Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(76)

“What happened is whoever killed Antonio decided what was good for the gander was good for the goose, and rammed a rosewood spike into your back,” said the Luidaeg. “Pretty good shot, too. They managed to get it more than halfway through. It would have gone farther on its own, but the tip of the thing broke off inside your lung.”

That explained the probing fingers, and the reason they hadn’t been able to wait for me to wake up. With the way I healed, a delay would have allowed my body to close up around the foreign object. Not too bad, if we were talking about a bullet or a bone or something else blunt and easily ignored. The tip of a harpoon, inside my lung? That was something else entirely.

“Wait,” I said. “How did you get in there? Weren’t my ribs in the way?”

“I went under the rib cage,” said the Luidaeg blandly. Quentin made a face. I decided I was glad to have been unconscious when that decision was made. “I got all the bits out, but you’d lost a lot of blood. I had to feed you some of mine to give you the strength to recover.”

“So that woman I saw—”

“Yes, that was my mother, and no, I don’t want to talk about it. Whatever you saw, that is between you and the blood. I won’t answer any questions.” Something in her eyes . . .

“Won’t, or can’t?” I asked.

She threw her bloody hands up in the air. “Is there no end to your questions? Can’t, October, can’t, and won’t, and we’re sort of getting away from the point here, which is that you could have died.”

“Maybe,” I said, and closed my eyes, feeling Tybalt’s chest rise and fall beneath my cheek, reassuringly solid and alive. Then I opened them again, and asked, “How long was I out?”

“Half an hour, end to end,” said the Luidaeg. “The conclave hasn’t started yet, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I just got stabbed. I have so many better things to worry about.” I pushed myself upright. The motion forced me to touch the table, and my hands skidded in the jellied blood. The smell of it made me hungry and turned my stomach at the same time. “There was a sound like tearing metal. Everything jumped. I don’t think it’s a teleporter.”

“No?” The Luidaeg raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Whoever it was can’t have been in the room before they attacked, or Tybalt would have smelled them. Unless they were Folletti, and then they wouldn’t be using rosewood.” Folletti were sky-fae, and used swords of hardened wind, as invisible as they were. Rosewood was too easy to see to be a Folletti weapon. “There was no lingering magic smell, which means any spells were cast outside the room. I think whoever it is, they’re somehow pausing things. Making everything stop for a few seconds, and using the time to get into position.” I looked at the Luidaeg expectantly.

She raised her other eyebrow. Then, firmly, she shook her head. “I know what you’re asking, and no. There’s no race in Faerie with that ability. Either you’re wrong, or someone is using some sort of alchemy or a mixed spell to do this.”

“So we don’t even know where to start,” I said. “Fun. Fine.” I swung my feet around to point them at the floor. More blood squished beneath me. I winced. “I need clothes.”

“Yes, you do. What’s more, you need a shower.”

“I don’t have time for a—wait. There’s a solution.” I turned to Tybalt—blood-soaked and still unsettled, judging by the faint stripes on the sides of his face. He was having trouble holding to the more human aspects of his current form. That was a sign of either relaxation or stress in the Cait Sidhe, and given the situation, and the amount of blood on his clothes, I wasn’t betting on the former. “Elliott is here. Go to Arden, find out where he’s staying, and get him.”

Tybalt blinked. “Why am I doing this exactly?”

“Because we don’t have time to shower before we need to go back to the conclave, and I’m not ready to go back to the room where someone tried to murder me.” The scene of King Antonio’s death, and the absence of a magical signature in the room right after I’d been stabbed, told me that going back wasn’t going to help us: not enough to put off cleaning up and reporting the attack to the High King. “Elliott’s a Bannick. He can have all this blood gone in a flash.”

“I don’t want to go,” said Tybalt. “I will, but I want you to understand how unkind it is for you to ask this of me.”

“I do,” I said solemnly.

He looked to the Luidaeg. “If you allow her to come to further harm . . .”

“Don’t threaten me, kitty, I’m outside your weight class,” said the Luidaeg. “Go.”

Tybalt pulled his lips back, showing her his teeth. Then he turned and ran for the shadows in the corner of the room, leaping into them and disappearing. I looked longingly at the place where he’d been. With everything that was going on, I didn’t like anyone going off alone. Not even Tybalt.

“Toby.”

I turned toward the sound of the Luidaeg’s voice. “Yes?”

“You could have died. You know that, don’t you? You’re not invincible. Hard to kill, yes, but unbreakable? No.” She looked at me gravely. “You need to be more careful.”