Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Cara
We barely had time to make our promises to Tesa—and did not have time to convince her, from the way she looked at me, before dinner. Fear and I talked and laughed and touched each other easily as we ate at a long table with my father’s rebels.
That was the real war for me. Fear’s hand on my back, his smile dipping toward my face, the adoration of the crowd reflected back on us both.
Every time he lavished praise on me, I heard his harsh, whispered accusation. Selfish.
He wasn’t wrong.
I was always trying to help my family and do the right thing. That was true. And yet I was still, underneath it all, just sort of a stupid asshole sometimes.
But I still lifted my wine glass on cue and laughed at everyone’s jokes. Tay beamed at me from down the table, and Lidi could barely be persuaded to sit and eat. All she wanted to do was run with her new best friends.
My mother was eager to be done with the meal and was full of feigned cheer. For her, that cheer always came across as slightly drunken, though she never touched her glass and barely touched her plate. Whenever there was pain in the future, she rushed toward it instead of dawdling like most of us.
She kept checking on Tay. She didn’t look at him with wonder in her gaze, as if she saw the miracle: her son, pink-cheeked and strong and laughing again.
This was the way she’d watched Tay when the illness was at its worst, and she hadn’t wanted him to see her worry. She cast furtive, sideways glances, like a bird launching from the brush when it knows it is being hunted.
She caught me watching and looked away.
Across the table, Tay was laughing at something Corbyn had said, easy and unguarded, the laugh I had heard my whole life, and the sight of it was so ordinary and so welcome that for a moment I almost let it be only that.
Then I saw what my mother had seen.
The way he laughed, yes. But the way he’d looked at Corbyn first, the flicker before the warmth arrived, was so brief I would have missed it any other night. Tay had never in his life calculated before he smiled.
Was that a part of the queen’s enchantment? Was he capturing details to bring back to her like a cat carrying mice?
My mother rose from the table before the meal was fully finished.
I rose too.
She didn’t look at me. I followed her away from the noise and the firelight; the sounds of the dinner growing muffled and then distant behind us as we moved toward the smaller tent. The night air was cooler here, away from the fire. Neither of us spoke.
She had her hands folded in front of her and her chin up, and her step was brisk. It was the cadence of a woman not allowing herself to hesitate.
We reached the tent. She didn’t go in.
I wanted to comfort her, and I had no idea how. “Did you tell Tay how everything will work?”
“Everything.” There was a faint shakiness about her.
“He took it badly,” I guessed.
“He took it the way Tay takes things, even without the queen’s enchantment curdling his soul.” Her hand rested at the tent entrance but didn’t lift the flap. “He listened carefully, and he was calm, and then he told me why it wasn’t necessary.”
Corbyn and Tay came after us, their conversation easy. Corbyn guided him toward the tent. When Tay looked up and saw my mother and me, he looked glad for a moment. Then his face shifted as he understood.
“I don’t want it.” Tay shook his head. “You don’t understand what you are doing to me.”
“Tay, the queen enchanted you,” I told him gently.
“Yes. She healed me.” His eyes were wide and frustrated and perhaps a bit sad. “No mortal could do that. Only the queen. And you want to undo it.”
“No, Tay. You’ll still be healed. She did heal you. It’s done. The sickness is gone, and the enchantment she has over you now isn’t healing.”
“You don’t understand.” He sounded patient, and suddenly I was back in our little cottage, listening to my brother’s soft, kind words.
He was terrified; his near-panic was written clearly across his taut face, and yet he was still so gentle.
“I know you’re trying to help, Cara. But you’re going to hurt me. ”
“I’m not. Tay, I’m not.” I touched his arm, wanting to comfort him, but he shied away. As if he expected me to force him.
There was a lump in my throat, and I swallowed it down. “We have to do this.”
“No, you don’t.” His hands raked through his hair in his frustration.
“You’ll be fine when it’s done. You’ll see.”
“Because you know everything about Fae magic now?” He smiled slightly to soften the words, but nothing of that smile reached his eyes, and it fell fast. “What if you’re wrong? What if I grow sick and die?”
Images of what it had been like when Tay was sick and dying flashed through my mind. “Please let’s go into the tent and talk, Tay.”
He looked as if the tent were a death sentence. “I’ve been sick for so long. Do you know what it’s like to be free? To not be afraid every morning that today is the day it comes back? The queen gave me that.”
Then, his voice was quiet and ragged. “Do you understand that? For the first time I can remember, I’m not afraid.”
Unvoiced but not unheard: until you.
“Cara.” Tay’s gaze on mine was hopeful, and that wrenched at my soul. “Please. Understand.”
He was not quite begging.
Something hot pressed against the backs of my eyes, but I wouldn’t let myself cry. I wouldn’t let myself back down.
Fear was at my side. His arm brushed my shoulder. When I looked up at him, his gaze was steady. There was none of the cold anger from our fight or the charming deceit at dinner. He was my ally.
But still, he didn’t offer. He wasn’t doing me those kinds of favors these days. If I needed him—if I wanted him—I had to ask.
I had to swallow hard, as if my pride blocked my throat. “Will you come with us, Fear?”
He moved before I could even finish speaking. He took command so easily. “Let’s talk about it inside.”
Somehow, Fear got us all into the tent. Even Tay. He said something quietly to him, and Tay softened, then went. I felt a sudden rush of jealousy. I wished I could soothe people as he did, instead of nettling them.
I glanced over my shoulder before I entered the tent. We were being watched. Corbyn threw out an uneasy glance. He was the leader, but his power wasn’t absolute. He had brought Nightwalkers and my brother, all under the queen’s enchantment, into these people’s last refuge.
