“October?” he said, lowering his voice to something just above a whisper. “Is that you?”
“I just said it was, didn’t I?” I reached behind his head, untying his blindfold. He blinked at me as it fell away. I offered a small smile, adding wryly, “I don’t know whether to be relieved or insulted that they felt the need to blindfold you when they didn’t bother with me.”
“They didn’t want me to see where I was being taken.”
“I guess that’s more of an issue with a teleporter, huh?” I was trying to keep my voice light. It wasn’t the easiest thing I’d ever done. Etienne had clearly been beaten. One of his eyes was swollen, and there was a heavy bruise on the right side of his jaw. He’d arrived at Dreamer’s Glass on his own. Tybalt and Quentin…
I set the thought aside. I would find them. For the moment, I needed to get Etienne loose. Having a teleporter with me would be more use than any amount of brooding.
“I cannot travel if I cannot see,” he said.
“Well, at least we’ve fixed that,” I said. “Hang on. I’m going to get you untied.”
His wrists and ankles were tied the same way mine had been. Etienne had struggled against his bonds, but had stopped before he could really hurt himself. That made him smarter than me. It took several minutes before I could pick the knots holding his wrists loose. Etienne hissed with pain as the twine fell away. Livid red marks ringed his wrists where it had been.
“These are friendly people,” I said, bending to begin work on his ankles. “Remind me to hit them a lot if I get the chance.”
“I assure you, I am unlikely to forget.” Etienne rubbed his wrist with one hand, watching me work. Finally, awkwardly, he said, “October…”
“We all got caught, Etienne. Not just you.”
“I was the one foolish enough to go by myself. Perhaps if I had waited…”
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.” I worked a thumbnail into the knot holding the twine in place. “Let’s just find Tybalt and Quentin. Then we can find Chelsea, kick Riordan’s arrogant ass all the way back to the Summerlands, and get the hell out of here. How does that sound?”
“Excellent, if improbable.”
“Improbable is sort of my specialty.” I peeled the twine away, sitting back on my knees. “All done. You’re free to go. Do you think you can stand?”
“My daughter is in danger. I think I can do whatever is required of me.” Bold words aside, Etienne stumbled when he pulled himself up to his feet. I moved to catch him, and he waved me off, grimacing as he leaned against the wall. “I can walk unassisted.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked, standing.
Etienne lowered his chin, dark eyes blazing. “Somewhere in this place that we should not be, my daughter is being held by a woman who is using her to no good ends. Yes, I am sure. I would be sure if doing it meant my death. This will not stand.”
“Okay. Just trying to make sure you’re all right.” I pulled the Luidaeg’s charm out of my pocket. It was still glowing purple. The color intensified when I moved it closer to Etienne. “You’re Chelsea’s father, so this thing is picking up on your presence. We need to fix that if we want to use it to find
“How—”
“Hang on.” I’d attuned the first charm by touching it to a place where Chelsea’s magic had been used, and I attuned the second charm by touching it to the first. Feeling only slightly foolish, I leaned forward and tapped the charm against Etienne’s shoulder.
The purple flared, and turned back to the familiar neutral shade of frozen starlight.
“It knows who you are now,” I said. “That means we can keep using it to look for Chelsea and not worry about you throwing it off.”
Etienne eyed the charm. “Do you understand how it works?”
“Nope,” I said, with more cheer than necessary. “I usually don’t know how magic works. I use it anyway. Are you feeling up to casting a don’t-look-here over the both of us? I lost a lot of blood getting out of my room, and I’m not sure how many of those I can cast.”
That wasn’t strictly true: losing the blood slowed me down for a few minutes, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything to slow me down now. At the same time, if I was going to be the one picking every lock we came to, I couldn’t also be the one putting up and taking down the don’t-look-here spells. I would exhaust myself before we accomplished anything useful, and then I wouldn’t be able to do anything for anyone. Not Chelsea, not Quentin, and not Tybalt.
Assuming Tybalt was even alive. Samson could never be King. He could still kill the man who held the throne.
Etienne paused, apparently seeing the change in my expression. “October? Are you all right?”
“I believe so.” Etienne took a breath before raising his hand and sketching a quick series of motions in the air. The smell of limes and cedar smoke rose, and the spell settled down on my shoulders like a veil. Etienne lowered his hand. “That should hold.”
“Good. Come on.” I turned to head back toward the door. Etienne followed, and I did my best to match my pace to his. Don’t-look-here spells are a form of illusion. This one would work best if we stayed close to one another. Besides, I didn’t trust him yet not to fall.
His clothing hid most of the evidence of the beating he’d received at the hands of Riordan’s guards, but I could see the signs of it in the stiffness when he moved and the way he was favoring his left leg. I was just glad they’d satisfied themselves with blindfolding him, rather than putting his eyes out entirely. That probably meant Riordan thought he might be useful later and wanted him intact when later came. Maybe that was an upside to dealing with sane people. They’d kill you just as dead, but they understood how to conserve their resources until they didn’t need them anymore.
Etienne’s pace was slow enough that we moved through the rest of the floor at about half-speed. The Luidaeg’s charm continued to glow a neutral white the whole time. Eventually, we came to a flight of stairs, spiraling both upward and downward from where we stood.
I paused at the doorway to the stairs, and then motioned for Etienne to remain where he was. He nodded, stepping back. I went six steps up toward the next floor, breathed in, and retreated. I did the same with the floor beneath us. Then I returned to Etienne, stepping close as I murmured, “Definitely Folletti on the floor below us. None I can spot on the floor above, although that doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
“Then we go up,” he murmured back. I nodded, and together, we began making our way up the stairs.
Nothing stopped us as we climbed to the next landing, where another floor like the one we’d been kept on was waiting. Again, I motioned for Etienne to remain where he was while I stepped forward and checked for Folletti; again, if they were present, they weren’t close enough for me to detect them. I waved Etienne forward, and together, we made our way down the hall, looking for doors.
What we found was an empty room above the one where I’d been kept, and a locked one above where Etienne had been. I pulled a piece of bracken from my hair and dropped to my knees, getting to work. This lock went even faster than the prior two. Practice was definitely making perfect. I tucked the half-bent piece of bracken back behind my ear, and pushed the door open gingerly.
Then I yelped, only remembering to swallow the sound at the last moment, and ran to where Tybalt lay motionless on his side in the heaped-up brush. He’d been beaten as badly as Etienne, if not worse; he was stripped to his trousers, barefoot and shirtless, as if to guarantee that he had no hidden weapons. His wrists and ankles were bound. Our captors must have seen him as more of a risk, because unlike us, they hadn’t used twine.
Tybalt’s wrists and ankles were bound with iron.
I dropped to my knees next to him, the bracken barely cushioning my fall, and grabbed his shoulder, trying to ignore the way the heat off the iron baked into my skin. “Tybalt? Tybalt, can you hear me?”
He didn’t respond. That didn’t strike me as a good sign.
Iron isn’t just a way of hurting the fae: it’s a way of torturing us, distorting reality and cutting off access to the magic that normally permeates our days. The stink of it rose from him, iron death and poisoned blood. I shuddered, pulling away enough to shove my hands into the bracken and search for something sturdier than my little makeshift lock picks. I didn’t even hear Etienne’s approach until he spoke from behind me, saying, “We shouldn’t linger. The iron—”
