Page 45 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

“Uh-huh.” Glass clattered in the background, the sound heavy and somehow threatening, like it was a portent of something much larger. “Out of everything that could go missing, you don’t think it’s strange that the thing Altair is most concerned about getting her hands on would be the hope chest?”

“No. It’s not strange.”

“Explain.” Her voice had turned icy.

“The false queen still thinks she can recover the Siren blood I took away from her. Dugan is her man, and Altair is his sister. If Dame Altair somehow remembered the vault, she may have also remembered that the hope chest was important to elevating her family standing in some way. After the enchantment broke, retrieving the hope chest for her brother and helping the false queen escape would have seemed like a perfect opportunity to get in the good books of someone their family is already connected to. They have her, I’m sure of it.

Everything Altair said about her attacker’s magic could also be true of Dugan’s, and nothing she said was a lie.

She was just describing her brother while she pointed at Simon. ”

And she was going to pay for that, just as soon as I had the opportunity to hand her the bill. I was still getting used to the idea of having Simon in my life on a permanent basis. I didn’t need some assholes taking him away from me.

“All right, so why are you calling me?”

“I need your help.”

“Help how? You know I need specifics, Toby, or I can’t do anything.”

I took a deep breath. “Luidaeg, can you please come to Goldengreen and bind Bucer’s magic so he can’t influence us again?

I need to take Quentin back to the house and get Altair and her trashy brother the hell out of there before somebody gets hurt.

I’ll call Arden, too, to get more backup on the ground, but I can’t risk leaving Bucer here to hurt Marcia and Dean, and I can’t take him anywhere with me if he can change my mind without my noticing. ”

“That passes outside the scope of selfishness. Hold on.”

There was a clunking sound, followed by silence. I frowned at the phone, looking over my shoulder to where the others waited for me to finish. Quentin gave me a quizzical look. I shrugged. He turned back to Dean.

“Hello?” I tried. “Luidaeg, are you there?”

“This would have been so much more impressive if you’d been patient for another ten seconds, you know,” said the Luidaeg, walking into the courtyard.

She was back in her customary overalls and heavy boots, with strips of electric tape holding her hair in twinned ponytails over her shoulders.

She looked more human than anyone else in the room, even Marcia, and she was carrying a canvas shopping bag over one shoulder.

She nodded to the others as she walked over to me.

“Dean. Quentin. Marcia.” When she got to Bucer she paused, then smiled, showing a full mouthful of razor-sharp shark teeth.

“Bucer. I thought you were well quit of this kingdom. Maybe you should have been.”

He paled, taking a half-step back. The Luidaeg snapped her teeth at him with an audible clicking noise, laughing at his expression of sheer terror.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

She finally focused on me. “I don’t have to tell you everything I’m doing,” she said. “This was just easier if I could do it in person. Give me your wrist.”

I hung up Dean’s phone and stuck it in my pocket before holding out my right arm, wrist tilted toward the ceiling. She nodded approvingly, taking hold of my hand and tilting it a little further toward her.

“You asked for a way to protect yourself and those around you from the Glastig’s magic,” she said. “You fear for the safety of your family, and so you bargain with the sea witch. Is this true?”

I nodded, meeting her eyes, which had gone as white and wild as seafoam.

There was no trace of a pupil, but I knew she was still watching me.

It was evident in the small motions of her head, the corrections of her gaze.

She knew exactly where I was. Still, she didn’t say anything, evidently waiting for me to say something.

“It’s true,” I said.

“How much will you pay?”

“Whatever you require, as long as it offers no harm to my child,” I said.

She smiled. “Good girl,” she said, sounding incredibly pleased with my reply.

“The first price my geas offered me would have had the baby in my arms rather than yours, and we could both have grappled with that nightmare for the rest of your life. Instead, I can offer you another option. I’ll give you what you ask of me, and you’ll give me blood—”

I’d done that before. I smiled, starting to agree, and she cut me off.

“—and bone,” she finished. “I’ll lay you down and slice you open, and I’ll have your ribs for my own, taken one by one from the willing. Do you agree?”

I’d lost bits of bone before, and they’d always grown back. But the process was excruciatingly painful, and I wasn’t going to pretend to be excited about the idea. Still, I forced myself to nod.

