Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Cara
The Nightwalker. Ander’s Nightwalker. Tesa. Her identity to me had shifted. I had been too focused on Tay and Lidi and my mother to pay much attention to what I’d deemed Fear’s pet Nightwalkers.
She had raven hair, short and choppy around a heart-shaped face, and she still wore the black hooded tunic of a Nightwalker, the scarf that they used to cover their faces knotted around her throat.
Now, as she sat stiffly down on the edge of the cot, I felt guilty, so I attempted a joke. “I feel like we should’ve gotten to be friends before I brandished a knife in your direction.”
“You do like to do that,” Fear agreed, smiling, and it sounded as if he was joking, but I knew what was underneath.
I turned away to the table at the side of the cot so no one would see my smile flatten out. Someone had removed the gore-streaked bowl and replaced it with one that was clean and empty.
“It will feel strange,” I warned her.
“So does knowing you’ve left so many pieces of yourself behind.” She studied Fear, her gaze tracking across his face curiously. “You told me you would learn about my past and report back.”
“Now you will be able to remember for yourself.”
“Do I want to?”
Her pretty face was open and honest. She removed her hooded tunic and lay it beside her, dressed now only in her leggings and wrap. She was slender and muscular, the muscle in her shoulders and arms defined.
It was easy to imagine her standing at Ander’s side. They must have made a lovely couple, not just beautiful, but earnest and good. She was likely a better person than I was—someone who would never stab their mate—and Ander was certainly a better man than Fear.
“I don’t know,” Fear confessed. “You had a good life once. You lost much. I don’t know if it’s better to mourn what’s been lost and to try to piece back together the shards.”
“Well, I guess I’d rather be miserable than let the queen win.” She said the words lightly, though I had the feeling her courage had been summoned from deep within. She smiled at me. “Brandish away.”
She had more personality than I expected from a Nightwalker. I’d had little contact with them to know if there was truly something strange and notable about her or if the Nightwalkers were just always acting.
I lifted the knife and drew the tip over her body.
Despite herself, as I passed the knife over her arm, her hands turned over and clenched into fists.
But no enchantment rose to her skin. Her jaw tightened, a muscle jumping, as I brought it near her neck and down, and her stomach tightened as I moved downward.
Color pulsed beneath her skin, and I knelt at her side. “Hold,” I told her softly, and Fear leaned over us both from the other side, ready to grip her if needed. The healer was just outside the door.
My palm gripped her flat, cool side, holding her steady, as I pressed the tip above the ruby crystal that had formed. Like Riven’s, this was deeper than her skin, woven into her flesh.
I glanced up at her. She gave me a small smile and a nod, as if she were the one encouraging me.
I dug the tip of the blade into her skin. She was still at first, but this enchantment was woven even deeper than Riven’s.
She let out a cry, and Fear gripped her shoulders, holding her still.
“It’s all right.” He used his best, comforting voice. He could be so convincing.
I slid beneath the crystal with the tip of the blade and worked it loose, bit by bit, trying to focus only on the work. I tried to be mindless of how her body had gone taut and arched with pain.
The crystal shattered suddenly, flying in shards across her lap and toward me. I ducked away, and her blood was spilling into her lap, but there were still glimmering pieces of the enchantment embedded in her flesh.
“Fear,” she gutted out. She clutched his arm and looked up at him as if she knew him.
“Almost there.” He was using the soothing voice again, but lines of tension stood out in his corded forearms.
When I held the tip of the knife at the wound I’d made, shards rose to the surface. I had to reach in and twist them out the rest of the way, worrying them out with the tip, and her eyes closed, her face paling with pain.
As soon as I had the last free, I shouted for the healer and backed away.
“I remember you,” she told Fear as the healer went to work. She grabbed his forearm rather than let him move further away, staring up at him. “We were friends for years.”
His throat worked once before he answered. “I didn’t know you were alive. I would’ve come for you.”
“Enough. I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty.” She frowned up at him. “Ander…is he all right?”
“He’s alive and…well.”
She seemed to be casting about for another question, and Fear added, “He is alone.”
