A Red-Rose Chain

“Ah, but you see, I did, which is why I will be concealing it in the local Court of Cats, to recover later,” said Tybalt. “I’m sure May will be able to get the blood out, once she wakes, and will have some fascinating things to say about your heritage while she works. I treasure the idea of hearing her insult you.”


“Right now, so do I,” I said. I looked toward Marlis. She was staring at my arm, eyes huge in a suddenly pale face. I glanced down. The blood covering my arm was thick and bright, but it was possible to see the unbroken skin beneath it. I ran my clean palm across the arm, wiping a swath of blood away, and held it up for her to see. “Good as new,” I said. “Can we start moving again, or do you have a door that requires a kidney?”

“Nothing heals that fast,” she said.

“Faerie always changes,” I replied. I wiped my bloody palm on my dress. Let May enjoy a real challenge for once.

“I . . . I see,” said Marlis. “This way.” She turned and dove through the opening created by the retracting vines, which had barely pulled back far enough to let her through. I followed, gathering my skirts close to keep them from getting snagged. Getting the blood out was going to be hard enough without adding physical damage to the dress itself.

Quentin and Tybalt followed me, Tybalt swearing softly as he navigated the space between the thorns. Quentin’s little ball of light continued to dart ahead of us, brightening the tunnel until I could make out the finer details of the walls. They were as roughly hewn as the ceiling, and glittered here and there with flecks of pyrite and quartz. We were walking through the body of the Summerlands, surrounded by stone, and I wasn’t sure whether that was comforting or terrifying.

“You said this would have signaled the Cu Sidhe, Cait Sidhe, and Huldra once,” I said. “How tightly tied were they to your wards?”

“The Cu Sidhe and the Huldra were tightly tied; the Cait Sidhe had access as a courtesy, and so they wouldn’t turn against us,” said Marlis. “There were never many of them, anyway. Cats don’t stay where there are so many dogs.” She smiled, just a little, seemingly lost in the pleasure of having unfettered access to her own memories, and the feelings that went with them.

A pale light began to filter through from ahead, different in both quality and quantity from the small, bright glow of Quentin’s ball. He snapped his fingers and it guttered out, leaving the presumably natural brightness to guide us. We were close enough to the exit that there wasn’t much change. We continued forward, until we stepped out of the mouth of the tunnel and into a garden taken straight from a botanist’s dream.

The sky overhead was a smooth sheet of velvet black spangled with so many stars that they chased away the deepest of the shadows, casting the entire world into a crystalline twilight. The air smelled so strongly of roses that I almost lost track of the smell of blood—both my own and Marlis’. Everyone around me could have been casting spells and spinning illusions, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell. The smell of roses was too strong.

The sight of them was even stronger. They grew everywhere around us, spiraling out in a wheel of colorful blooms and thorny boughs. Some climbed trellises or tangled themselves around statuary, while others grew in vast, fragrant bushes. I recognized many of the varieties from my visits to Luna’s gardens. There was even a plot of my beloved glass roses, the starlight lancing through their petals and casting colored shadows on the soil below them. Other varieties were new to me, roses that glowed blue like swampfire or burned with actual fire, somehow sustaining their own flame without being consumed. I couldn’t count the varieties in front of me. All I could say was that they were beautiful beyond measure, each in their own unique way.