Page 68 of Night and Silence

“You’ll do it!” snapped Jocelyn. “You’ll make me perfect!”

I struggled to lift my head, squinting at her through my blood-tangled hair. “She had a hope chest the whole time she had the throne,” I said, voice raspy and weak. “She could have shifted your blood any time. She could have made every changeling in the Mists fully fae. She didn’t. She never even offered. So maybe if you want to be mad at somebody, you should try being at least a little bit mad at her.”

Jocelyn paused, confusion written on her face.

And behind me, the Baobhan Sith screamed.

It was a haunting, triumphant sound, the cry of a predator that had finally broken free of a trap. It echoed through the room, spreading until it seemed to come from every direction at once. A hand grasped my hair, yanking me up until I was looking at the wide-eyed, horrified face of the false Queen.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” I said. I closed my eyes. The dark was soothing and tempting. This would all go so much faster if I never opened them again. “Tybalt, on the other hand, may have freed your pet. Bet she’s not happy about you bringing people to her den.”

The Baobhan Sith howled again, much closer this time, and the false Queen was ripped away from me, going ass-over-teakettle as she rolled off the dais. I pushed myself to my hands and knees, prepared to bolt—

—and froze as Jocelyn pointed my own sword directly at my face. Well, shit.

EIGHTEEN

“NO,” SHE SAID, anger and fear battling for dominance in her voice. “You stay right where you are. You have to fix me.”

“I’m not going to change the balance of your blood,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the blade. I’ve died at least twice, probably more, but I’d never died of brain trauma. Would it grow back? Would I still be myself if it did? Or would I be someone new, someone like May, who had most of my memories but no longer saw them the way I did, who could hold herself at arms-length from my life and not miss what she’d never really had.

“You have to,” she said, sounding like a child on the verge of a tantrum. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” The Folletti knife was still embedded in my kidney, freezing me slowly from the inside out, and the Baobhan Sith was no doubt going to lose interest in the false Queen eventually, choosing to go for the juicier meal—me. I needed to move. “You hurt my daughter. You woke a despot. If anyone’s in debt here, it’s you.”

“I didn’t wake her,” said Jocelyn, looking startled. “I wouldn’t even know how to start. She got in contact with Mom. She said she wanted to be my godmother, to make everything better for me. Mom pulled some strings with the residence hall to get me moved into Gillian’s room. Mom got paid, and I’m going to get a new life, a better life. The life I should have had from the beginning. But I didn’t wake her. Her friend did, the man with the green hair.”

I stared, the bottom dropping out of my stomach as everything suddenly, horribly, started making sense. I only knew one man with green hair who would have any reason to work with the false Queen . . . a man who smelled like cinnamon and cardamom.

Sweet Maeve forgive me, but I’d thought he was dead.

I was still staring when Tybalt stepped out of the mist behind her, reached down, and wrenched the sword from her grasp. Jocelyn cried out in pain. It looked like the act of breaking her grip may have also broken a few of her fingers, or at least sprained them.

Good. Anyone who pulls a sword on me deserves to hurt. Doubly so if the sword they’re holding is my own. That’s adding insult to potential injury, and I won’t stand for it.

“How many of your bones shall I break, kitten, to make clear that no one threatens my lady without some payment being demanded?” His hand engulfed both of Jocelyn’s, pinning her in place. He was making no effort to seem human, or even Sidhe: his pupils were wide ovals, consuming more than half of his irises, and when he spoke, he showed canine teeth too long and sharp to belong to anything but an apex predator. Stripes slashed down his cheeks and across his forehead, his tabby coloring carrying over onto the skin.

That was a bad sign. That was a very bad sign. Tybalt is powerful enough that he experiences that sort of slippage only when under extreme stress, and seeing it made me want to run to him and pull him away from her before he could do something he’d regret. Killing Jocelyn wouldn’t be a violation of Oberon’s Law. It would still hurt him, deep inside, and while I might not care about her life, I cared way too much about his.

And I didn’t know whether Gillian was alive. If she wasn’t, my ability to intercede on Jocelyn’s behalf might go way, way down.

The false Queen was still screaming somewhere in the fog. That was a good sign, in that the Baobhan Sith hadn’t torn her throat out yet. I wanted her alive to stand trial for her crimes. She may not have broken the Law, but all that meant was that I couldn’t demand her life. I could demand a hell of a lot else. I was planning to do exactly that.

Later. Right now, I had bigger problems. Like Dugan. Oh, Oberon, Dugan. “Tybalt, you have to let her go,” I said, struggling to my feet in order to make it easier to attract his attention.

He turned to me, and there was almost no rationality in his eyes. He looked like a feral creature, like he was ready to bolt with his kill.

“She hurt you,” he said, as if I might somehow have failed to notice.

I nodded. “I know. I was there. But I need you now, and she’s not going anywhere. She couldn’t get out of here if she tried. The doors won’t open for her without someone to help her. Let her go.”

He hesitated. “I came back,” he said finally.

“I know. I’m so grateful. But I’m kind of in a lot of pain right now, so if you could please let her go and take care of me . . . ”

Tybalt blinked, some of the blankness fading from his expression. “October?”