Relief brightened her face. She swallowed it down, managing concern instead. “It’s been years.”
“I’m not sure that matters,” Fear said.
“Where is he?”
“On a mission with Amber. I can summon him—”
“No!” She looked from him to me, her eyes widening. “Please, no. Don’t tell him.”
“If you are worried you’ll disappoint him…” Fear crouched at her side, his gaze gentle. “He has loved you without changing.”
“But I have changed. He mourned a person who deserved it—”
“He still mourns.” Fear put his hand over hers. “Tesa, you don’t have to be ready to see him tonight. But try not to be afraid.”
I was stuck on her words. He mourned a person who deserved it.
What had she done for the queen?
“Please.” Her gaze was steady on mine. She seemed to know Fear and his ways, even after a gap of all those years. I was the one she didn’t trust.
“Yes,” I said, and then reconsidered as the full weight of that promise pressed down. “Ander will be hurt if he knows you were alive, and we concealed the truth—”
“I need time,” Tesa cut in, her voice desperate.
“You’ll have it,” Fear promised. “We can give you time.”
He cut a look at me. There was a harder edge in it than ever before, something stern and unyielding. The version of Fear that commanded shifters and earned their fear.
I narrowed my gaze back at him. I was not to be commanded, and I would not be afraid, not of him.
“A moment, Tesa,” he asked her, and waited until she nodded before he rose.
I stalked out of the tent before him. Back to the basin set out with fresh water. I plunged my hands into it and began to wash, scrubbing too hard.
Fear burst out behind me. He was also moving a bit too quickly, but he slowed immediately, nodding to a rebel passing by. His hand fell on the small of my back, and I looked up at him, not trying to hide my fury.
For his part, he was smiling for someone else, not me, and he said through his teeth, “You are not going to tell Ander.”
“I can’t tell Ander.” I looked up at him and tried to force a smile of my own, but it was a snarl, and I knew it. “I don’t have a way to reach him. So you don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not discussing logistics.” He dipped his mouth near my ear. “This is Tesa’s story. It is her right to tell him when she is ready.”
“I know that. But it’s also wrong to keep this secret from him.”
“You already promised. So this conversation is rather academic, is it not?” He was condescending. I was close to feeling nostalgic about stabbing him.
“Of course, you keep all your promises.”
“I do.” He leaned against the post beside the basin, his tall body taking up enough space to grant us some privacy, so long as we spoke very softly. “I promised you long ago that I would see your brother well and your sister’s magic restored, and I have worked steadily toward that promise.”
“I’m not doing this right now.” There was no towel. Why was there no towel? I shook off my damp hands, irritated by the wetness and the chill in the air. “We have to talk about Tesa and Ander. What happened between us doesn’t matter.”
He leaned in as if he were going to tell me a secret. With his lips dangerously close to my ear, he breathed, “It matters to me.”
I forced myself to hold still despite the warmth of his breath on my skin.
He was too close, close enough for me to see every part of those eyes.
From a distance, they read gold; up close one could see the golden flecks glittering, bright and supernatural, within the amber irises.
They were a dragon’s eyes, except for the shape of the pupil.
Whether the hammering of my heart was alarm or rage or desire was impossible to determine.
Focus.
“We could tell him that she is alive but isn’t ready to see him. That’s the truth.”
“Yes, Ander will definitely take that well. Should I tell him—his old enemy—or would you like to take the lead?” His voice was bright and cutting.
He gently gripped my bicep. “Do you think yourself strong enough to hold him back from going to the woman he loves, the one he still mourns, magically restored to life?”
I shook off his hand. He let go as soon as I moved. “Ander would understand.”
I wasn’t sure he would.
Fear gave me a cutting, dismissive glance. He was still angry at me. I had known that. It had been in the cold between us at times, but now I felt the full force of Fear’s anger, boiling away under the surface.
He offered his arm to me. “We should perhaps seek a quieter place for conversation.”
“Tesa is waiting for us to return.”
“Tesa is waiting for us to return with a promise to respect her right to choose when and where and if she reveals herself to a man who thinks she is dead. So I’m not sure it matters if we rush right back in while you are being a selfish little monster.”
