One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“I’ve earned it.” The pixies illuminated the hall, showing doors lining the walls. “From what Bucer said, I don’t expect the shallowing to be huge. Let’s stay together. I don’t want to be surprised by something nasty.”


“Your wish, our command,” said Tybalt, falling into step behind me. Quentin fell in beside me, and together, the three of us walked silently on.

The smell of blood followed us from the main room, but every step we put between us and it made it a little fainter, and a little easier to ignore. That was good; that wasn’t the blood I was looking for. Tybalt had his sense of smell to depend on. I had something similar. Dean bled when they cut his finger off. If he was here, I’d find him.

Tybalt cleared his throat before beginning, uncertainly: “October, I’m not sure—”

“Are you going to say something useful, or are you just going to see how hard it is to get me to punch you?”

“I’m sorry.”

The words were offered quietly, almost as if he was apologizing for saying them as much as he was apologizing for everything else. Tears jumped to my eyes, blurring my vision and making it briefly impossible to see. I shook my head, dragging my hand across my eyes as fiercely as I could.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, voice sharp.

“I understand.”

The worst of it was, he probably did. As King of Cats, he’d buried more subjects than I could imagine losing. And that didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Connor was going to sleep for longer than I’d been alive, and no apologies were going to change that. Nothing ever was.

We walked in silence, the pixies periodically darting ahead to keep lighting our way. Tybalt and I stopped almost at the same time, both turning toward the same door.

“Do you smell that?” I asked.

“There,” he said.

“What?” asked Quentin.

“It smells like . . . wet stone and eucalyptus.” I stepped closer to the door. A new note introduced itself underneath the others: blood. My eyes widened. “Dean’s in here.”

Quentin frowned. “How do you know?”

“I can smell him.” I was going to have to ask the Luidaeg what this new level of sensitivity meant—and whether it was going to go away. It was a lot easier to cope with the smell of blood when it didn’t bring a person’s entire history with it. “Okay. Both of you, stay behind me.”

I opened the door, revealing a small room with a stone floor and stained wooden walls. Dean’s memories were right: it smelled like something had died in here, a very long time ago. I didn’t want to guess at what it might have been. At least the scent of blood was covering up the worst of the decay.

The source of the blood was huddled in a corner of the room, clearly feigning sleep. He had his body turned so that his back was to the door. I knew that trick; we used to use it on Devin. If they can’t see your face, they can’t tell that you’re crying.

“Hi,” I said, moving about halfway into the room before crouching down and resting my elbows on my knees. “Dean, right? I’m Toby Daye. These are my friends, Tybalt and Quentin. We’re here to rescue you.”

Dean didn’t move.

“Your parents sent me,” I said. “They’re really worried about you. Helmi’s really worried about you, too. She thinks it’s her fault you were kidnapped.” Dean didn’t say anything, but he shifted, changing positions very slightly. That was a good sign. He was listening, waiting for us to prove that we were who we said we were. “We don’t have Cephali here on the land, so I thought she was a little funny-looking at first. All those tentacles.” He shifted again, still not saying anything. I decided to try another tack: “You know that wheelchair your mother uses when she wants to go on land without having legs? Well, I rode it—and her—down a large hill to get away from a bunch of Goblin archers who were trying to hit us with elf-shot.”

That worked. Dean lifted his head, turning to stare at us with wide, baffled eyes. “You’re really here,” he said, in a voice that was rusty from disuse. “I can’t be dreaming you. My dreams make more sense than this.”