Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“I do better when I know what I’m restraining myself for, Etienne,” I said. “If you want me to help you, you need to talk to me.”


“I don’t know how.” He closed his eyes, tilting his head back until his face was almost pointed at the ceiling. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“That’s a start. What kind of mistake?”

Etienne was silent.

I bit back a groan. “Do we have to play hot and cold, here? You came to me, not the other way around. I didn’t force you to be here.”

Etienne was still silent.

“Look, did you kill somebody? That you didn’t intend to kill, I mean. Because I would count that as a mistake.”

“What?” His chin snapped down, eyes opening. “No!”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Did you steal something? Piss off a member of the nobility? Break an oath?”

“Perhaps the last.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “I may have endangered my oaths, if not broken them entirely. I don’t know yet.”

I gaped at him. “Root and branch, seriously? When?”

“The spring after you disappeared.”

That was more than sixteen years ago. I nearly dropped my coffee, but saved it at the last moment as I demanded, “What?!”

“If I broke my oaths, I did so the year after your disappearance, when the Duchess and her daughter were…lost to us.” Etienne spoke slowly. “The Duchy was in chaos. The Queen offered no succor, and the Duke…the Duke was…”

“Mad,” I said. “He was mad, Etienne. I’ve heard the stories.”

“I endured them,” he snapped, anger kindling in his voice. “You weren’t here during Luna’s absence, October. I was. You didn’t see Sylvester at his worst. I did. I served as his Seneschal during those dark years, Oberon help me, and I did it out of loyalty, and duty, and love. Do you understand that much?”

“I would have been there if I could,” I whispered. The “dark years” of Luna’s absence corresponded to my own imprisonment as an enchanted koi in Golden Gate Park’s Japanese Tea Gardens. Not a place I ever meant to wind up.

Etienne took a deep breath, composing himself. When he spoke again, his voice was steady. “I know. Please believe me when I say I do not blame you. What happened to you was horrible, and we should have found a way to bring you home long before you escaped on your own. That doesn’t change the fact that you weren’t here. You never saw Sylvester raving at shadows, all but grieving himself to death, while the rest of us fought to keep Shadowed Hills alive and healthy long enough for him to find his own way home.”

I shuddered. Sylvester’s more than my liege. He’s my friend. Even knowing how bad things were for him when Luna and Raysel were missing, hearing it from Etienne hurt more than I would have guessed possible. “Okay. I get your point. I wasn’t there.”

“Sometimes…” Etienne paused, sighing again, before he pressed on: “Sometimes, when it got to be too much for any of us to take, Jin would brew something to make him sleep. Never for more than a day or two. Just enough to let the rest of us recover our strength and brace against the storms we knew were yet to come.”

“You drugged him?” I asked, almost before the thought finished forming. “Etienne, that’s…that’s…”

“It was necessary for the health of the Duchy and the health of the Duke,” he said. “He knows everything. He gave us his forgiveness long ago.”