Chapter 30
Thirty
Cara
Anayla was at my side when I came slowly back to wakefulness. The world seemed too bright, yet somehow still dark around the corners of my vision, and when I tried to speak, it came out as a rasp.
She had been starting into the distance, looking troubled, but she leapt at the sound I’d managed. “Cara!”
Ander came through the door then. There was blood and ichor in his hair and smeared across his tunic, and he looked weary. “I came as soon as I could.”
“It doesn’t matter how many healing potions she takes. The wound won’t heal.” Anayla sounded calm, controlled, but there was other emotion threaded beneath.
Ander glanced from me to Anayla, the two of them trading a look that suggested poor odds in my favor.
“Time to give this a try then.” Ander glanced beyond us, and Anayla, understanding him wordlessly, moved to the door.
She spoke briefly to the healer.
I hadn’t caught much of her words, but I had caught enough.
“Even if she screams—”
Then she shut it. Sealing us in.
“Where’s Fear?” The world seemed dark at the edges still. I knew, dimly, that I had lost a dangerous amount of blood.
“He’ll be back soon.” Ander’s gaze flickered to Anayla’s, full of questions.
“He’s with your family,” Anayla promised. “Just hang on.”
Ander gripped the knife in one hand. “How does this work?”
“I don’t know,” Anayla admitted.
Ander’s jaw tightened. He didn’t say out loud that they were experimenting on me, but I knew it.
“I’ve done this before,” I whispered. “Almost.”
“Almost,” Ander repeated.
It was still more than his experience.
I reached for the hilt. My fingers scraped over his as I took it in my hand, and he shifted but kept his grip on the hilt, too, stabilizing my shaking fingers on the knife but letting me lead.
“It senses the enchantment.” My words came out garbled, and Ander’s grip tightened.
I guided the tip of the knife over my skin. The same glitter was visible under my skin, near my shoulder, as before at the campsite. Ander tried to hesitate there, but I pulled the blade further down. “Not right.”
I was too tired to quite make sense. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but the wound was still pumping blood steadily despite all their efforts to seal it.
Something pulsed, agonizing, under my skin at my hip. Anayla pulled up my tunic, exposing something red and crystalized, the size of my thumb to its first knuckle. It seemed to throb in time with my wound.
“There,” I managed.
The door flew open.
Fear strode in. His hand went to his throat, and his cloak fluttered away behind him, falling to the ground. He was already pushing up his sleeves.
“You haven’t saved her yet?” His voice was rough.
“Fear.” There was a world of questions in my voice, or would have been, if it weren’t.
“I’ve got you, Cara.” He all but shouldered Ander out of his way, taking the knife from my hand.
The red throbbing thing faded back into my flesh.
“She has to hold the knife,” Anayla said. “It must be some magic that only works for mortals.”
Fear guided the cold, hard hilt back into my hand. Hand in hand, the point drifted over my skin, back to the place where it had been, and the red crystal rose to the surface, just beneath my skin.
His grip on mine hesitated. The point slipped over the surface of my skin, just barely scoring it.
“Do it,” I said, and then I drove it in.
I let out a cry of pain as the tip of the point worked around the wound.
Fear cursed as I tried to dig out the crystal, and then he had the crystal in his hand, blood dripping between his fingers.
Wisps of magic began to leak between his fingers. The enchantment was disintegrating.
“Get her the healing potion there,” Fear ordered. Ander was already reaching for it. Fear cupped my head, tilting it back, as Ander lifted it to my lips.
My eyelids were so heavy, my eyes aching. The potion tasted bitter.
“Would you see the clan prepared for our departure?” Fear asked Anayla. “We may have to stay. We may have to fight our way out. Be ready for anything.”
“Yes, of course.”
She cast a troubled look at me, but she didn’t question Fear. She was good at reading him. She squeezed my hand. “Get some rest, my friend.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Anayla.” Fear’s voice was a whip snap. But that anger was meant for me; I knew it. “No one needs to know what almost happened to our mortal.”
“Understood.” Anayla cast us both a worried look, but she went through the door.
Then Fear’s firm hand was on my bare skin, holding me down as he spread salve over the wound. It sealed under his touch.
“You’re all right,” Ander told me, his voice warm. His fingers brushed over mine. “Be well, Cara. I’ll see you again soon.”
Fear gave the two of us a look of such open, seething something—wrath or jealousy or hurt—that I had never thought I would see from him. But Ander was just my friend. Just saying goodbye.
Ander lifted the still-bloody unmaking knife.
“I need that,” Fear told him. “I have enchantments to cut away.”
