Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Cara
The dream did not begin with fire.
It began with certainty. The labyrinth opened for me as if it were waiting. Doors unlatched as I reached them. Corridors were straight and bright. The stone beneath my bare feet was warm.
And I ran, driven by some instinct that guided me forward, the way a hand might rest at the small of my back—not pushing, not quite—but making it clear which way I would go.
Ahead, a final door stood open.
Light flickered beyond it, golden and violent. Heat pressed against my skin before I reached the threshold, a warning my body understood before my mind did. My steps faltered.
Behind me, soft, familiar, commanding and soothing all at once: “Good girl. You’ve done so well. You’re almost there.”
My hand came up, bracing against the stone beside the doorway. The surface burned and I snatched my hand away.
The hand on my back was gentle until it shoved me forward.
I stumbled through into the arena, heat already beating on my face.
I turned back and the door was gone. I was in the center of the arena, sand sliding underfoot in soft piles. Fear stood thirty feet away, handsome in his light armor and cloak, his hands at his sides. He gave me a warm, approving smile.
And I burst into flame.
I woke with a ragged intake of breath, sweating against the sheets, the coin too hot in my palm. My fingers were so tight around it that they were hard to unfurl. I tossed the coin away from me desperately, heard it hit the ground with a clink, then roll.
I was so angry that I could not catch my breath. Terrified, too. Still terrified from the dream.
From what he had done to me.
Fear stirred restlessly. I put my hand on his shoulder, even though I could’ve sworn his skin burnt me, too, and murmured soothing nonsense in his direction that I did not mean one bit. I just didn’t want him to wake. Not yet.
I dressed in the dark without looking at him.
I needed to talk to someone who didn’t belong to Fear.
When I paced out of Fear’s room, it was almost dawn. Most of the barracks were quiet, but when I went down one floor, there was a flurry of activity.
Amber was packing. I heard it before I saw it: the soft sounds of packing, weapons checked and re-checked; the low murmur of shifters checking in with each other as they worked their plan.
Ander was in the corridor, speaking quietly to Nixi and Beck. When Ander saw me, he cut himself off mid-sentence and clapped Beck on the shoulder. “You’ll handle it.” Then he moved toward me as if I were the most important person that could have entered this hall. “Are you all right?”
I studied the packing. “There’s a better chance of surviving whatever punishment the queen has planned if we get free of the capital.”
“Yes. And she has even more reason to move against Fear.” He looked past me toward the Bismyth corridor. “You should stay close to him.”
“I needed to talk to someone who doesn’t owe Fear anything.”
He gave me a brief, assessing look. “You look like you haven’t slept. Are you all right, Cara?”
“I haven’t. Nightmares.”
He opened his mouth, and then his head turned, a fraction of a second before I heard it.
The shadows came alive.
Nightwalkers moved differently: too smooth, too coordinated, as if they shared one mind. There were six of them, and they filled the corridor in silence.
The blade at her chin caught the torchlight as Nixi’s jaw lifted with it, the line of her throat very still, her eyes cutting sideways to Ander with an expression that was doing tremendous work staying composed.
Ander looked at them. His voice was level. “You know we can take you.”
“You can.” The Nightwalker’s voice held no inflection, no interest. “And then your entire clan will be killed.”
“What do you want?” Nixi asked tightly, her voice strained and high like her chin, with the Nightwalker’s blade to it.
“The queen requests you deliver Cara to her.”
Did the Nightwalker not even know who I was? Perhaps a barefoot mortal in their midst just didn’t register. They assumed I was just a servant.
“Are you lost?” Beck asked. “She’s upstairs, curled up in Fear’s arms.”
“They probably don’t want to face him again.” Nixi’s voice came out cool. She was self-possessed even with a Nightwalker’s hand gripping her braids and a knife to her throat.
“If you must menace us instead of Bismyth,” Beck said coolly, “at least let us send our servant girl for breakfast.”
Beck glanced at me with barely a trace of interest, as if I were truly nothing to him. Something skipped a beat in my chest, trying to understand why Clan Amber would protect me. I would never understand the shifters.
“Get us Cara or we start killing.” The Nightwalker still sounded disinterested.
Ander was not the kind of man who spent other people’s lives on the hopeless. But he was slower to name me now that he should have been if he were entirely practical.
