Ashes of Honor

My skin started giving way before the rope did, the smell of my blood seeping into the air to mingle with the scent of the bracken. I hate the sight of blood, but the smell of it strengthens me, even when it’s my own. It’s just one more annoying side effect of my increasingly inhuman biology. Still gritting my teeth—against actual pain now, not the promise of pain that might be coming—I pressed my back into the stone and sawed harder. The hardest part was forcing myself to keep sawing when the stone finished wearing through the skin at the base of my wrists. I could feel my flesh shredding. I could also feel the twine shredding. I kept going.

The first strand of twine snapped just when I was starting to think I’d have to stop and throw up from the pain. I tugged experimentally, and the remaining twine drew tight, giving me something new to saw against. I took a shaky breath, bit my lip, and went back to work.

The fact that I can bounce back from almost any injury that doesn’t kill me is usually an asset. At times like this, when I would have once needed to worry about permanently damaging my hands, it’s a godsend. There’s just one problem: I heal supernaturally fast, but pain still hurts. Normally, if you hurt yourself enough, and keep hurting yourself, your nerves will give you up as a lost cause, and you’ll stop hurting. Not optimal, but better than the alternative.

I, on the other hand, was already starting to heal. There was an itching underneath the agony that meant the cuts I’d made were beginning to knit themselves closed, flesh and muscle regenerating. And I was still sawing, which meant I was reopening those wounds faster than they could close, and the pain never got any duller. Blacking out was starting to sound like a great idea when the twine finally snapped.

I yanked my hands apart, ignoring the way the remains of the twine dug into my wounds, and bent forward to brace my palms against the floor, lean to the side, and puke. I stayed in that position for a while, dry-heaving and waiting for the pain to subside enough to let me sit up.

Eventually, my head cleared, and I pushed myself upright. The worst of the damage to my wrists was gone, although my hands were sticky with blood. I peeled away the last loops of twine with shaking fingers, wadding it up and throwing it into the bracken. The room was dark enough that the blood on my hands was just blackness, like spilled ink.

It’s just ink, I told myself firmly and wiped my fingers on what was soon to be yet another ruined pair of jeans.

It says something about Faerie’s sense of humor that the daughter of the best blood-worker in Faerie can’t stand the sight of her own blood. At least the effort of wiping the blood off distracted me from the vague itch of my wrists healing themselves.

Once the pain was gone and my hands weren’t quite so sticky, I bent forward and untied the twine around my ankles. The knots were tight, but not so tight I couldn’t unpick them with my fingers. Carefully avoiding the puddle of puke to my side, I braced one hand against the blood-dampened wall, and stood. My head spun one last time as I adjusted to being upright. Then everything settled, and I was loose, relatively uninjured…and entirely unarmed.

“Crap,” I said, and scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my hands. The movement caused my jacket to shift, and something in my pocket went “clink.”

I dropped my hands.

When Duchess Riordan’s guards knocked me out and took me away, they’d confiscated my knife, but they hadn’t searched my pockets for less obvious dangers. I still had the Luidaeg’s Chelsea-chaser, which was currently glowing neutral starlight pale. And I had both the power dampener and its counteragent tucked into their respective pockets. Which meant that Quentin and Tybalt, wherever they were, probably also had theirs. Things were looking up.

Speaking of looking up…I crossed to the window, leaning onto my toes as I looked out on the moon-washed moor. I was definitely in Annwn, and I just as definitely wasn’t looking up: the waves of heather and broom that stretched out around the tower where I was imprisoned were way, way down. Far enough down, in fact, that I couldn’t even consider jumping a viable means of escape. If it had been only fifty feet, I would probably have broken the bones in both my legs, but I would have recovered. This was more like two hundred feet, and no matter how quickly I heal, a drop like that would kill me.

When all else fails, try the direct route. I dropped back to the floor and walked to the door, a heavy oak monstrosity barred with magic-dampening rowan wood. This must be the humane dungeon. They didn’t want prisoners using magic to open the door, but they hadn’t resorted to barring it with iron. Thank Oberon for that. The last thing I needed to add to my day was a bad case of iron poisoning.