Chapter 16
Sixteen
Cara
“Your father is fast,” Fear told Kiegan as we moved back off the ridgeline.
“He has always been fast.” Kiegan’s voice was flat. “He is also between us and the border.”
“What does the western pass cost us?”
“A day. Maybe two.”
I did the arithmetic; Fear and Kiegan hadn’t bothered to speak aloud. The fresh possibility of being unclaimed and burning alive—or was that a lie, along with the nightmares?—lit in my chest.
“We’d better make it a day. Kiegan and I have a date with our dragons.”
We rode wildly at first, then at a long, steady pace. Kiegan and Fear glanced at each other in the dark. Better to risk low Fae tricks, though, than to be hemmed in by orcs while we slept.
Sometimes in the dark, when I had lost track of time, my eyes began to drift shut.
The angle of the world tipped sideways. I pitched out of the saddle, and Fear’s arm closed around my ribs hard enough to wake me.
“I’ve got you,” he said, low against my ear.
It happened twice more in the next hour.
But each time I found myself braced against his chest, held so protectively.
He wouldn’t let gravity claim me. When I rested my temple against the underside of his jaw, his pulse was against my cheekbone.
I breathed in the smell of leather, horse, the saltiness of his sweat after the long ride and found my fingers tangled in his tunic.
“Rest,” he murmured, before the next slip carried me into something that was not quite sleep and no longer waking.
In that haze, I dreamt wild thoughts.
I might love him.
We finally stopped for the horses’ sake in a place Kiegan chose without consultation and Fear did not debate: a low shelf of rock that backed against a rise, defensible on three sides with a clear line of sight to the south.
Fear spread my bedroll for me, but he didn’t unlace his boots. He sat beside me with his sword in his lap. “I’ll take first watch.”
I took the hint and left my boots on too. The three of us clustered together against the dark night, passing the last of our food around. When I reached into my pack, I found the knife warm, even through the now-dirty tunic in which I’d wrapped it.
I unwrapped the knife and turned it in the moonlight. It seemed to glow, beautiful and eerie.
A strange urge came over me to touch the knife to my skin.
I slid my sleeve up, touched the knife lightly to my wrist. Light was trickling from beneath my sleeve, but not there.
I pulled my tunic over my head and found the glow came from a place just above my heart, where something glowed beneath my skin.
When the tip of the knife met the glowing spot, something red and hard pressed up through my skin, eager to meet the knife.
A crystal etched itself just under my flesh, stretching the skin slightly.
The sight should have sickened me. But all I wanted was to slice my skin open with the knife, to free the enchantment.
“Cara.” Fear’s voice came quietly from the other side of the fire. When I glanced up, his eyes were watchful, and he had eased the sword from his lap. He looked coiled, as if he were prepared to defend against an entirely different threat.
“What is this?” I hadn’t felt afraid until I saw his face, and now suddenly an awful feeling swept over me, the kind one has after almost falling.
“I think that’s my tracking spell. The knife pulls it to the surface, gives you the option to cut it away.”
I turned the hilt in my grip. I had the sense of a door slightly ajar. I suddenly wanted to press it into my skin. To let the knife drink more of my blood and feel out the enchantment. “We could test it.”
“Do you want my spell cut away?” Fear’s voice was carefully neutral, as if he would try to accept either choice.
“No.” His tracking had saved my life once, and I wasn’t stupid. “Though I’d like to be able to do the same for you.”
The hard line of Fear’s mouth eased slightly.
“No cutting into you when we’re not yet out of orc territory and being stalked by Obsidian.” Kiegan sounded grouchy even by his standards.
I rewrapped the knife, but reluctantly. Only because they were both watching.
Fear and I argued about whether or not I would take a watch, and he made some rather offensive comments regarding my mortal senses. Kiegan fell asleep immediately, leaving us to sort it out.
I allowed Fear to order me around because it had been a long day, and resisting Fear was always exhausting, and I fell asleep almost as quickly as Kiegan.
I dreamt of fire again, but this time, I was not alone in the flames.
I was in the castle where I had stolen the knife, and the satyr was screaming, and the mortal with the grooves worn through his skin stood slack-jawed as flames crawled up his clothes.
Then I was running, and the flames were behind me, and I could escape.
But that was not enough.
I sat up, my breathing ragged. For a frantic moment, I could not make sense of where I was.
“Cara.” Fear was still looking out at the night, his voice hushed.
“It’s nothing. I had a nightmare.”
“That’s not nothing.”
