Chapter 19
Nineteen
Cara
In the morning, I woke up to Fieran pulling a tunic over his head. His back was to me, and I admired the ripple of his muscles, the play of the sunlight on his dark hair.
When he turned around, I became intrigued by the ceiling. He was arrogant enough without realizing how drawn I was to him. “Where are you going?”
“Out to fly,” he told me with a mischievous grin. He loped toward me with a confident swagger that suggested to me he was entirely aware of how I watched him, then tossed me one of his tunics. “Are you coming?”
Sudden anger pierced my heart.
My heart was suddenly racing, but I wasn’t sure the fury was mine. I was always a little bit angry—as a mortal in our world, as a woman—but now my anger felt changed and redoubled. I took a moment to compose myself, pulling his tunic over my head. What was happening?
I tried to hide the sudden pulse of rage. “My dragon and I are not ready to fly together.”
“Maybe if you just leap out, your dragon will catch you,” he suggested.
I resisted the temptation to tell him he was channeling Dair’s optimism. “And maybe I will die on impact.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Then there’s no reason for my dragon to catch me to make sure I don’t die.”
“You’re not still afraid of heights?” He seemed offended that his attempts to orgasm me out of my fears hadn’t been successful.
“She felt the pull to shift last night when everyone else went up. She felt it and turned away from it. That’s not a dragon who can’t shift. That’s a dragon who won’t.”
“Fine,” he said, recovering his grin with the ease of long practice. “Watch me fly and fantasize about seeing my wings fail.”
He gave me that cocky grin and stepped onto the window ledge. He smiled at me as if gravity were nothing to him. Then he let himself fall backward.
Despite myself, a sudden burst of fear pierced my chest. I was on my feet and running toward the window, even though I knew what I’d see.
For one heartbeat, he was a dark figure falling. Then wings unfurled from him, vast and radiant. His dragon caught the updraft from the ocean as if it had been waiting for him, and they rose together.
Something raw and aching stirred inside me.
A throb of want, different, sharper than the usual wanting I felt for Fieran.
Part of me always wanted him, unfortunately.
That had not changed and showed no signs of changing, and I had made my peace with it in the way you made peace with conditions that were simply permanent.
But right now, I wanted to fly.
“Is that your emotion too?” I muttered to my dragon. “Then why don’t we just fly? Why don’t we shift?”
Rees pressed against my legs, watching the sky with me. Below us, the sea beat the cliffs with its old, patient hunger. Above, Fieran wheeled once, twice, sunlight breaking over the curve of his wings.
“Is he showing off or inviting us?” I asked Rees, though I wasn’t really talking to the dog. I was talking to my dragon.
I could feel desire and resistance, both coiling inside me, and perhaps not all of it was mine.
Then my vision snapped into too-sharp focus. I could see every seam of mortar between the stones, the salt crusting on the black rocks below, every flicker of color in Fieran’s radiant scales. I was drinking him in, helpless, watching him hungrily no matter how I tried to resist.
We knew so little about our dragons.
“Have you not seen him until now?” I asked softly. “As angry as you are…have you missed him?”
My vision shifted back to normal. I drew in a deep, shocked breath, feeling as if I’d just been blinded. How did anyone live switching between those two worlds? I’d only tasted a flicker of what it would be like to have a dragon’s senses. I wanted more.
Fieran’s dragon swooped up along the wall, seeming for a moment as if he’d crash through the window. Then he folded back into himself midair, landing in human form with a crunch of boots on the sill and a grin that said he knew all my secrets.
“Well?” he asked, damnably pleased with himself once more.
“I think she wanted to watch her mate.” I said it before he could, which took the smugness out of it somewhat. “Don’t look like that. I’m just reporting what happened.”
His grin deepened anyway. Insufferable. “You were leaning out the window to watch.”
“I know.” I looked back out at the sea where he’d been tracing loops across the sky. “It felt as if…she wanted to fly. I wanted it, too.”
“Sometimes our feelings influence each other.” Fear regarded me seriously, not cocky for once. “You think it is Lightbringer? That she sees her mate?”
“Yes, but she can’t stand either of you,” I added, which was true in a way, but even as I said it I was aware of the thin layer of the joke.
“I didn’t realize your dragon would be as much of a scaredy-cat as you,” he said, because he was constitutionally incapable of not being obnoxious. “But I suppose it makes sense. Your traits influence each other.”
