Chapter 16
Sixteen
Iraised my chin to Fieran. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cara.” He sounded disappointed, which was really something, given he had ruined my life today.
I didn’t owe him honesty.
I owed him something sharper.
“You can’t hide here. You are going to be found out.” His gaze felt intrusive, as if he could see to my soul, and I despised him for it. “How old are you?”
“Twenty,” I lied automatically, knowing that was the last year one was allowed to present themself for the Dragon Trials. Not that anyone showed themselves so late. Those who were dragon-marked proudly trained for years, beginning in early childhood.
He crossed his arms impatiently, as if he were holding himself back from throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me off. “If you don’t come with me now, you’ll be caught by the curse.”
That last word, curse, landed like a spark on my skin. “The curse?”
“You don’t know about the curse?” He dragged a hand through his hair, looking stunned. “Gods, you mortals are…. We don’t fight for the queen for the hell of it. If we don’t go through the Trials, if we don’t bond with a dragon, we burn.”
Whatever else the curse was, it was a fairy tale—at least for me. It would have caught me already since I was too old. “There’s no reason to think the curse applies to mortals.”
“Don’t be foolish.” He took a step forward just as my back bumped a hard wall; I hadn’t realized I was backing up from him. He put out a steadying hand, but stopped short of touching me. A wise choice. He sounded so reasonable as he said, “You have to come. There are laws.”
“There are laws?” I let out a hard, bitter laugh, surprised by his change in tactics. “It’s not the laws forcing me to go.”
“I wouldn’t betray your secret if I had a choice.” He seemed affronted, as if I should trust him. “But I’m not going to let you burn.”
I shook my head. “Thanks for your concern, but I’ll risk it.”
“You don’t get a choice,” he said, and my gaze snapped up to his, surprised by the harsh tone he took, his patience apparently breaking.
His every word came out forceful, staccato, like a series of blows.
“The dragons take what belongs to them, one way or another. You’re marked to shift, so you will, or you will die. ”
His clothes were stained with blood and reeked of ichor, and his face was tired beneath that tousled dark hair. If there were gods, that done-with-mortals expression was pretty much what I imagined they must feel when they looked down at our world.
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I disagreed.
He didn’t even acknowledge my statement, as if it were too stupid to waste breath. “There’s one choice you get to make. And that’s whether you go say goodbye to your family, or I just take you.”
“Don’t you dare.” I was furious, but there was a desperate pleading that broke through my voice too. I was powerless, and we both knew it. “You’ve cost my family enough today.”
He looked bored by my rage. “As I said, it’s your choice. If you go with me, you can say goodbye. Pack a few things.”
“If I go to the Trials, I’ll die,” I bit out. “I’ve never trained, and I’m mortal. It seems easier to just leave my effects at home.”
“Efficient,” he agreed, deadpan.
Emotions threatened to overwhelm me. My vision was red at the edges, my hands folded into fists—fists that I knew didn’t matter. I could hit him; he’d just be annoyed at my dramatics.
I fought my feelings down. Desperately. Swallowed the hate that felt like a knife in my throat. “I hate you.”
Any connection I’d imagined between the two of us must have been purely in my imagination. I felt so stupid now. I’d wanted Fieran; I’d wanted to be one of them just as much. But in a dreamy way.
“I know,” he said, and he didn’t sound as if he cared very much at all. “But I’ll help your brother, and you’ll survive the Trials as the first dragon-marked mortal, and you might just change the kingdom.”
I went back to get the Wheelers’ horse only to find the horse a victim, guts spilled out over the cobblestones and the cart smashed. I stared at the blood that was drying in the gaps between the stones.
“Your horse?” Fieran asked.
“No.” My voice sounded distant, as if someone else was speaking. “Our neighbors use their horse and cart to take produce to the market in Bevest. They take ours, too, since we don’t have a horse. Fine thanks for them.”
Now I’d be gone, with no chance of paying them back; my family would struggle enough without my income from the pub. The garden’s leaves would gray as winter fell without Lidi’s magic.
Fieran stuck his hands into his pockets. “Are you going to be outraged if I give them a new horse and cart?”
I scoffed out a laugh before I glanced at his face. “No. Please do.”
There was independent and then there was foolish, and I didn’t intend to fall on the foolish side of the line.
