Chapter 18
Eighteen
Cara
Fear reluctantly left me outside Clan Amber’s barracks.
“I know you have work to do,” I told him, shooing him off. “Leave me be.”
Ander was waiting in the corridor outside my room in Amber when I came out from bathing and packing my few things. He took the bag from my hand. “I’ll always be one floor below if you need me.”
We went up the stairs in silence. He stopped at the top.
“Ander.”
I had been thinking about how to say this since the staged fight in the arena and the currency he’d spent with Fear for my sake. None of the versions I’d rehearsed were right. “Amber may suffer for me. I know that. And I’m sorry.”
“I’ve made worse decisions for lesser reasons,” he said lightly.
“Thank you. For all of it.”
He held out my bag.
I took it, and he turned back toward the stairs. I watched him go, the broad set of his shoulders, this man who bared his grief to serve our cause, who called Fear his enemy but helped him again and again.
When I entered Bismyth’s common room, Sera looked up from the table and called, “She’s here!”
Anayla reached me first. Her arms came around me with a decisiveness somewhere between a warm embrace and being taken into custody. “Finally!”
Then I was pulled back. Kiegan hugged me, lifting me off my feet, and he squeezed all the breath out of my lungs.
I hugged him back, attempting to be just as lovingly aggressive.
His face was bright with joy, with the grin I hoped we would see more now, the one that didn’t hold anything back.
He had been claimed today. His dragon had chosen him.
He had a home in Bismyth, and he had earned it.
Rees arrived through the middle of all of them with the magnificent indifference of a giant dog navigating a crowd that existed primarily as obstacles between him and his destination. He put his head against my stomach and shoved.
“Hello to you too,” I told him, scratching behind his ears. “Organ damage as greeting. You have no idea what’s happened today, but you’re glad I’m back, aren’t you?”
Some of my joy dulled. It wasn’t sharp—just dimming, like a cloud sliding over the sun. “Though because of me, we’re trapped here.”
Kiegan frowned. “Why?”
“We can’t leave the Trials until every shifter in our clan flies.” Asrael stepped in from the other side and gave my shoulder a firm clap, solid, grounding, the kind of contact that acknowledged both the problem and my ability to survive it. He didn’t soften the reality. He never did.
“Is there anyone else who hasn’t?” I knew the answer even before I asked.
Kiegan snorted. “You’re always the slowest when we run,” he said, entirely unbothered by the fact that this was not encouraging. “Perhaps you’re just the slowest to fly.”
I stared at him. He stared back, deeply sincere.
No one needs enemies when they have a genuinely loving orc on their side.
“It will happen.” Anayla gave me an encouraging look.
Dairen draped an arm over my shoulders, his grin irresistable. “Perhaps you just need to throw yourself from a window. Your dragon will answer!”
I huffed a laugh despite myself, shifting slightly under his arm. “That seems like a plan for someone who grew up with dragon levels of confidence, and I’m just a mortal.”
“Let’s save that plan for a day or two,” Anayla said dryly, casting him a look that managed to be both exasperated and fond. She nudged his elbow off me, reclaiming my space without breaking the loose circle we’d formed.
The tension eased just a little. Enough that my shoulders dropped, enough that I could breathe again without feeling like I was failing them.
The memory of when I had first met them and wanted to be like them returned to me.
They had hugged and sparred and thrown their arms over each other’s shoulders, comfortable with each other in every way. I had envied their tightknit bonds.
Now that familiarity was mine.
“Let’s get to the island,” Sera suggested, her cloak already over her arm.
The first time we went to the island, Ander had warned me it was the only time I would be carried. After the Claiming, I would fly.
Asrael took my bag off my shoulder and dropped it onto a chair just as Anayla said, “Cara can ride with me.”
“My wife will ride with me.” Fear strode into the room.
I didn’t want my world to orient around him, but as soon as he stepped through the doorway, it did. I’d been bone-weary, but my spine straightened; some strange but happy anxiety quickened in my chest.
He paused just inside the doorway, as if taking the measure of the room, and the movement drew more than just my eye: his height, his presence, the sweep of Bismyth purple of his cloak. His gaze, molten gold, skipped over everyone else and caught on me. As if his attention belonged to me alone.
