One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel (37 page)

“I’ll do what I can,” I said, and reached for the box, only to jerk my hands away as soon as I touched it. I could feel Dean’s blood through the wood, still as connected to Faerie as when it was running through his veins. There was a time when I could have held the finger in my hand and not felt anything, and now I could hear the blood calling me through sealed, enchanted wood. Just one more thing to thank my mother for.

Slowly, more prepared this time, I grasped the box again. For a moment, I thought Patrick wasn’t going to let me take it from him. Then he sighed, unlocking his fingers. “Find them?” It was closer to a plea than a request, filled with a parent’s need to have his heart returned. I’ve heard that tone in a lot of voices, including my own.

“I’ll do what I can,” I repeated. I wanted to make wild promises and swear that it would all be okay, but I couldn’t do that to him.

“Thank you,” he said, voice solemn. “Thank you so much.”

“Thank you” is a binding contract in Faerie. For once, I didn’t flinch when I heard it. “You’re welcome,” I said, and glanced around the Undersea delegation. Connor knew what came next. He blanched. None of the others seemed to have a clue. Shaking my head, I turned back to Patrick.

“You know what it takes for me to get answers from this,” I said.

Patrick nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“I can do it here, or I can leave you here while I take care of things. It’s up to you. I won’t make you watch.”

“I need to see,” said Patrick. “I appreciate you trying to spare me, but—”

“I understand. I’d feel the same. But do your people need to see this?” He paled. I continued, “Let’s take the third option. They stay here, and you come with me.”

He hesitated before nodding, slowly. The Roane woman gave his arm another reassuring pat.

“There, there, my lovely one. She’ll steer you sure enough. Just never let her near the silver. Line of thieves, hers is, and they’d rob even royalty blind.” She turned a mad, serene smile on me. “I know you’ve not stolen half a heartbeat from a stolen child as yet, but you will, given time. You will.”

I frowned. “May?”

“Yes?”

“Take care of the delegation. Quentin and Raj can help with the refreshments. Your Grace, if you’ll come with me?” I didn’t wait for an answer before turning on my heel and walking toward the hall. The box was starting to vibrate in my hands. The blood knew I was there; it wanted to be heard.

Patrick followed me down the hall to the room where I’d gone to summon the night-haunts. It was the only space I could be sure we’d have entirely to ourselves, and there was something fitting, somehow, in going there to ride the blood of someone I desperately hoped was still alive.

He didn’t say anything about the furniture cluttering the hall. That was a definite point in his favor. He did, however, look deeply discomforted when I led him into the solarium and closed the door. Maybe he was just now realizing the reality of what I was about to do.

I walked to the center of the room and sat, cross-legged, in the circle of blood I’d drawn there earlier. If Patrick wondered why I had a circle of blood ready and waiting, he had the good manners not to ask. The vibrations from the box were getting stronger. The blood wanted my attention, and I had to either give in or get it away from me. I glanced back to Patrick, watching him sit across from me. He winced when he bent his knees. Then, meeting my eyes, he nodded.

I opened the box.

The interior was cushioned in dark blue velvet, with Dean’s severed finger resting in the middle like a macabre parody of a woman’s finest jewels. I looked up at Patrick one last time.

“You really don’t have to be here for this,” I said quietly.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

I hesitated before reaching into the box, scooping up the finger. It was almost obscenely light, and the blood was nearly screaming now that it was so close to me. I gave Patrick a final glance, and turned my attention to the task at hand.

Dean’s finger had been severed at the joint without splintering the bone. I could analytically respect that—it would have made it easier to stop the bleeding—even as I wanted to kill the people responsible. Closing my eyes, I raised the finger’s severed end to my lips, and drank.

T
HE RED VEIL OF DEAN’S memories crashed down on me almost instantly, stronger than I expected. I struggled against them automatically before I realized they weren’t trying to overwhelm me; they were just there, open, welcoming me in. Blood magic had never been this easy.

I took a breath, and let myself fall into someone else’s skin.

Everything hurts. Moving hurts. Breathing hurts. Nothing is supposed to hurt like this. Even
dying
shouldn’t hurt like this. I raise my head, squinting through the tears I won’t let them see me shed. It’s dark. The floor is cold, and the straw that covers it isn’t enough to fight the chill. It smells like something died here a long time ago, the stink barely disguised by the distant scents of spices I don’t know the names of.

“He’s alive,” I said, pulling myself far enough out of the memories to speak. “They’re not keeping him in the water.” If Patrick responded, I didn’t hear it. The blood surged over me again, and I was gone.

I knew who belonged to that voice. Dean didn’t, but I did.

I gritted my teeth. The red film of memory broke slightly, cleared away by my anger. No matter how much I knew Raysel was involved, it still hurt like hell to see her there, torturing an innocent. How could she have fallen this far? Then the red haze closed over me again, and nothing mattered but Dean’s borrowed fear.

I go rigid, trying not to look at the sickle.
I will not cry
is the thought the blood remembers. “Let me go before my parents find you,” I say, forcing a bravado that isn’t really there.

