Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“October?” Tybalt’s voice was no closer than it had been a few moments before. He hadn’t moved. Smart kitty.

“Hold on.” I raked my hair back with my free hand, using the movement to cover my shudder, and stepped closer to the wall. The smell of lilies was stronger here. The smell of smoke…wasn’t. I frowned, twisting back around to face him. “I don’t think she opened a door to the Fire Kingdoms.”

“Much as I hate to argue with you, I believe the amount of lava that made an unexpected—and unrequested—appearance proves that the Fire Kingdoms were involved.” His mouth twisted into a shape that was half-grimace, half-smile. “Mortal lava doesn’t dissolve as it cools.”

“I’m not saying they weren’t involved, I’m saying she didn’t open a door to them. She wouldn’t have survived in the Fire Kingdoms for more than a few seconds. And I don’t smell her blood at all. Wouldn’t she have been hurt?” I looked at the dimly glowing sphere in my hand before tucking it back into my pocket. “The Court of Cats is where the lost things go, right? Is there some mechanism that determines what is and isn’t lost?”

Tybalt shook his head. “No. When something becomes ours, it finds its way here.”

“Well, in that case, I’d call a teenage changeling who can’t control her powers pretty damn lost. What if she opened a door looking for a safe place to hide and wound up here? Would anyone have noticed?”

“No members of the Divided Court have ever found the Court of Cats on their own before,” he said, hesitantly.

“Chelsea’s a special case. Maybe when she got lost, she saw the way. That’s all she’d need. Just one signpost telling her which way to go.”

“It’s…possible,” said Tybalt, still hesitantly—although it was the hesitance of a man facing an unfamiliar concept, not the hesitance of someone who was getting ready to disagree with me. “The doors are supposed to be sealed to all but the Cait Sidhe.”

“You brought me here.”

A smile ghosted across his face. “Like Chelsea, you’re a special case. Before today’s excitement, you were the only member of the Divided Courts to walk these halls in centuries.”

“That’s me—defying expectations wherever I go.” I took a breath. “What was this room used for? Why were you in here?”

“It was one of our dining halls. Many of us used it for napping, or for teaching kits to hunt.” Tybalt’s tone became tinged with fond remembrance. If it hadn’t been for the bruise on his face and the smoke in the air, it would have been almost sweet. “There is little more amusing than watching adult Cait Sidhe play rat-catcher in the mortal alleys for the sake of having live things to bring back here.”

That explained why there had been so many Cait Sidhe here to be hurt, if not why Chelsea would have suddenly decided to fill the room with lava. I walked to the worst of the burn, trying not to wince at the way the floor crackled under my heels. Tybalt watched me go, a curious expression on his face, but he didn’t stop me.

When I reached the point I judged to be the origin of the blaze, I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply. All I smelled was smoke. I sighed, hand going to the knife at my belt.

It always comes back to blood.

My mother’s line, the Dóchas Sidhe, draws power from blood in a way that no one else in Faerie does. Unfortunately for me, that means there’s no one to teach me what it is I can do and how I’m supposed to go about doing it. Oh, some of the lessons the Daoine Sidhe use for their children apply to me—that’s how I was able to pass for Daoine Sidhe for so damn long—but it’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. Just because a few things work out, that doesn’t mean you’re going about them the right way.

My mother knew how to use her magic. She could have shown me the way to use mine. She didn’t. So that’s one more thing for the long list of things my mother didn’t do, one more thing for me to figure out by guesswork and luck.