One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

—and then he was shoving me, hard, into the shadows. As I fell, I saw Tybalt wheel to launch himself at the Goblins, already snarling. Then the shadows closed around me, and I found myself in the endless dark and crushing cold of the Shadow Roads . . . alone.

“Tybalt!” I shouted, before I could catch myself. The cold filled my mouth and flowed down my throat, making me feel like winter was devouring me from within. All the air seemed to rush out of my lungs, leaving me breathless and freezing.

I dropped to my knees, unable to see what was under me, and unable to entirely care. The cold was making me dizzy, and I had no idea how I could find my way out of the shadows alone. I barely even noticed when my eyes closed, trading the endless dark of the Shadow Roads for the endless dark inside my own eyes, and the world fell away.





NINETEEN


I GASPED FOR AIR, clutching the blankets to my chest as I sat bolt upright in the bed. Wait—blankets? Bed? I looked frantically around, taking in my surroundings. I was in a large, white-painted room. The furniture was simple and sturdy, and the single window looked out on a gold-and-purple Summerlands sky. I blinked. We must have crossed the boundary into Faerie while I was unconscious, leaving the mortal world behind.

We?

“Tybalt?” I said uncertainly. The room didn’t answer. I was alone. Alone, and—I looked down at myself to confirm my first impression—wearing a cotton nightgown with the crest of Shadowed Hills embroidered on the bodice. I touched the embroidery with one finger, sighing in relief. I was in Shadowed Hills. That was something good, at least. The film of May’s magic that had covered me was gone; whatever happened after Tybalt threw me into the dark must have stripped away my human disguise.

I stood slowly, keeping my hand on the carved oak bedpost to help my balance. My legs were wobbly, and my head felt like I was coming off a three-day bender.

“When I find that cat, I am going to kill him dead,” I muttered, and stalked to the door, yanking it open.

Jin was sitting in a wicker chair just outside, flipping through a large leather-bound book. She looked up when the door opened, and smiled. “You’re up,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Naked,” I snapped, before I could think better of it. “Where’s Tybalt? How did I get here?”

“Are you having any muscle pain? Any difficulty breathing?”

“Now I’m feeling annoyed. Where’s Tybalt?”

Jin’s smile faded into a look of aggravated amusement. “It’s always good to see that severe injury doesn’t do anything to improve your manners. Tybalt’s in the Garden of Glass Roses. He’s been there since I kicked him out of your room, which I only did because I was afraid he was going to wake you.”

“Why didn’t you let him?” I demanded. “What did he do?” The last thing I remembered was blacking out alone in the shadows—and if that wasn’t the sort of thing that nightmares are made of, I didn’t want to know what was.

“He pushed you through to the Shadow Roads to save your life.” Jin shook her head. “He told me what was happening at the time. Do you have any idea how close you came to being elf-shot?”

“I survived it once,” I said defensively.

“Yes, because your mother rebalanced your blood and weakened the enchantment,” Jin shot back. “That sort of thing is a little bigger than elf-shot. If you’d been hit on the street, you would have died.”

“He left me in the dark,” I said, more quietly than I’d intended to.

Jin sighed. “Toby . . . he didn’t mean to. As to why I didn’t let him wake you, you needed the sleep more than he needed the reassurance. Healing as fast as you do doesn’t mean you need to find new and exciting ways to get hurt. Healing is hard on the body, and doing it all at once doesn’t make it any easier.”