Chapter 50
Fifty
Kiegan was waiting for me, but he wasn’t alone.
Tay was by his side.
Rees growled at Tay, and Tay gave my dog a worried glance.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I wanted to spend the evening with you.” His eyes were troubled, and a knot of emotion tightened in my gut. “With the claiming coming…”
My brother thought I might die.
Kiegan, looking as if he might have an allergic attack to feelings, held out his hand for the books. “Give those over. I’ll look for myself if any dragons seem worthy.”
“That’s not how it works—you know what, good luck. Any dragon would be lucky to bond with you.” I handed over the pair of books.
Tay looked slightly concerned at the tomes being produced from under my tunic, but it was a familiar expression on his face. His furrowed brow made me smile, remembering all the times I’d seen that look.
“There’s no reason to worry about the claiming,” I said.
Kiegan snorted, and both Tay and I startled.
“I found a garden in the labyrinth that reminds me of home,” Tay said. “Come with me and see it?”
“Promise we won’t get lost?”
“No.”
But I wanted to go with him anyway. There was a faint sheen in his eyes, even though he was smiling, as if he were barely holding back tears.
“Can you look after Rees?” I asked Kiegan, since Rees still looked agitated.
Did Rees sense the queen’s presence with Tay somehow? He was Fear’s dog, and I wondered how much Rees and the queen had crossed paths.
“He’s as grumpy as you are sometimes.” Tay said with a grin.
“Fear likes her grumpiness,” Kiegan observed, and I wondered if that thought came from his desire to taunt me or from Fieran himself.
“Tell Ander where I went.”
Kiegan gave me a long, searching look, but I was just being careful. I couldn’t trust my brother, but we could stay on the grounds and talk. Ander might be irritated, but he would understand. He had told me to pretend all was normal with Tay.
And if the queen intended to twist my brother in some way, Ander and Kiegan would know I was with him.
Whatever Kiegan saw in my face, he nodded. He whistled to Rees, who reluctantly trotted at his side, glancing back at Tay and me.
There were so many hidden, magical places in the academy’s caverns that it didn’t surprise me Tay had found another one.
Tay said he’d written to Mother and Lidi and had letters back already. Even though I hadn’t, a rush of guilt and hurt tangled in my chest at the thought that no letter had come for me.
Then Tay pulled a folded envelope from his pocket. “They both wrote to you too.”
Sudden tears stung my eyes. It was ridiculous. I might die within days, and yet what undid me was the relief of not being forgotten. “How did you manage that?”
“I told the queen that I missed Lidi and Mother,” he said, smiling a little. “She suggested I write to them.”
The image of Tay chatting with the queen about our family made my stomach twist. “Tay, you shouldn’t talk to her about them.”
“Right, because you’re convinced she’s a monster. Because of Fieran.” His smile was sly, knowing.
“Before you say it,” I warned, “I’m well aware that Fieran is also a monster.”
“But he’s your monster,” Tay teased.
“Not at all.” I sighed, trying to steady myself.
I didn’t want to argue with him, not when these might be among our last conversations.
I wanted to be kind, to let him carry good memories into a future where I might not be there to apologize.
“I’ve spent too much time thinking about Fieran as it is. Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course,” he said easily. “Anyway, you should read your letters.”
A small, unsteady joy unfurled in me. I held the two folded pieces of paper between my fingers, hesitating over which to open first. Lidi’s would be dessert. Mother’s…might not be so sweet. I was never sure what to expect from her.
I decided to read my mother’s letter first. Her neat script filled the page.
Something loosened inside me as she wrote about the spring planting, about the goat possibly being pregnant, and about how much she wished I were home.
I could almost see her writing by lantern light at the kitchen table, imagining I’d walk in before the kidding.
My mother hated tending animal births—she was surprisingly squeamish for someone who’d borne three children.
There was no scolding hidden between the lines, no disappointment, no sharp edge.
When I finished, I pressed the page to my chest. It was exactly the letter I needed.
I opened Lidi’s next, reading as we walked. Tay reached out once to catch my elbow, steering me around a tree that grew up through the middle of the passage as I squinted at her chaotic handwriting.
“She has a…creative sense of spelling,” I said.
He laughed. “You do too.”
“I do not!” I protested, though he wasn’t wrong. I’d never understood why spelling couldn’t just match how words sounded.
I folded both letters carefully and tucked them into the pocket of my tunic. The faint crinkle of paper against my heart made me feel steadier, tethered to home, to family.
