Chapter 17
Seventeen
Fieran reached for my bag.
I wrapped my fingers around the strap tightly. I wasn’t going to let him play the gentleman with me after he had devastated my life and Lidi’s.
“How are you going to help my brother?” I demanded. The need to know Tay was going to be all right pounded in my head like relentless waves dragging me away from shore.
“He’s stable for now, Cara. I have to make a deal with the Fae. You know how carefully they control access to healing.”
“I don’t know much about the Fae. The only time I ever saw one was when they hollowed out my magic.
” I didn’t try to hide my bitterness. Concealing my anger was never a strong suit for me anyway.
“Is it really going to take time to save my brother’s life?
Or is that how you’re guaranteeing I come with you? ”
“Cara.” His voice was sharp, and he stopped in the road.
I stared at my natural eye-level, which was somewhere mid-chest on him.
He was wearing a clean tunic that clung to his chest and hung loose over the taper of his waist; while I said goodbye to my family and my life—most likely literally—he’d found time to bathe.
Maybe the grateful Wheelers had watched our door for their new hero.
He put his finger under my chin and pushed up, trying to raise my face to his. I shoved his hand away, but I looked up—and up and up—into his eyes. I didn’t try to hide my scorn.
“I don’t have to do anything to make you come with me,” he said.
“I’m the leader of Clan Bismyth. I shift into the most feared dragon in the kingdom.
And I’m literally twice your size. You are going to come with me.
But you’re welcome to glare at me all you like.
I don’t think you could control those murderous eyeballs of yours anyway. ”
He sounded stern, but also amused, and my murderous fantasies intensified.
“Your brother isn’t going to die,” he promised.
“He is wasting away as we speak.” My voice was very soft, but threaded with fury. I didn’t dare raise my voice above a whisper when I was so emotional.
“I’ll arrange to have him brought to the capital, where he can receive the best care,” Fieran said. “Far better than in this little village. Our care can buy him all the time he needs. And we’ll bargain with the Fae for a cure.”
Then, gently, as if I were slow-witted, he added, “You don’t have to say goodbye to Tay.”
If Tay were with us in the capital, I’d know for myself that he was well cared for and alive. “But no one else from my family comes. Not my mother or Lidi.”
I worried enough about my mother and the risk she’d be exposed as having concealed me from the Trials all this time. At least no one thought much about our village. It felt so far from the Fae cities.
“No,” he agreed. “It’ll just be you and me and Tay, alive and well.”
Fieran brought me with him back to the same field where they had fought the wyrm invasion. It was far from the destruction of the village, idyllic and peaceful. I wondered if he intended to remind me of how we had met—and how grateful I had felt for his existence that day.
I was certainly never again going to be grateful for his existence.
I glanced around at Maura, Asrael, Dairen, and Anayla. They all looked awe-worthy in their form-fitting leathers, braces on their forearms, muscular biceps exposed. Anayla’s white-streaked blue hair whipped back in the breeze.
No one was here from Clan Amber.
I had questions, but I chose to frame the question in the way that I had an inkling would bother Fieran. “Where is Ander?”
“Clan Amber already headed back,” Fieran said briskly, and I hid a smile, reassured that I had struck true.
I looked around, noticing the absence of horses, and realized that they all could fly. Everyone but me. A sudden sense of horror bloomed in me that I fought to hide, forcing my forehead smooth.
Fieran was watching me with that eerie intensity that sometimes made it seem as if he could see right through me and understand what I was thinking. “Asrael is going to give you a ride. Anayla is going to ride with you to make sure that you are safe.”
“Do you think I need a nanny to make sure I won’t fall off the dragon?” I asked tartly. I felt a faint sense of relief, actually, to realize that I wasn’t going to have to ride clutched in his arms.
“I do,” Fieran said. “If you would prefer, I’ll ride with you myself.”
I didn’t try to hide the way I recoiled. I may have exaggerated, just in case he missed how I despised the thought of his touch.
“That’s what I thought. I figured it’d be better for you to ride with Anayla so you can do some thinking. Come to terms with your situation.”
