Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
When I stepped out into the hall, Fieran was waiting. He leaned against the wall, looking relaxed and self-possessed, his arms folded over his powerful chest.
“Have you been waiting long?” I brushed the tears out of the corner of my eyes with a knuckle, blinking and hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“No.” He might be lying. Fieran always seemed as if he might be lying.
“Can I come here anytime to see him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How?”
“I’ll bring you any time you want.”
Ander was right that Fieran was making me dependent on him. The thought sent a prickle of unease through me.
“And how do I get my brother back to our village?”
“Once he’s healed, I’ll bring him home. You can come with me.”
“Why are you making me wait to have him healed?”
“Cara. I just need to make sure you’re safely in my clan before I ask the Fae for favors. There aren’t supposed to be mortals who can shift. I need to keep you a secret.”
So he did intend to have me in his clan, no matter what he claimed to throw me off balance. “You don’t know yet that I can shift. Maybe I’ll just burn alive.”
“And if you do, I’ll still make sure your brother is healed and returned home,” he said, as if I were being deliberately difficult by threatening to immolate.
“I want to see him healed before I go into your stupid Trials,” I said. “Once he’s healed, I’ll do whatever you want.”
His lips curved, just faintly, and it made his shapely mouth even more cursedly charming. No one so devious should also be so beautiful; it was entirely unfair. “I doubt that very much. You don’t strike me as particularly obedient.”
“And you don’t strike me as particularly honest.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response, probably because it was true.
I waited him out.
He worked his jaw back and forth once, as if he were debating with himself. “I’ll see if I can make a deal without endangering you. The queen is also going to be interested in a dragon-marked mortal. You might find her interest less pleasant than mine.”
Nixi’s words about how Fieran was putting me in the path of the queen haunted me. “I want to come with you. I can pretend to be your servant.”
That smile ticked up another notch, beautiful and disbelieving all at once. “I have a feeling you’ll be terrible at pretending to serve.”
“So, you were lying when you suggested I was good at serving at the pub?”
“Gods, yes.”
It was easy to volley back and forth with Fieran, but maybe the truth would shake him loose from his game.
Until he’d swept Maura out of his life, I’d thought he was fiercely loyal to his friends from how they acted together; he seemed like he should understand my feelings. “I want to help you save Tay.”
He looked at me with a trace of pity in his gaze that made me furious.
“I’ll play whatever game this is where I’m your tool against the queen,” I told him icily. “But I want to know you’re playing my game too.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Fine.”
“I want to show you something,” he said, as we walked back into the towering foyer of the war school.
“Lead on,” I answered, because what choice did I have?
Together, we walked down into the labyrinth dug into the stone beneath the academy. An enormous stone grotto branched off into a dozen different passages. As I followed Fieran, I glanced down each one.
They were all different—one with stairs rising, one with stairs descending, one that clearly dead-ended in an open doorway to the sea below. Some looked wild with plants that somehow grew in the darkness, and others looked polished to a high shine of marble, hung with portraits.
He walked confidently down one ever-changing passage to another as I tried to catalog every turn.
“Is there a map?” I demanded.
“Do you think I’d abandon you down here?”
“Forgive me if trusting the dragon shifter who kidnapped me is difficult.”
“Kidnapped is a bit dramatic.” He led me down a wide passage where a set of broad stairs led up to an enormous arched doorway, the door sealed.
“An exterior door for the queen’s guests,” he told me, before he turned the other way and we walked down a few stairs into another, smaller arena.
This arena was more ornate, with comfortable seating around the sides and an enormous dome overhead. It was dim in the interior and I blinked my eyes, adjusting to the cool peacefulness that reminded me of the village temple before it was taken over for the healer’s quarters.
Slowly, I became aware of the beauty that surrounded me, despite the fact we were in another arena. The dome above us was filled with pinpricks of light.
Stars.
“Is this a projection of the night sky?” I asked, searching for familiar landmarks. My father used to take me out to watch the stars when I was little, picking out constellations.
But I didn’t see a moon. I didn’t see any familiar patterns at all within the mix of stars, some brighter than others, many connected to others with faint bands of light or nestled together.
“This is the life dome,” he told me. “Every life in the kingdom is reflected above.”
“Why does this exist?”
He smiled as if my bluntness amused him. “Sometimes shifters fight to the death here. Regardless, anyone who bets on a particular shifter—or against them—can come and check how they fare.”
He pointed to a star, and I took a step toward him reluctantly, trying to follow his gaze. “Those stars that are pink or purple? Those are Fae stars. The blue or green are shifters.”
“The rest are mortal stars.” Of course our stars were plainer, duller. Even our lives didn’t shine as bright. The thought filled me with a surge of rebellious rage, furious that even the magic belittled us.
“Do you want to find Tay and Lidi’s stars?”
I glanced at him sharply. I would’ve assumed that the cloud of duller stars faded into the background for every shifter here; the only ones that mattered were the bright stars of the Fae or the shifters.
But he’d proceeded as if he were sure of my response.
His hand settled on my shoulder, and I breathed in his warm, clean scent as he moved closer to me.
He didn’t seem to notice the proximity, instead focused on stretching his arm alongside my ear.
But I was keenly aware of how close he was to me, of how his broad bicep sleeve brushed my ear just faintly as he tried to show me where to focus.
“See that blue star?” he asked me. “Above it, the cluster of two pink stars?”
“Yes.”
“Look down from the blue star, and you’ll see three stars clustered together.”
I followed his finger down, and my breath caught in my throat.
Two of the faint white stars touched a star that glowed blue.
Was that my star? I asked the safer question. “Are those Tay and Lidi?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the life dome’s magic and how to map stars to souls.” He spoke softly, as if it were a confession, and I wondered why. Fieran never sounded ashamed. “I think Tay’s is at the top. The one with the scar.”
Now that he pointed it out, I could see the fragmented edges of the upper star. “Is that because he’s dying?”
I almost kept the catch out of my voice, and I hated that he must hear it.
“It’s because he’s cursed,” he corrected. “But I suppose you need to hear that from the healer, not me, to believe it. At any rate, you can come in here any time. You can see their stars and know they’re still shining…even without your supervision.”
I wouldn’t believe my brother was cursed if I heard from the healer, either, because I assumed anyone here might well serve Fieran’s bidding. “Who would curse my brother?”
“I’m going to find out,” he promised, before he corrected himself. “We are going to find out.”
As I watched my sisters and brother’s stars, memorizing their location, the blue star pulsed and grew brighter steadily until it flared. Then it was flame blue bright, so bright I blinked, before the color faded.
Until it was just a mortal star.
“What is that?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. But it’s why I came looking for you.”
For once, I believed Fieran wasn’t lying. “Is that why you were really in my village?”
“I came because of the monsters. That wasn’t a lie. But I’ve been searching for you for years.”
The thought choked me with overwhelm. If mortals could be dragon-marked, if they could be powerful, the kingdom might shift. Or I might fail and die in front of those who gathered to watch the arena. “Where’s your star?”
He pointed out a star. Bright blue. Brighter than any of the others, steady without flaring out like mine.
“Why is it so bright?” I asked.
He cut a quick glance at me that I could feel. I’d surprised him. But he sounded as relaxed as always when he said, “I have my assumptions.”
“Which are?”
His lips curved up in a smug smile for reasons I couldn’t identify, but that made me feel like the butt of a joke I didn’t understand.