The leather armor that covered his broad chest and narrow waist outlined the strength I had felt more than once under my hands, and my palms could almost feel the phantom ripple of muscle.
I’d been telling myself for a long time that perhaps having Fear would cure me of wanting Fear. It was an impossibility. I might occasionally want to murder him, but I would also always want him.
Fear, for his part, cut through the crowd, and though Bismyth grinned and greeted him and joked, they all also got out of his way. A path had opened between him and me.
That sense of being trapped rose again in a chaotic swirl.
There was longing for Fear mixed in there, too—no, perhaps not longing for Fear.
I had never before felt this powerful urge to see him as a dragon, to watch him fly.
I hesitated for a sliver of time so small I was sure no one noticed but him.
His gaze shifted over me, searching for something.
Before he could find whatever it was, I took his arm, feeling Bismyth’s happiness when I did, the way the room seemed to brighten as I slid my hand over his arm. I found the warm skin above his bracers, just at his elbow, and he dropped a kiss into my hair as he led me away to the windows.
All I had wanted was to be alone that night while I was packing my things in Amber.
That was still true at some level, the way things remained true even when the reality around them had shifted.
But Bismyth being what it was, alone was not on the table, and I found that I minded less than I expected.
There had been revelry throughout the barracks, but it was slowly falling quieter now.
Through the arched windows, dragons were soaring together in the moonlight. Fear stopped at the windows to watch, and his hand found my waist, anchoring me against his side.
I glanced at the hard lines of his face in profile and knew he had a purpose here, pushing Lightbringer to come out, but it was still painful to watch my friends fly while I was trapped in my mortal form.
Kiegan kept glancing out the arched windows out to the sea, but he had stayed at my other side, and finally I pushed him toward it.
“Go!” I told him. “Let me see you fly. You don’t have to feel bad just because I can’t do anything right: not being claimed, not even being incinerated properly.”
“You’re just behind,” Kiegan told me. “Dragon’s in there. It won’t want to be stuck there forever, mooning after Fear and tripping over your feet.”
“Thank you for the affirmations.” I pushed him toward the window a little harder.
“Going to give the window a try?” Dairen asked cheerfully.
Anayla grabbed the front of his tunic as if she didn’t trust him not to encourage me right out the window. She shared with me an eye-rolling expression that said we were stuck with Bismyth, but at least we were together.
Kiegan stepped into the window. The wind ruffled his hair and tugged at his cloak, and he hesitated—still a bit nervous—before he caught my eye. Then he saluted and threw himself out all in one gesture.
I ran for the window—since Anayla had Dair under control—just in time to watch his enormous dragon shoot up. I waved and hollered, genuinely excited.
Fear came to my side. His gaze felt weighted. “Do you want to go to the island? Or do you want to rest?”
“They’ll expect you,” I said, watching the dragons circle over the moonlit water, then fly toward the island. Something in my chest ached. “And they’ll expect me too.”
“They’ll understand, Cara.” His hand rose to stroke my back. “You don’t have to be perfect. You’re home.”
The words made something close in my throat.
“We both need rest. Tomorrow we’ll figure out why Lightbringer won’t talk to you.”
“Shadowbane has no idea?”
“Maybe it isn’t Lightbringer.”
“Then what happens? You planned on Lightbringer.”
I felt fragile, and that made it harder to be near him because being near him was the thing I wanted, and that wanting was part of what made me feel fragile. The circle of it was exhausting.
“Tomorrow. You’ve done so much, Cara. Rest.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he swept me into his arms.
I was so tired.
I put my head on his shoulder and let him carry me.
He didn’t take me far. My awareness narrowed to the steady rhythm of his movement, the warmth of him, the solid certainty of his arms around me.
The room was dim when he pushed the door open with his shoulder, lit only by a low-burning lamp and the silver spill of moonlight through the window.
It softened everything: the edges of the furniture, the lines of his face when he turned slightly toward me, the world beyond him.
Gold necklaces glinted, hanging from the bedposts; there were twin new and empty bookcases framing the fireplace.
He set me down carefully beside the bed, his hands lingering for a moment at my waist.
I didn’t step away.
His hand came up, slower now, and brushed a loose strand of hair back from my face. His fingers traced the line of my temple. “Cara.”