My lips parted as if I had been slapped. I did not take his arm, but I went ahead of him into the forest, seeking privacy.
Fear followed me. I knew we must be far enough away from the camp when he said, “Though, I am certainly a fool myself for being alone with you someplace you might draw a knife.”
I turned on my heel. “I despise you.”
He waved off my words. Now there was none of the smiling charm he had been performing in case anyone could see us at a distance. His golden eyes were beautiful and cold. “Yes, yes. I am not particularly withered by your judgment when you have been displaying such a lack of it generally.”
He paused. Then, more coldly still, “What exactly is it you wish from me? Besides for things to be entirely different?”
I stared at him, my jaw tight.
“Ah, there it is, mortal.” He took a step toward me, then another.
I refused to back away, so I found myself pinned as he put his hand on the tree behind me. His body stretched over mine, caging me there as I raised my chin. His face was so near mine, even though no one could hear us now.
“You know that Ander cannot be told the truth now,” he murmured. “Either Tesa or Ander will be betrayed. But it is her story and her right. Is it not?”
He knew I could not argue. For once. I pressed my lips together tightly.
“But you don’t want to be the one carrying the truth.” His voice had gone soft, but there was nothing merciful in it.
“I do not want to be deceitful like you.”
“You do not want to be responsible like me,” he corrected. “Well, you demanded all my truths from me. You wished to sit in judgment. Now you are discovering just how unpleasant it is to be the one who decides.”
“It’s not our right.”
He nodded, though it was mocking. “Not our right to keep the truth from Ander?”
“No.”
“And not our right to tell Tesa’s story without her consent?”
I would have had to say no again, and he knew it. I would not. “You are infuriating.”
“And you are selfish.” He said it without raising his voice.
I forced myself to keep my gaze steady on his, though I could feel my cheeks were flushed hot. “I’m trying to figure out how to help both of them. What’s selfish about that?”
“You agree with me that it is Tesa’s right whether or not to tell Ander, and when, and how.
” He stepped back, his hand falling from the tree; now I was pinned there only by his words.
“You don’t like being the one who carries the truth.
That has nothing to do with what’s best for Ander or for Tesa. ”
He went on. “You want what’s best for you.”
He was silent for a moment, letting that land, before he unleashed the next volley. “You wish for the version where you do the right thing, only there is no right thing. You wish for the version where no one is betrayed, only there is no choice here that is not a betrayal.”
I crossed my arms, but it did nothing to armor me against his words. They battered against me like blows.
“You wish for the version where no one is angry at you. But you are not a child, and you cannot make decisions to avoid anger.”
He was right, and I despised it. I raised my chin, refusing to hide from that merciless gaze.
“You didn’t want to be complicit. You are. To deceive a friend is uncomfortable. I understand.” He stopped, his eyes flaring with hot anger. “That particular misery has been part of every decision I have made for the last ten years.”
He pulled away abruptly. His face shuttered, and it was only then that I realized he had revealed more to me than he had intended.
There was nothing I wanted to say in the silence between us. There was nothing I could say. I was foolish and selfish.
For the first time I realized how deeply he saw through me, to all that was ugly. I served and protected and tried to please other people, and in return, no one saw my secrets.
But his gaze was still steady on mine. His chest expanded with a breath that was more ragged than I would have expected. My own breathing was rough, loud and ragged in the charged silence between us.
I pictured Ander, hurt and angry and hating me, thinking I was just like Fear. And then I pictured Tesa, the way she had looked lost, the dread that flashed across her face at the thought of seeing Ander. He mourned someone who deserved to be mourned.
To my surprise, my face had grown damp. Fear did not brush the tears away as he once would have. I should not have missed the gesture.
I raised my sleeve to wipe my face. “I will not tell Ander.”
My voice sounded dull to my ears, as if it had been hollowed out.
“Good.” He straightened. “That is the best decision available out of choices that are all distinctly unfortunate.”
He began walking back toward camp, heading into the trees. The shadows of the canopy seemed to try to swallow him immediately. He turned his head over his shoulder to call back to me, “Welcome to the war, mortal.”