Ander gave him a look.
Fear’s jaw set. “If I might borrow it. Please. I will return it to you within the week.”
“Always willing to work with you, Fear.” Ander sounded too agreeable. “Who wounded Cara?”
“Let her tell you. You two understand each other so well.” Fear sounded both condescending and coldly bemused. It was a tone I had not heard directed my way until now, and something painful opened up in the pit of my stomach.
Ander studied him, then turned to me. “Do I need to get you out of here, Cara?”
I was tempted to let Ander take me, to avoid facing Fear. But I needed Fear now that I had failed. And Fear needed me.
“No.” My mind was blurry. The healing potion. “Fear is angry this knife was intended for him. Lightbringer sent it into my leg instead.”
Ander took this confession in stride, then nodded. “The queen leveraged your family’s lives for Fear’s?”
“He betrayed me.” My words spilled out, hot with rage. The potion was doing its work, and my strength was growing along with my rage. “He told me that our mating bond could be undone. He would stop at nothing to bring Lightbringer into this world. He stole my freedom.”
Fear scoffed. “Your mortal freedom. To live a miserable little life and die.”
Ander looked up and met his gaze evenly. “Fucking asshole.”
Then he turned back to me. “I’ll carry you out of here if you need me to.”
“I know.” Gods, if I could choose, I’d choose Ander. But Fear had taken that from me. “Go. Lead your clan. I’ll be all right.”
Ander hesitated. He did not like leaving me.
“You heard my wife.” Fear’s voice was cold. “Go.”
“I’m here any time,” Ander promised me, refusing to listen to Fear’s orders. He listened to mine. He touched my shoulder, and I rested my hand over his, thanking him silently.
Then we were alone. Exhaustion dragged over me in endless waves, and I let my eyes shut.
“I don’t think so, wife.” Fear’s voice was dark. He stroked his hand over my forehead, his touch light, his palm cool. It would have been soothing another day.
“Tay?” I caught his wrist, and he stared down at me. His face was hard for me to read right now. The healing potion was scrambling my thoughts, making it impossible to hide anything I felt under a surface of control. “Lidi?”
His jaw was hard, his eyes cold, and I thought he was going to deny me the truth.
“Safe. They’re at a safe house.”
“I want to see them.”
“I’m sure you do. What happened today, Cara?”
“You’re so clever. Surely you know.”
“I’d like to hear your honest answer.” His voice was acid.
I let my head fall back, too tired to hold it up, and found myself resting against his chest despite everything. I didn’t move away. I was too weak to make the statement worth making.
“You betrayed me first.”
“You’ll have to be more specific. When I brought Tay to the capital to save him from the curse? When I saved Tay and Lidi and your mother? When I helped you become your people’s savior with all of Lightbringer’s power when you were nothing?”
“I was never nothing,” I spat back. “You give away how you truly see me. As do your actions. You cast me into nightmares to drive me into your Trials. You bound me to you without my consent, in a bond I cannot escape.”
His gaze was molten gold, hot and dangerous. “I wish we were not bound. It is for the sake of our kingdom.”
“You used my love for my family as a leash. You used that to control me just as much as the queen controlled me.” He wasn’t her creature. He was her.
Some emotion touched his face, there and gone too quickly to read. Probably not guilt. Probably irritation that I saw through his deceits. “Lying to you is a fairly small sin compared to burying a knife in my side.”
“I didn’t.”
“Only because you failed.” His voice was careless, dismissive. Another lie, though I wasn’t sure if this one was for my benefit or his.
“How dare you,” I spat. “You forced me to be your mate. You violated me, Fieran.”
He pulled back, hurt flashing across his face.
For a long moment, silence hung between us.
Fear’s lips were parted, his golden eyes hurt, and then his face shuttered. Whatever part of him had heard my accusation shuttered.
“No one can know what happened between us.” His voice was flat and calm. “For their sake, mortals and shifters need to unite behind the two of us. The Fae can only rule us because we’re divided. Knowing that you tried to kill me would ruin our chance to unite this kingdom against the queen.”
His gaze roamed over my face, the slightest sneer coming to his mouth. I had never seen his handsome face touched by ugliness. “Or would you prefer to serve the queen?”
“You know I would not,” I snarled.
“Then you will pretend to be my loyal, loving wife.” He took my hand in his and raised it to his lips in a mockery of a kiss, then paused, seeing the blood that still streaked my skin. “And I will pretend to love you.”
Those words curled through my lungs like smoke that could choke me. “You’ve been so good at pretending.”