Page 73 of The Unkindest Tide

“As my lady wishes,” said Tybalt, sounding quietly relieved. He fell into position next to me, and together, we walked out of the courtyard, away from the people I was still struggling to save, out into the Duchy of Ships.

EIGHTEEN

“PLEASE DON’T THINK ME ungrateful, or that I wouldn’t follow you to the very ends of the Earth if given the opportunity, but where, precisely, are we going?” asked Tybalt.

There are no true days or nights in the Summerlands, which exist in an eternal, tangled twilight, but time still passes, and we’d been in the Duchy of Ships long enough that most of the people who’d been awake when we arrived were in bed by now, leaving the docks and byways largely deserted. Not entirely: there’s always someone awake in Faerie, no matter what the clock tries to say. Humanity has their night owls, and the fae have their morning people.

Some of them looked at us curiously as we passed, but none reacted as if they knew who we were. Either the news of the Luidaeg’s presence—and entourage—had failed to spread, or they simply didn’t think it mattered. Interesting.

“Pete’s quarters,” I said. “She’s not there, but she didn’t give me the impression of being a lady who likes to live alone. She’s a pirate queen, right? Well, they have crews. I want to talk to her crew.” Specifically, I wanted to talk to Rodrick, her so-called first mate. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be him. With Pete gone, news of any mysterious deaths would land squarely in his lap.

Maybe sending the Luidaeg—our biggest threat, and biggest dissuasion for anyone who wanted to make trouble—to find Pete had been the wrong call. But Pete wasn’t Evening. Pete had promised to minimize her impact on Faerie, and that meant leaving when Dianda and the others showed up. And without Pete, we weren’t going to get Dianda’s name cleared, and if Torin successfully seized Saltmist, it would destabilize the region. The Mists had enjoyed multiple centuries of relative peace. A war would risk everything. Our people, our ability to hide from humanity, everything.

The thought hit me with such force that I actually stopped walking, eyes going wide as I stared into the middle distance. I was dimly aware of Tybalt also coming to a halt, turning to look at me with bemusement and no small amount of concern.

“October?” he said. “What is it?”

“I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” I said. “I think it’s not about the Selkies at all, except for the part where it’s entirely about the Selkies. Who knew—”

That was as far as I got before a fist slammed into my jaw, sending me reeling. My assailant hit me again before I could do anything more than see stars and blotches of vivid blackness dancing across my vision, like my head had suddenly become the site of the most exciting rave in the Westlands.

Tybalt roared, rage and—I suspected—relief: here was something he could deal with. Here was something he could hit. I took another step back as I heard the distinctive sound of an enraged Cait Sidhe slamming into whoever’d been foolish enough to attack me. My jaw felt broken. I touched it gingerly, trying to will the bone to knit back together faster, before the situation got worse.

Pain is not my friend. Neither are broken bones, which may bleed, but mostly do so internally, where it doesn’t do me any good. My body is full of blood all the time, and it never helps. Only blood in the open air helps me.

Tybalt snarled again. The flashes of light and darkness were clearing, enough that when I raised my head, I saw him duck a blow from Torin. The burly Merrow had a wicked-looking knife in one hand, a jagged thing clearly designed for gutting whatever it hit. His other hand was empty, although I was living proof that he didn’t need a weapon to do damage.

He and Tybalt seemed to be evenly matched. Tybalt was faster, and technically better armed, thanks to his claws, but those claws didn’t give him the ability to split his opponent open with a single blow. Torin was already bleeding from several minor wounds, none of which seemed to be slowing him down. He looked like he could do this all day. So did Tybalt.

I had my own knife. It wasn’t enough, especially not with that fishing knife in play. Being gutted wouldn’t kill me. It would definitely slow me down.

Sometimes the right answer is not to play. “Tybalt! Come on!” I shouted, and ran toward the end of the dock.

Did he understand what I was doing? Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t matter, because as soon as he saw me running, he ran after me, moving fast enough that he caught up before I could go over the edge. He grabbed me by the shoulders, spinning me around, away from the water.

“What in the world are you trying to accomplish?” he demanded.

“You can—” I began.

The knife hitting me in the back stopped me.

I saw Tybalt’s eyes go wide and his mouth go slack, hands starting to lose their grip on my arms as he realized what had happened. I grabbed his wrists, keeping him connected to me. Blood was filling my mouth, bitter and bright as a new penny. It hurt, oh, how it hurt, but I was grateful for the pain. If Tybalt hadn’t moved me to keep me from falling, the knife would have hit him in the chest.

“Run,” I whispered, and pitched forward, slamming into him, sending us plummeting over the edge. I was getting really tired of falling.

Come on, Tybalt, I thought, unable to convince my mouth to do any more heavy lifting. Figure it out.

His arms closed around me. There was a rustling sound, like a curtain being thrust aside, and instead of falling through the open air, we were suddenly falling through freezing cold and absolute blackness. I smiled despite myself, closing my eyes and relaxing as he slung me up into his arms. We were on the Shadow Roads. We’d be fine.

There was a jolt as his feet found whatever passed for ground here, and I focused on holding my breath, staying still, and bleeding as little as I could. The last of those wasn’t exactly within my control, but as I felt my wounds ice over and struggle to heal at the same time, I felt reasonably confident I wasn’t going to be leaving a gory trail through the dark for the next Cait Sidhe who came along to follow.

My lungs burned. I was almost used to that, at this point, and this was just suffocation, not drowning. I let the warmth of Tybalt’s body soothe me, the smell of his magic hanging in my nose like a promise that this wasn’t going to last forever. The darkness could hold sway for a time, but it would have to pass eventually. It always had before.

As if that had been the incantation to bring us back into the light, the atmosphere shifted around us, cold airlessness becoming ordinary heat. I could see flickers of brightness through my eyelids. I couldn’t open my eyes, since my lashes had frozen together, but that was fine; the warmth of wherever we were now would melt them soon enough.

“October.” Tybalt sounded distressed. Tybalt usually sounds distressed when I’m wearing more than a certain amount of my own blood. If fae could get gray hair from stress, he would have been a silver tabby by now. “The knife is still in your back, and I’m afraid to leave it there; your body is trying too hard to heal, and may refuse to let it go later. I am so sorry, love, but I have to do this.”

The ice on my lips cracked as I smiled. “It’s all right,” I said. “I would have asked you to pull it out if you hadn’t volunteered.”