The world turned to ice, making me feel like going to sleep would be not just comforting, but final. I screwed my eyes more tightly closed, hands seeking Tybalt’s arm and clinging. I’d been through these shadows before. I could make it out the other side, if I could just hold on . . .

Sometimes I think Tybalt times our little runs to match the absolute limit of what I can take. I was about to breathe in when we broke through into warmth and light once more, Quentin and Connor coughing and wheezing behind us. It was too much light; even with my eyes closed, it burned. I whimpered, burying my face against Tybalt’s chest. He covered my head with one hand, barking an order, and the lights dimmed until I could look up and slowly open my eyes.

We were in an alley. The streetlights were swathed in fabric; that explained how Tybalt could have them dimmed. Cait Sidhe in feline and human forms watched from every flat surface. What I could see of the skyline reflected Berkeley by night, with the familiar form of the University clock tower rising above everything else. We were outside San Francisco. I was as safe as I could get without leaving the Kingdom entirely.

That was all the encouragement I needed. “Tybalt?”

“Yes?”

“Are we safe now?”

“Fairly, yes.” He sounded amused. I lifted my head to face him, and frowned at the undiluted relief in his eyes. Looking at him, you’d think saving me was some sort of miracle. “The Queen’s guards can’t enter my Court without my consent.”

“Good,” I said, closing my eyes on the strange satisfaction in his expression. There was too much iron in my blood, and I was too tired; I couldn’t cope. “Wake me when the world ends.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said.

I would normally have called him on that. I’m not normally exhausted and trying to shake off a bad case of iron poisoning after an unexpected run down the Shadow Roads. I went limp against his chest, trusting him to hold me up, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“OCTOBER.”

The voice was distant enough to be of no concern; if people wanted to talk to me from a million miles away, that was their problem, not mine. The iron singing in my blood was doing its best to drown out everything else. It was almost like being back in Blind Michael’s mists—that horrible place where there was nothing but suffering and songs I never quite understood—except for one crucial difference: when I was in Blind Michael’s mists, I didn’t hurt. Sure, I was the captive of a mad Firstborn who planned to make me his unwilling bride, but I wasn’t in pain when he wasn’t actually beating me.

Now that I had the cold gray fog of iron-song burning through me, I was starting to wonder whether that hadn’t been the better deal.

“October, please.”

The voice hovered on the very the edge of the category I’d internally dubbed “almost worth bothering to pay attention to.” I wanted to tell whoever it was to shut up, go away, and let me fall back into pain-free oblivion, but I couldn’t get my body to obey me. It was vexing as hell.

“I know you can hear me.”

Did he? Something in the tone made me realize I knew the speaker: Tybalt. Oh, well. If anyone had the right to bother me while I was trying to figure out whether I was going to die, it was probably him.

“Please listen.” He paused. The nuances of his tone were becoming clearer. I couldn’t move—Oberon’s balls, I couldn’t even tell him he was right about my being able to hear him—but I could at least try to figure out what he was talking about.

The pause lengthened, stretching out until I thought he might have changed his mind and gone away. Then, much closer, like he was whispering in my ear: “What she did, what your mother did, you’ve done it before. Your scent was different when you left the pond. That’s why I followed you so closely those first few months. I was trying to decide whether you were you, or something else, trying to trick us all. The changes were subtler, but they were there. You did it to yourself to break the bastard’s spell.”

There was real hatred in his tone when he mentioned Simon. That might have been a surprise, if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the dual stresses of pain and paying attention. I filed the surprise away for later.

“I don’t know whose child your mother is, which of the Three made her, but it’s time to stop letting her lies define you. She’s Firstborn, October, and you’re the only child of her line I’ve ever known. You can change your blood if you have reason enough. And Toby . . . humans don’t die of iron. They die of time, but not of iron.”

His breath was hot on my cheek. I realized, with a dim lack of surprise, that this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to talk me back from the edge of dying: I really did hear him begging me to live on that long-gone day when Devin’s hired lackey shot me and sent me staggering into the Tea Gardens to bleed to death.

“Shift yourself the other way. Be as human as you can, and survive.” He paused. Something touched the side of my face, too faint to be identified as anything but contact—kiss or slap, my iron-riddled body couldn’t tell the difference. And then, quieter still: “Don’t leave me again. Please.”

And he was gone, leaving me alone in the darkness where the iron sang songs of suffering and eternity. With a sigh that felt a thousand times too large for my aching body, I surrendered and let myself topple back into the black. Tybalt’s words had been a nice dream, but they were silent now.

Only the iron remained.

Another voice, some untold time later; this one was tired, and sounded almost disinterested as it asked, “Is passing out your hobby or something? Because if I were you, I’d get a better one. Like, I don’t know, bank robbery.”

“What?” The fact that I could answer surprised me into opening my eyes. I found myself looking at an oaken ceiling covered in a coat of dust thick enough to give Hobs heart failure. I didn’t recognize it. I searched for words, settling for: “Where am I?”

“Like you don’t know? Welcome back to the Court of Cats.” The speaker coughed. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

I grudgingly turned my head, eyes widening as I saw the tiger-striped changeling sprawled on a pallet of crumpled rags to my left. “Julie?”

“Currently. Check back in a few hours and you may get a different answer.” Sweat matted her hair into cherry-red spirals, and her voice was raspy and strained. That’s probably why it took me so long to realize who she was. “Forgive me for not getting up and killing you, but I hurt too much to move.”