Chapter 45
Forty-Five
The next day, we gathered in the wreckage for the selection ceremony.
The arena floor remained drowned beneath dark, stagnant water that lapped against crumbling stone. I stopped dead in the entrance to the arena as the other recruits streamed around me.
In the distance, the stands—once crumpled into the water, dumping the spectators into the same misery we experienced—had been rebuilt.
But we had been left to fend for ourselves above the dark water.
The arena could have been restored. This was the Fae kingdom, where stone rebuilt itself and water obeyed.
This felt like a message. A threat.
Floating just above the murky surface, dozens of marble platforms glimmered like pale moons. The other recruits stepped across them in silence.
I jumped from one to the next, the impact of my boots echoing over the flooded ruin, until we all stood isolated, with one person per stone, suspended above the wreckage as if another round of terror waited hungrily below.
Then we waited.
The silence grew thick, heavy enough to press against my ribs.
I risked a look toward Kiegan. His gaze was locked forward, jaw set, shoulders rigid with worry he’d never admit.
My stomach twisted. He’d always tried to hide his fear, but here, in this stillness, it radiated off him like heat from a forge.
Across the water, the clan leaders assembled in a jagged line, cloaks snapping in the wind. Behind them, their clans stood in proud ranks, banners unfurling in jeweled colors, rippling like living things. My eyes found Bismyth’s purple banners before I realized I was searching for them.
Before I admitted I was searching for him.
Fieran stood with the other clan leaders, but he might as well have been the only one there. The pull of his presence felt like the relentlessness of gravity. I was tangled with Bismyth now, with Fieran’s fate.
And we waited.
The queen had not arrived yet. My stomach twisted with anxiety.
How did I get my brother out of this world?
Tension rippled through the clans, as if every banner had shuddered in unison. The air changed as the shadows pulled apart, surrendering to a blaze of light, and my eyes winced shut even though I wanted to see.
The queen stepped through onto the platform.
The light faded, but the last bright remnants of it clung to her, limning her in shimmering veils of gold.
Tay stood at her side, dressed as finely as yesterday.
There was a smile fixed on his face as he watched her, and for some terrible reason, I thought of the adoring dog we used to have when we were very small.
Every clan leader bowed and kept their heads lowered when they straightened. Fieran sketched a bow of his own, but even when Fear bowed, it looked like a mockery, like a game, like a lie.
As if he could never truly be humbled.
“Recruits.” Her voice was soft, melodic, carrying to every corner as if she were standing right beside me.
“Today you will be selected by the clans. They will place the sigil in your hand that you will offer to your dragons. The clan who chooses you now determines the clan your dragon descends from, your destiny, and the family who will be closer to you than your own.”
I stiffened at her words. Bismyth would never replace Tay and Lidi. Her smiling words felt like an accusation, even though she spoke them to a hundred of us.
Did it feel so raw in part because part of me did long to be one of Bismyth? To be chosen, to belong? As the queen went on, my gaze slid past Fieran to the clans aligned behind them.
To Bismyth. To Anayla, who had slipped past my jaded defenses. To Dairen, with his bright smile and easy diffusion of tension. To Asrael, who seemed like he didn’t give a damn and then whispered just the right thing to me when I needed to hear it.
I didn’t want to care for them any more than I wanted to feel the slow softening I had for Fieran.
My gaze went back to Tay. There was a yawning pit opening in my chest, the feeling of doom casting its long shadow.
“My beloved recruits,” she went on. “You have sacrificed years of your lives training for these Trials and for the sacrifices beyond. For serving our kingdom and saving our people from the incursions of the vile things that seek to destroy all of us, Fae, shifters, and mortals alike.”
Well, I was clearly not one of her beloved, given that I had arrived last week.
“Your sacrifices, your suffering, your pains, and your victories—they are seen.” Her voice was warm, honeyed. “You have endured so much. The Trials are cruel, and yet here you stand in the wreckage they create, rising above it. You are strong. Sharp. Forged like steel.”
Gently, she went on, “I do not wish suffering on any of you. But I will not deny its value, either. Suffering shapes greatness. And only the great deserve to be claimed, first by these clans who have proven themselves in battle, then by your dragons. By your power.”
“Clan leaders, I know you have been watching even more intently than we all watch our heroes. You’ve decided who will fight alongside you. Choose well.”
