attacked us follow our trail before my strength returns, we won’t be able to run. There are ways of tracking where someone goes when they travel in shadow.”

“You’ll get better.”

“Not if they kill me properly. And you won’t get better regardless.”

I frowned, biting back further protest. “Okay. No. You never told me about her.”

“We met over two hundred years ago, in New York. Her name was Anne O’Toole.” His lips curved into a smile I’d never seen before, soft and wistful and almost longing all at the same time. “She was Irish when it wasn’t fashionable to be Irish, and a woman when that wasn’t fashionable either. She was all impulse and sharp words.” He opened his eyes, looking at me. “I think you would have liked her. You’re similar in some ways. Mostly in your habit of charging headlong into danger while swearing you’re doing no such thing.”

I looked at him but said nothing. After a moment he looked away, still smiling.

“We hated each other, of course. She thought I was arrogant and boorish. I thought she was common and dull, like every other human. But we…learned otherwise, and I loved her. She burned so bright—she raced through every day like she knew they wouldn’t last. She wanted me to remember her.” He stopped.

The cats yowled in the distance, marking out their territory. I brushed my hair away from my face with my free hand and asked, “Did she know?”

“That I wasn’t human? Of course she did. She wasn’t stupid.” The implied criticism of Cliff stung. “She knew before the first time she let me touch her. She said she loved me all the more for knowing I’d be here after she was gone. I was her immortality, she said. ‘The Sidhe have always been immortal for the sake of the Irish,’ that’s what she told me. And she laughed, and I laughed, because I was young and foolish and in love, and she was never going to die.”

“What happened?” The words seemed too bald, but I knew he’d never finish his story without prompting. We’d sit in silence until it was time to run again, and whatever demon he was trying to cast out with his recollection would stay with him.

“She died.” This time his smile was bitter. “She became pregnant, as women do, and it proved too much for her. Medicine of the time was…the human world lacked the skills she needed to survive. The Cait Sidhe have no talent for medicine, and I couldn’t find a healer among the Divided Courts who’d tend my ‘mortal slut.’ I begged. I bent my knee and I begged , like any penitent. And still they refused me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Anne died in my arms, and the only mercy of it is that she was gone before she knew the baby wouldn’t live. I buried my wife and daughter, and I swore I’d never trust the Divided Courts again, or love anything that came from the mortal world.”

“Tybalt…”

“That’s why I hated the changelings for so long. It was a changeling that killed my wife, intentionally or not, and doubled that…that pain by leaving me alone.”

I started to pull my hand away, but he caught it, pulling me back. “I wanted to hate you. Amandine got to keep her mortal lover and have her mortal child, even if she lost them eventually. I wanted to hate you because you made me think of Anne.”

“What changed?”

“I fell in love.”

Four words, simply stated, and impossible to believe. “You can’t mean that.”

“Can’t I? It’s been a long time since I’ve loved someone, but I know what it feels like. When you turn from me, it hurts. When you think badly of me, I think badly of myself. When you do stupid, suicidal things, I want to slap you upside the head and demand to know how you can be so brilliant and so blind at the same time.” Tybalt’s expression was calm. “If that’s not love, what is it?”

“Why are you telling me this?” I whispered.

“Because we’re probably going to die today.” He waved his free hand toward the street. “I’ve always tried not to lie to you; I’ve seen how you react when others do. Dying without telling you how I felt would be lying. I’ve been patient. I’ve given you time to recognize my feelings, and I’ve seen you choose a man who loved the girl you were, not the woman you are. Now he’s gone, and I can’t be patient anymore. I love you, October. I’ll be sorry if we die here, but I won’t be sorry I helped you…and I won’t be sorry I finally told you.”

“Tybalt…”

“Cats never regret anything,” he said, and he turned and kissed me.

The lingering chill from the Shadow Roads fled as my body reacted without consulting my mind, leaning forward and returning his kiss with a degree of eagerness almost as surprising as his admission. We’d kissed before, but those kisses weren’t like this one. Nothing had ever been like this one. He kissed me like a man who knew he’d been condemned to die and had chosen me in lieu of his last meal.

One hand stayed on mine, pinning it to his knee, while the other hand laced through my hair, pulling me closer. A flicker of common sense asked what I thought I was doing—there were people coming to kill us, Chelsea was missing, and Riordan was planning Oberon-knows-what, yet here I was, kissing the King of Cats like a human teenager sneaking out in the middle of the night.