“So thoughtful of you.” I wondered what the rest of them thought about why he was bringing me with them.
But apparently, we were done speaking. Asrael shifted, the ground throbbing underfoot as his front legs planted on the ground. My heart pounded as he raised his massive, horned head to the sky, but then he sank to his knees. He still towered over us all.
Anayla ran, jumped to land on his knee, pushed off, and leapt from there to the back of his neck. She swung herself to sit down, lightly gripping the horned ridges of his head.
There was no way I could physically do that. She leaned over the side of the dragon, all tall, lean grace, and offered me her hand and a bright smile.
“Come grab my hand. I’ll help you up.”
I looked around at the small awe-inducing band, feeling a sick sense of embarrassment. There was no way. If I tried to replicate her movements, I would plant myself face-first into the side of a dragon.
Anayla was looking at me expectantly, as if they weren’t trying to be unkind or humiliate me. They knew mortals were weaker—in theory—but they had no idea that I was so much less physically capable.
“No way out of it.” Fieran’s voice was low and dark near my ear, and suddenly his arm closed around my waist. I struggled automatically, but he was bearing me up into the air. His wings unfurled to either side of us, and the next thing I knew, we were hovering beside the dragon.
He lowered us until my feet were on the slick scales, but my boots slid, unable to find purchase. His grip loosened, but he didn’t let go until I had somewhat found my balance. I pitched forward onto my knees, and forward into place near Anayla.
Fieran offered me a smile. He did not try to hide how smug that smile was.
Then he shifted in midair, one of his enormous wings sweeping over our heads as he banked. I ducked. Anayla didn’t.
“He can be maddening,” she said, giving me a look that said she, too, saw more than I would appreciate. “But he does have his redeeming qualities.”
“Maybe I’ll be able to see them once I get over him destroying everything that mattered to me.” I’d had twin purposes in life: protecting Tay’s life and Lidi’s magic. Now I felt powerless, gripped by forces beyond my control…forces that wore Fieran’s cursedly handsome face.
“Maybe,” she agreed.
Asrael began to move, his body flexing, scales rippling. I grabbed for anything to steady myself. There was nothing to hold on to but the edges of scales, which pinched my fingers flat with his movement.
Without commentary, Anayla swung around me so that she was sitting behind me. She pushed me forward so that I could grip the horned edges of his head. Asrael looked back at us, his head turning to view us with one enormous eye.
She gestured at him, and he took a few more steps, then lumbered into the air. I gripped the ridges until my fingers went white.
She put one hand lightly on my waist—not for her own sake. She seemed confident and steady. But then, she had her own wings. Falling off was not nearly as serious a problem for her as it was for me.
“Where are we going?” I asked Anayla, pulling my voice away. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, not wanting to watch the branches of the trees shrink as we rose higher. “More specifically than the capital?”
“Either to the barracks at the Trials or to Fieran’s house. Usually, we would go to Fieran’s house if the queen hasn’t given orders otherwise.”
She left out why things would be different this time, but I assumed I was the reason.
My chest felt tight. “Fieran’s house.”
The thought of being in his home felt like a fresh new trap.
“It’s nice,” she assured me, as if that would be my problem with staying in his home.
“Where are you from?” I asked her.
She named a city I didn’t recognize. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to geography. For someone who never went over the mountain, it had seemed pretty irrelevant when my teacher tried to teach me in the schoolhouse.
“Are your parents dragon shifters too?”
She froze—just for an instant—but it was enough for any pleasant feelings between us to curdle.
I had misstepped somehow. As usual—though it was never effective—I tried to make things better by talking more. “I heard that having dragon shifters in the bloodline makes it more likely, but doesn’t guarantee—”
“They do keep you mortals in the dark, don’t they?” she asked. “My parents were dragon shifters, yes. I’m from a line of dragon shifters.”
They must be dead. But she hadn’t said as much, and I felt uncertain.
