Chapter 8
Eight
Fear
Icame back from my Nightwalker meeting through the lower passages, which were less watched, and emerged into gleeful debauchery.
We had entered the wilder time after a Hunt where the clans spilled down the stairs and into the antechamber to celebrate together.
As soon as dragons finally claimed shifters, the Trials would be over.
We would all be back to hunting monsters, spread across the kingdom, until the next year brought us back together.
It was a good chance to seek Obsidian and see who had left already, or if they were still preparing for the queen’s mission.
And yet, I found myself hunting not for Obsidian’s leaders but for one blond head, far shorter than the others.
Anayla stood beside her and Rees was watchful at her feet.
Cara wore a simple black dress. Unclaimed shifters wore black, so she had settled on something that was not Amber colors or Bismyth’s.
I could picture her wearing my colors the rest of her life.
Seeing her in my tunics before had nearly destroyed the last shreds of my sanity.
They didn’t see Maura moving toward Bismyth, graceful as a leopard and twice as stealthy.
There was something in her face that I had not expected: without armor. It was the expression of a woman who had been outside the warmth for long enough that she had stopped being able to pretend she didn’t feel the cold.
Cara and Anayla had not seen her yet. Anayla was saying something softly, and Cara had her head tilted to listen; they were both smiling. Cara’s smile was devastating.
Maura’s face shifted when she saw Cara. It might have been guilt or might have been grief.
When Cara looked up, her eyes widened as she saw Maura. She barely flinched.
I would have missed her reaction if I hadn’t been watching closely, but I was always too aware of Cara.
I was across the room before I’d decided to move.
I put myself at Cara’s side. Not between them. I wasn’t going to make it a confrontation. My shoulder at Cara’s, my body an anchor rather than a wall. Cara looked up at me and couldn’t hide the way her face brightened, as if she had missed me, and my chest did complicated, rebellious things.
“This seems like a conversation I’m not invited to,” Maura said, false bright, and nodded goodbye to Anayla before veering off to a different knot of Bismyth.
I watched her go, and I caught a glimpse over her shoulder of Kien and Lawri looking up to check my reaction as she headed toward them. I gave them an unsmiling nod; she could still talk to Bismyth. I wasn’t that petty. But she wasn’t coming home.
She had been one of my best and dearest friends until she hurt Cara, and I was not sorry.
Cara’s fingers brushed mine. “Where have you been?”
“Getting a gift for you.”
That was true, though incomplete. I was always getting a gift for her. The newest one was a bundle under my arm, which she clocked with amusement.
“At least you’re not hiding these like you hid the coins.”
“You found the coins.”
“I’ll always unravel your secrets. Sooner or later.”
“Open it.” I set the bundle in her hands.
She unwrapped it to reveal a sword belt—custom-made for someone as petite as she was—with twin scabbards. She drew them, and the glinting blades reflected her face. “Thank you. But what will these do against monsters?”
“The daggers are not for monsters. They’re for far worse enemies.”
I took the belt from her hands and set it around her hips, and she let me, raising her hands to allow me space to work. As soon as I had buckled the scabbard, before I could straighten, she leaned in and kissed my cheek.
The small gesture surprised me. She smiled. “You trust me with your life.”
She had teased me about that trust when I gifted her my boot knife to replace the kitchen knife she carried.
“I trust you with my heart,” I told her, lightly. “Which is considerably more terrifying.”
From the way she smiled, she didn’t believe I meant it. Maybe I didn’t. I had never been in love before.
After watching what happened to Ander and Tesa, I had never desired love.
Anayla walked with me when Cara went to join Sera and Kiegan.
“Maura made a mistake,” she said.
“An understatement. She almost killed my wife and our rebellion.” The rebellion came out as an afterthought.
“She’s been paying for it. She misses Bismyth. She misses us. She misses you.”
“Cara flinched when she saw her.” The words came out flat, past anger, into something quieter and more settled. “Maura can’t change that any more than Cara can.”
Anayla was quiet for a moment. “She regrets it.”
“I don’t doubt that. But I find I cannot bring myself to forgive.”
Maura had moved on to a different knot of Bismyth. They were speaking to her, but there was wariness in it on both sides. They wouldn’t cross me for her sake. “And I find I cannot get there.”
Anayla hesitated, twining a loose lock of hair around one finger. “How uncharacteristically…feral of you.”
“It’s not a virtue.”
