Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Fear
Bismyth prepared quickly to leave the Trials. It wasn’t long before we were standing in the arena, surrounded by our packs.
I stood with Anayla and Asrael, mapping out our path. I’d send a smaller contingent to carry out the queen’s mission. We needed to get Cara’s family and my Nightwalkers to the rebellion.
Suddenly Anayla touched my arm. I followed her gaze to where Cara was deep in conversation with a mortal servant. Helda, I was pretty certain.
“We have a problem with the mortals,” Anayla told me quietly. “They’re losing faith in Cara.”
“They’ll find it again. Corbyn’s gained new mortal recruits as the story spreads.” We just needed it to be more than a story.
I stepped forward. “Bismyth, ready to fly.”
They all called back to me, cheering out their readiness. We all wanted to be free of this place.
“I will carry my wife,” I declared, my wings spreading to either side.
Cara, who had faced down a monster with nothing more than a shovel, looked far more shaken by being carried in my arms. But she smiled, a beat too late, and came toward me.
“We are going to get your family,” I told her quietly. She would do anything for them. We had certainly established that fact at length.
When she reached my side, I touched the empty scabbard at her hip. She looked up at me, her eyes flashing dangerously.
“You seem to have lost a blade,” I told her, though we both knew damn well where she had lost it.
Her body was so close to mine. It felt intimate, gripping the scabbard at her hip.
I slid the enchantment knife home into the scabbard.
“You should carry this one. You are the one who has the power to wield it. You will be the one who frees mortals from the queen’s enchantments. ”
“Perhaps I should carry the blade I failed with,” she muttered.
I usually read her so easily, but I wasn’t sure now whether she meant she might make a second murder attempt or if she intended to serve the rebellion with the weapon she had used to almost destroy it.
“I’ve decided to keep that one as a souvenir.”
I smiled down at her, looping a strand of her long blond hair around my finger. For the view of the clan, for the mortals. The way the two of us were standing so close must look as if we were intimately close, husband and wife, as Bismyth expected.
And if my devoted wife sometimes glared at me as if she hated me…. Well. Bismyth knew me and likely understood her.
I scooped her into my arms. She stared resolutely at my collarbone but put her arms around my neck obediently.
Then Bismyth launched. One contingent to the queen’s mission, the rest to the rebel encampment. I would lead my small group to collect my Nightwalkers and Cara’s family from the safe house.
I launched myself into the air, and Cara’s grip tightened around my neck. She looked grim about it. She didn’t even see the mortals who had come out to the arena to wave goodbye.
Quietly, I told her, “Corbyn is doing us a great favor by allowing us to bring your family and my Nightwalkers into the midst of the rebellion.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful to my father then?” she asked me pointedly. “Is that what you want from me?”
“Seeing as I know you, I was not particularly expecting gratitude,” I said dryly. “I was merely trying to explain to you the texture of the problem that we face. You want honesty from me, do you not?”
Her chin was tight. “That might be a start in…”
Her words failed. She didn’t have it in her to say it: in fixing things between us.
She would never admit it if she even wished for that.
It would be a vulnerability. What if I did not wish to fix things between us?
But was there any way of fixing things between two people when one of them had tried to kill the other?
“We have to be allies. We have to be husband and wife.” I brushed my lips over her temple, and even though we were in the air, her body shied away from me. It was as if she were more afraid of proximity to me now than she was of height itself. “It would help if we could be friends.”
“How?” There was the thinnest edge of vulnerability in the question.
That was all she would give me. I found it exasperating. I had reached out to her suggesting we should be friends, and she repaid me with nothing. “I suppose that’s on you to figure out. You are the one who tried to stab me. You are the one who should grovel for forgiveness.”
She stiffened, turning away from me. How she must wish she could fly now, so that she did not have to be trapped with me.
Shadowbane’s voice was a disapproving grumble in my mind. “You were right in what you said to the queen.”
“I was lying to the queen,” I reminded him.
“You’re lying to yourself now. She had every reason not to trust you. You are the one who should grovel.”
“I am not going to grovel to the person who almost murdered me.”
“Your kind is so dramatic. I have lived centuries. I understand every terrible thing Lightbringer has ever done. There is nothing that could reduce my love for her.”
