running—and believe me when I say that wasn’t a race I’d ever wanted a winner for.
I held my position until I was sure I was stable before trying to stand, tucking one knee under my body as I braced myself against the floor. I had to stop twice and wait for the dizziness to pass before I managed to get to my feet.
Once I was upright, I couldn’t remember why I wanted to get up in the first place. I was still standing there, trying to decide what came next, when I heard footsteps outside the door. Hope surged forward, threatening to overwhelm me. The Queen changed her mind. She realized she was making a mistake, and she changed her mind; she was going to let me go. “Oh, thank Oberon,” I whispered.
Relief died as the Queen’s voice came slithering into the room. Her Siren blood meant she only had to whisper to make herself heard. “Not Oberon,” she corrected. “Flattering as the comparison is. Are you comfortable, October?”
“Your Highness.” I swallowed. “Now that we’re alone, maybe … maybe we can talk. I need to explain.”
“No. You really don’t. You see, I don’t care whether you killed the Lady of the Tea Gardens, or attacked the Duchess Torquill. Your failure is in thinking I would.”
“I … what?”
“We were peaceful while you were gone. Your mother ceased her meddling, and my Kingdom was untroubled. But you had to come back, didn’t you? And murder and madness and chaos followed in your wake, as it always had to, daughter of Amandine. Well, I’m through with your games. You killed Blind Michael. That’s more than enough to bring you here. You’ll burn, October. And like the Harvest Queen, who burns to bring plenty to the land, your death will bring peace back to my Kingdom.”
“Highness—” I began, and stopped. There was no point to it. The rustling had stopped; the oily presence of her voice had faded. She was already gone.
The Queen’s words echoed in my head as I started pacing. Had things really been that much better while I was gone? I didn’t want to believe it. Considering the world I’d come back to, I wasn’t sure I should. Just how out of touch—just how insane—was she?
The room was about eight by eight feet square. The air near the walls was so saturated with iron that it hurt to breathe there. Only the center of the room was at all clean, leaving less than four square feet where the iron wasn’t pressing in on me.
I was on my third circuit when my foot hit a slippery patch in the straw. I toppled, unable to catch myself. My cheek hit the iron-laced stone wall, and I screamed. Jerking away, I staggered back until I hit the wall on the opposite side of the room. Even my leather jacket couldn’t offer protection from the iron. I screamed again as it hit the wounds in my back. I crumpled forward into the straw, forehead cracking against the stone floor beneath it, and the blackness took me.
I woke up some unknowable time later, dizzier and more disoriented than ever. “Oh, no,” I muttered, trying to sit up. The straw slipped beneath me, making it impossible. “No, no, no.” I’ve had iron poisoning before; I knew the symptoms. I was dizzy, aching, and unable to focus. The room was warm, probably to keep the walls radiating poison, but I felt like I was freezing.
I curled into a ball and buried my face in the straw, using it as a sort of primitive air filter. It smelled like mold, urine, and decay, but it was better than the alternative. I was holding on as tightly as I could, for all the good that it was going to do me. There was no way out, and with the iron manacles burning against my wrists, even breathing through the straw wasn’t going to help for long.
Iron has a physical presence for the fae. Give it enough time and it starts making a sound, like fingernails on a blackboard inside your head. If you leave a fae prisoner in an iron cell for a few days, you won’t have to worry about them anymore; the iron prevents them from using magic to escape and breaks them at the same time. It’s practical cruelty. When you drive your prisoners catatonic, you don’t have worry about them escaping and coming back for revenge.
The length of imprisonment before execution varies depending on the severity of the crime; the worse you were, the longer they keep you locked up before they let you die. I was starting to understand why. After three days of this, I’d welcome death with open arms. Part of me realized dying would mean Oleander and Rayseline won, but the rest of me didn’t give a damn. It just wanted the hurting to stop.
Time slipped away as I drifted in and out of fitful, iron-soaked sleep. I rose and fumblingly relieved myself at the edge of the safe zone at least once, kicking the soiled straw against the wall. No one brought me food or water. That didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry. During my increasingly rare moments of lucidity, I tried to figure out a way to escape with my hands chained and my strength fading. There wasn’t one.
At first, I thought the knocking on my cell door was just another symptom of iron poisoning. I groaned, burying my face in the straw. The knocking continued, getting louder. Lifting my head, I shouted, “Go away!”
The knocking stopped. I sighed, content in the knowledge that I’d vanquished my hallucinations. I wasn’t completely crazy yet.
And then I heard Quentin whisper, “This one! She’s in here!”
My eyes snapped open. “Quentin?” At least I was hallucinating people I liked. That was a nice change.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re getting you out of here.”
A hallucination wouldn’t say that. A hallucination would bring me a blanket and offer to hold my hair while I threw up. “You’re real.”
“Um, yeah.” He sounded unsure. “Are you … Toby, are you okay?”
“You can’t be here.” I slumped back to the floor. “It’s death to be here.”
“Just relax, okay?” A barred window scraped open in my door, letting a dim glow into the room. Quentin’s face appeared in the opening. “Guys, she doesn’t look so good …”
“Move aside,” said Tybalt, stepping into view. The light brightened as he approached. I flinched away, closing my eyes. I’d been in the dark too long.
“Turn it down,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” said Tybalt, earnestly. The light receded. “Can you stand?”
“I can barely breathe.” I opened my eyes. “Are you real?”
“Real as I’ve ever been. Connor, we’ve found her.”
“Thank Maeve.” Connor’s face appeared next to Tybalt’s, looking as pale and worried as the rest. Some of the worry vanished when he saw me, replaced by relief. “Hang on, Toby. We’ll have you out in a second.” He ducked out of sight. A steady scraping noise began. “I told you teaching me how to pick locks wasn’t a waste of time.”
“Don’t touch the door!” I protested. “It’s iron!”
“I know,” he said, unperturbed. The scraping noises continued.
“Connor left his skin in my Court,” said Tybalt.
“What?” A skinshifter without his skin was essentially human. Connor wouldn’t even be able to see large portions of Faerie without the aid of faerie ointment. “Why—”
“Got it.” Connor stood, coming back into view. This time I was looking closely enough to see the faerie ointment ringing his eye. “Get back as far as you can.”
I had just enough time to roll to the edge of the clean zone before the door swung open, banging against the wall. The sound sent sympathetic vibrations through the iron in my blood, and I whimpered. Tybalt stepped into the room, letting out his breath in a low, angry hiss as he got his first good look at me.
“She’s chained,” he said, deceptively calm, “I can’t move her with iron on her.”
“Coming.” Connor pushed past him, ignoring the iron in the doorframe. Mortality has its advantages. Then he stopped, eyes widening. “Oh,
“I look like hell,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. “Point taken, move on.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. I heard him kneel, and he gripped my wrists. I whimpered. He stroked my hair one- handed, saying, “Relax. I’ll have these off in a second.”
“Be fast,” said Quentin. “The guards are gonna be coming down here to check on her any minute.”
“What did you guys
“A minor diversion,” said Tybalt.
“There are seventy rose goblins enchanted to look like three hundred rampaging through the Court,” said Connor.
There was a snap as the lock on the manacles gave way. I opened my eyes and pulled my hands around, staring at them. My head was already starting to clear. The pain and the low, chattering hum of iron were still