“I will do that. I want to make things right,” he told me, and there was a faint mischievousness about the way he swept his arm toward the road that told me he had another scheme. “You said they’re your neighbors. So lead on.”
The bastard. I couldn’t get away from him. But I did want to make things right with the Wheelers, so I walked toward home with Fieran by my side.
“That’s their house,” I said when we came to it first, pointing at the undisturbed white cottage, with smoke curling from the chimney; it looked so peaceful, as if nothing had happened today. “Will you go settle with them?”
I’d like to be spared the shame of facing Wheeler, who had generously handed over his horse.
“I will.” He looked around meaningfully. From here, we could see my house and the gates covered in flowers; there was also the farmhouse across the street, with laundry snapping in the breeze on their clothesline between two trees. “And then your home is…”
I was fighting to be calm and just-sweet-enough to get what my family needed, but I could not stand the image of him stooping his head to go through our front door and casting that intrusive, glittering gaze over the last fragments of my pathetic life.
“Please spare me your presence. Saying goodbye to my family will be painful enough.”
He did not look particularly moved. Instead, he gave me an assessing look—much like he might’ve given a replacement horse he considered purchasing. “Do you promise me that you won’t try to run away?”
“Where would I run to, Fieran?” My voice came out frayed.
“I imagine you can find someplace.” His mouth curved. When he gave me that look—that smile that seemed knowing and even fond—my palm itched to slap that smirk a way. “You’re a clever little mortal. But all right. You can have your time alone with your family.”
How generous.
“To say goodbye,” I spat at him, before pacing away angrily, leaving him behind me. The cool wind whipped through my hair.
“To say goodbye.” His voice was quiet, steady, but carried to me—as if even the wind obeyed him.
When I glanced back, he stood at the Wheelers’ door.
Wheeler was ushering him inside, and he was a blur for me at this distance, but I could’ve sworn he was smiling.
It was for the best if Fieran charmed Wheeler, who might be more willing to help my family during the coming winter if he weren’t sore from the loss of his horse, but I still felt a stab of betrayal.
Was I the only one to see Fieran’s terrible side?
Fieran stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and turned back. Our gazes collided as if he had known I was watching him, and a jolt ran through me. I turned my back to him and made my way down the road, but I still felt far too aware of him.
Even when he wasn’t at my side, I couldn’t escape the sharp, unsettling way he looked through me. His presence made it hard to calm down, to breathe, to think.
I truly didn’t see anywhere to run. Tay needed Fieran’s help, which meant that I—curse the gods—needed Fieran.
When I reached the fence around our little cottage, the cat wasn’t waiting for me, and the fields were empty; the animals were already in the barn and the coop.
I stopped with my hand on the gate, knowing when I came out tonight, it would be for the last time I touched it for a long time. Probably forever.
I studied the scene the way it would be without me. Our home, like the others on the outskirts of the village, had been untouched; if I hadn’t dragged Tay to the healer, the three of us could’ve been safe at home, out of the way of the monsters.
Smoke rose in a thin but steady stream from the chimney, and the lights shone out from the windows. A riot of flowers wrapped the fence posts and colorful blooms nodded their heads everywhere, but they were already beginning to wither. Maybe that was merely my imagination. Maybe not.
I had the sensation that I was already an outsider. I was looking at a home where I did not belong.
If I had left them long ago, if I’d gone to the Trials, then my mother would have already sacrificed Lidi’s magic to Tay’s cure. Would Lidi even miss her magic? Maybe I’d been trying to protect my family while I did nothing but cause them pain.
My fingers tensed on the gate, wishing I could just turn around and walk back to Fieran and let him take me where maybe I should always have gone.
I’d only brought trouble to my family. Once I saw his smug face, my rage would probably re-kindle, but for now, I only felt shame and exhaustion and the sense that an inevitable, well-deserved doom was rising to meet me.
But it would be hard for Lidi and my mother if I disappeared without a goodbye, and at least they could explain my abrupt departure to Tay—who might still be asleep now anyway—so I lifted the latch and went in.
The cottage smelled like fresh blooms and crushed mint tea with lemon and a hint of woodsmoke. I breathed in deeply, trying to hold onto the scent of home.
Lidi leapt up when she saw me and rushed to hug me. “Everyone’s talking about what a hero you were.”