Chapter 30 #2
“Don’t sell yourself short, mortal. You deceived me well. You should be able to sell the kingdom this lie.” He set my hand on the slab again, then rose and moved across the room.
I looked out at the door and thought about Tay and Lidi, safe somewhere because of him, because of his clan, because of the rebellion I had just tried to decapitate.
My rage was still there; it wasn’t going anywhere, but it was sitting next to a cold, practical understanding. “What about my family?”
“Safe. And they’ll stay safe as long as we stay useful to each other.”
Useful. There it was. That was the word for what we were.
He returned with a basin of water and a cloth.
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Fine. Then we’re useful to each other. That’s all.”
“You can’t be seen like this.”
He wet the cloth and leaned over my body to cleanse my arms. His touch was careful. Not quite gentle, but careful. My skin goose-pimpled under his touch. I stared resolutely over his shoulder at the wall, trying to pay no attention to his eyes or to his face so near mine.
Then he took my hand in his and cleansed it, washing away the blood from my knuckles, between my fingers. If he thought that I had tried to cover my hands in his blood, he said nothing.
“You need to undress. You need clean clothes. This wound would be too hard to explain. We’ll imply you were bitten.”
“Turn your back.”
“I tried turning my back on you once.” His voice was harsh. “And you’re still too weak. Raise your arms.”
I shook my head, though it made my head ache worse. I made it to my elbows, then slowly managed to leverage myself to sitting. The world spun mercilessly, Fear’s cold face revolving in front of me, but I managed to get the tunic off.
He stayed back a moment as I struggled with my buckle, which had suddenly become a puzzle, and then he cursed and moved forward. Impatiently, he undid the buckle and my blood-soaked trousers.
Then he dressed me again in clean ones. I set my jaw and helped him as much as I could, despising myself and him in near-equal measure.
He cast a displeased look over me. “When you were wounded before, everyone saw me carry you to my bed before, to watch over you. So that’s what I’ll do.”
The thought of him touching me burned. But I couldn’t throw away our fragile alliance, not when the rebellion depended on it.
His jaw clenched at the contact as he slid one arm beneath my back and another under my knees, lifting me so I fell against his chest. I wrapped my arm around his neck to steady myself and stared at his collarbone instead of his face.
The wound was sealed. The rest of me felt scraped hollow. I was trapped in a body that had given too much and been allowed too little time to recover.
The world was a blur of the healers’ quarters, stone corridors, the waterfall, the stairs. But always, the one constant: his arms, the smooth leather against my cheek, his hard-angled jaw in the corner of my vision.
When we walked back through the doors of Clan Bismyth, the scent of food and the noise of revelry hit us both. The scent of spiced wine and sweets hung in the air; music played, voices were raised, and laughter was everywhere.
The Last Hunt was over; Bismyth celebrated.
It struck me with shock to realize that none of what had happened to me in the past hours—trying to kill my husband, being betrayed by my dragon, almost dying for it—was even known to them.
I did not feel like the same woman who had padded barefoot downstairs to Clan Amber’s territory just this morning.
Fieran changed instantly.
He warmed like the sun itself. The tension left him in a single breath, and something else moved in: the ease and light that lived in him when he was among his own.
He drew me closer. His jaw brushed the top of my head.
His hand at my hip shifted, settled, and began tracing an absent pattern against my side.
But I knew that touch wasn’t absent at all. It was deliberate.
A cheer went up at the sight of us. Kiegan caught my eye and gave me one of his not-quite-successful winks.
Anayla and Asrael stood together in one corner, looking troubled as they cast glances at us; then Anayla caught my gaze on her, and she smiled. But there was no erasing her shadows. My stomach tightened.
What was happening to Bismyth? Anayla and Asrael adored Fieran.
Fear settled with me in his lap at his usual chair at the long table. His arm around my waist usually felt like an anchor; tonight, it was dragging me down below the surface of the sea.
“Be gentle with Cara,” Fieran ordered as his clanmates surrounded us, and his voice carried his usual amused, exasperated affection with them, as if nothing weighty had happened today. “I’d keep my wife away from you all while she regains her strength, but we have to plan our next steps.”
“Are we getting out of here?” Riordan blurted out.
Fear’s arm tightened around me. I would’ve thought it was comfort, but tonight I knew it was play-acted comfort, if anyone was even keen-eyed enough to notice and appreciate it. Gods, what a magnificent liar he was.
“Soon,” he promised.
Because we had to get out of here; Tay and Lidi and Mam were gone, and the unmaking knife had been used to heal me, and the queen would know why, and Bismyth would be punished.
The queen’s reach seemed impossible to escape, but it had to be worse that we were within swatting distance from her castle.
My next thought was almost a prayer. “Lightbringer. Please.”
As usual with my prayers, it went unanswered.
Dairen handed me a plate. Roast chicken and crisp red grapes and buttery cheese and still-warm bread.
The smell of it opened a hollow feeling in my stomach.
I hadn’t eaten since before everything went wrong, and the hunger was sharp enough to embarrass me.
But though I forced myself to chew one piece after another, I tasted none of it.
Someone brought Fieran a plate too. He picked up the fruit tart—my favorite—and put it into my hand. A thoughtful gesture for others to observe. I ate it but did not taste it.
When he turned his face and brushed his lips over my temple, I could feel his smile against my skin. The touch was warm and easy, and it made me want to die.
“I’m tired,” I murmured into the warm hollow of his throat.
“I’ve got you,” he told me quietly. Once, those kinds of words had warmed me. Now, I knew they were for a purpose.
He carried me away, down the hall. The noise of the revelry faded behind us. He shouldered open his door and carried me in.
It was all restored to order now: the bed made, the lamp on the desk down low, the windows closed against Obsidian encroachers and the cool night air. Glowing coals smoldered in the stone fireplace.
It was only when he had closed the door behind us that I said, “We aren’t going to sleep in the same bed.”
It was not quite a question, not quite a statement.
“Of course we are.”
I had half-expected him to deposit me on my feet as soon as we entered, like an angry cat he had cuddled only to discover its claws. But he settled me into the bed carefully, though not with the reverence that had once come over his face. It might have been an act then.
He finished, “It’s practical.”
“Practical,” I repeated. It seemed like a punishment.
I slid my hand under the pillow, across the smooth fabric, until I found the edge of the coin. I drew it out, feeling as if it were dirty, and held it out to him. “This is yours.”
My tone was barbed. How dare he act as if I had betrayed him when he had betrayed me over and over?
“There is it,” he said, his voice cool, unapologetic. He took it from me, careful that our fingers did not touch, and I wiped my hand on my tunic, trying to get away the feeling of having held something filthy. “Goodnight, Cara.”
He sat down at his desk and turned down the light, leaving me with only the glow of the coals and his back for company. I wondered if at some time during the night he would truly come to bed or if he could not bear to sleep beside me.