Chapter 17
Seventeen
Cara
We rode all day and then through the night again, stopping only to rest the horses. Only for that. There were more orcs blocking the passages out; Fear and Kiegan viewed them grimly and rode to the next until we managed to slip past them.
By the time we neared the capital, the sky beyond the castle was the color of a bruise turning.
“Why must this shit start so soon after sunrise?” Kiegan growled as we rode through the first gate, dropping from a hard gallop to merely a punishing trot to cut through the mortal crowds.
I’d expected the city to be empty. But there were mortals in the street, looking toward the arena. I’d grown up in Stonehaven hearing about the Trials secondhand, about who had been claimed, and I had tried to avoid the conversations. But here, people were watching.
Watching, I realized suddenly, for new dragons to fly. To see what dragons had returned from their dreaming. Every shifter would fly today.
Or burn.
Those were the options. I had been doubting the curse, but right now, minutes from sunrise, I believed.
“Tell me we have time.” My words came out ragged; I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to straighten my legs again.
“We have time,” Fear said.
“Tell me we have time without lying.”
We galloped to the stables where Fear had gotten the horses and swung off our horses in the courtyard.
“Go,” Fear ordered us both, catching the horses’ reins. “I’ll take care of them and see you there. Run.”
Kiegan and I ran. My legs were cramping, and my thighs were so raw that I was in fiery agony, but it was better than not being claimed.
“I’m so miserable I’ve forgotten we should be terrified,” I gasped out to Kiegan as we raced down the cobblestone streets.
He let out a harsh bark of a laugh.
Kiegan and I ran through the halls and down into the labyrinth, and I was glad that we had visited the Claiming grounds before.
My boots slid over lichen and I stumbled; Kiegan grabbed my hand to steady me.
The two of us raced on and he did not let go, and some small part of my mind that was still capable of wonder stuck on the fact I was holding hands with an orc. An orc who terrified the shifters.
We reached the opening to the ceremony grounds.
I blinked in the sudden light after the dark of the labyrinth.
The sun had almost fully risen, and the lush grass was softly illuminated.
The sea was still dark on our right; we would be expected to throw ourselves off the cliffs and fly within the hour.
We ran for the doors to the repurposed temple.
They stood open and we slid to a stop, gulping in breaths of air and trying to compose ourselves for a split second before we strode in.
I attempted Fear-level of confidence, raising my chin as we strode through the silent hall.
The clans all stood beneath their banners, waiting.
The room still smelled of campfire. The scorch marks in the ground around the altar still sent a chill through my body.
We slid into the back of Bismyth’s ranks. The relief of not running was almost immediately replaced by the acute awareness of every part of my body that had been on a horse for the past two days.
“Still more miserable than terrified?” Kiegan asked in the quietest voice he could manage.
“Barely,” I whispered back. Terrified was rapidly winning out, though.
Anyla reached out and caught my hand, giving me a dazzling smile. Asrael raised an eyebrow at me as he bumped me with his shoulder, his gaze an entire scolding. I smiled back at him, and his lips gave slightly.
There were no mirrors here like the ones that watched us in so much of the labyrinth. I glanced up at Asrael, who stood at my side like a bodyguard. We both knew he—and even Fear—could do nothing if no dragon claimed me and I was incinerated.
“Why no mirrors?”
“This is a matter for shifters only. It’s not for the prying eyes of those who see our lives and deaths as entertainment.” He spoke in his usual restrained way, but I wondered if he thought I’d ever been one of those mortals, watching for entertainment.
“I never wanted to see any of the Trials,” I told him quietly.
He favored me with a thin smile, his gaze sliding over my face. “Unfortunate for you that you have to then.”
“It’s unfortunate for all of us.”
Ander had materialized at my other side. He looked at Asrael, then at the assembled recruits, then back. “You intend to flaunt her as part of Bismyth?”
“She knows who Cara is to us,” Asrael said. “There’s no denying that. If you had cast her out, we would take her.”
“As if I could for long.” Ander offered me his arm.
I went to stand with Clan Amber.
“You’re ours anyway. You’ll always be ours. It’ll be an Amber dragon who selects you.”
“Or doesn’t,” I said.
“You’ll be selected,” he told me, with gruff confidence that I found remarkably comforting.
