.”
“I’m not as sturdy; I get it,” he said.
“Heroes raising heroes to do heroic bullshit since the dawn of time,” said the Luidaeg, almost fondly. She poured the rest of her liquid down the sink. “All of you, get out of my apartment. I’ll go seek my sister as soon as I’m sure you’re gone. I don’t want to see your faces again until you’ve had your dance with drowning.”
I frowned. “Luidaeg—”
“Go!”
We went, out of the kitchen and back into her apartment in the Duchy of Ships, and then out of that to the courtyard where our friends and allies waited, impatient and afraid, to see how much we’d paid for a slim shot at salvation.
ELEVEN
“I COULD GO WITH YOU,” said Patrick for the third time, his eyes on the bottle in Quentin’s hand. His hands twitched, like he was considering the virtues of snatching the thing from my squire. “I know the way.”
“It wouldn’t work for you,” I said. I wasn’t sure of that—the Luidaeg’s magic is strong enough to be surprisingly flexible—but I was sure her deal with me had been for myself and Quentin, not myself and Patrick. If he drank the potion, it might work, or it might do nothing, or it might somehow mystically cause my dose of the stuff to curdle and turn useless. If this was going to happen, it would happen according to the Luidaeg’s rules. “Now come on. Tell me what else we need to know. What’s going to be waiting for us when we get there?”
Patrick sighed heavily. “When you exit the Duchy and swim downward, you’ll find the channels connecting the various Undersea domains to this neutral ground. It’s how the Selkies were able to get here so quickly. The gate to Saltmist is marked with pearls and ancient teak carved in sea otters and kelp. Passing through it will deposit you at our borders. I don’t know what Torin will have done with the guards. Normally, you’d be able to pass through the fields to the palace, and enter through the lowest doors. Right now . . . I don’t know.” He looked at me, briefly, openly hopeless. “They may have destroyed everything. They may have taken it all intact. I don’t know.”
“Then we’ll find out.” I gripped his shoulder, squeezing hard. “Tybalt will take you back to the others. Trust him. Until we get back with Peter, it’s his job to keep you alive.”
“I take my job very seriously,” said Tybalt. “You will be safe in my company.”
“I don’t care about my own safety,” said Patrick. “Save my son.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” I said, and glanced to Tybalt. He offered me a small, tight nod, but didn’t speak, only touched the leather jacket that hung, folded, over one arm. There was nothing left for us to say to each other, not until I had gone and come back. I returned his nod and turned away, offering Quentin my free hand.
“Now?” he asked.
“No time like the present,” I said, popping the cork out of my bottle with my thumb. He did the same, even as he took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, holding on as tightly as he could.
Together, we stepped off the edge of the dock, plummeting toward the surface of the sea. The wind was cold and stung my eyes, sending my hair whipping around my face. I raised my bottle, exactly as we had planned, and gulped down its contents in the instant before my feet hit the water. The liquid was sweet and bitter at the same time, like cherries mixed with battery acid, or honey mixed with snake venom. My body revolted, trying to gag, to spit it out, but it was too late; I had already swallowed, and warmth was radiating out from my belly, filling me.
The speed of my descent was enough that when I finally hit the water, I just kept going, cutting a trail of bubbles down into the depths, until ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet of ocean stretched out above my head. Quentin was gone, his hand ripped out of mine by the impact. So was the bottle, returning to the bottom of the sea, which was probably where the Luidaeg had found them in the first place. They could wait there until she needed them again.
My lungs were starting to burn. I closed my eyes, fighting against the panic that was threatening to claw its way out of my gut and overwhelm