Chimes at Midnight

It was one that I was more than happy to answer. I stepped forward, and he wrapped his arm around me, kissing my forehead before resting his head against my shoulder. We stood there, shivering, holding each other up.

I don’t know how long we’d been standing that way when he said, “I need you to do something for me, October.”

“What?”

“The hope chest. I need you to use it on yourself.”

I pulled away from him, eyes wide. “What?”

“I asked you this the last time I saved you from this dungeon: please, for me, make yourself human.” He let me go in order to hold out the hope chest. “The iron can’t kill you if it can’t hurt you.”

“Tybalt, no.”

“Please—”

“I said no!” I held up my hands. “Oak and ash, we just spent how long turning me fae, and you want me to undo everything so you don’t have to watch me die? You think I should have to watch you die? Was there a contest somewhere along the way to decide who loved who more, and I lost? I won’t do it. I’m not going to change myself just to survive a little bit longer.”

“But we know you can use the hope chest,” he said, pleading. “You don’t have to turn all the way human. Just enough to buy yourself some time, and let you figure out another way . . .”

“If I tell that chest I want to be human, it’s not going to stop,” I shot back. “I’ve never touched it when I was this weak. I won’t be able to control it, and it’ll burn the fae right out of me. We don’t even know if the goblin fruit is still in my system! Maybe I’d just be condemning myself to an even worse death, with no escape clause. And it doesn’t matter, because I won’t do it. I won’t leave you like that. I can’t. Stop asking me.”

“Oh, October.” He pulled the hope chest away again. I’ve never been so relieved by such a little gesture. Then he chuckled. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re good for one another.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked, forcing a smile. “We’re great for one another. Who else would show you awesome things like the Queen’s secret iron torture room? Admit it. I’m the best girlfriend you could ask for.”

“You are definitely the only girlfriend I have asked for in a long time,” said Tybalt. He put his head back down my shoulder, sighing. “This seems like a very anticlimactic death. I am afraid I do not approve.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” I closed my eyes. We were all going to die in here. A Cait Sidhe, a Dóchas Sidhe, and a Tuatha de Dannan, and there was nothing we could do to save ourselves.

My eyes snapped open.

“I can do this,” I breathed, and pulled away, pulling the knife from my belt in the same gesture. Tybalt looked at me in alarm. I shook my head. “No, not that. I mean, I’m not going to stab you. I mean . . . look, if this works, be ready to move.”

“October?” he asked, bemused.

“No time.” I knelt next to Nolan, grabbing his hand and turning it, palm upward, in mine. Then, as carefully as I could under the circumstances, I slashed a line across the meaty part of his thumb and clamped my mouth down over it.

A red veil slammed down over my perceptions as Nolan’s memories overwhelmed my reality. Arden doesn’t want to challenge for the throne, but she’s wrong. This woman isn’t our sister, and she’ll lead the Kingdom into ruin. If Arden won’t listen, I’ll go myself. For Father’s sake, and for my sister’s sake, because this so-called “Queen” will never leave us in peace—

There was nothing there that I didn’t already know, and so I forced my way past it, trying to filter through his disjointed, dreaming memories. I’d never done anything like this before, but I’d moved through memories, and the principle was the same: all I had to know was what I was looking for.

I found it buried in a memory of Nolan and Arden playing hide-and-seek through Muir Woods on a beautiful starry night years before I was born. They were chasing each other from tree to tree, and every time one of them was about to be tagged by the other, they would disappear, Arden leaving the scent of blackberry flowers and redwood bark in her wake, Nolan leaving the scent of fresh blackberries and sap. I grabbed the memory of that moment as hard as I could, clinging to it. This was just like pushing strength into Tybalt, or letting May guide me through changing one of the Queen’s transformations. I could do this. I could do this.

Gathering every ounce of strength I could find in myself or borrow from Nolan, I raised my hand and transcribed a circle in the air. The smell of blackberries and sap followed my fingers, faint but there. I pulled my mouth away from Nolan’s hand, and whispered, “Now.”

Tybalt grabbed me a split second later, somehow managing to lift both me and Nolan off the floor as he leaped. He didn’t have to hold us for long. The world dipped and wove—