I lunged to pretend to shove him out of the window, but he threw himself backward first, laughing as he shifted midair. His dragon flashed past the window, wings outstretched and catching the sun, and I could’ve sworn Shadowbane wore the same damned insufferable look as Fieran on his scaled face.
Out over the sea, his dragon rolled on one long wing and began to trace loops through the sky.
Then he dove low, skimming the water and sending it flying in a glittering arc. I felt a thrill of longing, and gods damn it, he was right. I was leaning out.
“Say your name,” I whispered into the wind that whipped around me, calling to her. “Tell me your name, and let’s fly.”
I got the distinct feeling she didn’t like being told what to do.
So I closed my eyes, remembering yesterday’s smoke curling in my lungs. I was so afraid this dragon and I would never connect, that I’d never be what I was meant to be. That everything I’d hoped for would turn out to be nothing but ashes drifting away in the wind.
So many moments had slid past me, fast as a current, while I laid my hands on the stone and waited to be claimed. I had come so close to dying. She had saved me, I didn’t doubt that.
“Thank you for claiming me.”
From the feeling of being trapped, I had the feeling she had claimed me as a kindness. Not because she had wanted to be part of this world.
A faint turn of emotion answered. Curiosity, perhaps.
“If you come,” I promised, “we will work together. I’ll listen. I won’t ask you to be small for me.”
Heat bloomed in my chest. My palms tingled against the stone.
Maybe she couldn’t speak to me because I was mortal. Maybe she wasn’t choosing silence—maybe she couldn’t. Maybe I’d never been meant to have a dragon’s claim at all.
If that was true, then I was still grateful she’d saved my life.
Rees whined and pressed his weight against my side, nudging at my stomach as if to push me back.
I opened my eyes. The world was dazzling: edges bright, colors sharp, everything alive.
I’d leaned out so far that my balance shifted toward the drop. I gasped and clawed at the stone to steady myself.
Fear landed lightly, looking disappointed. “I thought you were going to let yourself go and fly.”
My heart was pounding in my chest at what felt like a near fall. “She’s still not speaking to me. I’m not going to throw myself out the window without us having a conversation. ‘Don’t worry, Cara, I saved you from burning; I don’t intend to let you perish on the rocks.’”
“Sound logic. Why would she let you die now?” Fear agreed.
He stepped inside from the window ledge with the ease of someone who had never once seriously considered falling.
The morning had done something unfair to his already beautiful features: the shimmering light off the sea caught the plane of his cheekbone, the collar of his shirt still open from the shift, the easy warmth of those smoldering golden eyes.
“Lightbringer and I will get there,” I said, which was not entirely true but felt like something I needed to say out loud. It was something I needed to believe.
Fear looked at me with the expression of a man who knew better than to argue with optimism doing important work. “You will.”
I crossed to the chest near the bed and lifted the lid. The knife was there, wrapped in the cloth I’d carried it in—dull in the morning light, ordinary-looking, the way things with too much power often were. I picked it up and turned. “When are we getting Tay?”
“Cara.” He sounded genuinely sad. “Let’s see you be able to defend yourself before we go to war with the queen. You need your dragon.”
“We have the knife.” I kept my voice even. I was proud of how even it was. “We can cut the enchantment from him. That was the entire point, Fear.”
He was quiet for a moment. Not the silence of someone without an answer. The silence of someone deciding which answer to give.
“We will, Cara. But Tay is not the sole reason. The queen wants it for a reason, which we can deny her. We can free Nightwalkers from their bond to the queen. We can save any enthralled mortals. We can do much before the queen realizes we have it. Once she does, there will be consequences.”
I gripped the hilt of the knife too hard, my fingernails biting into my skin, and Fear’s gaze dipped to it as if he didn’t trust what I might do. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing on my face.
“You told me we could save Tay. You knew I was upset, and that was your promise—”
“I was always clear the timing would depend on our strategy,” he interrupted. He didn’t even have the decency to sound distressed. “I have a contact in the castle watching Tay.
“Spying,” I said.
“Protecting,” he said with a show of patience. “Do you want to know how he is?”
“You know I do.”
“He’s fine. In good spirits. The queen’s given him tutors in court politics and swordsmanship. His trainer is a good man. He’ll look after him.”