Late Eclipses

TWENTY-EIGHT

“OCTOBER.”

The voice was distant enough to be of no concern; if people wanted to talk to me from a million miles away, that was their problem, not mine. The iron singing in my blood was doing its best to drown out everything else. It was almost like being back in Blind Michael’s mists—that horrible place where there was nothing but suffering and songs I never quite understood—except for one crucial difference: when I was in Blind Michael’s mists, I didn’t hurt. Sure, I was the captive of a mad Firstborn who planned to make me his unwilling bride, but I wasn’t in pain when he wasn’t actually beating me.

Now that I had the cold gray fog of iron-song burning through me, I was starting to wonder whether that hadn’t been the better deal.

“October, please.”

The voice hovered on the very the edge of the category I’d internally dubbed “almost worth bothering to pay attention to.” I wanted to tell whoever it was to shut up, go away, and let me fall back into pain-free oblivion, but I couldn’t get my body to obey me. It was vexing as hell.

“I know you can hear me.”

Did he? Something in the tone made me realize I knew the speaker: Tybalt. Oh, well. If anyone had the right to bother me while I was trying to figure out whether I was going to die, it was probably him.

“Please listen.” He paused. The nuances of his tone were becoming clearer. I couldn’t move—Oberon’s balls, I couldn’t even tell him he was right about my being able to hear him—but I could at least try to figure out what he was talking about.

The pause lengthened, stretching out until I thought he might have changed his mind and gone away. Then, much closer, like he was whispering in my ear: “What she did, what your mother did, you’ve done it before. Your scent was different when you left the pond. That’s why I followed you so closely those first few months. I was trying to decide whether you were you, or something else, trying to trick us all. The changes were subtler, but they were there. You did it to yourself to break the bastard’s spell.”

There was real hatred in his tone when he mentioned Simon. That might have been a surprise, if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the dual stresses of pain and paying attention. I filed the surprise away for later.

“I don’t know whose child your mother is, which of the Three made her, but it’s time to stop letting her lies define you. She’s Firstborn, October, and you’re the only child of her line I’ve ever known. You can change your blood if you have reason enough. And Toby … humans don’t die of iron. They die of time, but not of iron.”

His breath was hot on my cheek. I realized, with a dim lack of surprise, that this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to talk me back from the edge of dying: I really did hear him begging me to live on that long-gone day when Devin’s hired lackey shot me and sent me staggering into the Tea Gardens to bleed to death.

“Shift yourself the other way. Be as human as you can, and survive.” He paused. Something touched the side of my face, too faint to be identified as anything but contact—kiss or slap, my iron-riddled body couldn’t tell the difference. And then, quieter still: “Don’t leave me again. Please.”

And he was gone, leaving me alone in the darkness where the iron sang songs of suffering and eternity. With a sigh that felt a thousand times too large for my aching body, I surrendered and let myself topple back into the black. Tybalt’s words had been a nice dream, but they were silent now.

Only the iron remained.

Another voice, some untold time later; this one was tired, and sounded almost disinterested as it asked, “Is passing out your hobby or something? Because if I were you, I’d get a better one. Like, I don’t know, bank robbery.”

“What?” The fact that I could answer surprised me into opening my eyes. I found myself looking at an oaken ceiling covered in a coat of dust thick enough to give Hobs heart failure. I didn’t recognize it. I searched for words, settling for: “Where am I?”

“Like you don’t know? Welcome back to the Court of Cats.” The speaker coughed. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

I grudgingly turned my head, eyes widening as I saw the tiger-striped changeling sprawled on a pallet of crumpled rags to my left. “Julie?”

“Currently. Check back in a few hours and you may get a different answer.” Sweat matted her hair into cherry-red spirals, and her voice was raspy and strained. That’s probably why it took me so long to realize who she was. “Forgive me for not getting up and killing you, but I hurt too much to move.”

The iron in my blood still ached, but it had faded while I was floating in the black; it wasn’t singing any more, and it barely even burned. “What’s wrong?”

“Where do I start?” She closed her eyes. “First I think I’m going to die, and then Tybalt puts you in the room where I’m trying to get better. This keeps getting less and less like fun.”

“At least you’re not dead.” I tested my limits by ordering one unwilling arm to move. It lifted with a minimum of protest. Emboldened by success, I sat up. When this didn’t make me black out or vomit, I pushed myself to my feet, ready to grab the nearest wall if the world started spinning. It didn’t seem inclined to. Bit by careful bit, I relaxed. “Right now, that’s about the only positive thing I can see about the situation.”

