One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

THE RED VEIL OF DEAN’S memories crashed down on me almost instantly, stronger than I expected. I struggled against them automatically before I realized they weren’t trying to overwhelm me; they were just there, open, welcoming me in. Blood magic had never been this easy.

I took a breath, and let myself fall into someone else’s skin.

Everything hurts. Moving hurts. Breathing hurts. Nothing is supposed to hurt like this. Even dying shouldn’t hurt like this. I raise my head, squinting through the tears I won’t let them see me shed. It’s dark. The floor is cold, and the straw that covers it isn’t enough to fight the chill. It smells like something died here a long time ago, the stink barely disguised by the distant scents of spices I don’t know the names of.

“He’s alive,” I said, pulling myself far enough out of the memories to speak. “They’re not keeping him in the water.” If Patrick responded, I didn’t hear it. The blood surged over me again, and I was gone.

“Are you scared now, little prince of the sea?” It’s a woman’s voice, sweet as honey and toxic as cyanide.

I knew who belonged to that voice. Dean didn’t, but I did.

I tuck my head down, feigning sleep. Anything would be better than facing her again. “Oh, sleeping? Lost in pretty dreams of home, of freedom, and of family?” A hand grabs my hair and jerks my head up. “Don’t be stupid.”

Her hair is red, like blood coral, and her eyes are gold. Her ears rise to tapered points under the twined braids on the sides of her head, blunter than they’d be if she were pure Daoine Sidhe, but still as sharp as mine. There’s a sharpened sickle in the hand not snarled through my hair.

I gritted my teeth. The red film of memory broke slightly, cleared away by my anger. No matter how much I knew Raysel was involved, it still hurt like hell to see her there, torturing an innocent. How could she have fallen this far? Then the red haze closed over me again, and nothing mattered but Dean’s borrowed fear.

I go rigid, trying not to look at the sickle. I will not cry is the thought the blood remembers. “Let me go before my parents find you,” I say, forcing a bravado that isn’t really there.

She smiles. “Oh, you silly little thing, don’t you know? Your parents will find you. We’ll leave you for them a piece at a time, like bread crumbs leading children out of the woods. We don’t need you both alive. One will do nicely for what’s needed.”

“Where’s my brother?”

“That’s up to you. Behave, do as I tell you, die like the little nobleman you are, and your brother will be fine. You’ll be a hero for keeping him alive. Make too much fuss, and . . .” She draws the blunt side of the sickle across her throat in a gesture both graphic and direct. “He’s the one fit to inherit, isn’t he? The golden child. Such a pity when the more valuable son has to die.”

I love my brother. That only fuels my fear. “I won’t fight you.”

“I hoped you’d say that.” Her smile grows wider, until it shows the sharp tips of her incisors. “Such a brave little boy. So noble.” She raises the sickle, and I look away. I know what comes next, I know I can’t escape it, but oh, Maeve, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to feel that blade come down—

The pain of the sickle biting into Dean’s hand was enough to snap me out of the spell. I slammed back into my own skin so hard that it was like hitting the water after a badly-botched dive. It didn’t hurt. “Hurt” was too small a word. It burned.

The fragments of my shattered spell hung in the air around us, reeking of cut grass and copper. The finger dropped from my hand, rolling away. It wasn’t just a bit of discarded meat and bone anymore—I remembered it as part of my body. It would take time for the memory of being Dean to fade, and until then, it was my finger on the floor.