Page 63 of Night and Silence

“It’ll heal,” I rasped.

His eyes snapped back to my face. “You must stop doing this, little fish, unless you intend to be the death of me.”

“You saved me.” I lifted one hand to trail my fingertips against his cheek. His skin was warm. It was almost impossible to believe we had been in the same place. “I wasn’t scared. I never am, when you’re there to save me.”

“My October,” he said, and turned his head to kiss my palm. “The death of me.”

“You should be so lucky.” I sat up, sending more ice cascading away from my body. My head spun. Even I have limits, and I was finding them fast. “Ow. Okay. Are we in the knowe?”

“We are, but you need time to recover. We should—”

“We should get moving. May and Quentin didn’t stop to play with the Baobhan Sith. They’re already inside, and the false Queen is only going to believe that May is me for so long.” If she believed it at all.

Without her Siren blood, she couldn’t compel them to fight each other—she was Banshee and Sea Wight now, and nothing else—but she could hurt them. She had run the kingdom for over a century, and she had always demonstrated powers that none of her bloodlines possessed. Meaning she was a borrower, using charms and tinctures to access the magic of others. We might have driven her from her knowe and into the Kingdom of Silences, but we’d never found her store of potions. I hadn’t even thought to look. We had been dealing with the ascension of a new queen and the collapse of the old queen’s knowe.

Now she was back, and there was no telling what she had access to, or what she could do if we gave her the chance. I stood by the choice to send decoys. That didn’t mean I was going to leave them without backup.

“You should lie still,” Tybalt snapped. “I don’t know how much blood you lost in there.”

“I still have blood in my body,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

He stared at me. Then, to my surprise, he smiled.

“You will never change, will you?” he asked, offering me his hand.

I took it, sliding to my feet. The outline of my body remained on the sheet, etched in pinkish ice-diluted blood. “I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “Now come on. We need to find Gillian and get to our people.”

“The knowe is not fully awake,” he said, following me across the ballroom floor. “Pieces may be missing.”

“We can work with that,” I said. When we reached the doors, I paused, putting my hand against them, and said, “My name is Sir October Daye. This is my friend, Tybalt, King of the Court of Dreaming Cats. I’m the one who found you after the last time you’d gone to sleep. I’m sorry I helped a bad woman claim and hold you. I didn’t mean to. We can let you rest after this, until no one remembers that she ever had any power over you. But right now, we need to find my daughter. A human girl. The bad woman has taken her. Can you help us find her?”

“You’re talking to the walls again,” said Tybalt.

“Don’t knock what works,” I said. Returning my attention to the door, I added, “Please?”

The door swung open.

The hall on the other side was too plain to have been the approach to a ballroom of this size. It was more suited to use by the servants, helping them to move through the knowe without being seen. I shot Tybalt a smug look and hurried down it, with him at my heels, until we reached another door.

This one led to an abandoned kitchen. The fires were dead, the chopping tables were deserted. It was a strange, silent world. I paused, darting into one of the pantries, and emerged a moment later with a turkey leg the length of my forearm. Tybalt raised a brow.

“How . . . ?”

“Stasis spell,” I replied. “I’ve been raiding the kitchens at Shadowed Hills since I was a kid. The big knowes always keep the pantries full, in case someone important wants to demand, I don’t know, roast cockatrice at three o’clock in the afternoon.” The fae equivalent of the middle of the night.

The wound on my shoulder itched as I started gnawing on my prize, the edges finally starting to heal. Tybalt shook his head.

“Sometimes I forget the depths of your misspent youth,” he said.

“I was never the best thief in the Mists, but the best trained me,” I said.

We kept walking. Beyond the kitchen was the library, and beyond that was a spiral staircase, winding downward. The “windows,” such as they were, provided crystal portholes into the ocean beyond the shore. The water glowed a pale, pearlescent blue, and through the glass we could see all manner of strange fish, both fae and mortal, swimming idly by. Tybalt frowned again, eyeing them.

“The Undersea must have been very eager to curry favor, to have allowed such an intrusion into their territory,” he said.

“That, or they really, really wanted to be sure they’d have a weak point to attack if it actually came to war.” I pointed to the nearest “window,” shaking my head. “Dianda could punch that thing to shards in under a minute, and she’s their duchess. Imagine what an actual soldier could do.”

It felt strange not to be running. But there was no blood trail here, and Gillian had no magic for us to follow. Letting the knowe lead us was the best option we had. If we were walking into a trap, we would find a way out of it. We always did.