Chapter 34 #2
“Oh, yes, of course. Since I know my way around the city and shifter society so well.” Did he really think I was stupid enough to walk these streets alone? “Are you offering to go with me, Fieran? To use your skill as a liar to catch other people in their lies?”
He fixed me with a beatific smile. “I’m happy to help. Since you always ask so nicely.”
When I went to my room to get ready for bed, I couldn’t stop picturing the way he’d sat so confidently stitching his own wounds, the way his muscles flexed under his skin.
The Fae really did have bizarre magic, ensnaring mortals. Because I knew what a jerk he was. I knew I couldn’t trust him. And yet…I replayed the memory of how his body felt against mine when his thigh cleaved mine. How his lips had grazed mine the other day before I put a blade to his throat.
I tried to shake off the memories and the unwanted desire. I threw myself onto my bed with a groan.
My hand brushed something cold and metal under my pillow. With my heart pounding, I lifted it into the air: a long golden chain with an amulet at the end.
My heart hammered. Was someone setting me up to be accused of theft? We’d all heard the stories of mortal girls who stole from the Fae, and what happened to them afterward. Their fates made those night market cages seem merciful.
I had to get rid of it.
I paced the room. I couldn’t exactly fling it out the window, given that my room opened to an interior courtyard. Instead, I’d need to bring the rotted thing out to hide it somewhere.
Muttering curses, I shoved it in my pocket, and double checked that gold links weren’t dangling out to expose me.
Gods, what time was it? It had been a terrible, long day, and tomorrow promised to be awful too.
Either I would go to the Recruits’ Trials and earn the queen’s enmity, or I would betray Fieran and disgust Clan Bismyth.
I made it out of my room and cast a worried look at the table, afraid of shadows, but none of them rose into a growling Rees.
I tiptoed to the door—as useless as my attempts at being quiet were around the Fae—and tried to pull open the arched door.
At first I couldn’t tell if it was too heavy for a mortal or if it was locked.
Giving up on being quiet, I leaned backward, straining with all my strength to pull the door open. Nothing. I was locked in.
There was soft movement behind me, and I froze, certain that an enormous hound was about to lunge. After all, I’d failed Rees today.
“Hello,” Anayla said.
I turned, heart still pounding.
“Did Fear not give you a key?” Her tone was mildly exasperated as she reached beneath her collar. She must have already been dressed for bed, because she wore a loose, soft shirt and leggings, not her usual fierce corset. She pulled out a key on a loop. “Here, take mine.”
“Thank you,” I said, unable to hide my uncertainty.
“Are you worried about the Recruits’ Trials beginning tomorrow?” Anayla asked me gently as she held out the loop, and I took it from her.
“No,” I said, too bluntly, and she let out a surprised little laugh. I was too nervous at the moment about the stolen gold weighting down my pocket.
“You just need some air at midnight,” she confirmed, her voice teasing.
Oh. If that was why she thought I was fleeing the barracks in the middle of the night, then very well. I smiled at her, letting my embarrassment show.
“Fear would kill me if I let you go off on your own, knowing not everyone here is your friend,” she said. “Do you want to go to the sea overlook? I promise, I’ll leave you alone to think.”
“Thank you. But I feel bad disrupting your night—”
She waved her hand airily. “Here, let me show you how the lock works.”
The lock was more magic than anything else. If I’d stolen a key, I never would have figured it out.
“Thank you,” I told her for the third time—before I realized I was repeating myself—and she smiled at me.
“Come on…I don’t think you’ve been up to the overlook yet, have you?”
I shook my head and followed her down more mysterious hallways. She stepped outside a doorway, and the wind lifted her hair as she turned back to me with a smile that lit her eyes, as if she were happy to share this place.
When I stepped outside, the night world opened up in front of us, but I could barely look away from the rippling dark of the sea.
The overlook stretched out along the cliffside, a sweeping balcony carved straight from the stone.
Wind tore at my hair the moment I stepped onto it, cool and sharp with the scent of salt and something metallic from the sea below.
There was a railing only by the stairs—as if Fae were too graceful to ever misstep—and the rest of the ledge opened wide to the night.
A shiver ran through me at the thought of how easily one wrong step could send me tumbling into the pitch black.
A few kiosks dotted the balcony, draped with ribbons and pennants in jewel tones that snapped and fluttered in the wind, and in front of them were a dozen inviting tables.
Magically lit lanterns floated above them, drifting like lazy fireflies, their glow casting ripples of blue and gold over the stone floor.
Further down, the space opened to a breathtaking pool carved into the cliff’s edge. The pool shimmered silver in the moonlight, spilling over in a smooth, endless sheet that vanished into the dark ocean far below. The ceaseless whispering sound of falling water unsettled me.
Anayla had brought me here to be kind and comforting, but I felt frozen. I’d learned to swim only in the most bare-bones way, doggy-paddling around our small lake with my body arched to keep my chin above the water.
“Don’t worry about tomorrow,” she told me cheerfully.
“I won’t,” I promised, because I was far more worried about tonight.
As she headed off, humming to herself, I clung to the railing. My knees felt weak. Who knew there was something I feared more than heights?
Anayla had settled down at one of the tables and was holding a swiped light from one of the kiosks to read her book. I had the feeling she did that often.
She was pointedly, politely, ignoring me.
I turned my body to hide my pocket from her and pulled the necklace out. When I released it over the railing, it fell, sparkling and glittering in the moonlight, until it disappeared into the darkness.
I never heard a splash at the other end. The seconds stretched by, and my sense of doom expanded with every heartbeat.
What kind of dragon would ever be willing to possess me, with my terror of heights?
I stayed there, deeply uncomfortable, for a few long minutes, trying to pretend there was anything restorative about lurking around the edge of a dark abyss.
When Anayla returned to me, she let go of the light—which flew across the space and re-attached itself to the kiosk roof—and tucked her book under her arm. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I promised her.
“What is it that worries you about tomorrow?” She looked troubled, standing carelessly at the edge of the sea. “If it’s Fieran’s stupid games, don’t worry. He’ll claim you. He knows we’d all revolt if he didn’t bring you into Bismyth.”
I began to climb the stairs, my gaze focused on my death grip on the railing. I didn’t deserve her worry or her promises of loyalty.
“It’s mostly my strange distaste for being punched in the face.” Gods, they were going to hate me after tomorrow. Clan Bismyth was far kinder to me than made sense. “I know Fear brought me here for a reason. He’s not going to abandon me.”
No matter how much he would despise me after tomorrow.
“Good,” she said, her voice genuinely pleased. “It’ll be a few unpleasant moments, and then it will be over. We’re all rooting for you.”
“Why?” I asked bluntly, and she laughed as if I’d been joking.
When we reached the top of the stairs, I glanced back once at the dark void that lay behind me.
It was nothing compared to the void that lay ahead.