there, but I could think again. “You have to get out of here,” I said.
“What?” Quentin stuck his head into the room. He was wearing leather gloves thick enough to let him knock without hurting himself. “What do you mean?”
“Get out,” I repeated, pushing myself up onto one elbow. “Leave me and get the hell out before the guards show up and give you cells of your own.”
“No,” said Tybalt.
I glared at him. “Just listen to me for once. I’m not worth this. Get out and save the others. Stop Oleander.”
“Not without you,” said Connor. I turned toward him again, distracted enough to miss Tybalt moving into position behind me until he was scooping me off the floor.
“Hey!” I yelped.
“Hey, yourself,” he said, walking toward the door. “Connor, leave the shackles.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said, following.
“This is suicide,” I said.
“If it’s suicide, it’s our choice,” said Quentin. “You can’t stop us.”
“I’m getting that,” I said, letting my head drop and closing my eyes. The rolling motion of Tybalt’s steps was almost enough to lull me back to sleep—an honest sleep this time, brought on by exhaustion, not hopelessness and terror.
We were halfway up the last flight of stairs when Tybalt spoke again. “Did you think I could walk away and let you die?” I didn’t answer. He shook me, demanding,
“Easy, Tybalt!” said Connor. “She’s sick.”
Tybalt subsided. I could still hear him growling in the back of his throat. “She’ll recover.”
“Not if you break her first.”
“I won’t,” said Tybalt. He took another step. “October, are you awake?”
I considered lying, but cleared my throat and whispered, “Barely.”
“We’re going to take the Shadow Roads.”
“What?” I opened my eyes, staring up at him. His face was only a foot away, but it was blurry and hard to focus on. “Tybalt, I can’t—”
“You have to,” he said, gently. “There’s no other way out of here.”
“I’ll suffocate.” Not long before, I’d been waiting to die; now, I wanted to avoid it if I could. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.
“You won’t. Not if you trust me and hold your breath. Can you do that?”
“I …” I realized that he’d try to take the overland route if I said I couldn’t handle the Shadow Roads. Quentin and Connor couldn’t move through the shadows without him, and all three would die or be imprisoned for the crime of trying to save me. I wasn’t worth their lives; if they’d made it this far, I wouldn’t stop them from making it the rest of the way. “Do what you need to.”
He kissed my forehead, whispering, “Hold your breath.” Quentin gave him a sidelong look. Tybalt quelled it with a look of his own. Then he tensed and took a great leap forward, throwing himself into a running start. Quentin and Connor grabbed his belt, straining to keep up. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and Tybalt dragged us all into the shadows.
The world turned to ice, making me feel like going to sleep would be not just comforting, but final. I screwed my eyes more tightly closed, hands seeking Tybalt’s arm and clinging. I’d been through these shadows before. I could make it out the other side, if I could just hold on …
Sometimes I think Tybalt times our little runs to match the absolute limit of what I can take. I was about to breathe in when we broke through into warmth and light once more, Quentin and Connor coughing and wheezing behind us. It was too much light; even with my eyes closed, it burned. I whimpered, burying my face against Tybalt’s chest. He covered my head with one hand, barking an order, and the lights dimmed until I could look up and slowly open my eyes.
We were in an alley. The streetlights were swathed in fabric; that explained how Tybalt could have them dimmed. Cait Sidhe in feline and human forms watched from every flat surface. What I could see of the skyline reflected Berkeley by night, with the familiar form of the University clock tower rising above everything else. We were outside San Francisco. I was as safe as I could get without leaving the Kingdom entirely.
That was all the encouragement I needed. “Tybalt?”
“Yes?”
“Are we safe now?”
“Fairly, yes.” He sounded amused. I lifted my head to face him, and frowned at the undiluted relief in his eyes. Looking at him, you’d think saving me was some sort of miracle. “The Queen’s guards can’t enter my Court without my consent.”
“Good,” I said, closing my eyes on the strange satisfaction in his expression. There was too much iron in my blood, and I was too tired; I couldn’t cope. “Wake me when the world ends.”
“Your wish is my command,” he said.
I would normally have called him on that. I’m not normally exhausted and trying to shake off a bad case of iron poisoning after an unexpected run down the Shadow Roads. I went limp against his chest, trusting him to hold me up, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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
