Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

I gave him a sidelong look. “Since when do you drink coffee?”


“Since I had to learn how to make it or risk your endless wrath.”

I had to smile a little at that. “You can fix your own.”

It only took me a few minutes to climb the stairs to my room, drop the disguise that made me look human, and shuck off my blood-drenched clothes, throwing them into the wastebasket next to the door. One more pair of jeans down the drain. I’d need to get one of the hearth-spirits I knew to do something about the holes in my leather jacket. I was willing to get rid of a lot of things, but not that.

I washed the blood off my hands and face in the master bathroom. My reflection was overly pale, even for me; regenerating that much blood had done a number on my system. There was no blood in my hair, for once. I swapped my bloody jeans and T-shirt for clean ones that weren’t full of bullet holes. Then I went jogging back down the stairs and through the dining room to the kitchen, where Tybalt was watching with evident amusement as my half-Siamese cats, Cagney and Lacey, cornered Quentin.

My squire was spooning wet food into cat dishes. He wasn’t doing it fast enough for their liking, because both cats were yowling. Cats are like that. Tybalt cleared his throat. Cagney and Lacey went silent. They turned to face their King and sat, wrapping their tails around their legs. Quentin looked up, relief written across his face.

“Good one, Tybalt,” he said.

“A cat may look at a King,” Tybalt replied, waving away Quentin’s almost-thanks without commenting on it.

“Greetings, Squire,” I said, and ruffled Quentin’s hair. I didn’t have to get on my tiptoes, but it was close. After one more growth spurt, he’d be looking down on me. I guess that’s what you get when you take a teenage boy as your sworn squire. “Is there coffee?”

He looked at me solemnly, doing an admirable job of concealing his annoyance over my hair ruffling, and said, deadpan, “We didn’t want you to kill us all, so May told me to start a fresh pot when Tybalt left to get you.”

“I have the smartest Fetch in the whole world.” I snagged a coffee mug from the rack. “Do you have any clue what Etienne is doing here?”

“I know as much as you do.” Quentin bent to set the cat dishes on the floor. “He just showed up saying he needed to talk to you, and he wouldn’t tell us why.”

There was an anxious note in Quentin’s voice. I paused in the act of filling my mug, glancing back at him. “He can’t take you back to Shadowed Hills,” I said gently. “It’s against the rules, and if there’s one thing Etienne would never ever intentionally do, it’s break the rules.”

“I know,” said Quentin miserably. “I just…”

“I wouldn’t concern myself if I were you.” Tybalt plucked the coffeepot from my hand, topping off my mug before half-filling his own. “I’ve had sufficient dealings with the Divided Courts to know there would be much more pointless discussion before we reached that point. Unless she has been found guilty of some dire crime and has neglected to tell the rest of us, you can no more be removed from her custody than I can sprout wings and fly off to take tea with the Swanmays.”

“Don’t say that where the Luidaeg can hear you, or she’ll take it as a challenge.” I got the milk out of the fridge. “Quentin, you have my word: I will be your knight until your fosterage ends or you’re ready to graduate to a knighthood of your own. And the only people who get to decide when that is are me, Sylvester, and whoever the hell your parents are.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, smiling.