Page 63 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

Tybalt pushed away from Madden and into my arms, spending a few seconds there, pressed against my chest to let me feel the depth and volume of his purr, before he leapt down to the floor and became a man again, the scent of musk and pennyroyal swirling in the air around him.

“October!” he exclaimed, taking me in his arms and wrapping me in a fierce, almost desperate embrace. “What happened? Did they get you, too? Are you injured? What happened to your hands? Is the baby—”

“Whoa, babe,” I said. “Slow down. You can only throw so many questions at me before you stop to breathe, and I have some questions for you. Are you all right? We’ve been looking for you.”

“Dame Altair did something that locked down my access to the Shadow Roads,” he said, tone grim.

He put his hands to either side of my face, studying me like he hadn’t seen me in a hundred years.

“Once imprisoned, I couldn’t leave. The walls are stone, and the door wood, but she covered the door in garlands of rose thorn and iron thread, like some bitter tapestry.

I couldn’t touch it. I’ve been lurking next to the doorway, ready to make my escape at the first opportunity presented to me. ”

“I just wish that opportunity hadn’t been Madden.” I looked past Tybalt to where Walther was using a strip torn from his own shirt to dab at Madden’s wounds, trying to clear at least some of the blood from his face. “Poor guy didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s okay, Toby,” said Madden. “He missed my eyes.”

I returned my attention to Tybalt, leaning in to kiss him quickly. “It’s good to see you, sweetheart.”

“Yes. And both of you are well?”

“We are.”

He frowned, deeply. “I know now probably isn’t the time to say I wish you’d listened to me about staying safe inside the house—”

“No, it’s not. We’re here because someone went to a lot of trouble to lure me out, and I was desperate enough to take the bait. That doesn’t mean I wanted a jailer instead of a husband. Safety shouldn’t feel like something to escape.”

Tybalt sighed. “I never wanted you to see me that way.”

“We all make mistakes,” I said. “But none of this would have happened if I hadn’t felt so confined that I was willing to make poor choices for a moment’s freedom, and if I hadn’t been trying so hard not to upset you. I have to be myself, even when I’m vulnerable, or bad things happen to us.”

He blinked, then sighed and drooped, taking his hands away from my face. “I understand.”

“Oh, for—this isn’t your fault , Tybalt. I agreed to stay in lockdown, even when I knew it was making me miserable, and you were just trying to do what was best for our family. If there’s anyone to blame here, it’s Dame Altair and her damned brother, and my grandmother.”

He frowned. “Janet?”

“Janet,” I confirmed.

“I’m going to kill her.”

“Not if I get to her first. Family privilege.”

Everyone else grumbled, until May finally said, “I could claim the same thing.”

“Oh, probably,” I agreed. I turned back to Tybalt. “Bucer O’Malley is here. He’s a Glastig. He’s changed sides, and I’m pretty sure he’s working with us at this point, but we didn’t find him in any of the holding rooms, and he may well be back with Dame Altair.”

Tybalt’s frown deepened. “The Glastig can convince a person of almost anything.”

“They can,” I agreed. I half-hoped we wouldn’t run into Bucer again; the first time someone had taken control of Tybalt’s actions, it had been the false Queen, and that encounter had ended with him ripping my throat out with his claws.

It took him ages to get past the horror of that moment, the knowledge of what he had been compelled to do to me.

The more recent time he’d been controlled, it had been Titania, and she had again used him as a weapon against me.

I wasn’t going to let that happen a third time, even if it meant making sure Bucer couldn’t use his magic against anyone else, ever again.

I twined my fingers with his as I turned back to the others, holding fast.

“Madden, you all right over there?”

“I should be,” said Madden. He sneezed, shaking his head the way a dog would, leading with the nose rather than the chin.

Then he sniffed, admitting with embarrassment, “I’m allergic to cats.

Not bad allergic, but allergic enough that it’s not awesome for me to take one to the face. No offense, Your Majesty.”

“None taken,” said Tybalt. “I’m sorry I tried to claw your eyes out.”

Madden waved off the apology with a flap of his hand, looking to be in far too good of spirits for someone who’d just been mauled by a twenty-pound tomcat.

I looked to Quentin and Walther. “You ready to move along?”

“Where are we going?” asked Walther. “I didn’t see an exit.”

“If we backtrack to where I was being held, either Madden or I should be able to pick up the trail our captors left when they brought us here,” I said. “Blood for me, everything else for him.”

Madden whined, the sound distinctly canine. “I still can’t walk on all fours,” he said. “My hands are too hurt.”

“Then I will gladly carry you,” said Tybalt gravely. “Consider it a proper apology for my assault.”

Madden looked startled, but finally nodded. “All right,” he said. “When we get back to where I found Toby…”

“I appreciate your willingness to salve my wounded pride,” said Tybalt.

We started walking again, back the way we’d come.

There were six of us now, fighters and diplomats both, and I began to hope we might be able to get out of here after all.