“True. You’re finally a felon, or whatever it’s called when the Queen wants you dead.” She opened her eyes, giving me an interested look. “Do you think they’ll torture you when they catch you? Before the execution, I mean. Which should be televised.”

“Good to see that you’re as upbeat as ever. How long have I been here?”

“Long enough for Tybalt to freak out twice because you didn’t look right, four times because he was sure the royal guard had been beating you, and six times because you weren’t waking up. It’s been a big circus of psychodrama. Thanks for that.” Julie shifted on her pallet. “It’s no fun around here when our lord and master isn’t slamming people into walls for breathing too loudly in your presence.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, looking around.

We were in what looked like an abandoned hunting lodge; dust and debris covered every surface, save for the spots that had been swept clean to make room for more pallets. Each held one or more Cait Sidhe, all as worn and sick as Julie. A fire blazed in a vast fireplace that took up most of the far wall. It was obviously sustained by magic—real fires don’t burn that high for long without getting out of control.

Cat-form Cait Sidhe covered the hearth, furry bodies obscuring the stone. The room must not have been as dark as I thought at first. My eyes adjusted quickly, picking out surprisingly clear details, like the pattern on a dozing calico.

“You going to stand there all day?” Julie asked. “I bet the King would appreciate knowing you’re not planning to play Sleeping Beauty.”

“I don’t even know where I am,” I said, keeping a careful distance from her. She said she was too sick to attack me, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “I mean, besides the Cat’s Court.”

“You shouldn’t know.” She shook her head, and winced. “Ow.”

“It still hurts?”

The look she shot me was pure hostility. “I bet there’s some of that poison left, if you want to try it for yourself. Get a firsthand idea of what this feels like.”

“I’ll pass. I’ve been abused enough this week.” I pushed my hair back, noting that my hands were entirely healed. That was something. “Still planning to kill me?”

“As soon as I get the chance.”

“Why?”

She paused. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

Maybe this wasn’t the time to try convincing her to drop her vendetta—the Queen had her own vendetta, and I doubted Tybalt could stop her by bouncing her off the walls the way he did Julie—but it was worth a shot. I needed this to be over. I missed my friend, and I didn’t need the extra enemies.

“I mean exactly what I said. Why are you still trying to kill me?”

Bitterly, she spat, “You killed Ross.” Ross was Julie’s lover, and he died when an assassin sent to kill me didn’t judge his aim quite the right way. Devin’s assassin. I was starting to feel like I’d be spending the rest of my life cleaning up that man’s messes.

“I didn’t kill him.” I forced myself to keep looking at her. I started this confrontation; I was going to deal with it. “I blame myself for a lot of deaths—it feels like more all the time—but I didn’t kill him.”

“He got shot by a man who was aiming for you. What do you call that?”

“Bad timing. Neither Lily nor I knew the assassin was there. If we’d known …” I shook my head. “If I’d had any idea, I wouldn’t have taken you down that hill. I didn’t mean to let anyone get hurt. I’m sorry. But I didn’t kill him.”

She glared for a moment longer before the expression faded, replaced by confusion. “You mean that.”

“By oak and ash and thorn, I mean it.”

“So he died for nothing?”

That stopped me. Ross’s death was a tragedy … and in the end, it changed nothing but my relationship with Julie. “Julie—”

Her eyes narrowed. “Did he die for nothing?”

Reluctantly, I answered, “Yes.”

“Yeah.” She slumped, turning away. “He wasn’t going to live forever, but he should have lived longer than he did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I mean it.”

“That makes it worse.” She waved a hand, shooing me away. “I hurt too much to kill you, and I can’t forgive you if I can’t choose not to kill you. Go find my damn King before he breaks something, okay?”

“Right,” I said, heart sinking, and turned to walk away.

“Toby?”

“Yeah?” I looked over my shoulder. Julie was watching me, eyes narrowed.

“Don’t get killed. I know you got that guy to fix things, and … and we won’t know who to pay our debts to if you die.”

I smiled. That was the closest she was going to come to telling me to be careful. “I’ll try.”

“Good.” She put her head down again. I turned, heading for the door.

Crossing the room was like walking through a living jigsaw puzzle. Most of the Cait Sidhe were unconscious or asleep; the others moved sluggishly, winding up underfoot at the worst possible moment. I wasn’t dizzy, but that didn’t mean I was running at full speed. I had to stop and brace myself several times while I got my breath back, waiting for the equally miserable-looking cats to move out of the way.

They all seemed to be breathing; that was a small blessing, at least. If Walther’s antidote worked, Tybalt wouldn’t lose any more of his people.

