Page 82 of Be the Serpent

Stacy was gone. She’d left no trace behind, and nothing was going to call her back. My best friend, the woman I had charted so much of my life against, was never coming back.

Tybalt stepped up behind me, and I turned, not looking at his face before I dove into his arms. If he was blaming himself for what she’d made him do, I didn’t want to see it. I just wanted him to hold me.

And he did.

TWENTY

“Toby!” Arden came running across the grass toward us. I pulled reluctantly away from Tybalt enough to turn and face her.

She was bleeding from a nasty cut on her left arm, but that didn’t account for the amount of magic crackling in the air. She had clearly portaled over from the orangery, leaving the rest of the defenders behind. The sounds of battle had never resumed, I realized: whatever spell Titania had been casting over these people had been shattered when she lost focus. Well, that was one good thing about this night.

When your “good thing” is that the terrible thing that shouldn’t be happening has stopped, there’s a problem.

Arden grabbed my arm without so much as acknowledging Titania’s fallen form or saying hello, yanking me toward her. “There you are,” she said, hurriedly. “You need to come with me.”

“What’s going on?”

She was already pulling me through the portal she had opened behind her, and I had time for a glimpse of Tybalt’s absolutely bereft face before it was closing again, and we were all the way on the other side of the field, in front of the orangery.

The smell of blood hit me first. It came from at least half a dozen sources, some familiar, others not. I couldn’t pick out the Brown siblings in the morass. That was something of a relief. I was almost ashamed to admit, even to myself, that the absence of Quentin’s blood was even more of a relief.

It was a short-lived one either way, as my traitorous nose insisted on identifying one of the injured, and one of the worst injured: he must have lost a lot of blood for the smell to be that strong. I wrenched myself away from Arden, looking frantically around the trampled field. Nolan was helping to bandage a wound in Lowri’s side. Madden was passing out what I assumed were pain potions, and Jin was trying to get Sylvester to his feet. He had a gash across his chest and a bruise forming on his cheek, and I honestly couldn’t say, looking at him, which side of the fight he’d joined in on.

It didn’t really matter, because Simon was sprawled on the ground with a short sword jutting from his stomach. He was always a pale man—it went with the red hair—but now he was so pale that he looked waxen and bloodless. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t visibly breathing.

This wasn’t happening. I shouted and wrenched myself away from Arden, running over to him as fast as I could and falling to my knees on the ground by his side. I wasn’t worried about hurting him worse with a little movement, so I pushed my way in close and pressed my ear to his chest.

Come on, Simon, come on, come on, this isn’t how this ends . . . I thought, frantically.

As if in reward for some impossible service, his heart beat once, almost too soft for me to hear, and I jerked upright again. “He’s alive,” I shouted over my shoulder to Arden. “Jin! Get over here!”

Jin looked at me regretfully. “You really think I don’t understand how triage works?” she demanded. “I can help a body heal. I can even force it, within limits, but I have limits. He’s too far gone. Boy lost blood like he thinks he can compete with you.”

Sylvester winced, looking surprisingly bereft.

I looked at Arden. “Is there another healer? Is there anyone?”

“The sea witch, I suppose, if healing is something she can do . . . but I don’t have a healer yet! I was hoping I could woo Jin back from Duke Torquill, since her first loyalty was to this household, and not his.” She shook her head, cheeks pale save for high spots of hectic color. “I’m sorry, October. There’s no one else.”

“There’s me.” I yanked the silver knife out of its sheath and laid my right wrist open to the bone, adding my own blood to the mixture in the air. My magic rose along with it, called out of the nothing.

If I could do this for High King Aethlin, I could do it for my own—for Simon. Aethlin wasn’t nearly as skilled at borrowing magic as Simon was, and he’d been able to recover. I just needed him to be awake enough to swallow, at least a little. If he could do that, this might work out.

The smell of pennyroyal and musk swirled around us as Tybalt stepped out of the shadows, joining the crowd that had formed around the injured. No one appeared to be dead. That was a good thing.

“It was like being on a string,” said Tybalt, to Arden. “She commanded, and I had no choice but to obey. I was screaming inside, and still, I did as she desired. Nothing mattered beyond making her happy.”

“Yeah, that’s what the others have said,” said Arden, and awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. “I’ve never been so glad not to have a Daoine Sidhe–dominant court.”

“She caught me as soon as I came into range,” said Sylvester. He sounded ashamed, like the admission was somehow the worst thing in the world. I didn’t want to think about that too hard. It raised questions about how that sword ended up in Simon’s gut, and they weren’t ones that bore examination.

I was already angry enough at Sylvester. I didn’t need to add one more good reason to the pile.

Blood ran out of the corners of Simon’s mouth, puddling on the ground to either side of his head. My wrist was already healed. I sliced it open again, faster this time, and pressed it back to his lips.

“Come on, you asshole,” I said. “Come on. I just got you, I can’t lose you yet. And August! Fuck, can you imagine what kind of bullshit she’ll get up to if we make her an orphan? Last time she got a wild hair up her ass, she vanished to Annwn for a century and everything here went to hell in a handbasket! No, she needs babysitting, and that means you need to stick around and be her dad for as long as she wants you to. Which is going to be forever.”

My wrist had healed again. I laid it open a third time as the Luidaeg came running up behind me and sucked in a sharp, startled breath.