Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Fear
There was no sign of Riven and Tesa when Az, Dair, and I arrived, but once we were waiting impatiently, they melted out of the shadows.
“I need to get the queen’s guests,” I told Riven. “The mortals she brought here.”
“Bold even for you, Fear,” Riven told me. “It’s dangerous.”
“It is. That’s why you’re finished in the palace as of tonight.”
Riven frowned, confused.
“I won’t risk you two.” I took in Tesa with a glance as well, though it was primarily for Tesa’s sake—for Ander’s sake—that I could no longer bear the risk.
“I’m no use to you out of the palace,” Riven said.
“Two Nightwalkers with your skills will still be very useful to me,” I promised. “And far more useful than dead spies if the queen realizes you helped me. It’s too dangerous, taking them from the palace. She’ll know I had help on the inside.”
“And the mortals are worth losing our eyes inside the palace?”
“Yes, the mortals are worth it,” I said swiftly, decisively. However I truly felt. I had made my decision.
Riven hesitated. “You know we are bound to the queen. She will recall us—”
“I can sever the queen’s enchantments,” I promised. Riven’s brows rose, but he would have to trust me for now; I needed to get back to Cara. “What’s the best way for us to extract them?”
I knew the palace as I had once known my own hand, but I no longer knew the guards’ rotations. When I was a boy, the palace had been guarded by dragon shifters. Now the queen had her Nightwalkers, with her fingers sliding through their minds.
“They’re in the south tower.” Riven cast his gaze up.
I followed his gaze to the tower that overlooked the city. Arched and mullioned windows looked over us. Was Lidi in one of those windows, looking out? The memory of the little girl beckoning us from the door of the magic shop, urging an injured Dair and me to safety, rose like a ghost.
“We could go in with orders to bring them to the arena,” Tesa said.
Riven nodded. “I wouldn’t risk it if we were staying, but it does get us past an obstacle.”
“We’ll come in if you need us.”
It was good thinking. Clean. A pair of Nightwalkers escorting three mortals toward the arena would read as the queen’s will.
“Do it.” I looked at Riven. “We’ll be near. We’ll come in if you need us.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then you won’t see us at all until we meet at the safe house.”
We went through the specifics of the plan.
Tesa met my gaze. There was always that question in them, as if she were on the verge of knowing me, and beneath it was the trust that I was going to get them out. Tesa’s old faith in me, borrowed from an earlier time. She must not remember, not in mind nor in body, the end of her previous faith.
She turned and went, Riven at her shoulder.
I watched them go the way I always watched the people I sent into difficult situations, with part of my mind already calculating what to do if they didn’t come back out.
The math of it all grew complicated. Tesa had to be protected for Ander; Tay, Lidi, and Maris had to be protected for Cara.
She was my higher priority, but Tesa had strategic value as a Nightwalker who understood the palace.
I’d be grateful to have them all at the safehouse then, better yet, the rebel camp, though having them near Corbyn came with its own problems.
And there were other things, emotional things, underlying the strategy.
Az was at my left. Dairen, my right.
“Stay ready.”
At least this part was simple.
The queen’s tower rose from the eastern wing. It was older stone, older magic. It smelled to me of blood, and I was never sure if that was my imagination or if, just as the queen’s thrones were built from dragon’s bones, the castle was built from blood.
We went down the halls, up the servants’ stairs.
There was a ward in the hall. Dair’s nostrils flared, breathing in the magic. Like a guard recognizing a face but knowing it out of context, it hesitated, but we passed through.
“I don’t like this,” Dair breathed, barely a whisper. “We are going to have to get out of the capital before the queen rounds us all up.”
“Cara will fly, and we will go,” Az murmured back, brimming with confidence in her that I would’ve usually found gratifying.
Though the only confidence I should have in her was in her willingness to drive a blade into my back. The thought curdled in my gut.
“She’s a clever, distrusting mortal. That’s why you love her.” Shadowbane’s voice was an unhelpful growl.
I stuck a finger into my ear, as if to plug it; usually, he took the hint. “I’m in the middle of a highly dangerous mission for your clever mortal.”
“You’re standing in a hallway eavesdropping while someone else does the work. You have time to listen. Not that you ever do. Or the girl wouldn’t have needed to stab you.”
I gritted my teeth.
Through the crack of the door into the hallway: footsteps, steady and unhurried, the measured pace of a Nightwalker escort. Good.
Dairen tilted his head. Listening. The footsteps continued, rounded a corner, went quiet.
We waited as she and Riven reached the guard, talked their way past him.
Then, a crash.
A voice I didn’t know, sharp and sudden. Riven’s voice rose over it, too controlled, speaking with the flatness of a man trying to unwind a situation.
