Chapter 15
Fifteen
Lidi was different.
I took a breath, steadying myself. Ander and Fieran were both looking on, which was going to kill me.
“Lidi, honey,” I asked. “What happened? I left you with Orx.”
Maybe it wasn’t what I thought. Maybe I was wrong.
“The shifters were in trouble,” she said. “So I had to help them.”
“Lidi, they don’t need your help.” I glanced at Fieran, despite my best intentions. He looked even more god-like than he had yesterday, tall and muscular and seeming to glow from within. There was no mistaking him for a mortal. “They’re shifters.”
“She called us into the shop when we were on the run,” Fieran supplied helpfully. “She’s clever and brave like her sister.”
“I didn’t ask you what happened, Fieran.” The words would’ve sounded more hostile if I didn’t sound so shaky. “Lidi. Did the monsters hurt you?”
Did the burrowers take your magic? Maybe I had misunderstood what I saw from a distance. I didn’t want to examine why I felt so desperate for that to be the answer.
But no matter what, the magic that would have paid for Tay’s healing was lost. Despair was a wild, writhing thing in my chest, something that made it impossible to breathe fully.
I dared another furious look at Fieran. Had they endangered my sister? Had she been bitten and had her magic taken by the burrowers? There was blood on her arm, and I took her wrist in mine carefully, peeling back the fabric slowly and expecting to find a wound.
But there was no wound.
Someone else’s blood had soaked into her clothes while they stole from her.
“They needed my magic,” Lidi said in a small, hesitant voice.
“Who needed your magic?” I asked, slow and thick and unwilling.
“We did.” Fieran stepped beside Lidi, towering over us both. He rested his hand on her shoulder, and I almost ripped it off to try to beat him with it, no matter how much bigger he was than me.
“Don’t touch my sister,” I ground out as I rose to my feet.
He studied me with an expression I couldn’t read, but crossed his arms over his chest.
I whirled, the world red at the edges. Both Fieran and Dairen were soaked in blood. Dairen watched me with wide, worried eyes.
“Which one of you?” I barely recognized my own voice, livid with rage.
Fieran wasn’t even looking at me. His gaze was soft, kind, focused on Lidi.
“It’s all right, Lidi,” Fieran said.
He spoke if he had some rotted bond with her, and I knew, and I wanted to rip his eyes out, and I wanted to fall to the ground and scream.
“What did you do?” I demanded. I looked down at Lidi, and her eyes were wide and afraid, the way they’d been when the townie kids picked on her about her magic.
Afraid of me.
I swallowed the rage that choked me and stilled myself, although I was sure I couldn’t do anything about the flush in my cheeks or the tension that stiffened my face and body.
“It’s all right, Lidi,” I echoed that rotted asshole. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She’s a hero,” Fieran said, as if that would be a helpful thought.
“Maybe,” I said. “But you took something you had no right to take from her, you monster.”
Fieran just studied me, his expression cool, his gaze almost sympathetic.
His calm demeanor really just encouraged my homicidal urges at the moment.
I’d been fighting for two things. Lidi’s magic and my brother’s life. I hadn’t been able to have both.
Now, I’d have neither.
While I’d been focused on Lidi, one of them had laid Tay down on a makeshift pallet of blankets. The sight of Tay, sick and sleeping again now, away from our cottage and perhaps never to walk back through the gate under his own power, made me want to die.
No, that wasn’t true. I never wanted to die. I wanted to kill Fieran if I couldn’t make the world be the way it was supposed to be.
“I need to get Lidi home.” I wrapped my arm around her, trying to convey that she was safe, that she was loved.
“I gave it to him,” Lidi told me again.
“I know you did,” I said. “That was a brave, kind, wonderful thing you did, Lidi. But he shouldn’t have taken it.”
Fieran’s coming had left me with a sort of hope and excitement that I hadn’t felt in years. Now I felt like a fool, and I despised him for it.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, taking a step closer.
I raised my hand to stop him. “I would not come within stabbing distance of me right now.”
His lips curled up slightly before he managed to stop himself.