The hall on the other side of the door obviously belonged to another building, with ivy-patterned carpet and gilded chandeliers loaded with mismatched candles. I kept a hand against the stained wallpaper as I walked, doing my best not to look up. The third time I stopped to rest I realized I was clean, and that I wasn’t wearing the clothes I was locked up in; they’d been replaced by a floor-length velvet robe that smelled like pennyroyal and fabric softener. My hair was loose and brushed smooth. I was hungry, but not excessively so; they’d been keeping me fed, somehow. Weak, yes; starving, no.

“I hope they didn’t lose my jacket,” I muttered, and started walking again.

It took me almost twenty minutes to reach the end of the hall—some showing for the big, bad knight. I was leaning against the wall, panting, when a door swung open and Raj stepped through, carrying a glass bottle full of something fizzy and fire truck red. He froze when he saw me, faintly feline ears flicking briefly back.

“Hi,” I said, waving weakly.

Raj tried to speak, and failed. Licking his lips, he tried again: “Toby?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Look, I’m kind of lo—” That’s as far as I got before he dropped the bottle, leaping for me. He might have gotten himself smacked aside if I’d been feeling better; as it was, he threw his arms around my neck before I could decide whether to dodge. The bottle hit the ground with a soft clunk, rolling to rest against the wall.

And I realized he was crying.

“Hey, it’s okay.” I patted him awkwardly on the back. “I’m here.”

The words made him cling more tightly. His tears were silent; instead of sobbing, he was purring. Cait Sidhe don’t purr much in public, and most of them don’t like to have it pointed out. I kept patting.

“I’m tired and in pain, but I’m going to be fine,” I said. “My head doesn’t even hurt much.”

“We were sure—I mean, Uncle Tybalt was sure—” His voice faltered as he pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. “You went to sleep, and you wouldn’t wake up, and you still look so strange. We thought you were gonna die.”

“Well, I didn’t. I’m real, and I’m me. Promise.”

“You really promise?”

“I really do. Life’s been weird, but I’m still me.”

He smiled brilliantly, giving me another hug. This time I returned it, tightening my arms around him before he pulled away. “I was scared,” he admitted.

“So was I,” I said, and pointed to the bottle. “You dropped that.”

“Oh!” He went red and hurried to retrieve it. “This is yours.”

I took the bottle when he offered it to me, and frowned. The liquid was even brighter when I looked at it closely. “What is it?”

“Walther made it. We’ve been giving it to you every three hours for the last two days. It’s supposed to make the iron in your blood stop hurting you and let your body wash it out faster.”

I paused. “Two days?”

He nodded. “That’s how long you’ve been asleep.”

“Wow.” I gave him a third hug, this time one-armed. He nestled against my side, resuming his purring as I uncapped the bottle and sniffed the contents. “It smells like mulberries.”

“Sometimes it smells like bananas or artichokes,” said Raj.

“Right,” I said, and chugged it. I was immediately glad I’d taken that approach—it tasted like pickles and peanut butter, but I’d swallowed most of it before I started gagging. Coughing, I handed the empty bottle back to Raj. “I slept through that?”

“For two days,” he confirmed.

“I must have really been out of it.” I shuddered, shoving my hair back with both hands. I didn’t even flinch when my thumb hit the still-unfamiliar edge of my ear. “Think your uncle might want to see me?”

“I think he’ll kill me if I don’t take you to him.”

“That would be bad. Lead the way.”

He walked back through the door he’d emerged from, slow enough for me keep up. I accepted the courtesy without comment, keeping a hand on his shoulder, as much for balance as to comfort him. We passed through half a dozen rooms, taking twice as many rest breaks, before we stepped through what looked like a plain brick wall and into an open alley.

The setup was familiar: mattresses at the end of the alley, crates blocking the entrance, tattered tapestries draped over the trash cans. The silence, on the other hand, was strange. There were no cats there, no lounging Cait Sidhe in either human or feline form. It felt like we were walking into a hospital waiting room.

A small knot of people was gathered near the alley’s mouth, some standing, some sitting, none quite looking at the others. They just continued the impression of walking into a hospital; the family of the terminal patient, waiting to hear whether it was time for grief or elation.

Quentin saw us first. He’d been leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his chin canted down, a light morning wind teasing his darkening hair into knots. My robe rustled as we emerged, and Quentin turned toward us. “Hey, Raj,” he began. “How is—” His eyes widened, and he took off running, shouting, “Toby! Toby! ”

The others turned when Quentin started shouting. Connor was the first on his feet, a disbelieving grin spreading across his face. Tybalt was on his feet half a beat behind, wide-eyed and suddenly pale. He looked like a man who wasn’t sure whether to cry or start looking for the catch.

I was too focused on Quentin to comment on anyone else’s reaction. “Careful!” I said, holding out my hands to stop him. “You have to be gentle. I’m still sore.”

