Chapter 9
Nine
Cara
Returning to the rooms I had shared with Tay stung. The door still stood open between our two doors. I closed it, latched it, then sagged against it. I had not seen Tay since he chose the queen, and when I thought of it, it felt as if a knife had found its way under my armor.
I could hear Clan Amber celebrating down the hall.
Ander knocked on my door to check on me and respected my desire to be left alone.
A huge shifter named Beck and a surprisingly petite one named Vanya knocked on my door, one of them carrying a plate of food and the other a bag with my few items from Bismyth.
“Dairen told us we had to make sure you ate,” Vanya told me.
“Thank you,” I said, and I felt less alone even with my brother’s room empty beside me and Bismyth on the floor above.
The night was longer than it had any right to be, but it passed, as nights always do.
In the morning I went with Clan Amber to train in the arena in the morning and found myself facing Nixi, Maura’s twin sister.
It felt as if it had been arranged that way, and I faced her, curious if she had arranged it, or if I was being tested, or if she was.
“Careful with each other,” Ander reminded us. “Our real battle is tonight. And then, beyond the Trials.”
We moved into position.
Nixi fought nothing like her sister. Where Maura was rage given form, Nixi moved as if she had a budget for motion.
She tapped my leg with just enough pulled force to bruise before I realized I’d given her the opening. “Mortal. Drop your shoulder when you swing. You are giving the strike away.”
I dropped back, buying myself time to breathe after that blow. But still, it was good advice. “Thank you.”
“Thank me with competence,” she said.
She was as cool as Maura was heated, and I wondered, not for the first time, how they had come to be in two different clans.
But then she pressed the attack and I did not have any more time for wondering.
The queen’s announcements always arrived with pageantry. The clans had to assemble the next morning in the arena as if it were an honor to hunt the monsters, which they had caught all year, instead of an insult.
The crowd cheered, of course.
Ander was at my left. He had not looked at me since we arrived, which also meant he had not stopped tracking me in the peripheral way that was his version of watching out for someone.
I was watching the dais when Tay appeared at the queen’s shoulder, and suddenly I could barely breathe.
Tay looked well. He looked healthy and he stood with perfect posture, at ease in her company. My chest closed with all the anxiety he should have felt.
He angled slightly toward her when she spoke. When she gestured, his gaze followed. He was eerily focused on her.
The queen was speaking. I registered the words at a distance. Another Hunt, deeper into the labyrinth where a prize waited for the first clan to reach it. The crowd made its appropriate sounds.
Tay’s gaze moved across the gathered crowd with bland curiosity. He didn’t seem as if he were searching for me. He didn’t seem afraid.
His eyes passed over Clan Amber. Over Ander. Over me.
And then he stopped. His gaze returned to find my face.
For a moment, the smooth, comfortable attentiveness slipped. His lips parted as he stared at me.
Ander’s hand caught my arm, jerking me to a stop, and it was only then I realized I had moved toward Tay. “Hold,” he murmured.
The queen said something, low and private, and Tay’s gaze moved to her, quick and unhesitatingly. He smiled, and she rewarded him with a smile back, a hand on his arm as if they were close.
She had noticed his attention on me, and she had stolen him back again.
The world blurred as I blinked away the hot emotion in my eyes. Mortals would be looking at me. Gods forbid the mirrors caught me crying before the Hunt. The queen would enjoy showing that to all.
He was imprisoned in the self she had made for him. There was nothing, not a single thing, I could do about it until Fear agreed.
Perhaps Fear was right. I still wanted to slap him.
The announcement concluded. The crowd cheered, and Amber flowed around me as I moved with them.
I made it nearly to the entrance to the labyrinth before I had to stop. I could not bear it. Ander stopped with me, gesturing the rest of the clan on.
The stone wall was cold where I put my hand against it. I was not going to be sick. The corridor was quiet enough that I could hear my own breathing turn ragged. “I’m sorry. I’ll be fine in a moment.”
“You don’t need to go on the Hunt,” Ander said.
“I’ve got her.” It was Fear’s voice. “Go on, Ander. Clan Amber needs you.”
Fear was not in Bismyth colors; he wore nondescript clothes, though it wasn’t as if he could blend easily.
A black tunic hugged his broad shoulders; his chest was covered in light leather armor, and he wore matching bracers, bristling with knives.
I frowned at him, trying to make sense of it: he was dressed for the Hunt, but differently than usual.
I glanced behind him and saw none of Bismyth; each clan was supposed to go to a different entrance to race to whatever prize was beyond the monsters.
He had come for me.
I hated that his presence helped.
“You try my patience,” Ander told him, but it was true that Amber needed him. When he gave me a questioning look, I nodded. He didn’t look particularly thrilled that Fear was my comfort, but he went anyway.
