Chimes at Midnight

I’D NEVER BEEN ON THIS SIDE of the cells before while I was in a position to look around. The air was thick with smoke, making it difficult to see even in the light cast by my borrowed torch. I limped from door to door, peering through the hatches set into them at eye level. The first four cells I passed were empty. When I opened the hatch on the fifth door, a brick rebounded off the grill.

“Whoa!” I yelped, barely managing to fling myself out of the way of the flying stone chips. “Dianda? Is that you?”

“Come a little closer and find out for yourself,” she snarled.

“. . . definitely Dianda,” I muttered. Louder, I said, “It’s me, Toby. Can you please not throw anything else? I’m here to get you out of there.”

There was a pause before Dianda said suspiciously, “Prove it.”

I moved back in front of her cell’s hatch. She was standing at the center of the room in bipedal form, a brick in one hand, glaring. Her tunic was ripped and stained with blood and rust. She wasn’t wearing any pants, or shoes.

She scowled when she saw my face. “You’re not October,” she snarled, and pulled back her arm, preparing to fling the second brick.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” I said. “I am October, I just had a little accident with a goblin fruit pie and sort of accidentally turned myself mostly human.” The sheer ridiculousness of that statement hit me as soon as it had left my mouth. I winced. “Okay, let me try again . . .”

“There’s no need. No one else would say something that dumb and actually mean it.” Dianda lowered the brick. “How did you get here?” She seemed to be trying to look past me to the hall. The reason was revealed when she asked, “How many guards did you bring?”

“I brought a force of one, and he’s in trouble. I need you to help me find the treasury so I can fix myself, because I can’t fix him until I do that.” I drew my iron knife. The hilt was heavy and familiar in my hand. “Hold tight. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Hurry.” Dianda wrapped her arms a little tighter around herself. “The air in here burns.”

“I know.” I dropped to one knee, wincing, and studied the lock. The fact that Dianda was still standing, and still strong enough not to revert to her natural form, was sort of awe-inspiring. Iron saps strength, and the more fae someone is, the faster iron will start affecting them. Dianda was pureblooded. She should have been writhing in agony. Instead, she was just looking for something she could hit.

I knew I liked her for a reason.

The lock was surprisingly easy to pick, maybe because there’d never been much of a reason to make it very secure. The Queen’s dungeon was hard to access, and anyone fae enough to know it existed was unlikely to ever make it that far. I twisted my knife to the side and the tumbler popped, allowing me to unlatch the door.

“All right; I’m opening the do—” Dianda burst out of the room, shoving past me, and stopped at the middle of the hallway, breathing so hard she looked like she’d just finished a marathon. I caught myself against the wall. “—or now,” I finished. “You okay?”

“My blood is full of stinging jellies and I want to hurt someone,” she snarled. “So it’s to be treason now, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Arden just announced her regency. Unless she fails, this Queen has no right to hold you.”

Dianda blinked, and then slowly smiled. “Wonderful. Now about those people I wanted to hurt . . .”

“We can’t.” I shook my head, resheathing my knife. “We have something else to do.”

“What?” Dianda’s eyebrows arched upward in surprise. “I’m sorry. You get to give me orders now? Did I miss the annexation of the Undersea?”