Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

Something inside the lock clicked. I twisted my bit of bracken hard upward, and was rewarded with a second, louder click. Moving cautiously, in case there was some sort of secondary lock spell on the door that I hadn’t noticed before, I tried the latch.

The door opened smoothly. The hinges didn’t even creak—probably, I realized as I straightened up, because they were made of hand-carved oak. This was a realm where humans had never been common. Given a choice between metal and wood, humans almost always choose metal, and fae almost always choose wood. That probably says something deep and profound about our two species. At the moment, I was just relieved to know I wasn’t going to need an oilcan if I wanted to move quietly through the building.

I opened the door a little wider and peered into the hall. I didn’t see anyone. That didn’t necessarily mean anything; not with Riordan using Folletti for bodyguards. I breathed in, searching the air for signs of other fae. All I found was the smell of blood, and the unmistakable traces of Dóchas Sidhe. I already knew I was there. That meant that, for the moment, I was alone.

Stepping back from the door, I gathered my magic—something that was easier than I expected, thanks to all the blood in the room—and spun a don’t-look-here over myself. It wouldn’t keep me safe forever, but it might be enough to keep me safe until I could find myself some backup. I shook the last clinging bits of magic off my hand before grabbing a few more pieces of bracken and tucking them behind my ear. There’s no telling what might turn out to be useful, and I was probably going to be picking a few more locks before I was finished.

There was nothing else in the tower room for me. I wiped my hands on my jeans one last time, trying to get off a little bit more of the blood, and stepped out into the hall.

I didn’t have any way of relocking my door, so I just pulled it as tightly closed as I could and hoped no one would come to check on me until I was safely away. Pulling the Chelsea-chaser out of my pocket, I held it close to my body to keep the light from possibly shining outside the boundaries of my spell, and started making my way cautiously down the hall.

The irony of the situation was that nothing about it was new to me. I’d been a captive in Blind Michael’s lands, and while they weren’t as deep as Annwn—nothing we can access normally is as deep as Annwn—they were still disconnected from Earth and the Summerlands. And while I was there, I used the light of a magic candle created by the Luidaeg to find the children that he’d stolen.

Back then, I’d been trying to deny I was a hero. These days, no matter how unhappy I may sometimes be about it, I know I’m a hero. Oddly, knowing that made it easier to walk down the hall, keeping my back to the stone wall and watching for Folletti. There was none of the old urge to run and tell them to get someone else to deal with things; this was mine to deal with. My friends were somewhere in this hall. I was going to find them, and together, we were going to find a lost little girl who deserved better from Faerie than she’d ever gotten.

The Luidaeg’s charm flickered when I was halfway down the hall. Then it flared, turning not its customary red, but a dark, almost puzzled-seeming shade of purple. I paused. There was only one door nearby. It was plain oak, with no convenient little window to let me see what was on the other side. Hollywood castles always get the little windows.

“Stupid Hollywood castles,” I muttered, tucking the charm back into my pocket. I pulled a piece of bracken from my hair and knelt, getting to work on the lock. This one was easier, maybe because I was getting warmed up, and maybe because I’d had a little more time for the feeling to come back into my hands. The lock clicked open, and I cautiously opened the door.