Page 68 of The Brightest Fell

“Tybalt, don’t go.” I reached for him.

He took another step back, and he was gone, melting into the shadows that had replaced the wall. I ran after him, charging through the shadows into the seemingly infinite basement beyond. I stumbled. I put my hands out to catch myself as I fell. I hit the floor—

—and gasped, opening my eyes. I was staring at the ceiling of the real basement. The beams were newer, less caked with layers of time and neglect. More importantly, there were naked lightbulbs hanging there, grimed with layers of dust that filtered and softened the light.

A blurry figure at the edge of my vision resolved itself into Simon, looking at me with wide, anxious eyes. “October, can you hear me?” he asked.

“Mghle,” I said. My lips were gummy with dried blood, and the inside of my mouth tasted like something had died.

Another blur turned into Madden as he stepped nervously forward. He was actually wringing his hands in front of himself, like he had no idea what else to do. “Is she . . . is she okay?” he asked.

“Yes, and no,” said Simon. He returned his attention to me. “October, I’m going to help you sit up now. All right? Please blink if it’s not all right.”

I wasn’t sure I could blink if I wanted to. My body felt heavy and disconnected, like it belonged to someone else entirely. But I felt Simon slide his arm around my shoulders and ease me into a sitting position.

He looked to Madden. “She needs fluids. You serve beverages here, do you not? Get her something. Lots of sugar, lots of milk or cream or whatever other fatty liquid you have on hand. Go.” He paused before adding, “Please.”

“Sure,” said Madden, looking almost relieved before he turned and fled.

Simon returned his attention to me. “Do you know who I am?”

There was a thread of anxiety in his question, like he was afraid I’d hit my head when I fell, and forgotten which Torquill brother I was dealing with. Maybe I had hit my head. That would explain why everything kept spinning. I licked my lips again, and managed to croak, “Simon.”

“Oh, thank Maeve,” he breathed. “October, you undid the geas my brother put on me. It was blood magic, and you unraveled it. Do you understand?”

Speaking still seemed like too much trouble. I nodded, head wobbling like my neck was not long enough to support its weight.

Simon looked . . . Simon looked wrecked, abjectly miserable in a way that was so unlike Sylvester’s quiet, profound sorrow that I wondered how I could ever have confused them for one another. I wanted to tell him that, that I could finally look at him without seeing the slightest trace of his brother, but I couldn’t seem to make my mouth work properly.

This was bad. Part of me realized that this was bad. I’ve been injured before. I’ve been killed in the course of duty, and I’ve always bounced back. Only now, after nothing more serious than a papercut, I was so weak I could barely move, and the room wouldn’t stop spinning. Whatever I’d done to myself, it was bad, and Simon knew what it was, and for some reason, he wasn’t telling me, which just made me sure that it was worse.

I made a small, pained sound. Simon sighed.

“October, when August assaulted you, she did so using techniques she had learned from her mother—your mother. Amandine trained our daughter in the use of her natural talents, because she did not want a child of hers to go into the world unprepared. She left you weakened. I would have told you not to do what you did, if you had been able to ask me.”

But I couldn’t, I thought fiercely. I had done what I had to do.

Simon seemed to understand that. He bowed his head a little, and said, “Under normal circumstances, snapping a geas would have been painful. It would have come with a price, because undoing a spell rooted in the blood itself was never meant to be easy. Under these circumstances . . .” He tapered off, and just like that, I knew what I had done.

It always comes back to blood in the end. No matter how much we wish it didn’t, it always comes back to blood. Closing my eyes, I breathed in as deeply as I could, straining until, at the absolute edge of my awareness, I caught the faintest flicker of cut-grass. It was weak, and the copper seemed to have vanished entirely, leaving what remained flat and simplistic, like it had been pressed between two sheets of glass. I could touch it. I could feel it. But when I tried to call it, it didn’t respond.

“Hair,” I croaked.

Simon frowned. “What?”

“Hair.”

He hesitated before reaching around and lifting a hank of my hair, tugging it into my field of vision.

It had never been such a dark brown before.

“Right,” I said, and closed my eyes, and went away.

TWENTY-ONE

“IS SHE DEAD?” The voice was Madden’s. He sounded worried and a little panicky, like he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain this to Arden. A valid concern: I was currently the only hero of the realm she had.

Some hero. I couldn’t call my own magic, much less see the hidden world around us. The last time I’d been remotely this human, I’d needed fairy ointment just to find the Library door, and this was worse. Now that I was looking for the markers, I could tell this was worse.