There was only one way to protect them, and my brother was resisting.
The tent felt far too small once we were inside. I hesitated at the door and hated myself for hesitating.
Tay looked at Fear the way he looked at all the shifters when he’d first arrived, with the careful assessment of someone who had grown up hearing stories and was startled to find themselves standing inside one.
“Is he going to hold me down?” His voice was still gentle. He was frightened; I could see it in every line of his face, and he was still the kindest person in the room.
“I hope not,” I said honestly.
“But he might.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t make that promise, and we both knew it.
Tay looked at Maris, then at Corbyn, and it was only because of the width of his glance around that I realized how far apart they stood.
But mostly, Tay only had eyes for me and for the knife at my hip.
“She never hurt me,” Tay said suddenly. It was like a dam breaking before a river as his words spilled out. “I know what you think she is. I’ve heard it all. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying she never hurt me. She healed me when I was dying, and I never saw her be cruel. Not once.”
His eyes glittered with tears. “But this is cruel. I’m healed, and I’m well, and you’ll take it away from me because it’s the queen’s work.”
“That’s not why, Tay. You can’t trust her.” I could feel Fear and my mother and Corbyn watching me fail. I could not find the right words no matter how desperately I grasped for them. “I’ve done it on myself. I promise it will be all right.”
“That’s different, isn’t it? Doing it to yourself?” His throat bobbed. “Cara. I’m asking you. Please. Cara.”
He said my name softly, the way he had begun to say it when he was dying. Some of the sibling angst and agitation and mockery had been worn away by the shadow of the grave, and he had said my name with tenderness, as if he was glad I was in the world.
“The queen will use the enchantment to find you and to find this camp.” The words fell from my lips gracelessly, and his shoulders sagged.
My mother stepped forward. “Enough. We have to do this, Tay. You’ll understand after.”
“I trust you,” Tay told me urgently. He didn’t look at Fear, who was advancing, or at Maris, who had given Fear the order. He just reached for me. “I always trust you, Cara, please—”
“Please trust me in this,” I said, and our voices were overlapping, our pleases and the ragged edges of our voices.
Fear was careful. He got his arms around Tay from behind and held. Tay was strong now, genuinely strong in the way he had never been, the queen’s healing complete and working against us both right now, but he was never going to be enough against Fear. Tay knew it.
He fought anyway.
Fear gritted his teeth. Being careful was hard and cost him, and he had to be far more careful because my mother was watching how she handled her son.
“Cara.” Tay’s voice, strained. Fear’s arms around him. “Cara, please. I’m asking you.”
Doing this quickly was the most merciful. For all of us. Now I didn’t hesitate.
I pressed my palm to his side and ripped the knife free of the scabbard.
My mother turned away, her face pale. Corbyn took a step toward her, then stopped.
My hand was shaking on the hilt as I passed the blade near his skin. I dared to look up at Fear’s face, but I already knew he saw. He always saw.
Still, his gaze was pointedly fixed somewhere over my shoulder as he held Tay still, and he was whispering soothing nonsense to my brother that contrasted sharply with those powerful arms forcing Tay still. Somehow he could do both, brutal restraint and murmured kindness.
The enchantment rose suddenly, protruding from the skin near his throat. Maris covered her mouth with her hand. It was hard and glowing, yellow like an old bruise.
I steeled myself as I raised the knife, or tried to, because Tay was pleading and there were tears clinging to my lashes, and the world was too blurry to cut into my brother’s skin. I hated myself for being weak, for slowing us down.
Fear’s hand fell over Tay’s mouth, and Tay made a sound of protest and anger that was smothered by Fear’s palm. I glanced up at him, surprised. Fear gazed back at me, blank-faced and unapologetic and cold. If I couldn’t focus with my brother’s begging, he would take care of it.
Welcome to the war, mortal.
I blinked away the tears, feeling them track down my cheeks, but they no longer blurred my vision.
“I’m sorry. It’ll be all right,” I whispered to Tay.
And I cut.
Tay made a sound I was going to be hearing for a long time.
“Almost there,” Fear said for the second time today, and he was right.
Tay stopped fighting. Not because he believed me or trusted me, but because Fear was holding him, and there was nothing useful fighting could do anymore.
Tay had always been practical. That thought was accompanied by too many memories of Tay having known the end was near and there was not another battle.
I did the work and cut away the enchantment. I trust you. I always trust you.
Not always.
I flung away the enchantment, which was already melting away into nothing. I didn’t even aim. I just wanted the queen’s poison away from us both.
“Here,” Fear said, his arms loosening around Tay.
As soon as he was certain Tay would harm no one, his hand went to his belt. It meant nothing to Tay that Fear forced the blood salve on him. I was afraid for an instant that Tay would knock the blood salve from his hand, but Fear convinced him. Instantly, the wound healed over.
I thought of the precious potion made of Shadowbane’s blood that I had dropped onto the labyrinth floor with sudden, tight guilt.
Tay didn’t yank away from Fear. He was forever gentler than me. He just went as far away from the four of us as he could within the confines of the tent, his tense shoulders and bowed head all we could see as he tried to put himself together.
After a long moment, Tay turned around.
I had known every version of my brother’s face for nineteen years, and this was a new one. Not the anger I had braced for. Not the fear.
His gaze found mine. “I trusted you.”
A fact that had been and might never be again.
He sat down on the cot.
He put his face in his hands.
Maris sat beside him. She put her arm around him, and he leaned in.
I went to wash my hands.
Fear came with me, and I was, despite it all, grateful for his presence at my side.