We would get out of this dungeon, back to where Tybalt could reach the Shadow Roads, and then I’d convince him to carry me with him through the cold and dark at least far enough for us to find a phone.

I’d call Arden. She’d come, descending with all the fury of a Queen, and this would all be over.

This would all be over.

Tybalt stayed close to me as we walked, his hand in mine, careful not to bump into me, but still close enough that I could feel the heat off of his skin, could hear the soft rhythm of his breathing. I squeezed his hand. He shot me a grateful look. I smiled. And still we continued walking.

When we reached the room where I’d been held, I grabbed Tybalt’s arm to keep him from looking inside. “No,” I said, voice low. “You don’t want to see how much I bled for them.”

“I can smell it from here,” said Tybalt, sounding half-strangled—but he didn’t try to look inside the room, and for that, I was grateful.

He turned to Madden. “Can you follow her trail from here?” he asked.

“Can you actually carry me?” Madden replied.

Tybalt nodded solemnly. “I’ve carried more for longer. I can carry you wherever you require.”

Madden eyed him, then folded inward on himself and disappeared, replaced by the red and white dog that was his second form. He sat back on his haunches, whining as he tried to balance without putting any weight on his injured paws.

Tybalt moved to scoop him off the floor, hoisting him with more ease than I would have expected, given that he didn’t spend a lot of time carrying dogs around his Kingdom.

He wound up holding him belly-down, Madden virtually reclining across his arms, plumed tail waving joyfully back and forth as he leaned against Tybalt’s chest.

“We may continue now,” said Tybalt.

He took the lead, Madden sniffing the walls as they moved, indicating the way Tybalt needed to go with jerks of his head and small, almost inaudible noises that never quite rose to the level of barking.

We moved farther and farther from our starting point, my body screaming at the discomfort of it all, my head starting to swim from the need to stop and eat something already.

I forced myself to keep going. I needed to get the iron out of my system.

As soon as I did that, everything would be fine.

My injuries would heal, and my body would get back with the program of tolerating however much abuse I wanted to hurl in its direction.

Then we turned a corner and saw the stairs, stretching upward into the dark like the answer to all our prayers… or the final punishment after a long day of tortures. I stopped dead, staring at them with blank, almost unfocused eyes.

I couldn’t. Even the thought of beginning the climb made my back ache and my knees want to buckle under me.

May looked at my expression and sighed. “Madden, if this is the way out, can you be a biped again?” she asked.

In a twinkling, Madden was back in his humanoid form, still draped across Tybalt’s arms like something out of an old movie. He squirmed, and Tybalt set him on his feet. Madden grinned at him.

“Good carrying,” he said. “You should get a dog. If you ever want to, let me know, and I’ll take you to the shelter.”

“No,” said Tybalt simply, brushing the dog hair off his chest with both hands. “But I was more than glad to assist with our escape. I still can’t feel the Shadows, so clearly we have farther yet to go.”

“That’s why I asked Madden to get down,” said May. “You need to carry October.”

Tybalt turned to look at me, eyebrows raised. “Have you been hiding an injury from me, little fish?”

“Not hiding,” I said, indicating my stomach with a sheepish shrug. “And it’s not an injury so much as it’s a temporary change in ability. I don’t think I can manage the stairs.”

“She’s being coy about how much pain she has to be in by this point,” said May.

“I remember the last time she was pregnant, with Gillian. She’d have shanked anyone who tried to make her climb stairs after this much walking.

She might not have been healing then the way she does now, but she also didn’t have iron poisoning then. ”

“May!” I protested.

Tybalt ignored me, moving to sweep me off my feet and into his arms, getting me into a bridal carry in a matter of seconds.

I didn’t squawk, but relaxed against him as best as I could while my body got busy trying to repair itself.

It was faster without the bracelet, although it was still slower than it should have been, thanks to the iron in my system.

I was mostly just relieved that Tybalt hadn’t freaked out over being forced to acknowledge my iron poisoning.

“We are leaving,” he said, and started up the stairs. The others followed.

We heard nothing as we made the long climb back up to what should have been Janet’s kitchen.

When we stepped through the doorway, however, we found not a well-lit room, but a cavernous space that would have made a dragon proud.

The walls were rough stone, barely shaped from whatever they had been originally, and lined with shelves that reached up into the darkness until they disappeared into the gloom. That was impressive enough.

But what really made the space breathtaking was the contents of those shelves.

They were packed with precious treasures and antiquities, like the back room of a particularly well-funded museum.

Among them were bushels of fruit and even potted plants, the air around them gleaming with the stasis spells that held them as they were, keeping them from falling into dust and decay.

Chests and jars of coins and loose jewels were scattered across the floor, as were wooden crates whose lids were only partially askew. I saw a cage large enough to hold an adult Minotaur, and a Wyvern’s nest complete with eggs, also glimmering inside a stasis shell.

“We found the treasury,” I breathed into the silence.

No one else had anything to say.