When I looked up again, we stood at the entrance to a garden that took my breath away.
The air shimmered faintly with magic. Flowers glowed with soft bioluminescent colors in blues, violets, and golds.
Silver streams trickled through mossy stones, and hundreds of small, suspended lanterns floated like stars caught midair.
The walls of the grotto breathed faint light, making everything seem alive.
“Lidi would love these glowing flowers,” Tay said, pointing.
“Maybe we can bring back seeds for her,” I replied.
“Do you think they’d grow on the farm?”
I felt a pang at the thought that Lidi couldn’t grow things as she used to. “Maybe. Even without her magic, she could make anything bloom.”
Magic didn’t make us. The Fae and the shifters might think mortals were nothing without it, but I knew better.
If a dragon claimed me, maybe I would have magic myself.
The thought unsettled me. I pushed it away. I didn’t want to think about the dragons’ claiming, not when I was here, with Tay, and everything felt briefly safe.
“I think Lidi would love the magic of the city,” Tay said. “It’s incredible here.”
Fear closed around my chest like a wolf’s jaws. “It’s beautiful, but it’s dangerous too. I want us all to go home.”
Tay gave me a knowing look. “You’re scared.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Sometimes. But I was dying at home, Cara. It’s nice to be somewhere that doesn’t hold all those memories.”
Guilt stabbed through me. He must’ve seen it on my face because he softened, smiling faintly. “I know you worry about Lidi and Mother coming here. But we’ll go home eventually. I’ll make new memories, good ones. I’ll forget that I ever thought I was dying.”
“That sounds like a plan.” Maybe we could both forget the taste of dread.
“But I’m not leaving without you,” he added firmly. “We’re in this together, Cara.”
His words touched me—and worried me.
As we turned a corner, the air thickened. The light dimmed, as if the magic itself grew uneasy. Shadows stretched long across the glowing garden floor, the air humming with a strange pressure.
“Maybe we should go back,” I said.
“I want to be at the claiming,” Tay said.
“No.” The only thing worse than burning would be burning while my brother screamed.
He frowned. “Then you don’t need me to stay here with you. You spend all your time worrying about me.”
“I do need you,” I blurted out. Gods, I had wanted for him to go home, and now I needed to convince him to stay. “Just not then. Not watching.”
“You think I don’t want to be there for you? Or that I’m not strong enough to see it?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” I felt lost in this conversation, unable to find my way well enough to point either of us in the direction of what I meant. “I don’t want you to watch. But it makes me feel better to have you close. You’re my family. My one friend I can trust—"
“Is that what I am? When I don’t even understand this world? I can’t help you.” His frustration sounded raw. “But I could learn. I could understand the court, the politics—Fieran’s maneuverings, the queen’s plans.”
Alarm curled through my chest like smoke. “What are you talking about?”
“Good evening, Cara. Tay.” The queen’s voice was soft.
Tay’s face lit up as he turned toward her. My heart plummeted.
The realization struck me like a physical blow: he had brought me here for a reason.
Perhaps for a reason he didn’t even understand.
“Are we still on war college grounds?” I asked.
“Barely off them,” Tay said. “We can have you home before Ander misses you.”
What had he done? I’d been betrayed by the brother who loved me, and he didn’t even know it.
I closed my eyes, gathering what strength I could.
Then I turned to face the queen. Tay had bowed, stiffly, like we’d been taught in primary school in the unlikely event we ever met Fae royalty, and she waved him off.
I dropped into my awkward school curtsey, and she watched me with glittering eyes, perhaps in no rush to ease my discomfort.
“Cara,” she said, urging me up with a gesture. “Do you have anything to tell me about my son?”
Her voice was melodic, beautiful, almost transfixing. Her smile was radiant, her face opening. Something about her made me want to confess everything I knew and felt about Fieran.
Tay was watching me with guileless curiosity too, as if he wanted to know the truth. Was my brother enchanted, compelled to do her bidding…and was I as well?
“He’s guarded with me,” I said, letting that truth flow without trying to hide it. “He doesn’t trust me.”
“Is that because you betrayed him?” She seemed amused. “Choosing Ander over him.”
The queen would dig my truths out of me with her enchantments. But what did I know for sure? I suspected Fieran had manipulated me into joining Clan Amber, but I also had seen a flash of genuine hurt on Fieran’s face.
“I think I hurt him. And I shouldn’t care.” But I did. The implication hung in the air.