Then the scream, and I was already moving.
The door to the connecting passage was ten feet behind us. I covered the distance and had it open before the echo had finished, and Az and Dairen were with me before I’d cleared the frame.
The servants’ corridor beyond was narrow and dim, and at the far end of it, a guard was running toward the commotion with his hand on his sword.
He saw Tesa coming out of the room ahead of him and stopped. “Tesa?”
His voice had the relief of someone who has been frightened and has seen a calm, familiar face. His sword hand dropped as he closed the distance.
Her expression didn’t change.
It was over quickly. She lowered him against the wall in one practiced motion. Her back was to us by the time she straightened. She stayed that way for a moment before she turned.
“She attacked us,” Tesa said. Flat. Stating a fact rather than a complaint. “As soon as we came through the door.”
I went past her into the room.
Riven was against the far wall, one hand pressed to his temple, which was bleeding. His other hand was raised in the universal posture of a man trying to convince someone he does not mean them harm.
Apparently, Cara had inherited her gift for wounding those who tried to help her.
Maris had a fireplace poker. She was standing with Lidi behind her, the girl pressed back against the wall, and her eyes were moving between Riven and the doorway, calculating whether they could get both her children out or only one or if it was already a lost cause.
She had seen the guard uniform and drawn the most likely conclusion available to a woman in a room with no exits and no friends.
She swung at me as I came through the door. I caught the poker on my bracer and took it from her in the same motion, which required care; she was stronger than she looked, and she had committed to the swing, and I had no interest in hurting her.
“I’m not here serving the queen,” I told her urgently.
“Then what do you want with us?” she demanded, her voice rough. Anger covering fear.
“I’d like to get you free if you would stop attacking your rescuers.”
“Fieran!” Lidi pushed away from her mother, who tried to snatch her but was too late. Panic wrote over Maris’s face, and then Lidi was in my arms.
I dropped the poker to hug her, lifting her up with me to settle her onto my hip.
I kicked the poker in one smooth move before Maris could lunge for it, putting it at Riven’s feet.
It hit the toe of his boot, and he had it in his hand, fast as a flash of lightning.
He gave Maris a reproachful look but did not move from the wall.
“Cara sent me to rescue you.”
Maris’s eyes widened. “Where is she?”
“She’s at the arena. I need to get the three of you to her.” I needed three, and I had two.
Maris’s gaze roamed over mine, uncertainty in her face for the first time, as if she’d found a thread she could not quite pull. I wondered how much of her memory was lost to Corbyn’s trickery. “It’s not Tay’s fault, but he’s under an enchantment. He’s going to fight you.”
“He won’t win.” I had no choice, thanks to Cara, even though he was enchanted, and it was going to be a mess because I didn’t have the knife here. Cara had fucked over my entire timeline as well as my heart.
“Dair, take the little girl. Make sure you get her out, no matter what happens.”
As I transferred her into Dair’s arms, I smiled at the little girl who had once rescued us. It was only right to return the favor. “You remember Dair?”
She could walk, but he would move faster, even with her in his arms. She nodded.
“My savior,” Dair called her, and she put her arm around his neck.
My life would be easier if Cara was more like her and less like her mother, who was still slightly wild-eyed and looked as if she were torn between listening to me and going for another weapon.
“Where’s Tay?” My gaze rose to the door beyond, the one that led into another room.
I put myself between Maris and the open door half a second before Tay came through it. I sheathed my sword in one quick movement because I couldn’t stab Cara’s brother.
He didn’t have any compunctions against injuring me, though. Must be a family trait.
“I’m taking you to Cara,” I told him.
He lunged.
He was better than I’d expected: fast and committed. I turned his first strike and took the second on my bracer and moved into him, closing the distance so completely that his next strike had nowhere to go. My elbow caught his jaw.
He staggered. His gaze went to mine, and recognition passed across his face.
“There he is,” Shadowbane observed. “Not entirely lost yet.”
The enchantment snapped back. He came at me again, wild and rabid.
I spoke to Asrael. “Go, get Maris and Lidi out. I’ll bring him.”
“I’m not leaving you—”
“You’re leaving me.” I spoke in the tone that ended arguments. “Go.”
Asrael put a hand out for Maris, the gesture courteous, and she gave the fire poker one last longing look—that was definitely Cara’s mother—and began to go. But Tay came at me again, and she paused in the doorway.
“Sorry,” I told Maris as much as him.
Another blow, and he went down, unconscious.
I lifted him over my shoulder.
Then we were moving back through the palace. Riven and Tesa went ahead, securing the hallways.