The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,126

said Tybalt. “It’s small, and there’s no scent that would alert me to the presence of a King or Queen, but it’s stable all the same, and I believe we should be safe here, for now.”

“Great. So get this thing out of me.” There was something wrong with the knife. It wasn’t just the pain, which was coming in bigger waves now that the ice was melting and leaving my already raw nerves exposed to the air; it was the shape of it, the way it felt tangled with flesh and bone and . . .

Oh. Oh, yes; that would be a problem. I squeezed my eyes a little tighter shut and added, in a small voice, “Please.” Silently, I added still further, Forgive me.

There was a long pause, as if Tybalt could hear everything I wasn’t saying. Then, gently, I was lain on my side, stretched out on what I thought might be a pile of canvas sacks. The things that got lost in a floating Duchy would have to be different than the things that got lost on the land. Although maybe the Court of Cats here also had access to shipwrecks, vessels lost at sea and thus technically within their purview? They could drain the rooms they added to their slowly evolving architecture, and the dampness would fade. Or maybe they focused on air-filled rooms, or chambers that had somehow never been opened to the sea. Maybe—

The feeling of the knife being jerked out of my spine was a pain like nothing I’d ever felt before or wanted to feel again. Pain has flavors, and I’ve become something of an unwitting connoisseur of the many terrible forms that it can take. The dull, aching throb; the pointed sear; the jabbing agony. This was something greater than any of them. This was something so big and terrible that it somehow managed to cross from pain into numbness and back again. I’d intended to hold my breath when the moment came, to keep back what air I could in case the worst happened. The pain was so big it knocked every bit of air out of me, leaving me wrung-out and gasping.

And then I couldn’t breathe, because nothing below my neck was responding to my commands. Even the pain was gone, cut off so abruptly that it left a great, aching chasm in my awareness. It was like the sensation of having a rotten tooth pulled, only in this case, the tooth was my entire body.

“Oh sweet Maeve.” Tybalt’s voice was barely more than a horrified whisper. “October, I think I’m holding a piece of your spine.”

I closed my eyes. That was what I’d thought I felt, when I was trying to sort out the shape of the knife jammed into my body. Torin might not have had the time to aim as carefully as he wanted to, but luck had been enough to put his blade right next to my spine, and to hook it through one of my vertebrae.

I’d never had a piece of bone entirely removed from my body before. Academically, I wondered whether it was going to grow back, or whether this would be a step too far for even my magic to deal with. I’d risen from the dead, probably multiple times. I’d healed from injuries that should have been, could have been, and had been fatal. But could I recover from this?

Tybalt hissed, dropping to his knees next to me. “You insufferable woman,” he muttered. I tried to listen through the haze of oxygen deprivation and shock. This was like being back on the Shadow Roads, almost, except that there was light here. There was warmth. There was air, even if I couldn’t reach it. All things being equal, this was a much more pleasant place to die.

A hand cupped my chin, turning my face even further toward the light. I still couldn’t feel anything below my neck. My lungs weren’t even burning, just . . . failing to pull in any additional air. That was going to be a problem very soon. It was probably a problem already.

“You are direly fortunate that I love you,” said Tybalt, and pressed his wrist against my lips.

Blood filled my mouth, bright and hot and brimming with memories that weren’t mine. I swallowed involuntarily, and swallowed again as the act of swallowing seemed to unlock something in my chest, making air feel, if not fully achievable, at least like something that might return to the world