Clearly, he was not concerned by my stabbing potential.
“I took your sister’s magic because it was the only way to save the rest of your village.
It was the only way to save Dairen. And your sister gave it to me freely, because she’s smart and brave, just like you. ”
The exaggerated compliment enraged me more. “Oh, go fuck yourself. You think you’re going to compliment me and I’m going to forgive you for stealing my precious little sister’s magic?”
“I’m telling you the truth, not squirming for forgiveness,” he said.
I had nothing left to bargain with. Lidi’s magic was gone.
This asshole must have money and power and therefore the ability to barter for Tay’s cure.
I needed him to save my brother’s life.
“Good, because you won’t get forgiveness from me,” I said, then swallowed the rest of my words, trying to hold back my anger. For now.
He was watching me with those intrusive golden eyes as if he could see me put on the mask. But he still asked, “What do I do to make this right, Cara?”
You could die. That might be a good start. I have many imaginative suggestions on how.
I couldn’t say the words in front of Lidi. I swallowed heavily.
“Hey, Lidi,” Ander said suddenly. “I need to carry your brother home. Can you show me the way?”
I looked at Ander, shocked by his deep, rich voice and the calm it settled over the room. He made eye contact with me, a question in his gaze.
“Thank you,” I said, even though it felt odd to send my sister with one of these shifter assholes after what they’d done.
Then my mother was there, running toward us frantically. I smiled at Lidi and gave her a gentle shove toward her, hoping that smile had seemed like more than the bearing of teeth. I could not deal with my mother right now.
“I came home to find you all, and the house was empty.” She sounded furious, but fury and fear often were knit together for her. “Where did you go?”
“We’re all fine,” I said woodenly. Though it wasn’t true. None of us would ever be the same after today. “Tay needed a healer.”
Ander had picked my brother up again to carry him home; Tay’s pale face lolled against his shoulder. He tried to rouse himself, muttering, and my mother pressed her hand to her mouth, her face crumpling like an apple decayed.
“A healer,” my mother repeated.
“Lidi and I took him.” The words were flat and heavy. It was another time that I had carried the burden on my own when I wished I’d had my mother. “While we were here, burrowers attacked, and the shifters…”
Dairen looked stricken, as if he were on the verge of confessing, and I shot him a hot, hate-filled look that my mother didn’t see because she was focused on Tay. I was the one who had ruined every life in our family; I wanted to choose how we had that conversation.
Ander looked at me over both their heads, his gaze scrutinizing, and then his gaze flickered to Fieran. Something unspoken passed between Fieran and Ander.
“We were able to stop the burrower attack,” Ander told my mother. “Everything is going to be all right. They’re gone. But now there’s a lot of devastation with which to reckon.”
“Take Lidi home, Mam.” I hadn’t called my mother that in a long time, but she looked so small, almost mouse-like, with her arms wrapped around Lidi.
She looked at me as if she wanted to hug me, and if I were a better person, I would’ve reached to hug her.
“Ander will carry Tay home. The healer gave him something so he could rest.”
“Lead the way.” Ander seemed to project confidence and calm that even cooled my mother’s fear.
Fieran smiled and inclined his head to my mother respectfully, but she gave him a long, cold look that made me realize how much we probably looked alike, except for twenty-five years between us.
Lidi waved goodbye to Fieran, who waved back. The look that passed between Fieran and Lidi—as if they were bonded by him stealing her magic—enraged me. Lidi didn’t know yet what she had lost.
As soon as they had gone, Dairen tried to speak to me, his tone distraught. I put my hand up to stop him, turning away. It might not be his fault that he’d been healed by my sister’s stolen magic, but I wasn’t ready.
“I need to talk to you,” I told Fieran tightly.
“I need to talk to you,” he returned. He didn’t seem to share Dairen’s grief and regret. “Privately.”
He swept his arm to indicate someplace—it was hard to tell where, given the destruction of the village around us. I raised my chin and went with him, though.
Fieran had the ability to take my sister’s magic.
He’d done it without the ceremony with which the Fae stripped our magic away.
The ceremony hid how vulnerable we were, how our magic could be taken at any time.
