Chapter 3
Three
Cara
Ineeded time alone with Fear. He owed me answers, and I intended to collect them if I could get to him without an audience, without the whole of Bismyth standing around us like a wall.
The clan was moving through the grotto toward the labyrinth, toward the waiting nightmare circus of monsters. Kiegan caught my eye, and we traded a quick look. It was hard to tell if he disapproved of Fear marrying me or if he was thinking happy thoughts; orc faces didn’t register much joy.
“We have very little time.” Asrael’s hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword, not as a threat, but a habit. “The queen will expect us to be visible in the fighting.”
“You owe me a conversation, husband.” The word husband sat strangely on my tongue.
“I will tell you everything.”
Fear’s eyes met mine, and it was only because Asrael was at his shoulder that I happened to catch the flicker—brief, already gone—that crossed Asrael’s face at those words.
Fear never told anyone everything.
“How are we going to protect her?” Kiegan demanded. My half-orc friend was frowning, more than his usual natural glower. “The queen will want her dead. What’s the plan?”
From the passage behind us, the distant sounds sharpened—something that was not quite a scream, something that was not quite stone breaking. Battle. Moving closer.
Asrael’s gaze cut briefly toward the sound, then back. “You’ve brought her into danger by your attention, Fear. More so now. We’ll guard her with our lives, but—”
“But the queen cannot kill me.” The thought arrived with a giddiness I didn’t fully trust. “Not now. Not my brother or sister either.”
“Not once you finish this.” Anayla’s voice was careful.
I looked to Fear for clarification—finish meaning what, exactly? I was not opposed to certain interpretations.
He caught the look. The corner of his mouth moved. Not now.
“I’ll protect Cara during the Hunt,” Fear said, addressing the group but watching me. “While the queen knows my marriage is blocked, we’ll keep her from realizing it’s Cara. She’ll suspect. I’ve planted other rumors.”
Fear and I had bargained that we would not be forever to each other. We were allies in a marriage that could not be faked, and so it must be real. For now. But something still nettled me about the indignity of existing alongside other rumors.
“That leaves her without formal protection.” Anayla’s gaze cut to the passage where the sounds were growing, then back to Fear; the threat in her voice doubled by the threat in the dark. “If one of the queen’s court moves before the Claiming is complete—”
“Not as long as one of Bismyth draws breath.” Dairen’s hand came to rest briefly on my shoulder. “She’ll have protection.”
“You know what I mean, Dair.” Anayla’s voice softened, though it didn’t lose its edge. “The queen needs to know she can’t move against her. That’s the only protection that holds when none of us are in the room.”
“The marriage bond means the queen cannot order harm to Cara—or do it herself—without the magic turning back on her.” Fear’s tone was measured in the way of someone who already saw the outcome and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.
“It doesn’t matter if the queen realizes my wife’s identity.
Hiding her in Amber will delay the queen. ”
“She won’t be safe enough,” Kiegan said. “Not without us. Not in Amber.”
Fear’s jaw tightened in a way that told me what name he was going to speak. “She’ll be under Ander’s watch. Ander’s protection. The Claiming will protect her from the queen at one level of protection, and the second will be that the queen will expect my wife to be here. In Bismyth.”
“She’ll be safer with us,” Anayla said. Quiet, but immediate. Final in the way of someone who has already decided and is simply informing the room. She had stepped closer to me. “Ander will protect her, but not like we would. Nixi? Revin? You think they’ll look after her as we would?”
“I know what the queen will expect.” The edge in Fear’s voice was barely there. “And I know how to use her expectations. I’ve kept us alive this far, if you recall.”
Dairen exhaled slowly. “You always do love a good gamble.”
“This isn’t a game.” The snap in Anayla’s voice was unfamiliar enough that it made me look at her. Kiegan’s chin dipped in agreement before she finished, low and certain, “She’s ours.”
The word landed somewhere for which I didn’t have a defense.
Ours.
This strange clan that had acquired me like a stray and apparently intended to keep me. I thought of what Maura had lost by going against Fear. Of what it must have cost her to be cast out from something like this.
And then I noticed, not for the first time, that Fear let them disagree with him. He had only cast out Maura for betraying him. For hurting me.
“She’s mine,” Fear corrected. The weight of it was possessive. Final. And not enough, somehow, to do what ours had done.
Anayla’s chin lifted. “She’s ours.”
Fear, ever patient, shifted paths. “Cara needs to remain in Clan Amber until the claiming. An Amber dragon intends to claim her, and we need that dragon to defeat the queen. Bringing her into Bismyth now would block the claim before it can be completed.”
The ground seemed to tilt.
A dragon was going to claim me.
I’d been preparing to burn alive, the half-mortal who’d never be chosen. Kiegan and I had joked about it, or not quite joked. Fear had known all along.
He’d promised to tell me the truth once we were wed, once the bond between us protected me from the queen’s enchantments.
If only this clan would let us be alone.
“Being claimed by this dragon matters,” Fear promised. Then to me, he added, “I know how it looks. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?”
“You think I’ve got a trick, and of course I do. But this trick protects you.”
The sounds from beyond the passage grew. Something moving wetly through the stone. Something close.
Fear looked at me the way he did sometimes, as if the rest of the world wasn’t there or had become irrelevant. “Cara. Do you trust me?”
The hesitation I gave him was honest; one he’d earned. “Probably more than I should. But yes.”
The tension in the room cracked. Fear’s expression opened, brief and warm, something almost surprised in it.
“I trust you with my whole heart, my fierce mortal protector.” He caught my hand in his and brought it to his lips, the scrape of his mouth against my knuckles sending a strange thrill through me that I noted with the appropriate amount of self-reproach.
“Trouble,” Sera called out, and she was already moving, and so was half the clan before I saw the chittering monsters that swarmed the opening to the grotto.
Asrael caught Fear’s arm as the rest of Bismyth moved to slay the monsters. “The queen may have laid traps for Cara before your binding held. Things already in motion.”
“I promise.” Fear gripped his shoulder once, brief and firm. “I will take care of her.”
Asrael held his gaze for a beat before he nodded. Whatever he was thinking, he held onto it for later.
The clan had killed the monsters at the entrance and were moving out in pairs.
I glanced back at the grotto we were leaving behind, but Fear caught my hand.
He whistled to Rees, and Rees gave the labyrinth a longing look but obediently lay down, resting his head on his paws with a distinctly sulky look.
“Not allowed by Trial rules,” Fear told me briefly.
He strode toward the unsettling dark.
I followed.
Of course I did.