Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(99)

I plucked the piece of glass from the frame, tucking it into the bodice of my gown. It didn’t matter if it cut me; I’d heal. There was no way I was leaving Quentin’s blood lying around for anyone to find. Not given who he was, and the secrets he was trying to keep. I took one more step forward, to the very edge of the broken glass, and blanched, feeling my stomach do a slow tuck-and-roll.

This room might not have been one of the highest points in the knowe, but it was more than high enough. The window wall looked out on an endless sea of redwoods, and the drop between me and the ground was easily fifty feet, maybe more. We were in the Summerlands, after all, where the laws of nature were superseded by the laws of Faerie, which were much more forgiving in certain ways.

None of the people I was looking for could fly. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and looked again.

Far below me in the gloom—at least fifteen feet straight down—one of the wooden paths that Arden’s people used to move through the trees wound its way into the darkness. Verona was a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe, and could possibly have some sort of spell in her arsenal to allow them to make the drop in safety. Fifty feet was too much, but fifteen? That wasn’t out of the question. They could be down there.

If they were, and I was hesitating here, then I was allowing them to get even more of a head start on me—not good, since I had no idea how long I’d been trapped in that fairy ring. If they weren’t, and I jumped down to follow them, I’d have to find a way back up in order to resume my pursuit. That could be the last straw. Quentin needed me following him, not running off on some wild goose chase.

Carefully, I leaned far enough out the open window to look to either side, searching for another way out of here. There wasn’t one: the room ended in a sheer drop, an artificial redwood cliff face descending down into the misty dark. They hadn’t gone back, I was sure of that; Quentin didn’t heal the way I did, and would have still been bleeding if he’d been dragged out to the hall. There would have been some sort of sign, a trace for me to follow. They must have gone down. There was no other option.

“Oh, this is gonna suck,” I muttered, and took three long steps back before I broke into a run, hit the edge of the room, and leaped out into the air.

Falling is easy. Anyone can fall. Landing without breaking multiple bones is a harder problem. I plummeted through the redwood-scented green, branches whipping at my face and arms. It was all I could do to keep one arm in front of my face, preventing the branches from hitting me in the eye. With my luck, I’d blind myself before I landed, and have to wait for that to heal before I could start moving again.

The path rushed up at me faster than I would have thought was possible, and I braced myself for impact as well as I could. I hit hard, and felt my ankle shatter under the pressure. The pain was sudden and immense, blocking out the rest of the world. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, rolling to bleed off my momentum. I thought I was rolling with the curve of the path until it dropped away, and I was falling again.

Years of struggling not to die when the entire world seemed determined to make it happen had honed my reflexes to an amazing degree. My hands shot out before I’d fully realized what was happening, grabbing the edge of the path and stopping my descent. I hung there, clinging to the wood, panting, with waves of pain rushing outward from my ankle and filling my entire body. Every time I thought the worst of it was past, another wave would hit, and I’d black out for a second. Not ideal for someone who was dangling above a seemingly infinite drop.

I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. I fall off things with dismaying frequency. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it, and the thought of how much more it would hurt if I broke every bone in my entire body was terrifying. At least the path had been treated with some sort of water-repellent; the wood was dry under my fingers, and I wasn’t slipping. That would have been a step too far.

Quentin needed me. Madden needed me. Arden and the others were still back in the dining hall, or nearby, and had no idea who was behind this; they wouldn’t be prepared if Verona and Minna came back in, claiming to have been attacked. I couldn’t be sure that Minna would still willingly work with Verona, but Verona had Minna’s sister, and Minna had . . . what? She’d killed the King of Highmountain. Verona would want revenge for that. Maybe not now. Maybe not yet. I needed to pull myself up.

“I hate everything,” I muttered, through gritted teeth, and began slowly, laboriously hauling myself up onto the path. Every time I pulled, my ankle throbbed again. It was no longer the shooting, violent pain of a fresh break, but that was a problem in its own way: the bone was starting to set, and I didn’t know whether the leg was straight. The thought of rebreaking my own ankle before I could walk was not an appealing one.

Sometimes healing faster than anything natural is not as good as it sounds. I kept hauling, and my ankle throbbed with every motion. I couldn’t really get a grip on the wood; in the end, I had to ram my fingers between the planks and pull hard enough that the skin shredded, healed, and shredded again. I was almost there. I could topple back down, or I could pull myself up. I took a breath, tensed my shoulders as tight as they would go, and hauled, boosting myself over the edge and onto the planking.

I collapsed as soon as I was safely on the path, lying flat with my face pressed to the wood and the wind howling around me. My ankle wasn’t throbbing anymore. I didn’t have the necessary materials to rebreak the bone if it hadn’t set right, and so I didn’t look at it; I just pushed myself back to my feet, wobbling as I went, and pressed down on my formerly injured foot, waiting to see what it would do.