“I agree,” I said. “Blood, and bone, both given freely to you, to be used as you see fit—but not until after the baby is born.”

“I can throw in a small freebie,” she said. “They won’t be used against you or your blood, either by me or by any who come seeking them. I’ll use what you give me in ways that won’t harm your family.”

I sighed, relieved. “That’s… good to hear,” I admitted.

“Wait before you say that,” she said, and drove her suddenly taloned forefinger into the space between the bones of my wrist, splitting flesh and skin in the same gesture.

It ached like acid. When she pulled her talon from the wound, the skin was blackened around the edges, and didn’t start to heal for several seconds, giving the blood plenty of time to well up and spill over.

The Luidaeg took a step back. “All our distinctions are artificial ones,” she said, voice calm. “Water magic and blood magic are the same thing, because blood is nothing more than an isolated ocean. We prison the tides in our veins and pretend to be independent islands. We are water.”

She raised her bloody hand, and the blood dripping from my injured wrist rose with it, floating off the floor and away from my skin as it danced like ribbons in the air between us.

My skin was finally knitting back together, whatever she’d done to slow my recovery fading.

She apparently had enough blood for her purposes, because she didn’t cut me again, just twisted her hand back and forth like she was trying to wind yarn around her fingers.

The blood responded to her motions, swirling closer and resolving into four discrete ribbons, each one about an inch wide and several feet long. They stayed bright red and arterial, not drying or browning.

“Bucer, I need you,” she said, sounding bored.

“Uh, no, I’m good over here,” said Bucer.

The Luidaeg turned to face him. Her eyes, white only a moment before, were suddenly as black as the depths of the sea, captive slices of void surrounded by skin. She pursed her lips, visibly unhappy.

“I will ask one more time,” she said, in a voice like ice breaking on a frozen river. “Bucer O’Malley, come here.”

He swallowed hard and walked toward her on unsteady legs, hooves clacking against the floor.

As he drew closer, she held her hand out and waited for him to offer her his arm.

Bucer shrugged and turned to show her that his arms were bound behind him, making it impossible for him to do as she was asking.

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m a prisoner,” he said. “I can’t accommodate your request.”

The Luidaeg scoffed and snapped her fingers. The chains on his arms fell away in an instant, wood and silver both transmuted into saltwater.

I scowled. The Luidaeg raised an eyebrow and offered him a slow smile, then beckoned him forward again.

“We needed him tied up,” I said.

“This will be better,” said the Luidaeg. “Trust me.”

And I did. Oberon help me, I did.

Bucer shot me a look, clearly miserable, and took the last few steps to reach her before he held his arm out as she was asking.

“I’m not—you know I won’t—Toby’s different from the rest of us,” he babbled. “I can’t heal like she does.”

“I know,” said the Luidaeg. She didn’t stab him like she’d stabbed me, only grasped his wrist and pulled him toward her before using the edge of her thumbnail to lay the skin of his wrist open.

She didn’t cut him as deeply as she’d stabbed me, and while he certainly bled, it was slower, more controlled.

She waited until she judged he’d bled enough, then reached over and pinched off an inch or so from one of the ribbons she’d crafted from my blood, laying it across his wound.

Adding blood to blood only makes things bloodier, and for a moment, I couldn’t see what she’d done. Then she rubbed her thumb across the site of the injury, and there was nothing there but skin. She let Bucer go, stepping back.

“You’re done for now,” she said.

He nodded and fled, hurrying back to the others like he thought they were the last source of safety in his world. He even ducked halfway behind Quentin, using my squire as a shield.

The Luidaeg raised both hands, and Bucer’s blood rose from the floor, becoming a broad, flat ribbon before splitting in two.

She spread her arms, fingers splayed, and the ribbons of blood danced through the air around her, becoming three-strand braids, his blood and mine tangling tight together until the weave was done.

“Hold out your arms,” said the Luidaeg. “You, too, Quentin, if you want to be included in the protections.”

I did as she bid, as did Quentin. Bucer kept his arms firmly by his side until she glared at him again, then raised them up.

Dean also raised his arms. Marcia didn’t. I shot her a confused look, and she shook her head.