Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

Luna Torquill is many things. A Duchess. A Blodynbryd—sort of like a Dryad, only connected to rosebushes, not trees. But above everything else, she’s a gardener. Always has been and probably always will be. And because she’s a gardener, even though Shadowed Hills has groundskeepers, she can often be found in the location of the most noise in the yard.

We came over a low rise to find ourselves facing a vegetable garden being harvested by half a dozen Hobs, a few Brownies, and one delighted Cornish Pixie, who was picking ears of corn from stalks nearly fifteen feet high. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t harvest season. This was Luna’s garden. It would ripen when she wanted it to. Luna herself was on her knees in a patch of strawberry plants, plucking berries from beneath the broad, flat leaves. Some were the normal red. Others were white with the faintest blush of pink, or so dark they seemed black.

“Luna?”

She straightened at the sound of her name. By the time we finished our approach, she was standing, and her gloves were in the basket with the berries. “October,” she said, sounding surprised. “And Tybalt. What are you two doing here? Is everything all right? Sylvester is inside…”

“We’re not here to see Sylvester,” I said. “We’re here to see you.” This was the tricky part. I needed her to help us. I wasn’t yet at the point of telling the Torquills what was going on.

“Me?” Luna blinked again. “Why me?”

“We need access to the Rose Road,” I said. “It’s sort of an emergency.”

As a Blodynbryd, Luna had access to the Rose Roads, which ran, near as I could tell, between the Summerlands and places where the walls of the world had worn thin. I had taken the Rose Road from Shadowed Hills to the Luidaeg’s apartment once, and once into Blind Michael’s lands. Those places weren’t necessarily lost—in fact, they were, by definition, found. They were also outside the normal passages of Faerie. If we wanted to find Raj, we needed a miracle. This seemed close enough for me. I might as well risk it all on the liminal spaces.

Luna’s eyes widened, pink eyelashes making her expression of shock almost comic. It’s taken me a long time to get used to her new coloring, snow white and rose red where she used to be shades of brown. Sometimes, it’s still a little strange. “What do you need the Rose Road for?”

“We’ve sort of misplaced Raj. I think if we can get between realms, we might be able to get a fix on him.” I hoped, anyway.

Luna frowned. “I can’t just open a road with no end. You have to have a destination.”

Destination. Right. “Send us to your mother,” I suggested.

“I don’t know…” said Luna uncertainly.

“Milady of Roses, you know October wouldn’t ask if it were not of direst importance,” said Tybalt. He smiled hopefully. “Please? It would be a great favor, to both of us, and I am sure all will be made clear, given time enough.”

Time enough, and us managing not to die. “Please?” I echoed, trying my hardest to look ingratiating. I probably managed to look deranged.

Fortunately for me, Luna has always been responsive to derangement. “If you get yourself killed, Sylvester will never forgive me,” she said. That was when I knew I’d won. If she was making dire statements about what I could or couldn’t do to myself on the Rose Road, she was going to send me.

“I know,” I said.

“Just so long as you do.” She bent to retrieve her gardening shears from the basket of strawberries. She opened the shears, using them to snip off a foot-long lock of her pink and red hair. The smell of roses was suddenly strong, and grew stronger as she shook the cut hair.

Somewhere in the middle of the motion the curl straightened, taking on overtones of green. And then it wasn’t hair anymore, but a long-stemmed white rose. She held it out to me. I took it, managing not to wince when the inevitable thorns bit into my fingers. The edges of the petals began turning red, the color spreading inward like blood spreading through white silk.