Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

I managed to shove myself out of her grasp—barely—before saying, “You shouldn’t have started by kidnapping kids if you didn’t want me to get involved.” I kicked at her hand. She shifted her grip out of my reach, and kept pulling herself up, while Quentin continued to drive us, full-speed, toward the portal.

Riordan reached into her shirt, producing a slender knife. It was a ritual blade, the kind some Daoine Sidhe purebloods use when a spell calls for bloodletting—like the tool you use to hurt yourself can somehow make the act less painful. And it didn’t matter, because I was already so hurt that one more injury might well push me over the point of no return. I tried to scramble farther toward the front of the wagon, pushing against the wood with my ankles and elbows.

Light glinted off the ruby around her neck. The ruby…in Samson’s earliest memories, she’d been wearing a diamond, but after she got hold of Chelsea, the stone changed color. And Riordan made blood charms. Suddenly, I understood how she’d been calling Chelsea back to her over and over again. All it took was a little bit of blood. Any extra would have been used to craft the teleportation charms she’d been giving to Samson.

He was the one who opened the door to the Fire Kingdoms. He killed Tybalt. The realization made me furious and tired at the same time—it was just one thing too many.

And not everything had been dealt with. “Changeling children exist to be disposable,” said Riordan, getting to her feet. She straightened, holding the knife in front of her as she effortlessly kept her balance in the jouncing wagon. “Why else would anyone lower themselves to copulating with a mortal? ”

I kicked at her again. She stepped aside. “Children are never disposable!”

“Spoken like someone who should have been drowned before she could grow up to bother her betters.” Riordan shook her head. “You’re still a changeling. Even if you spoil things for me, no one’s going to be able to touch me.”

“Quentin’s not a changeling,” I gasped, levering myself into a half-seated position, with my shoulders braced against the back of the driver’s platform. Raising my voice, I shouted, “Quentin! Drive faster!”

“The horses don’t go any faster than this!” Quentin shouted back. He sounded strained, but not worried. That could only mean one thing.

He didn’t know Riordan was in the wagon.

Riordan herself grinned, clearly coming to the same conclusion, and took a step toward me. I fumbled my own knife from my belt, holding it in front of me. I wasn’t going to scream. No matter what, I wasn’t going to scream. If there was any chance of Quentin getting out of here—if he could keep his panicked horses under control long enough to get to the portal that Chelsea was still holding open—then I had to make sure he would take it, and that meant not distracting him with my own impending stabbing.

“I really hate you,” I muttered, trying to get into a defensible position. It wasn’t working. I’d lost too much blood, and my body was giving up on me.

“The feeling’s mutual, sugar,” said Riordan, and raised her knife.

Tybalt seemed to appear out of nowhere, vaulting over the side of the wagon and grabbing Riordan by the throat. His teeth were too large for his mouth, distorting it until there was no way he could have managed human speech. He didn’t need to. The roar he directed into Riordan’s face made his message perfectly clear.

“Tybalt!” I shouted. “The charm!”

He grabbed Riordan’s ruby with his free hand, yanking it loose and tossing it to me. I caught it, barely. Then he lifted her, struggling, and flung her off the back of the wagon. She screamed as she fell. I didn’t see her hit the ground.

“October!” Tybalt rushed over to me, dropping to his knees as he tried to gather me into his arms and check my injuries at the same time. It was an impossible task. He did his best. “Are you all right?”

Manic giggles bubbled from my lips before I could stop them. I pressed my forehead into his shoulder, and said, “No. Not even a little.” Then I stiffened. “Tybalt, Chelsea—”

“Etienne has her. He’s helping her keep the portal stable long enough for us to get through.” Tybalt raised his head, looking past me to where Quentin was steering us, hell-bent, toward the portal. “We’re almost there. Can you hold on?”

“I made it this far, didn’t I?” I tucked the ruby into my pocket and closed my eyes. Sometimes the hardest part of heroism is admitting that the battle is out of your hands. This wasn’t my fight anymore. It was Etienne’s, and Chelsea’s, and Quentin’s race against a changeling girl’s endurance. All I could do was let Tybalt hold me and try to pretend that I wasn’t still bleeding. At least it was slowing down. Maybe that was a good sign. Or maybe I was just running out of blood.

My wounds weren’t closing. The damage was done.

The smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies grew as we approached the portal. Tybalt snarled, carefully settling me on the wagon floor, before leaping to his feet and swatting something out of the air. One of the surviving Folletti screamed. I sort of wished I could lever my eyes open long enough to watch. Then the smell of smoke and lilies became overwhelming, and the whole wagon shuddered, shaking hard from side to side.

The ground beneath us changed textures, going from uneven earth to the smoothly polished stone of Duchess Riordan’s “parking garage.” Chelsea wailed, and I heard Etienne answer her. I couldn’t make out words, but his tone was soothing. The wagon slid to a halt. Almost immediately, a hot wave of magic washed over us, mingling the scents of smoke, calla lilies, and limes. Etienne was helping his daughter close the portal.

Somewhere behind us, Riordan screamed, the sound cutting off in the middle, as if a plug had been pulled—or a hole had been closed.

“October?” Tybalt’s voice was close enough that I knew he had to be right beside me. I just couldn’t have said exactly where. “October?!”

There are limits to everybody’s endurance. Mine have changed a lot in recent years, but they still exist, and I had reached them. With a sigh, I stopped clinging to consciousness and let myself tumble the rest of the way into the dark.

I’M NOT SURE WHICH was more surprising: that I woke up in the white velvet room off Duchess Riordan’s entry hall or that I woke up at all. I blinked up at the ceiling, realizing a moment later that the light levels had changed. The globes of floating witchlight were gone, replaced by a portable array of modern-looking fluorescent lights. “What the—?”

“She’s awake!” I recognized Jin’s voice before she leaned into my field of vision, scowling down at me. “By which I mean, of course, ‘She’s miraculously not dead, again,’ since by all rights, you should be. Oberon must really love your dumb ass.”

“Jin?” I levered myself into a sitting position, blinking at her. We were alone in the room, but only on a technicality; I could see faces peeking around the edges of the doorframe behind her. Tybalt, Quentin—and May, of all people. “What’s going on?”

“You nearly died. Again . I put you back together. Again. Oh, and you owe Tybalt and May so many favors I can’t even put it into words, since he’s the one who made sure we both got here, and she’s the one who donated three pints of blood to your sorry ass.” Jin folded her arms and scowled at me, her wings vibrating into a hazy blur behind her. “Congratulations, you’ve figured out where your crazy healing powers stop working. You should be dead.”

“You already said that.” My mouth tasted like road kill. I licked my lips, which tasted like blood—not much of an improvement, all things considered.