Page 43 of Night and Silence

In fairy tales, a kiss can fix anything. My life is not a fairy tale, and a kiss has never been enough to save my life. But a kiss can change things in any version of reality; a kiss can reorder the world. Tybalt’s eyes widened. Then he closed them, arms going around my waist and pulling me close. I closed my own eyes, letting the moment exist without observation. His lips, as always, carried the pennyroyal and musk flavor of his magic. My lips, I knew, would taste mostly of blood right now, and he kissed me anyway, kissed me like a starving man, like he’d believed the time for kissing was somehow over.

We were both panting slightly when he pulled back, staring at me again. I immediately grabbed the front of his shirt—rough linen, like something out of a BBC Shakespeare production, and now irrecoverably stained with blood—and kept him from going any further.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I want you here.”

“Your mother—she trapped me, and a King who cannot run, cannot fight, is a danger, I would attract danger to you, and be unable to help—”

“I’d like to see anyone who wanted to hurt you get through me,” I said.

Tybalt blinked, looking too startled to reply.

That was fine. I could talk for both of us. “If you’re hurt, you let me help you heal,” I said. “If you’re damaged, we learn the ways around it together. I don’t care whether you can be fixed. I don’t care whether you flinch at shadows. All I want is for you to be with me—and let me be a part of whatever ‘getting better’ looks like now.”

“Perhaps refrain from using ‘fixed’ as a descriptor with your betrothed, the common cat,” he said weakly, a flicker of a smile crossing his lips. “It is unsettling at best.”

I beamed, bright and earnest and unable to stop myself. “There you are. Root and branch, I’ve missed you.”

In answer, Tybalt put his arms around me again, enfolding me in his embrace, and pressed his face into my hair. Voice so soft it was barely a whisper, he breathed, “I have missed you, too, my little fish. More than you can see or know.”

It was tempting to remain in that embrace forever, to stand surrounded by flowers and let myself breathe in the scent of him until the broken places in my heart began to reluctantly heal. There wasn’t time. The rest of the world wasn’t pausing while we dealt with our problems. If only it would.

I pulled away, letting my arms rest against his chest for a moment more as I said, “We have to go back.”

“Back?”

“To the house where you found me. I dropped my knife. The one Dare gave me.” And my phone, which would probably raise questions if the human insurance companies ever discovered the burnt-out old house.

There was nothing I could do to collect the blood that had liberally painted the walls. That would be fun. The local kids would get a new “murder house” to talk about at school, and all the local parents would get a new reason to drink heavily.

Tybalt frowned. “There are other knives.”

“But there isn’t a Dare anymore, and everyone else is trapped outside waiting to find out if I’m all right.” I paused. “How did you get in?”

“The barrier you found was normal for a Baobhan Sith’s denning place. They spin the world into a shell to protect themselves. They lack the authority of Oberon, and it’s a wild magic, not an intentional warding; the Shadow Roads allow the Cait Sidhe to slide through as a wind blows through a keyhole. They are . . . not fond of us, shall we say.”

The casual nonchalance with which he said that lifted my heart. Who would have thought that one day I’d be yearning for the arrogance of the Cait Sidhe? “Is she going to attack us when we go back into the shadows?”

“She’s no doubt escaped by now.” I stared at him. Again, he smiled, barely broadly enough to be worthy of the name. “Baobhan Sith that have recently fed have little need for breathing. She need only move through the dark until she sees the flicker of someone coming or going, and then push past them. She won’t attack, not until she’s free. It will be a grand opportunity for one of my subjects to test their wits.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So can you take me back?”

“I . . .” He paused. “I don’t want to.”

“Not the question.”

Tybalt stood silently for a moment before he hung his head and said, “Yes. I will return you to the monster’s lair. Why were you there to begin with?”

“Madden picked up Gillian’s trail. It led to the house.” The image of the Baobhan Sith disguised as my daughter flashed through my mind. I shuddered. “When I got inside, she looked exactly like Gillian. Exactly. Why . . . ?”

“If someone brought her the girl, a taste of her blood would have been enough to manage the mimicry, and she could then have lain in wait for better prey.”

My eyes widened. “Baobhan Sith can imitate their victims?”

“Yes.” Tybalt frowned before his eyes widened in turn. “She had far more than a taste of your blood.”

“We need to go.”

“Yes, we do,” he said, and swung me back into the bridal carry. For once, I made no effort to fight or resist him. This would be faster. My legs were still shaking, and I was in no condition to run an unknown distance through the freezing dark.