“The Fae don’t talk about where we come from when they show us fighting in the Trials or write stories about us. People seem content to believe that we were born to fight and to think we cease to exist when we walk away from the arena.” She sounded matter-of-fact.
“I never thought my life would have anything to do with the Fae or the dragon shifters,” I admitted.
It seemed insanely foolish now that I hadn’t asked more questions or even followed the Trials.
But my mother had always reacted so badly to any curiosity about them.
It had felt shameful. Somewhere along the way, being curious about my dragon mark or the dragon shifters themselves had felt like a rejection of my father—who knew I wasn’t biologically his but who had stepped in to raise me.
Now, ignorance seemed so damning. I had no idea what I was walking into.
“That sounds like a good life for a mortal,” Anayla agreed. “Were the mortals happy in your village?”
“Is anyone really happy?” I asked.
She whistled. “So cynical. No wonder you and Fieran connect. He’s the most jaded man I’ve ever met.”
He hadn’t seemed cynical. “Those don’t seem like his worst faults to me.”
“He can be hard to love,” she agreed, a phrasing that irritated me more than a little. “But only until you battle your way through the eighteen masks to the real Fieran.”
I didn’t want to talk about Fieran, so I fell back on her earlier subject.
“If mortals in my village seem happy, I think it’s because they thought they might have a better life.
It’s the thinnest sliver of possibility, but everyone seems convinced they’re going to be elevated amid the Fae.
They’re all future kings and queens of the universe, waiting for their thrones. ”
“The Fae give us all just enough to keep us serving them,” she said. “The shifters could be dangerous to them, but they found a way to keep us in line. We serve to keep the villages safe, we serve to keep the cities safe, and we serve by entertaining in the Trials.”
Her lips twisted. “And even if we ever thought to raise a rebellion…why would mortals follow us when we can’t make them into dragon shifters like us? But the Fae can offer them a chance at beauty, power, and immortality.”
“The Fae sound like monsters.”
“Who wouldn’t be, given the chance?” She clucked her tongue.
“Those are the political things you need to know to understand the situation you’re walking into.
The more important thing is that you’re going to face certain Trials before you’re claimed for a clan and before you are claimed by your dragon. ”
So she knew. She knew I was dragon-marked. And she seemed convinced I’d be able to connect with a dragon—something I still doubted very much.
“We have to attend events—we’re the kingdom’s heroes, you know, even if we wouldn’t choose to be—and we’re expected to present ourselves a certain way. Fae benefactors can help us tremendously in the Trials, for that matter, so I hope you’ll manage to be charming.”
“That’s usually not a strong suit for me.”
“Well, it is for Fieran. Half of his masks are charming ones. So stick close to him.”
Just his name filled me with tension. “Why did he make me come with you all?”
“There’s no running from what you are, Cara.” She sounded genuinely sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”
“All the mortals admire you,” I said, feeling stunned by the discovery that the dragon shifters were not gods like they had seemed, but pawns. “They look up to you…they wish they could be like you…”
“Lucky you then, discovering that you’re not mortal at all.”
“I am.” We were flying steadily now, and I dared to release one of the horns to touch my dishwater blond hair. “I’m not special. I don’t understand how I ended up dragon-marked…it must be some kind of mistake in the magic.”
“A mistake or a miracle,” she said, giving me a smile.
“Time will tell. Now let me tell you about the Trials. First, you’ll face the Recruits’ Trials, where you’ll prove yourself in three different types of combat: against other shifters, against the monsters, against the Fae—though they’ll claim that Trial is against your worst self. ”
My head swam with questions, but she was already forging ahead.
“Then the claiming by a clan. Then your dragon will choose you, one of the dragons of that clan.”
“How long do we have to prepare?”
She patted my shoulder. “The Recruits’ Trials come once a year, and the others have already gathered. We’re already late. But don’t worry…you won’t fail.”
The world tilted just then as Asrael banked, and as gravity tried to have its way with me, I let out a little scream.
Maura, in her dragon form, seemed to give us a skeptical look. I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me for screaming…or at Anayla for her cheerful lying.