Chapter 44
Forty-Four
“Tay!” I broke from the crowd, feeling Ander reach for me, but I was already gone.
I rushed to my brother in a few steps, then slowed; Tay had been so breakable for so long. But he looked better now, no longer knitted out of ashen skin strung between sharp bones. I gripped his arms gently, searching his face, afraid I’d hurt him.
“Cara.” He flashed me a full, bright smile, the one that used to turn heads in our village.
He pulled out of my grip easily, hurt lancing through me, before he clasped me in a hug. His arms were strong, his body solid and comforting. It was as if the last years had never happened, and I was hugging my brother the way I had before.
I wrapped my arms around him, feeling flooded with so much relief it made me want to sob, as if all my buried pain and grief could not be held back now. “You’re real?”
“Definitely. If we were dreaming, I’d make myself taller.”
My laugh shook my chest, or maybe it was a sob. I pulled away so I could see his face and cupped his cheek with my fingers.
“How?” I whispered.
“I keep my promises.” The queen had a smile in her voice.
I turned to her, horror washing through me at the realization I was so close to her and yet had forgotten her presence, and then I stumbled into my clumsy curtsey. “Thank you.”
“One woman to another, how could I deny your request?”
My gaze jumped to hers.
She—ethereally beautiful, a goddess—winked at me. “Now you are free of my son’s manipulations.”
Then she was gone. No matter how beautiful she was, I couldn’t look at anything but Tay’s face.
He grinned. “I’m starving.”
I looked for Fieran, but the queen had summoned both him and Ander to her side. Fear’s gaze cut away to me, a look in his eyes I couldn’t read—was he frustrated that my brother was healed? The thought carved into my chest like a knife, ripping out any relief.
“Let’s eat, then,” I said, unsure what to do at this moment.
There had been no offer. No cost. Yet.
But I could feel the trap growing up around me.
I’d pay any cost to keep this version of Tay, alive and well.
“Come on,” I told him for now.
A few minutes later, the two of us sat across from each other, the only people at a long table in the banquet room. The shifters were in the ballroom, never as interested in food as we felt.
Tay sat across from me, hale and upright. His steps were sure, his color healthy, his eyes bright with life I hadn’t seen in months. Every time I glanced at him, relief swelled in my chest until it hurt.
“This is…gods, Cara, this is incredible.” He sat and tore into the bread first, closing his eyes like it was a religious experience. “This city, this place…this healing…”
“Do you remember sneaking into Old Berren’s orchard when we were kids?”
“And almost getting bit by his hounds?” Tay grinned, mouth full. “Never saw you run so fast.”
“Not that it mattered, when you were so slow getting the gate open.”
“You’re still mad about that? I was eight years old!”
“I could work a latch when I was eight years old.” I threw a roll at him, because it didn’t matter. There was so much food. “The oldest has to be the cleverest.”
He grinned but picked the roll up from where it had fallen on the table and tucked it back in the basket.
It was such a Tay thing to do, quietly cleaning up after me, as he’d always done.
He’d tried to smooth things over with our mother—or with Old Berren, for that matter—and dragged me away from a dozen fights.
We were so different, and I sobered, thinking he was too good to stay here in this dark, twisted Fae world.
“And the youngest has to be the sweetest,” he added.
He was thinking of Lidi, but for a long time, he had been the youngest.
I was rotted enough to make my way among the shifters and Fae. He never would be.
“Mother will be so glad to see you,” I said.
“You want us to go home?” His brows arched.
“I can’t leave yet,” I said carefully. The queen must be furious I’d appeared in the Recruits’ Trials after all instead of disappearing.
“Leave without you? No. Someone has to watch your back.” He shook his head.
“I have allies here,” I told him.
“Allies? Not friends.”
Fear’s maddeningly handsome smirking face surfaced in my mind, as it did far too often. Definitely not friends. “This is no place for mortals.”
He propped his chin in his hand. Red fruit stained his lips, and for a terrifying second, I imagined him with a mouth leaking blood, his bright eyes fixed and growing dull.
I could barely handle my anxiety for my own life. I needed him home and safe.
“Then it’s no place for you,” he reminded me.
“I’m dragon-marked. I’m…one of them, more than I’m anything else.” If I went home, I would burn. I didn’t doubt that now after trying to escape the Trials. “I’ve never belonged in the village any more than I belong here.”
“I’m not leaving without you.” His jaw was tight. “You would never abandon me. You think I’d abandon you?”
“Tay, that’s not what I’m saying.”
He stood. Then he hesitated, his frustration forgotten as he looked down at the remnants of the feast. “What will happen to the food?”
