Ashes of Honor

The mongrel girl is flagging. I thought she would collapse long before this, but fear, it seems, is a grand motivator; a few threats to the mother she loves and the father she’s never known, and she was so much more willing to work with us. Still, holding a portal this size open for so long is doubtless…draining. I doubt she will live. Through his eyes, I watched Chelsea struggling to keep a passageway large enough to drive a car through open. I could see Riordan’s garage on the other side—and they were driving a car through, of a sort. A footman in Riordan’s livery was steering a cart through the opening, drawn by fae steeds and laden with farming equipment. From the tracks crushed into the bracken, it wasn’t the first, either.

“How much longer?”

Riordan turns her back on the supply train as she looks toward me. Behind her, that mongrel bitch’s spoiled little squire is bound and gagged in a wicker chair, watching helplessly as the wagons roll through. “Why in such a hurry, my friend?” she asks. “We’re both getting what we want. Shouldn’t you savor your victory?”

“I’ll savor it when that door is closed, and I never need to see your face again,” I snap. “How much longer?”

She sighs, looking disappointed. “You never did have a sense of humor, Sammy. Most of the supplies and livestock are through, and all my people. Why don’t you make yourself useful? Go check on our prisoners. Make sure they’re not getting into any mischief.”

Her laughter follows me out as I use her blood charm to access the Shadow Roads that would otherwise be locked to me in this place, the cold and the dark numbing the sting of being mocked by a member of her debauched Court. And then the light, and sweet Titania, what a gift—they’re here, and this time, no one will stop me from doing what needs to be done—

I jerked myself free of the blood when my/Samson’s eyes fixed on the four of us standing in the darkened hall. There was nothing he could tell me after that, except for maybe what it felt like to get stabbed with my own knife. It probably wasn’t going to be that different from getting stabbed with anything else, and none of those stabbings were much fun. Pass.

“That’s why she was willing to kidnap a police officer,” I muttered, half-gasping. “I knew she wasn’t planning on going back, but this…this…”

“October?” Tybalt’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

“We need to get back to the cliff.” I spat on the floor, trying to get the taste of Samson’s blood—of Samson’s life—out of my mouth. “Riordan’s there, she’s got some sort of supply train going. This was never just a kidnapping.”

“What is it, then?”

I managed to lift my head, twisting around to look at him. “It’s a colonization,” I said. “Riordan is recolonizing Annwn, and she’s using Chelsea to do it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

ETIENNE DIDN’T COME BACK as the minutes ticked by, until we couldn’t wait any longer. Riordan’s wards couldn’t shut off the Shadow Roads completely—not here—but Tybalt hadn’t been in Annwn long enough to anchor them, and we didn’t have Luna’s favor to open the Rose Road for us. I was grateful not to be alone as Tybalt and I crept out of the hall and onto the moon-drenched moor together.