Chapter 43 #2
Before I could respond, a servant—a mortal one this time, eyes glazed and distant, his hair perfectly coiffed and white uniform resplendent—stepped in to raise a hand to us both. “Lord Ander, the queen requests an audience.”
Ander stiffened in a heartbeat, angling himself forward between the servant and me as his hands slipped off my waist. As if he could be a quiet shield between me and whatever came next.
“At once.” And no matter how much he might hate Fieran, his gaze still rose beyond me, sweeping the crowd for him, as if he were handing off my safety. Then he was gone, without a backward glance at me.
A casual observer—and I was sure there were many watching us—might have seen it as a snub, as Ander cast me away the second the queen beckoned.
Fieran was at my side; I knew he would be even before I felt the warm solidity of his presence. “Your last trial is beginning.”
Sera took Kiegan’s plate out of his hands. “It’s for your own good,” she told him as he let out a truly feral growl. “No one who sees you eat is going to claim you for their clan. No one wants to sit across from your massacre three times a day.”
“You know most here think I’m going to burn in a week,” he muttered. “No one expects a dragon to claim me. I could eat a turkey leg and—”
“No,” Sera and I interrupted at the same time, so emphatically that his brow furrowed. The two of us exchanged a knowing glance.
She looked so different tonight, with her short hair styled and her black dress form-fitting, like a glimmering flow of the night sky cascading around her body. Her beauty was striking, but every time I looked at her, I saw that wild grin when she jumped in beside me into dangerous water.
“Why are you being seen with us, anyway?” I asked. “What if Fear doesn’t pick you for Bismyth? We’re the two recruits who are most…”
She helpfully picked up the thread I’d dropped, even though I’d trailed off deliberately. “Unsavory? Undesirable? Ill-favored? Ill-mannered?”
“Yes, all of that,” I cut her off, because she seemed quite willing to continue.
“You’re not dull. And some of these shifters are very dull.” Her dark eyes tracked someone through the crowd. “But not that one.”
I turned to find Ander cutting through the sea of people toward me. They melted out of his way; Ander always moved like a prince, just as much as Fieran. His attentiveness to me in this glittering room felt dangerous.
“They already made their offer,” Kiegan said abruptly. “Obsidian will choose me.”
My stomach gutted unexpectedly. “No. Come to Bismyth with me.”
He scoffed.
“I’ll make Fear guarantee it,” I said. “I want us to be together.”
“What’s the cost?” Sera asked him.
But there was no time, because Ander was at my side. His firm fingers latched around my arm. “I need you. Now.”
I nodded but cast a look over my shoulder at Kiegan as I let Ander pull me away.
“It’s not the Fae offering the tests tonight,” I guessed as Ander pulled me into his arms. This time, he held me closer, though it radiated protectiveness, not romance. “It’s the clans.”
“With the Fae pulling the strings,” he murmured. “The queen, in your case.”
As much as I never wanted to face her again, it worried me that she had set me a task to spy on Fieran and then never forced me to return. “Has she found some way to use me to hurt Fear?”
He scoffed. “She should. Fieran’s going to tear this kingdom apart. He wants to be its savior, but he also wants to remake it to suit his own vision. Maybe that vision is alluring, but in trying to create it…he’ll get every shifter killed.”
He’d glanced toward Fieran out in the crowd. Ander always knew where he was.
“And you intend to stop him. To save us all.” My tone came out light, but I wasn’t joking. “With the queen.”
“I’m not an ally of the queen, either,” he murmured.
“But you are her instrument.”
His eyes blazed, but he swallowed his anger down, looking as if he were swallowing something sharp. “She wants to give you a gift.”
“I know it’s not a gift, Ander.”
“It’s a trap.” He reeled me out, caught me again, his lips near my ear as he murmured, “But is it a trap you can escape?”
The room felt like a glittering blur, a gilt cage rising around me. “Tell me the offer; tell me the cost.”
“Fieran cannot relieve Tay’s curse. But the queen is prepared to do so tonight.”
The words dropped between us with devastating weight. It was what I wanted most in the world, but the warning in Ander’s eyes and the heaviness in his voice poisoned my relief.
“She already told me she would,” I reminded him. “How does this hurt Fear?”
Before Ander could answer, the ballroom doors opened.
The glow at the doorway made me blink, and I raised my hand to shield my eyes. Ander pulled me with him into a bow, and I followed, clumsy in this room full of grace as the Fae around me sank into bows and curtseys.
The queen.
I glanced sideways through the crowd at Fieran, looking where Ander had glanced. He stood taller than the other Fae, his head bent, his face blank.
Another of his masks.
I couldn’t see the queen through the crowd. I felt like a child compared to all of them. But I heard her voice.
“Where is the mortal girl?”
I raised my gaze.
Ander’s jaw tensed, and he moved closer to my side, giving me an encouraging nod. “She’s here, my queen.”
The crowd melted out of our path. Now I could see the queen and not just the supernatural glow that reflected off the crystal columns and chandeliers.
Slowly, the glow faded, until I could see her, pale and looking as if she were lit from within, with Fieran’s golden eyes and an ethereal dress that might have been spun from starlight.
The man at her side came into view.
Short and brown-haired, with ruddy cheeks and bright eyes that found mine.
Tay.