“Servants will come in and clean it up.”
“Mortal servants.” His voice was flat.
There was usually no point in specifying. The servants were almost always mortal, but more importantly, the mortals were always servants.
He picked up a piece of fruit and stuck it into the pocket of his fine gold tunic. He was dressed as richly as if he were the queen’s son himself rather than a mortal.
He was dressed better than the queen’s son usually was, given how Fieran almost always wore his leathers and blades.
He caught my gaze. “In case it would go to waste,” he mumbled, color flushing his cheeks.
“I do the same,” I admitted, reaching to pick up another piece of fruit. “It goes moldy under my bed, and I feel…”
I trailed off, glancing away. I wouldn’t have even admitted that much to anyone else in this castle, and I felt a rush of relief that he was here to understand. “There’s always plenty the next day.”
“And there’s always a next day,” he said, as if he were convincing himself.
“Always,” I said, giving in to my impulses and smoothing a napkin onto the table. Just a little cheese, a little fruit.
The two of us shared a mischievous, embarrassed smile.
When Fieran and Ander appeared at the doors together, every bit of happiness I felt curdled like a pail of milk left in the sun.
Tay clearly didn’t get it, because he flashed me a smile. “Which one?”
I couldn’t rise to banter just then. I felt as if the bright shimmering night had flattened out, like a page being turned in a book from a colorful, gilt-edged illustration to a blank page.
“No.” I moved in between Tay and the two men walking toward us now. “You can’t take him away.”
“Cara, you are always searching for the smart path forward,” Fieran told me softly. “Don’t disappoint me now.”
“Fuck you, Fear.” I turned away, and he wrapped his arms around me. I grabbed his forearm, ready to lash out with claws and teeth, but Tay was watching us wide-eyed. I didn’t want to make him afraid.
“It’s going to be all right.” Ander glared at Fieran over my head. “The queen is insisting he stays in the castle. Near her best healers.”
“Healers for a curse?” My voice came out very soft, meant for only the two of them with their sharp hearing. “Or is he just close enough for the queen to put that curse back on him, now that it can be the price of my disobedience?"
Ander’s face reflected that I understood the game. This trial was most of all about loyalty, and making sure it belonged to the queen.
Tay had come to us, his face worried, and I reached up and rested my hand on Fear’s shoulder. “I suppose I should introduce you to my friend. This is Fieran.”
“I remember. And I remember you.” Tay met Ander’s gaze.
“They say you have to stay here,” I said.
“I know. The queen said I can see you after the selection tomorrow.”
My gaze darted toward Ander’s. The cost. I wanted to know what it was right now, but I didn’t want Tay to worry.
And Fear was right. There was no way to get Tay out of here, so we had to choose our next moves carefully.
There was no maneuver that saw where Tay and I were walking back to our village side-by-side. My cheeks colored, embarrassed by my rare outburst.
I squeezed Fear’s forearm. “I’m all right.”
He nodded and released me. Ander was talking to Tay, so Fieran could whisper into my ear, “Trust me to get you through the next few minutes, and then trust me to get you both out of here.”
I nodded stiffly. “I trust you.”
“Liar,” he said again, but fondly. “The queen won’t hurt him. He’s far too useful. He controls you, and you control me.”
My brows arched.
He touched his finger to his lips in the quickest gesture, already turning into Tay and Ander’s conversation.
Ander and Fieran working together made me feel like things were truly dire.
I hugged Tay as if it might be the last time I saw him.
He laughed, staggering back a step.
“I’ve missed you,” I told him.
“I’ve missed seeing you smile,” he said, sounding more serious than I had expected. To Ander and Fieran, he said, “She used to be such a sweet girl.”
“She’s better now,” Fieran deadpanned.
He offered me his arm, and I took it.
Walking away from Tay took everything I had.
And I leaned on Fieran.
When we went back to the barracks, I asked Fieran, “When will I know what the cost is for this favor?”
“Too soon.”
“She lifted the curse?”
He nodded.
“Would she have to curse him again, or can she just…undo her removal?”
“She would curse him again.” His jaw flexed. “She’s the most powerful being in the kingdom. No one else can undo her curses.”
“What did you mean when you said I control you, Fieran?” I raised my hand to cut off whatever nonsense he was about to strew before my feet like flower petals. “I know you can’t tell me every part of your plans. Tell me what you can.”
“If all my plans unfold…you’re the reason the queen won’t rule forever.”
“Well, she’ll love hearing that if she coaxes it out of me,” I muttered. “You’re making me into the weapon of your rebellion.”
“No,” he said. “If we survive, you will change the world for mortals. You’re making yourself into the weapon of your own salvation.”