A Red-Rose Chain

“You did what you were compelled to do,” I said, finally feeling like I was back on solid ground in this conversation. “She was part Siren. You couldn’t help yourself.” She had been part Siren, then. She wasn’t anymore. I had ripped that part of her heritage away from her as cruelly as a battlefield surgeon hacking away a limb. I hadn’t felt bad about it then, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it now. She was the one who had chosen to use her fae gifts to turn my allies against me, and to try to hold a throne that she knew damn well wasn’t hers to have. She’d deserved what I did to her.

“But I knew.” The bitterness in his voice stopped me cold. “I knew what I was doing, even as I could not help myself. I had been pushed into the wings of my own existence, and my understudy allowed to take the stage. Don’t you understand? I wasn’t controlled so completely that I didn’t see your face as it crumpled, as my claws came away red with your blood. I could have killed you. I would have killed you. And I would have lived the rest of my life knowing that I had destroyed the woman I loved. I have lived with that knowledge, October. It was a bitter pill to swallow when Anne died, all independent of my actions. I could not have lived with it a second time. So yes, I’m worried. I’m worried that we’re walking into a situation I cannot predict or control, orchestrated by a woman who has used me as a weapon against you once before. I’m worried that when I see her face, I won’t be able to stop myself from taking my revenge. And I am equally worried that were I to stand aside, were I to let you go without me, you would not come home again.”

“Oh, oak and ash, Tybalt.” I crossed the distance between us in two long strides, putting my arms around him again. This time, I was the one to pull him tight, and he was the one who folded into me, pressing his face to my shoulder as he cried. I just held him, stroking his back with one hand and staring at the wall while I tried to sort through all the things I wanted to say—the ones I shouldn’t say, the ones I couldn’t say, and the ones that would have to be said eventually, but would do us no good in the here and now.

Finally, I said, very softly, “I don’t blame you. I made the choice then not to blame you, and I stand by it. You would never have hurt me if she hadn’t forced it to happen, and I got better. I always get better. That’s the thing you have to remember, okay? No matter what happens to me, I will do my best to get better, and I will not leave you. I love you. I love you even when my blood is on your hands. And I’m not going anywhere, you got that? I am not going anywhere.”

Tybalt didn’t say anything. He just stayed where he was, crying into my shoulder. I closed my eyes as I held him close, and hoped more than anything else in the world that I wasn’t lying to him.





SIX




I DIDN’T SLEEP LONG, BUT the sleep I got was sweet, tangled as I was in the welcome cage of Tybalt’s arms. The light of the afternoon was coming in around the edges of the blackout curtains when I finally opened my eyes and blinked, bewildered, at the dimly lit ceiling above me. “What time is it?”

“Later than it could be, earlier than it should be,” said Tybalt. I turned to find him sprawled next to me, his head propped up on one hand. “Did you rest well?”

“As well as can be expected, given what we’re about to go and do,” I said. His hair was artfully disarrayed, like it had been arranged by some supernatural stylist while he slept. Mine, on the other hand, was a bird’s nest of tangles, halfway blocking my eyes. I shoved it out of the way. It flopped right back down again. I sighed and gave up as I asked, “Do you need to go back to the Court of Cats for anything?”

Tybalt shook his head. “No. I made my farewells and my arrangements before I came to you. There was a chance that Arden might have ordered you to leave at sunrise, giving me no time to double back. I’m all yours, both now and until you’ll no longer have me.”