Chapter 19 #2
Something both loosened and knotted in my chest simultaneously.
Tay, in good spirits. The image landed in a place I hadn’t realized was braced for something worse.
But why was the queen educating him? Her words about an heir, about how Fear had disappointed her, floated by me again.
But she didn’t need a mortal heir, surely.
The memory of those mortals being raised to Fae—the tumultuous cheering from the crowd—haunted me. “He doesn’t need tutors. He needs us to use the knife to free him.”
“As soon as we do, the queen will know we have it.” His voice was measured, patient, steady. “He’s safe. We need to bide our time.”
“I came back thinking we would help him. That I would have my brother back…” My voice was wrong. I could hear it. I stopped, trying to force myself to calm down. Fear had always been clear; there was strategy at play. “How long until we get him?”
“I don’t know precisely.”
“How long, Fear.”
The silence that followed was the wrong shape. “Long enough for Lightbringer to fly and for us to get clear of the capital. The knife is a powerful asset. We won’t get a second chance to strike down the queen.”
I turned away from him. I set the knife down on the chest because my hands needed somewhere to go, and I pressed my knuckles against the lid and stood there.
The sea came through the open window. Salt and cold and the distant cry of birds over the water. Down the hall, Bismyth was waking; low voices and the rhythm of their morning together slipped under the door.
I had wanted this for so long. Now I had this, and Tay still wasn’t home, and it would be longer. Because of me.
“I’m failing him again,” I murmured.
I hardly ever cried. Strangely, I had cried most often over Tay’s sickness when I could see what it was doing to Lidi and my mother.
I wasn’t ashamed of crying, but it was my own private business.
I had held Lidi in the dark after the burrowers and not broken.
I had stood in an arena with my heart slamming against my ribs and not broken.
I was built of anger sewn through grief.
But I was so tired.
It wasn’t just the few days’ hard riding and rough sleep, though that was part of it. I was tired in a way that had been growing since I understood that there was no version of saving my family that didn’t cost me everything.
And I was still tired, and perhaps he hadn’t meant to do it to me, but he had let me hope. Then he had damned me with strategy all over again. The sound I made was not quite a sob. Just one breath gone wrong.
When I heard Fear move, I didn’t look up.
I was staring at my knuckles against the chest lid, trying to get ahead of my own face, and I did not want to see his expression again.
The quick glance I’d had through the blur of my tears was too much for me.
He was watching me with something he had no name for that looked uncomfortably like anguish, was the one I had the least defense against.
He put his arms around me.
I should pull away. I was furious at him for excellent reasons that had not stopped being excellent, and turning into him was the wrong thing.
But I turned into him.
His arms came around me, and I pressed my face into his shirt and sobbed. His hand came to the back of my head, holding me tenderly.
“What if the queen raises him to be Fae?”
“She won’t until—if—she has a reason. Your family is leverage to her.
Once she takes Tay off the board, the leverage is gone.
” His hand shifted at the back of my head, fingers moving once through my hair.
“Cara, please. Please trust me. I won’t let you lose Tay.
My strategy will never go that far again—I’ve learned my lesson. ”
It was a version of Fear I had never seen before. He rocked me against his body, trying to comfort me.
“I lost Ander’s friendship over strategy. I made the right choice for our rebellion—it would have been if he had struck at the queen, if he had not betrayed me trying to save Tesa, but we both lost everything.”
He sounded as gutted as I felt. “I will not leave Tay there a day longer than I have to. And I will lose the rebellion rather than lose him. I promise. If we have to…we’ll leave the kingdom. We’ll leave it all behind.”
His face was blurry through my tears, but his golden eyes were bright even through the haze.
“I won’t lose you too, Cara,” he said. “Not even over this.”
I should say something. There were still things unresolved between us, things that hadn’t gone anywhere; the fury was still there, exactly where I’d left it. It had just moved aside to make room for something larger and worse and considerably harder to defend against.
I turned my face back into his shirt.
His arms tightened.
Outside the window, the sea slammed itself against the rocks as it always did.
“Let’s get out of here for a little while before the Hunt.” His hands were gentle as he wiped away my tears with his thumbs. “Walk the city. Get some breakfast. Do some shopping.”
“You give me enough gifts,” I told his now-damp shoulder.
“Never,” he disagreed. “I owe you so much. Surely you agree.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, even though it had the desperate catch in it that one’s laughter has after weeping. “You and I have so much work to do, figuring out Lightbringer…”
“I don’t think she can be figured out. Shadowbane has loved her for a thousand years, and he is lost.”
Something tightened in my chest that wasn’t mine.
“But she’ll emerge when she is ready.”
I thought of Dair teasing me about the window. “Or when she must?”
He was careful, hesitating. He followed my gaze to the window, where the curtains fluttered with the wind.
“When she’s ready,” he said again.