A Red-Rose Chain

“And if I don’t?” demanded Rhys. “You’re an animal. What can you do to me?”


“Follow you to the ends of the earth. For a hundred years, if I must, because I will have no better way to spend my time. When she wakes, I will press your heart into her hand, and tell her I am sorry I was not a better man.” Tybalt’s smile was slow, and terrible, and had nothing to do with joy. “I have tried to be a better man, you see. For her. But I could be a better monster, for you.”

The arrow was barely an inch above the skin of my shoulder. If I moved at all, or if Rhys did, it was all going to be over. I would either die as the potion fought against my humanity, or I would sleep for a hundred years when my magic automatically pushed me all the way toward Faerie. Tybalt would break the Law, and High King Sollys would have no choice but to put him to death.

But if Tybalt let Rhys go to save me from elf-shot, then it would all have been for nothing. Silences would remain frozen in the rule of a man who allowed changelings to be treated like chattel, who sliced up his enemies for parts—and who had, thus far, managed to serve the letter of Oberon’s Law, never going too far, never crossing the line. The war might happen or it might not. It wouldn’t really matter. For the people of Silences, the last War still hadn’t ended. Either way, we would lose. We would all lose.

Or I could put my faith in Walther and in my magic, and I could end it now.

I moved my chin just enough to let me meet Tybalt’s eyes. His smile died, replaced by horrified understanding. Then, before he could react, I slammed myself hard to the side, taking advantage of Rhys’ rigidity. The change in our positions put the arrow above the flesh over my collarbone. As I had expected, Rhys brought it down, piercing my skin. I fell forward, hooking his ankle with mine. He wasn’t prepared, and my weight drove the arrow deeper as we both tumbled to the floor, passing through the muscle of my shoulder and into the flesh of his chest.

“I win,” I said, and closed my eyes. The pain began a moment later, electric and all-consuming. I welcomed it. The pain meant my body was fighting the elf-shot, and the elf-shot was fighting my body, and as long as I was at war with myself, I was alive.

It was only when the pain began to ebb that I realized I might be losing.





TWENTY-TWO




I AWOKE WITH A GASP, one hand flying up to check the curvature of my ear while my eyes were still struggling to find their focus. It was familiar, no sharper or softer than it had been before I went and stabbed myself in the shoulder with an arrow. Either I was dreaming, or I hadn’t changed the balance of my blood at all.

Hands clamped down on my shoulders, and then a mouth was pressed over mine, kissing me with such fierce intensity that I didn’t need to be able to see to know that it belonged to Tybalt. I looped my arms around his shoulders and kissed him back, not really caring who else was in the room. I wasn’t dreaming. I dreamed about Tybalt kissing me sometimes—I dreamed about it a lot—but it was never like this, never shaking and scared and holding me so tightly that it felt like air couldn’t slide between us. I was awake.

My eyes had finished focusing by the time he pulled back and let me go. I blinked, several times. His cheeks had seemed rough when he was kissing me, and now I could see why; they were peppered with stubble, which grew in bands of alternating black and brown, like his hair.

“Even your face is striped,” I said, half-laughing. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. That was when the fear began. “Oh, oak and ash. How long . . . how long have I been asleep?”

“Now you begin to worry,” he whispered. “Can’t you learn to worry sooner? For my sake, if no one else’s?”