“She’ll be all right. She’s been staying with Obsidian. She’s not alone.” Anayla had checked on her. “But she came here because she missed us. Not to cause trouble. Not with any agenda.”
“I know,” I said.
“And that cost her something.”
“I know that too.”
Anayla nodded, once, with the quality of someone closing a subject she had not fully resolved but had decided to set down for now. She was good at setting things down. I wished more of Bismyth would learn that from her. Dairen would’ve argued me into oblivion.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to leave my wife in the care of my worst enemy.” I hated returning Cara to Ander.
“He’s not your enemy.” Anayla shook her head. “Ander’s a good man and you are too.”
“If only that were enough to keep people from being enemies. You’ve solved war, Anayla.”
She pushed my arm and laughed. “Ass. Go claim that wife you don’t deserve.”
It was strange to hear Ander’s words echoed by Anayla. Cara’s superiority seemed clear to all.
When I reached Cara’s side, she was laughing with Dairen and Kiegan, and I felt a sudden rise of jealousy that was soothed as I came to her side and she looked up at me, her eyes crinkling at the corners as if she was happiest when I was present.
I needed to get her safely into Ander’s hands and investigate Obsidian’s plans for the queen’s mission, but the thought of keeping her with me was tempting.
“May I see you to Clan Amber?”
She nodded, and renegade disappointment grew in my chest, even though I had been the one to ask.
I took her in my arms and walked away from the crowd, my wings spreading from my back.
I flew her up and then found I could not bear to put her down.
My hand found her face, my palm gently cupping her cheek. My lips pressed hers in a kiss that should’ve been slow and tender and rapidly tipped over into feral.
She kissed me back the full-hearted way she did everything. Her hands were in my shirt, on my throat, then on my bare skin beneath my collar. She let out a little sound of frustration against my mouth.
“Put me down,” she murmured.
She was right, we should stop, so I put her down.
Then her hand was behind my neck, tugging my mouth down to hers. Her lips were soft, lush; she pressed against me, her breasts against my chest, her hips against mine, the two of us seeking every bit of contact, every inch of frustrated friction.
Her back hit the wall with a soft impact that I felt through her body more than I heard, the stone cold behind her.
I adjusted without thinking, one hand sliding to her jaw, my thumb brushing along the line of her cheekbone, tilting her face to deepen the angle of the kiss.
I could feel the echo of the bond threading through it, alive and insistent, as if it approved.
I barely managed to pull away, resting my forehead against hers. “Cara.”
Her eyes were closed. When they opened, they were very close to mine, catching the corridor light, and I could imagine that gaze on mine for the rest of my days.
“I know.”
“I want to be sure you understand why,” I said.
Her hands were still in my shirt. She had not let go. I had not let go either. Even though the point of this conversation was that we had to let go.
“The bond.”
“When we complete the bond fully, you move from Amber to Bismyth. You become mine completely.”
She frowned up at me. “You become mine.”
“I’ve been yours for a long time,” I promised her, pulling her hand up to my mouth to kiss her knuckles. It was all I trusted myself with, and it was dangerous enough.
“So we can’t…finish. And we can?” She raised her brows, prompting me.
“I can touch you. I can kiss you. But I cannot have my fill of you.” I hadn’t meant to confess in quite that way. “Though, I don’t think that would ever be possible. I don’t think I’ll ever have my fill of you.”
She did not say she felt the same. She was too careful. But the red of her lips and the flush of her cheeks, the way she gripped my shirt, meant she did not have to say it for me to understand.
“All right.”
I had to knock on the door to Clan Amber, regretting it all the while.
Ander came to the door himself. Of course it would be Ander; I couldn’t escape him today. It felt as if I would never escape him. Tesa’s face came to my mind, reminding me I had a secret I owed him. But not tonight.
“Cara.” He greeted her first, which was technically a slight given I was the prince, but not one that bothered me. My rank had brought me little joy. “Fieran.”
She smiled at him, then reached out and touched my hand, her fingers trailing over the skin below my bracers. “Goodnight, husband of mine.”
When Ander stepped back, she went into Amber’s corridor without looking back. I had expected it, and yet it still stung.
Ander watched her go. Then he looked at me as if he wondered why I still stood in the doorway, which was a fair question. I had been wondering the same.
“Thank you,” I said.
Ander was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not respond at all. “I don’t do this for you.”
“I know.”
He gave me that too-knowing look, the one that said he had always seen through me and always would. But at least he nodded before he closed the door between us.