Page 41 of A Divided Duty

I turned, watching as he walked over to her, and she took his wrist. The cut she made on his palm was shallower than the one she’d made across mine; she didn’t have to worry about how fast he was going to heal. He hissed between his teeth as she took the knife away and guided his hand into position above the bowl, adding his blood to the mixture.

When she judged that she had enough blood, she dipped the fingers of her free hand into the glowing whiteness, then ran them across his palm, dripping liquid into the wound. Tybalt hissed again, louder this time, and pulled involuntarily away. She let go, and he stumbled backward, shaking his uninjured hand.

“Big baby,” she said, with audible fondness. “I know you need to be ready for the fight I’m sure the two of you are going to find your way into. Relax.”

I moved to stand next to Tybalt, and he fell into position behind me, close enough that my shoulder bumped his chest. Whatever was about to happen, we’d face it together. So far, we had a one hundred percent success rate for things we approached that way. We just needed to remember that, and everything would be fine.

It had to be.

Muttering under her breath in a language I didn’t recognize, the Luidaeg took a spoon from her dish rack and stirred the liquid in wide, sweeping motions, making it glow even brighter. This accomplished, she dropped the spoon, reached up, and pulled two long, curly hairs from her head, holding them up for us to see before she dunked them into the bowl. As she did, I saw that her own palm had healed as well, probably when she dipped her hand into the liquid.

The surprise I felt at her undamaged palm only lasted a moment, until she pulled the two hairs out of the bowl and I saw they had become tapered candles, white patterned with blotches of red and black. Calico. Every time someone needed to pull a symbolic manifestation of my blood, it seemed to have the same calico koi pattern as my scales during my confinement in the pond.

She held them up, looking at them critically before she nodded in apparent satisfaction. “These will get you where you need to go,” she said. Walking across the kitchen, she handed one candle each to me and Tybalt. “Not too much farther than that, though, so be sure you keep your steps nimble and light, you understand me? I’ll call Miranda. Can’t have my goddaughter going hungry.”

“I rarely understand you,” I said dryly as I took the offered candle. “But I’ll do my best. Where are we going, exactly?”

“Hear me weary rover, and listen as you stand, for you’ll walk the wild world over, and not see Westmoreland,” she said, in a distant, almost dreamy voice. The candle in my hand lit up with a pale blue flame, and the one in Tybalt’s hand did the same. He moved closer to me, perhaps realizing that this wasn’t a good time to have any distance between us for the spell to exploit. “Long you’ll go and far you’ll walk, and never see the sun, but when you hear the night bird cry, you’ll know your journey’s done. Hear me weary wanderer, and know I tell you right: you’ll make it there and back again by just one candle’s light.”

The mixture she had made in her bowl was glowing brighter with every word, and beginning to put out clouds of cottony white fog, like some sort of Halloween smoke machine. I tried to hold my breath, but couldn’t, and inhaled despite myself. Tybalt coughed as he did the same. The billowing fog swallowed the kitchen, then the Luidaeg, and there was nothing left in the world but the two of us and the increasingly distant sound of the Luidaeg’s voice, reciting:

“Hear me weary rover, and listen as you stand, for you’ll walk the wild world over, and not see Westmoreland…”

Then the fog was clearing, and what it revealed wasn’t the Luidaeg’s kitchen, or the street outside her apartment, or anything else so mundane; it was a thorn-choked wood, the trees standing like dark sentinels against a night so deep and complete that there were no moons, only stars like gleaming diamonds high overhead. The ground below our feet was hardpacked earth, and the only light came from the candles in our hands.

In the distance, an owl—or something like an owl—screeched its challenge into the night. Tybalt moved closer to me.

“The Thorn Road, I presume?” he asked.

I nodded, not quite trusting my voice yet. We were on our way. Oberon help us, but we were on our way.

NINE

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for me to recover my wits. I reached back with my free hand, tangling my fingers tightly through Tybalt’s.

“You need to stay with me, and stay on the path,” I said. “No matter what you think you see or hear out in the brambles, neither of us belongs to Maeve, and I wouldn’t put a little light trickery past the things that call this Road home. Understand?”

“You sound so calm,” he said, moving even closer to me. In contrast, he sounded entirely unsettled. “How do you sound so calm?”

“Because this is how I’ve felt every time you pulled me into shadow from the day we met,” I said. “This Road doesn’t know or care for you, just like your Road doesn’t know or care for me. We just keep moving forward, and we hope that given time, Faerie will realize we’re trying to do the right thing. Sometimes that’s the only defense we have.”

Tybalt nodded, the motion felt more than seen as his jaw brushed my hair. “So we keep going?”

“So we begin.”

I started walking, and Tybalt moved with me, our candles keeping us from walking with no idea what was in front of us. As with every other time I’d been here, the path was something that could be followed. It twisted and wound, but it was smooth and clear, and as long as we didn’t get too complacent and miss a root or something, we could keep moving forward without any real difficulty.

The thorns pressed close on all sides, presenting a constant danger, and while I wouldn’t normally worry overmuch about a thorn briar, I didn’t know whether these thorns in specific might have some sort of poison or magical defenses. We had a cure for elf-shot. That didn’t mean we had a cure for whatever these briars might do. Keeping this firmly in mind, I stepped carefully, and tried to maintain a steady pace, not creating any openings for the Road to exploit.

And everywhere, hanging over everything, was the smell of roses. It was light at first, almost incidental, but it got heavier and thicker with every step we took, accompanied by a chilling in the air, like the season was shifting rapidly toward autumn. I’m not ashamed to say that it took me a distressingly long time to realize why that might be happening.

I froze between one step and the next, foot still lifted to continue forward, and swore softly. Behind me, Tybalt tensed.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re not alone,” I said. “I need you to keep walking, stay calm, and don’t let go of my hand.”

“Why not?” He sounded suddenly cautious, and honestly, that wasn’t the worst reaction he could have had.