He skidded to a stop a few feet away, beaming. “I knew you’d come back.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” I said, smiling back. It felt good to be outside, even with the buildings blocking most of the light. For the first time in days, it felt good to be alive.

“Yes, you did.”

I didn’t have time to argue. Tybalt’s approach was as swift as Quentin’s, if more decorous and substantially quieter. I didn’t see him make his way down the alley; he was just suddenly there, stopping behind Quentin and looking at me like he wasn’t sure it was safe to come any closer.

“October?” he whispered.

My smile didn’t waver as I turned it on him. “Hey.”

“I … hello.” He sounded hopeful and scared at once, like admitting hope would cause me to collapse into dust. Quentin stepped aside, leaving Tybalt and I facing one another. “I assume this means you’re feeling better?”

“A little bit.” My smile softened, until I was certain I had to look like a total idiot. Somehow, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I stepped forward, narrowing the gap Quentin left behind. “Sorry I didn’t listen to you before. I think I was too out of it. I probably would have hurt myself if I’d tried.”

He blinked, pupils narrowing. “You heard me?”

“Every word.”

“Ah.” He raised a hand to cup my cheek. We stood that way, frozen in a moment I couldn’t quite name, but never wanted to have end.

Everything ends. Connor stepped up next to me, touching my arm like he didn’t believe I was real. Tybalt stepped away, and I turned to face Connor, offering him the same smile. “You jerk,” he whispered, and pulled me into a tight embrace. “You had us all scared out of our minds.”

“I’m not that easy to break.” I let my head rest against his shoulder.

“We weren’t so sure of that,” said Tybalt. I pulled away from Connor as I turned to face him. Connor let go with obvious reluctance, and so I took a small step backward, letting my shoulder blades graze his chest. The solidity of him was a comfort beyond measure. Voice even, Tybalt continued, “That was the worst case of iron poisoning I’ve ever seen. You had us all seeing visions of the night-haunts. How many times do you have to die before you stay buried?”

“How long was I in the cell?” I asked.

“A little over two days,” said Quentin.

“Two days?” I squeaked, leaning on Connor to steady myself. Two days in that cell explained why I still felt shaky: iron can be fatal in less time than that.

“Sylvester kept trying to argue or find a way to get you out of it, but the Queen blocked everything. You were going to be executed in the morning,” said Connor. “That’s why I was willing to leave my skin here if it meant getting you out.”

“Oh, root and branch,” I breathed, shuddering. Connor put a hand on my shoulder, bracing me. “I … ”

“It’s okay,” said Connor. “We know.”

“All three of you could have died.”

“We didn’t,” said Tybalt, implacably.

“You could have.”

“And you would have. Don’t argue with me, Toby, we’ll both lose. Did Raj give you your medicine?” The look Tybalt shot at Raj made it clear that a “no” wouldn’t bode well for the young prince.

“It’s disgusting,” I said flatly. “He said Walther made it. I assume that means he knows you got me out?”

“Unfortunately, yes. You’d have died of iron poisoning if it weren’t for him.” Tybalt reached over to brush my hair back, fingers lingering against the tip of my ear. I could practically feel Connor glaring. “Are you adjusting?”

“Not sure yet.” I sighed. “I think the Luidaeg and I need to have a little question and answer session when this is all over.” So many of the things she’d said to me were starting to make sense. I’d been missing the context I needed to understand them.

“May told us what Amandine did,” Quentin said. “It seems …” His voice trailed off. He didn’t have the vocabulary to express what she’d done to me. That was all right. Neither did I.

“Bizarre? Tell me about it.” I looked to Tybalt again. “Did the antidote work?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “My people are recovering.”

“And Luna?”

The smile faded. “The Duchess isn’t well.”

“We’ve treated the roses, but she’s getting worse,” said Connor.

“That’s not acceptable.” I looked around the group. “I have to find Oleander.”

“You’re not leaving here,” said Tybalt.

“You’re right,” I said. Before the looks of relief on the people around me could get too entrenched, I added, “Not until after I’ve put on some real clothes, had a real meal, and drunk about a pot of coffee. Is there coffee?”

“October—” started Connor.

I pulled away. “We can’t hide here forever; either I find Oleander, or I get executed the first time I go home. You know Tybalt would get sick of us.”

“Perhaps some of you,” said Tybalt, sounding grudgingly amused.

I looked from face to face. All these people were such vital parts of my life, and I was asking them to let me go again. The trouble was, they knew me well enough to understand why I didn’t have a choice.

“So.” I turned my attention back on Tybalt, and smiled. “Breakfast?”