“One, I have not lived for centuries, and I still react strongly to murder attempts. I’m not going to apologize for taking assassination attempts to heart. Two, if you understood Lightbringer so well, I think she would be here, manifesting her powers, and not ruining our chances against the queen.”
Cara’s gaze was on mine. She had stopped studying my collarbone and was studying my face. “You look far away. Are you talking to Shadowbane?”
“I am.”
“Does he know why Lightbringer won’t let me shift?”
“Not entirely. He knows bits and pieces. Lightbringer was very attached to a mortal once before.”
“Let me guess. She died in some bloody and horrible fashion, and Lightbringer is now trying to save me from being part of your rebellion with its inevitable, terrible stakes?”
“You’ll have to ask her.” It was more of a confirmation than I intended.
She looked away from me. “This was always a terrible plan, Fear.”
“Don’t lose faith in yourself, wife. I haven’t lost faith in you.”
“Why do you keep calling me wife?”
“Does it bother you because you know you haven’t earned it?”
“It bothers me because I do not want to be bound to you for the rest of my life. I didn’t become your wife believing that I would be.”
I could’ve told her that I was sorry, but what would that have meant?
And was I even sorry if she brought Lightbringer into the world?
If our rebellion finally ignited? We were hastening toward open rebellion now, anyway.
There was no way around it. The queen hoped that Lightbringer would continue to fail, and so would the rebellion.
Shadowbane added in my mind, “Perhaps after your rebellion succeeds, I could sever our bond.”
My wings missed a beat. We dropped slightly in the air, and Cara’s arms tightened around my neck, her cheek pressing my shoulder urgently. I caught us, my wings catching an updraft.
There was no simple way to sever the bond between a dragon and a shifter. Shadowbane was offering to return to the Dreaming before his time.
“You would give up your time in this world?”
“I did not mean to betray Lightbringer by forcing her back into the world,” Shadowbane growled. “Perhaps you and I both have much for which to grovel.”
Shadowbane was part of me. When I had been alone for so long, his voice had become the only constant I trusted. The one friend who never left me.
I did not look at what else I would lose. Not here, with Cara in my arms and the wind tearing at us both.
“Perhaps,” I said to him, meaning no. But I knew his offer of sacrifice would haunt me.
We landed at the safe house. Cara went ahead of me, and I delayed by getting the report from my shifters who had been watching over her family and the Nightwalkers, thanking them for their service, asking after their needs.
It was only when I could delay no longer that I followed her.
She should have some privacy with her family.
When I stepped inside, Cara had Lidi on her hip.
The girl was too big, and Cara listed to one side, but the two of them were so obviously grateful to be reunited.
Lidi was already combing through Cara’s hair with her fingers, preparing to braid it and proclaiming over how pretty her hair had become, and Cara was enduring it.
Tay seemed pleasant on the surface. Smooth like still water, but the queen’s enchantment was working beneath it. Sooner or later, it would be a problem.
Maris had found a way to make herself busy. She was packing their few belongings for the road. She straightened, turning to me, and her face lit with recognition. Other emotions flickered over it after. She was not entirely thrilled to see me.
“I’m taking you somewhere safer.” I wondered how much she remembered.
“To the rebel encampment.” She came closer, purposefully, as if she were trying to shut out her son. Quietly to me, she said, “You cannot trust him, but you must understand it’s not his fault.”
Well, that seemed to be a family trait: being untrustworthy and yet somehow blameless.
“I understand. I’m going to ask you all to accept a small enchantment that will keep you from remembering the route to the rebel encampment.
” The queen removing it later would not change the altered memories they would form along the way or if they left.
“Once we get there, Corbyn’s magic will shield us from the queen. ”
“I feel as if I’ve been enchanted enough for a lifetime,” she said, a bit bitterly, but then caught my eye and added, “I understand why it is necessary.”
I nodded. “Thank you. I am sorry to do it. I understand what you lost.”
“Do you?” She tilted her head. It was a familiar gesture. “My time in the palace now seems like a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. But lately, it’s a dream I can better recall. I think I remember you. No, I know that I do.”
“What do you remember?”