We watched the first few recruits go up from Garnet, fearless as they stepped over the scorch marks and spoke the words of the Claiming. Fear had told me that Garnet prided themselves on embracing death as nothing but another mission.
My breath caught in my chest as the first of the Garnet shifters stiffened, her eyes widening and lips parting; the entire room seemed to hold, waiting for them to ignite.
But the Garnet shifter’s lips parted in a smile, and that preoccupied look came over her face that the shifters wore when they were in private conversation. Jubilantly, she called, “Castmire.”
Garnet didn’t cheer, but their pleasure, reflecting her joy, was palpable.
In the space between shifters approaching the altar, Ander leaned over. “Did Fieran tell Kiegan and Sera which dragon will claim them?”
I shook my head.
He gave me a curious look. “Does he no longer play that game? Demonstrating how well he knows us all, better than we know ourselves?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but the thought troubled me. Fear had told Kiegan he would be claimed. If there was some particular dragon likely to choose Kiegan, Fear would have known it.
Either Fear had been jollying Kiegan along…or he had kept Kiegan’s likely dragon to himself. I had no doubt that Fear, who had known Sandwing would claim Ander, would guess what Kiegan’s dragon would be.
“Perhaps he’s stopped gambling,” I said, knowing it was a lie.
Fear had gambled an awful lot on his plan. On Lightbringer. On me.
“That’ll never happen.”
Ander gave me the look he gave me sometimes, as if I were missing something obvious, but he was too polite to name it. But then the next Garnet shifter had stepped into the circle, and he turned his attention politely back to the front.
As if he had been summoned by my thoughts, Fear entered the chamber.
He did not look as if he had ridden for days; he looked bright and rested, his posture tall.
His clean purple cloak flowed behind him.
He did not look in my direction. But just as I felt an unbearable awareness of him, I wondered if he felt the same for me.
Then it was Bismyth’s turn.
Sera stepped into the scorched circle. She almost never looked serious, her eyes always creasing into half-moons with laughter even in danger, but now her face was etched with worry. Even Sera had run out of jokes.
She spoke the words and then paused, waiting. I held my breath with her.
Then she lit from within, her eyes shining.
For one breathless moment her face was entirely undone, stripped of the worry and the laughter, just the full, sudden presence of something immense returning. Then the half-moons came back. The laugh that came out of her was high and pure and helpless, almost childish with delight.
“Brightstar!”
The chamber exhaled, all but laughing with her. I did too.
Then Kiegan stepped forward, and all the joy died in my throat. Please. Please. Please. Let Kiegan be claimed.
It took me a moment to feel the weight on my shoulder. Ander gripped my shoulder to give me strength as I watched my best friend head into the scorched center of the room. I hadn’t realized he was my best friend until now. Now that I couldn’t breathe.
Kiegan strode quickly to the altar. Slapped his hands onto the altar. Spoke the words of invitation in a rush. It was as if he were trying to move too quickly for his fear to catch up.
One. Nothing.
Two. Nothing.
Three. When I cast a worried glance at Ander, he squeezed my shoulder; the fact he comforted me felt worrisome.
Four.
Had he moved too quickly? Offended the dragons?
Five.
Then the Claiming hit him.
It looked like being struck by a power both invisible and immense.
Kiegan almost lost his legs, hands pressing harder into the altar stone, his head dropping before he raised himself up again.
Whatever the dragon had shown him or given him or spoken to him in that instant had landed with great weight.
Whatever the dragons had seen, they had chosen him.
His gaze found me in the crowd and let out the rare, booming laugh he made when something surprised him past his defenses. He had not expected to be chosen. I grinned back.
From the look we exchanged, I knew what he was thinking. I had been right that he would be claimed, and I would be extremely insufferable about it later at the earliest opportunity.
Kiegan being chosen was the gift. The gloating was just a bow on top.
“Ironheart,” he called to the crowd, but even more so, to me.
I had guessed Ironheart would claim him, but he hadn’t believed me. Oh, I was going to be insufferable than I had ever been in my life, not even to my own brother.
Even as I wondered if Fear’s gaze had traced over that name in his book and he had known.
The joy in the chamber at the Claiming went on was wild with relief.
Some cried out their dragon’s names. Others stood in stunned silence.
The chamber was full of the sound of people becoming that which they had hoped they might be.
Dreams, gripped in one fist all their lives alongside the risk of death in the other, unfurled to the world.