Fear closed the distance without speaking first, and then his hands were on my face and his forehead dropped to mine. I had not realized I had been shaking. The warmth of him made my despair deeper, the way a wound only starts to hurt once we stop. I leaned in to him.
“We have to help him, Fear; we have to get him out of there—”
My voice sounded faraway. The urge to fall on Fear and beat him with my fists rose up like a wild thing. He had brought us here, and no matter how righteous his cause—no matter how Tay would have suffered without him—it was hard not to blame him.
“Listen to me. There’s a way to help him.” His voice was certain, and some of my fear fell away under the power of that tone.
When I pulled back to study his face, his hands stayed at my shoulders. The man who had let me grieve into him a moment ago had been replaced by the prince who always had a plan. His handsome features were calm.
“Tell me.”
“There’s a knife that can unmake any enchantment. Even the queen’s. She intends to steal it, and so do I.”
“When do we leave?”
His mouth set the way it did before he delivered news I would not like. “I’m leaving today. You’re staying with Ander.”
“Charmingly protective as usual, but no.”
“I’m stealing from the low Fae, against an opposing clan, in orc territory, in defiance of the queen,” he said, and his voice was reasonable, as if surely I would agree once he laid out the facts like so many cards.
“You’re still mortal. And if we were delayed and you missed the Claiming, it would be catastrophic and—”
“Don’t.” I despised his practicalities when this was my brother at stake.
He rode over my words without stopping. “Create risk for everyone involved. You’re safer here, and I’ll have what we need to help—”
“It’s Tay.” My hands clasped the front of his tunic. I didn’t remember reaching for him. “It’s my brother. You don’t get to take this from me and tell me to wait here.”
His hand cupped my cheek, with something unexpectedly tender in his golden gaze. “I’m not taking anything from you. I’m protecting you.”
“I know that’s what you intend. But if I can save my brother, I can’t sit here and wait for you to be my hero!”
He could have pointed out that as clan leader, he had the right to decide who to bring on a mission. Instead, he hesitated. Victory soared in my chest.
“You’re everything to this plan. If you die, the rebellion will be lost.” His gaze searched mine. “I will be lost.”
Something softened inside me at his words, and I steeled myself against it. “If I cannot save my brother, I will not forgive you.” I held his gaze. “And I won’t forgive myself.”
“That,” Ander said from the corridor entrance, “is the most honest thing I’ve heard when I’ve been around Fear in a long time.”
I had not heard him arrive. I was not sure if that was his skill or my preoccupation, and I had no particular interest in finding out which.
Ander leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who had heard enough to have already formed his conclusions and was now waiting for the other parties to catch up.
His gaze moved from me to Fear with the cool, specific attention he used when he was deciding how much to say.
Fear looked at him without expression, as if he hadn’t just been caught by his rival discussing knifing Obsidian in the back and leaving them to face the queen’s wrath. “This is a private conversation.”
“She’s part of my clan—which I’ve allowed as a favor to you—which means there is no private conversation.” Ander pushed off the wall.
“It’s a favor to Cara. You wouldn’t do me any favors,” Fear disagreed.
“Wrong. You just wouldn’t deserve them.” Ander’s voice had leveled out to something flat and deliberate. “You’re leaving her behind.”
“I thought you wanted to see her protected,” Fear said, with the patience of a man declining to be provoked. “Shouldn’t you be above eavesdropping?”
“I should not,” Ander returned with certainty.
I interrupted. “You said we need to move fast. Who are you bringing?”
“Myself,” he said. “Either Asrael or Anayla—I need the other here to guide the clan. Kiegan, given the territory.” He held my gaze. “Three is ideal for speed. More introduces risk.”
He had come to me today with a truth to comfort me, not a mission for me to protect my family myself. “I’m going.”
Fear’s jaw tightened, slightly.
“I understand why you don’t want me along, but I am going. That is the decision I have made. You can work with that or you can tell me you won’t, and then we can have a different conversation.”
Ander’s lips twitched. Fear glared at him, and Ander did not look sorry.
Fear looked at me for a long moment.
He held my gaze for another beat. Then he looked at Ander, with an expression that I had come to understand was a closed door, and said, “I need to speak with you.”
Ander’s mouth curved, very slightly. “I expected you would.”
Ander turned toward the other side of the corridor, his sword canted across one broad shoulder and the tapered shape of his waist. “Are you two coming?”
“I’d speak to you in private.” Fear’s gaze was still on me, even though he spoke to Ander.
“Given that you need favors from me, you’ll speak to me in front of Cara.”
I was beginning to like Ander, altogether too well.