When he shifted toward me, I leaned into his side. He adjusted the blankets around me so that I was still covered, but I hardly needed them when I had the warmth of his chest, his arm closing around my back. “What did you dream?”
It was the first time he’d ever asked, even though I had begun to think he could banish my nightmares. I’d never had them when I slept in his bed. He’d been my escape from the nightmares of the Trials.
“There was a satyr who tried to stop me,” I said, after a while.
He said nothing. He was listening.
“I didn’t know how afraid the low Fae are of us. The mortals there were enchanted, but when she saw that I was not…she was terrified.”
“The world is a brutal place for mortals and sometimes because of mortals,” he said. “It’s the same for dragon shifters. By turns we are the terrified and the terror.”
The world felt unbearable today, and Fear was not particularly helping.
“I made the right choice. Didn’t I? To get the knife, I started a fire. Do you think they made it out?”
Fear was quiet for a moment. “You made the best choice.”
I scoffed and buried my face in my hands. The thought that maybe he was right was overwhelming. There had been no right choice, no honorable choice. Just the best choice, the one that stole some power from the queen, that protected my family and could be used to protect more.
“Do you want to know what happened with Tesa?” he asked.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Not at all.” He raked his hand through his hair and glanced at Kiegan in his bedroll. “Ander had to be the one who killed the queen. I could not.”
“The enchantment.”
“It’s deeper than an enchantment, or I’d have hacked it out of me while we were still on horseback,” he said dryly. “Ander was with the queen. There were two groups of rebels on different missions as part of that work: a larger group led by a rebel leader, a smaller one led by Tesa.”
“We ended up in a situation where I could not get everyone out.” Fear’s gaze had gone far away, as if he was not quite with me anymore. “Ander tried to bargain with the queen to save Tesa.”
He seemed to shake the memories off, offering a wry smile. “She broke the bargain, of course. We both lost everything in the end.”
I reached to rest my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Fear looked at me, startled, as if he had not expected the touch. As if he did not feel he deserved it. When he shrugged resignedly, I felt it in my palm. “Ander says I let his world burn. He’s not wrong.”
“You would’ve saved Tesa if you could have,” I said. “You had to make a hard choice.”
Perhaps he had made the best decision.
He nodded as if he believed me. “I shouldn’t have said we lost everything. I saved our chance of one day finding you. All that matters is that we wrench the queen off her cruel throne. Not whether I’m happy, or if he is.”
My heart beat faster at that you, as if I had been accused. Tesa was dead, and I had played a part? “Why?”
“Your father was with the larger group. He was my chance of finding you.”
Horror closed around my chest; I hated thinking of my father, of Maris’s monster. “You were working with my father. Is that how you knew to find me in Stonehaven?”
“He does not know anything about you yet,” Fear told me. “He kept you a secret to protect you, even from himself. He couldn’t tell me if you were male or female, nothing but your age. Since you told me you were not ready to meet him, I have not told him.”
“Is he a monster?” Maris’s words kept coming back to me.
“No.”
When I glanced at him, his mouth tightened, revealing more emotion than usual.
He added, “Of course, you would not trust my definition of a monster.”
“I didn’t say that, Fear.” My hand was still on his shoulder. I leaned closer, resting my head on his arm. He shifted so I could rest against his chest.
The faintest exhale and the softening of his tight shoulders told me he felt comfort when I was in his arms, and warmth bloomed in my chest.
“Ander would say I am a monster, and he knows me quite well,” he said dryly.
“You loved them.” I had heard enough of his voice by now to hear when something cost him.
“Ander’s rebels were the family I always wanted. They brought me into their circle for his sake. Then I sacrificed them for our cause.” His voice was harsh. “I was certain then and I am certain now, and I still despise it.”
Then, more quietly, “Myself. I despise myself. But I would do it all again.”
For you. He didn’t say it, but I heard it, and I hated it. I didn’t want to be the reason Ander had lost Tesa.
He was looking out at the night, searching for something. “So there you are. You make your best choice and you carry the cost. If you were like the queen, you wouldn’t have to carry that cost at all. It would be nothing to you, a small coin slipping from your pocket.”
“We leave one enthralled mortal in a cage to try to free them all.” The scene at the Night Market still nettled me. It was going to nettle me until I was able to break open the cages and free every enthralled mortal. “Would you forgive Ander if he made his best choice and I was killed?”
“No, of course not.” He turned his head and brushed his lips over my temple, the touch soft and reverent. “Now sleep and try not to dream.”