But the shifters were Fae-born too; their magic just took a different shape.
I’d never seen them the same as the Fae who stole our magic.
Until today.
The streets were wreckage. Orx wandered outside, his face stunned, and stared at his ruined window and door. Then he bent and began to pick up fragments of smashed relics that had sat in the shop window.
Someone was weeping in the ashes of the village. I couldn’t see them, but I heard them crying.
“Let’s get out of here,” Fieran said, as if he needed to be away from this scene. He tried to guide us between two half-collapsed buildings toward the forest.
I stopped and faced him instead. I wasn’t stepping into the trees with him. From here, I could still hear the woman weeping, and I didn’t want to leave the devastation behind. Fieran would go soon, but we would be left with pain that lasted years.
“I thought you were supposed to protect us.” My voice came out cool and hard.
“That is the job.” He looked at me with an unflappable calm that made me want to hurt him. “And that’s what we did today.”
“My village is destroyed. Half the houses are damaged—”
“There are two dead,” he interrupted. “A tragedy. But not the tragedy it would have been if we hadn’t been here to stop the monsters. Your village would have been annihilated.”
“I thought you could protect us—I thought you were like—” I cut myself off. I’d been about to say gods, but I couldn’t admit that. I couldn’t admit, either, that I’d felt safe because he was here in the village. I’d been looking for him as if he would rescue us, right before he ruined everything.
“How do I help, Cara?” he cut in, his voice steady, almost gentle, as if it could possibly be that simple to undo what he’d done.
For a heartbeat, I could only stare at him. The smell of smoke and blood hung heavy in the air, the ruins of my world stretching around us. My hands were shaking—not from fear, not entirely—but from the sheer effort of holding everything together.
I had to focus. I couldn’t afford to fall apart now. This was my last chance to make things right before he left us all here in the ruins.
“My brother, Tay, is dying. I was trying to find a way to save his life without taking Lidi’s magic—” My damned voice broke on her name, but I went on, pretending that I hadn’t heard it, even though Fieran’s face twisted with sympathy…or guilt. “But now I need…”
He waited for me to finish, then added for me, “Help.”
The word struck me like a slap. “I didn’t need help until you ruined my plans.”
“I know.” His tone was measured, careful. “I’ll take care of your brother. Our healers can preserve his life while I negotiate a Fae cure. But I’m about to ruin your plans again.”
How had he said so easily that he’d take care of Tay? I was still stuck on his careless promise when I finally registered his threat. “What?”
“I have to head back to the capital,” he said. “And you’ll come with me.”
My emotions tangled together in a painful knot: anger, grief, responsibility for my family, disappointment, and a sharp sting of fear. He had to know my secret. My body felt hollowed out, as if there was nothing left of me save these emotions.
“Save my brother’s life, then.” I raised my chin sharply.
I didn’t dare provoke him when Tay needed him.
But I despised him, for making me scrape for the shreds of my dreams.
He was studying me with that damned intrusive gaze. Only the knowledge that I needed him—needed this arrogant, infuriating shifter—kept me from trying to strangle him with my bare hands.
“You’re lying to me.” His eyes burned gold, too bright, too knowing. “I want to help your brother, Cara. But you have to come with me. There’s no tricking or lying your way out of that.”
“Why?” My voice came out raw, brittle, the question tearing from me like something broken loose.
I already knew, but I had to hear the accusation.
He stepped closer, the air between us sparking with heat.
Then his hand rose, fingers brushing my jaw before sliding to my throat. His palm was warm, his touch maddeningly gentle. When his fingertips grazed the mark on my skin, the world seemed to ignite.
Fire roared beneath my flesh. My pulse stuttered. The mark flared to life like a brand being pressed against me from the inside.
I gasped, heat and fury tangled until I couldn’t make sense of my emotions.
“You belong with your own kind. You’re not one of them. You never were,” he said softly, his voice rough with something I couldn’t name. His thumb brushed my jaw, almost tender. Then, with the faintest ghost of a smile, he added, “Little dragon.”
The words sank into me like a curse.