She took a step back. “Recruits, in the days to come, may you rise, or may you drown. As you deserve.”
Her words echoed, then faded. They seemed to vibrate through me, and it occurred to me that I felt the same excited pulse I did to a favorite, fast-paced song at the pub dances. Irritation rose in the wake of that realization; her magic was manipulating us all.
But still, my heart was pounding. Eager to rise.
While the other clan leaders let her words resonate over us all, Fear was already moving.
He broke from their line with a decisive, slicing stride, cutting straight toward me.
His wings rose and he launched into the air without ever changing his stride. But Kiegan was between us, and to my surprise, he dropped out of the air, landing beside Kiegan. The crowd stirred, murmurs rising like wind through a thousand leaves.
When Fieran dropped his clan’s sigil in Kiegan’s palm, Kiegan looked stunned. Then bowed. He was always so stony, but joy, disbelief and relief flashed across his face.
I felt myself smile. Kiegan glanced my way, gratitude lighting his eyes, and my grin widened.
Fieran had listened to me. It was a dizzying, surprising thing.
Kiegan and I would be together in Bismyth. In that moment, I could have kissed Fieran.
“Cara.” Ander’s voice was commanding. The marble beneath our feet rocked as he landed at my side.
His brown hair was wind-tousled, jaw tight with tension. I stared at him in shock. At the sigil clutched in his fist.
The cost.
“Why?” I whispered.
“It’s the simplest way to keep you from being Fieran’s weapon.” His gaze softened, studying me. “To keep you from being his tool, Cara.”
“Is that your plan or the queen’s?”
“It’s the only one that works,” he said.
“Will she curse my brother again if I choose Fieran?” The world reeled sickeningly around me. I already knew the answer.
Ander leaned in. “He used your sister, Cara. That day he stole her magic. And he’s been using your brother. Don’t let him use you, too.”
“I should let you use me instead?” I demanded.
The ground rocked beneath my feet again.
“Yes,” Ander said, quickly, purposefully. “We can resist this kingdom’s cruelties together, but not in Fieran’s open rebellion. We can protect Tay and fight for mortals. But you have to come with me now.”
Fieran’s shadow fell over both of us.
His expression was unreadable. He held his sigil out to me.
“I just want to protect my family.” I stepped back, heart hammering. What was their rebellion to me? Stonehaven had been ignored by the Fae all these years. If I could just go back home, with Tay…
Returning home was a fantasy. There was no turning back the pages and slipping back into the past.
Fear’s gaze sharpened. “Cara.”
“I won’t take it.” This was the cost of my brother’s life. Turning my back on Bismyth. On things I had begun to want: to sit at Bismyth’s tables surrounded by my friends, with Fieran’s arm around me as the two of us traded fond insults.
Wind tugged at his cloak. That was a story of bright belonging I was spinning for myself, but it was just a selfish fantasy. Reality was Tay, pale and dying again.
Quietly, he said, “I will always choose you.”
When I didn’t reach to take his sigil, he threw it at my feet.
“No!” Ander said sharply, reaching as if to stop it. The metal rang as it landed on the marble.
Fear’s chin lifted in pride. Anyone else standing unclaimed in this arena would have been proud to have his sigil.
“I choose Clan Amber,” I told him as I reached for Ander’s sigil. “I choose Ander.”
“It’s not for you to choose,” Ander muttered. He let the sigil drop instead, falling alongside Fieran’s. The echo of the fallen metal seemed to echo through the arena.
“This is a matter to be settled between old friends,” Fieran said cheerfully, though his cold gaze on Ander made the tone a lie.
The queen’s voice rose above us all, smooth and victorious. “Two leaders. One recruit. To last blood.”
The courtyard erupted in sound.
Last blood?
The arena reformed with a violent shudder, as if waking from a nightmare.
Rings of fire burst to life around us, hissing through the mist rising off the drowned ruins.
Flames traced a circle atop the fractured platforms until the three of us stood trapped on a single floating slab of marble hovering above black, fathomless water.
The crowd leaned in from the broken stands, their anticipation a living thing, hungry and monstrous. Other shifters moved away, so the three of us stood at the center of a series of empty platforms surrounded by dark water that lapped angrily.
“Don’t worry,” Fear told me. “The arena will end things when Ander is at the edge of death, but it won’t let him die.”
“You arrogant prick.” Ander shook his head.