Page 42 of Night and Silence

“Tybalt . . .” I began.

The Baobhan Sith struck.

Launching herself away from the floor with a single convulsive shove of her wiry, well-muscled arms, she knocked us both backward before lunging for my throat and clamping down. She moaned triumph as she began to suck, teeth grinding against my windpipe. I tried to grab her shoulders, but all the strength had gone out of my arms. I couldn’t get a grip. I dropped my knife, to no avail; my fingers refused to close.

“Forgive me.”

Tybalt’s voice was barely louder than a sigh and was all the warning I had before he wrapped his arms around my waist and dragged us—me, and the Baobhan Sith—backward, into the darkness of the shadow roads.

ELEVEN

WE FELL LIKE STARS, plummeting into the freezing cold waiting on the other side of the light. I couldn’t breathe. That wasn’t much of a change. I already hadn’t been able to breathe, thanks to the Baobhan Sith crushing my throat. The blood covering my neck and arms froze almost instantly, becoming an icy shroud that wrapped around me and worked the cold even deeper, driving it all the way to my bones.

There was a sudden sharp heat as the Baobhan Sith’s hold on my throat broke and she tumbled away into the darkness. That heat faded as well, becoming another layer of cold as the blood stopped flowing. Everything was freezing. Everything was falling.

There was a sudden jolt beneath me, and I realized Tybalt still had his arms wrapped around my waist. I could barely feel them due to the cold. He swung me up and around, settling me into a bridal carry before he broke into a run. I didn’t fight. It might have been more accurate to say that I couldn’t fight. There was no strength left in me, no capacity to do anything other than huddle where I was and let myself be carried.

It was such a familiar position that it would almost have been pleasant if not for the blood drying at my throat and the knowledge that the Baobhan Sith was still out there, lurking somewhere in the dark of the Shadow Roads. It had been so long since Tybalt had carried me like this that I had almost forgotten how normal it was. Somewhere between my return from the pond and his proposal, this had become ordinary. I had probably spent more time in the shadows than any other non-Cait Sidhe in a hundred years.

“Almost there, little fish,” he murmured, and I didn’t try to argue. Between the cold and the blood loss, a pleasant lassitude was stealing over me, leaving me utterly relaxed. If we were attacked again, he would need to be prepared to defend us both.

Belatedly, I realized I no longer had my knife. It had fallen in the room where the Baobhan Sith had pretended to be my daughter, a perfect trap, perfectly laid for me. I would have to go back for it. I couldn’t lose it. I refused to lose it.

Tybalt leapt, clutching me to his chest as he jumped into the blackness. The shadows broke around us, and we emerged into a deserted classroom filled with potted lavender and rosemary plants. They covered every surface, encroached on most of the floor, so that we were utterly surrounded. Knotted ropes coated in flame-retardant wax hung from the ceiling, their lengths dotted with candles that glowed with flames like the sun.

In case that hadn’t been sufficient warning of our location, Tybalt said, in a tone nonchalant enough to scream concern, “We are in the Court of Cats. Shade may not care for our presence, as this is technically her territory, but if she objects, I will explain. Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

For a moment, I considered refusing to open my eyes. Let him be the one to deal with the fear of his lover not responding to him. I dismissed the petty, pointless idea as quickly as it had come. He hadn’t been answering when I called for him. I was injured. The two situations were completely different.

“Yeah,” I rasped, and raised a hand to feel my throat, dislodging icy sheets of blood with every motion. There were still toothmarks there, smaller than they had been, but enduring despite the length of time since my injury. “What the . . . ?”

“The saliva of the Baobhan Sith slows healing. Their prey generally bleeds out rather than recovering and leaves them with a trail they can follow to a feast. Can you stand?”

“Try me.”

Gingerly, Tybalt lowered me to my feet, keeping hold of my arm as he straightened and let me test my balance. My legs wobbled but held. I clutched his arm, finally raising my eyes to meet his.

He must have seen the recrimination there, because he winced, glancing guiltily at the floor. “Quentin called me,” he repeated.

“I feel like there’s a chain of events you’re leaving out.”

“Raj had . . . informed me you were in Berkeley, investigating the disappearance of your child. I was attempting to convince myself that my presence would be welcome when he returned to say you had found something which should not exist and were planning to parley with my opposite number.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, still not looking at me. “Then he threw his phone at my head and told me to behave more like a cat than a coward, and he left before I could scold him for his insubordination. When you began screaming, Quentin called Raj to ask if he could use the Shadow Roads to enter the house. He seemed quite surprised to get me instead. He called me some fascinating names. I was not aware he knew so many ways to belittle a man.”

“That’s my boy.” I flexed my fingers, popping off a sheet of frozen blood, and placed it in my mouth with barely a grimace. There was a time when even the sight of my own blood would make me light-headed. Now I swear the stuff makes up more than half of my diet.

The blood-ice melted on my tongue. A bit of the cloudiness in my head cleared. I straightened, feeling stable enough to stand on my own, and took my hand off Tybalt’s arm. His face fell immediately. I almost put my hand back, deciding against it only when I realized it wasn’t going to do any good.

“I should have been there before you could be hurt,” he said, voice soft. “I should have been there from the beginning.”

“Yeah.” There was no point in lying to him. He was smarter than that, and more, I respected him too much to litter the ground between us with falsehoods. We were past that point. We’d been past that point for years. “You should have been. But you’re here now.”

He paused for so long that I began to be afraid that no, he wasn’t here. That he’d been willing to save me, but that was where it ended: he was going to return to his self-imposed seclusion, and I was going to be going on without him. Again.

That wasn’t how things were supposed to be. They had changed, for the better, and I didn’t want them changing back. I never wanted them changing back.

“Only if you want me to be,” he said, in a small voice. “I am—damaged, October, I am hurt in ways I have never been hurt before, that I can barely put name to, much less chart in their healing. I flinch from my own shadow. How is that fit behavior for a king? How is that fit behavior for your love?”

I stared at him for a moment, unable to believe what I was hearing. My arm ached. My neck throbbed. Blood, both frozen and beginning to sluggishly thaw, coated more of me than I liked to consider. And none of that mattered as I raised my hand to brush his cheek, and stepped closer, and kissed him.