Chimes at Midnight

“Stab yourself.”


“. . . of course I have to stab myself,” I muttered. “This day just gets better and better.”

“Don’t stall,” she snapped abruptly. I blinked. She scowled. “If you bleed to death, I die with you. So stop messing around and fix this. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready. I have too much left to do.”

“But if I pick the wrong knife—”

“If you pick the wrong knife, Faerie had better find a new hero.”

I stared at her for a few precious seconds before turning my attention to the knives in her hands. They gave no external clues, nothing that might help me know which one I wanted.

But then, I’ve never been very good at choosing just one. I reached out and grabbed both knives before she had a chance to react, pulling them from her hands. The motion left her fingers cut and bleeding, freeing the smell of blood to invade the room. I took a deep breath, letting the blood strengthen me, turned the knives around in my hands, and drove them into my stomach in a single gesture. I never did see which was which. It didn’t seem to matter.

The pain was sudden and immense, expanding to fill the entire world. The last thing I saw before I fell was my own face smiling at me from the doorway. She looked approving. I wanted to yell at her. If there was a right choice, why couldn’t she just tell me that and skip the stupid riddles? But falling seemed much more important than arguing. I hit the floor on knees I could barely feel through the pain washing through my body.

The knives. The knives. I needed to . . . I needed . . . I yanked the knives out of my stomach before the blackness could take me. And then I closed my eyes, letting myself go limp. Dying hurt. I did not approve. I did not—

A hand closed on my shoulder, fingers surprisingly solid despite the remaining haze. “Toby? October? Are you all right?” Dianda sounded worried. I couldn’t blame her. From the smell of things, there wasn’t much blood left in me, but there was a lot of it around me. “Hey. Don’t be dead. I’m pretty sure it’ll count as a declaration of war if you’re dead.”

“No such luck,” I rasped. Until I spoke, I hadn’t been quite sure I still had a mouth. It tasted like blood, just like everything else. I swallowed, trying to clear the taste away, and opened my eyes to find Dianda—still finned and scaled—on the floor next to where I’d fallen. I blinked. “Did you crawl here?”

“I need water before I can shift back,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” I sat up, waiting for a flare of pain. Nothing happened. I reached for my side, slipping my hand through the cut in my clothing to feel smooth, undamaged skin. Sitting up a bit straighter, I pulled my hand free, wiped it on my jeans, and reached up to brush my hair back.

My fingers hit the sharp edge of my ear. Not pureblood-sharp, but the angle I was used to. I took a deep breath, swallowing the urge to shout with joy. “I think I’m—” I began, and stopped as pain shot through my left side. I doubled over, clapping my hands over the wound I knew had to be there.

They found the hilt of my iron knife. Fighting to focus, I wrenched the blade from its scabbard and flung it across the room. It clattered against a pile of golden coins before vanishing behind them. I pulled up my shirt and pulled down the waistband of my jeans. There was a welt where the knife had been close to my skin, and unlike the rest of my injuries, it wasn’t healing.

“I’m definitely back to normal,” I said, and stood, tucking the hope chest under my arm. Maybe more than normal. I felt less human than ever before, although I’d managed to hang on to some of my humanity. I knew the balance of my own blood well enough to be sure of that.