“I hoped you’d say that.” Her smile grows wider, until it shows the sharp tips of her incisors. “Such a brave little boy. So
noble
.” She raises the sickle, and I look away. I know what comes next, I know I can’t escape it, but oh, Maeve, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to feel that blade come down—

The pain of the sickle biting into Dean’s hand was enough to snap me out of the spell. I slammed back into my own skin so hard that it was like hitting the water after a badly-botched dive. It didn’t hurt. “Hurt” was too small a word. It burned.

The fragments of my shattered spell hung in the air around us, reeking of cut grass and copper. The finger dropped from my hand, rolling away. It wasn’t just a bit of discarded meat and bone anymore—I remembered it as part of my body. It would take time for the memory of being Dean to fade, and until then, it was my finger on the floor.

Turning my head, I bent as far to the side as I could, and threw up.

Patrick didn’t move. His eyes were saucer-wide in his pale face, and his hands were clenched in his lap, knuckles gone white from the pressure. “Did it work?” he asked.

I wiped my mouth with one shaking hand as I turned back to him, barely managing to keep from snapping,
No, I threw up because I realized what I was putting in my mouth.
Dean’s love for his parents had been almost as prominent in his mind as his love for his brother. Patrick didn’t deserve to hear something like that.

“It worked.” I wiped my mouth again, only spreading the sticky taste of blood. My head was pounding. I hadn’t had a headache this bad since Amandine shifted the balance of my blood. Apparently, I still had limits. That wasn’t as reassuring as I’d expected.

“Is he . . .” Patrick stopped mid-sentence, and just looked at me.

“He was alive when the finger was taken. They’re keeping him in a stone room, above water. There’s straw on the floor, but the stone is rough, like it wasn’t milled or worked at all.” I shook my head. “There was no iron in the air. Whoever has him, it’s not the Queen. I’ve been in her dungeon, and the iron is
everywhere
down there.”

Patrick nodded. I could see the hunger in his eyes, the burning need to know everything there was to know about the place his son was being held. I didn’t blame him. I just wished that Dean had been held in the same room as Gillian, so that I could have some reassurance of my own. “Is he hurt?”

“Other than the missing finger? I think they used at least one knock-down spell on him. He’s in a lot of pain, but there are no other serious injuries.”

“Was Peter there?”

“No. I’m sorry. He was alone.”

“Did you see who was holding him?”

I lowered my hand, looking up. He stared back with eyes that were suddenly cold and implacable, filled with a deep fury that I was glad wasn’t directed at me.

“It was Rayseline,” I said. Picking up the finger, I put it gently back into the box. That made me feel a little better. “She can’t be working alone, but she’s the one who . . .” Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to say “cut off your son’s finger.” “. . . hurt him,” I finished lamely.

Patrick’s expression darkened further, something I hadn’t been sure was possible. “That little bitch will regret the day of her birth by the time I’m finished with her,” he growled, in a voice like waves crashing against the shore.

“You’re not the only one who’s lost a child here, Patrick,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Rayseline has my daughter, too. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t agree to go in swinging. I’d like half a chance in hell of getting Gillian back alive.”

The darkness parted, replaced by a grimace of apology. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“Most people do.” I handed him the box before I stood, wiping my hands against my jeans. It wasn’t enough to wipe away the feel of phantom blood. Very little ever is. “I’m scared as hell about what they might be doing to her. Her father was human.”

“Ah,” said Patrick, sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

“She doesn’t know how to defend herself. I never had the chance to teach her.” Something about that bothered me. Patrick wouldn’t have known Gillian existed if I hadn’t told him. She was never a part of my life in Faerie. Rayseline knew that she existed, had even met her before, but . . . how did she know where to find her?

“If anyone can find her, I believe that you will,” said Patrick.

“Somehow, that’s not comforting,” I muttered. More loudly, I asked, “Shall we go reassure your subjects that I haven’t shoved you off a balcony?”

“You have balconies?”

“Not in this room. But we have a few.”

“In that case, we should definitely reassure them.” Patrick looked at me gravely as he stood. “We are in your debt for this.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You’re not in my debt until they’re home.”

“Still. At least you’re willing to try. That’s more than I can say for anyone else in this benighted Kingdom.”

“The Queen’s not all bad.”

He lifted his eyebrows and looked at me.

“Okay, maybe she is,” I admitted. “But I’m going to bring your sons home.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Patrick said, and smiled. He still looked exhausted and afraid, but there was hope in his expression. I considered him a moment before smiling back. There might be a way out of this madman’s game after all. That was worth smiling over.

Neither of us spoke as we walked down the hall. We both had too much to think about. He was probably dwelling on his missing sons and the impending war, while I thought about my own missing daughter, and the chances that captivity in a shallowing had already driven her insane.

Even more, I thought about who, out of everyone I knew, could have told Rayseline where to find my little girl. There weren’t many options. I was pretty sure I knew which one was the winner.