“I can talk to the queen now.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. “In fact, I would love to have words.”
“Cara,” Ander said my name quietly. A warning.
“She can’t harm me. Not by her own hand, not by her order. I have the same protection as Fear.” I watched him want to argue with this and watched him know, at the same time, that it was true. “Let Nixi go. I’m coming willingly.”
He didn’t like it. But I had watched Amber protect me at cost to themselves, had watched Ander make choices that put his clan at risk for my sake, and the weight of that debt pressed my chest. This was my only currency.
I walked toward the corridor’s end, and when I reached the doorway, when two Nightwalkers had seized my arms, the last Nightwalker released Nixi. She gave the Nightwalker a once-over look and a cold smile that promised revenge.
“Cara.” Ander still looked as if he was barely containing himself. But Ander was always able to contain himself. “Come back. I won’t leave until I know you’re free and well.”
I nodded. Then I followed the Nightwalkers into the dark morning.
The Nightwalkers moved like living shadows around me, making me feel even more alone as we went back through the labyrinth.
But there was something new this time: a passage I’d never mapped, a hidden door, a long tunnel that was not winding and natural like the rest of the labyrinth but straight as a road.
Had Fear known? It was hard for me to believe there was much he didn’t know when it came to the palace and its tricks.
The shadows slid toward me, narrowing my path, until some were ahead and some were behind.
I could touch the stone passage on both sides.
The ground underfoot was damp. I was never again, in all my life, going anywhere without thick socks and a good pair of boots; what had I been thinking, slipping downstairs to Clan Amber in bare feet as if the barracks were my home?
In the dim light I banged my foot into the stone and stumbled, my shins catching the step. Agony split my toe.
A Nightwalker helpfully put their hand on my back and pushed, in case I had not gotten the message.
“I’m going,” I said, and when they were all shadows, it felt as ridiculous as talking to myself.
We emerged into a brightly lit hallway. I followed the lead Nightwalkers down the hall.
There were four of them, and I looked back over my shoulder, confused about just how many there were.
There were more behind me than I remembered earlier, and the door through which we had come had vanished.
It must be concealed in one of the walls.
I wasn’t finding it again easily on my own.
“The queen will see you in here.”
A Nightwalker opened a door. I half expected there to be something terrible beyond it, but the door opened into a study, with windows overlooking the sea and linen curtains drifting in the breeze.
The room was empty. The door closed behind me.
I glanced down at my feet and saw blood smeared across my toes.
Light flared behind me. I threw up my arm to cover my eyes from the dazzling glare, my eyes stinging when I tried to open them.
“One last Hunt to go,” the queen said from behind me. “Are you ready, Cara?”
“Giddy with excitement.” The words came out brash. Internally, I felt like shaking. The queen was terrifying. She was so clearly not human. Capable of things of which it was hard for me to even imagine.
But she was not capable of harming me or my brother. Not now. I turned to face her, my mind humming those words again and again: not by her hand or by her order, not by her hand or by her order.
She was seated at her desk. Her shimmering gown spread around her, and she held a small book in one delicate hand. Her golden eyes were Fear’s eyes, and the warmth in them felt like a phantom.
She held out one bejeweled hand, the movement graceful. “Show me your ring, daughter.”
She sounded amused.
My sense of disquiet only grew.
“Yes, I know.” Her brows arched, a disbelieving smile slipping across her lips. “I’ve known since my engagement announcement failed. Fieran acknowledged you from the dais. Did he not tell you?”
She might well be lying. She wanted me to distrust Fear. To divide us.
She was still holding out her hand, and she was the queen, and I was in her lair, so I crossed to her. She lifted my fingers with the back of her hand, examining the ring. Her touch was surprisingly gentle, her fingers cool.
The most beautiful scent, like breathing in roses in a garden just after the rain, teased my nose, and I locked my jaw, fighting to keep from breathing in. She had shaped herself in every way to be enchanting.
“With the ring I once gave him,” she said quietly. “Because he is supposed to be my heir.”
I looked at her face. There was sadness in it I hadn’t expected. As if Fear had found a way to carve something out of both of us. But she was a liar, even more gifted in deceit than her son.
She released my hand. “Do you know what Fieran means?”
“I do not.” I didn’t have the first hint about the old Fae language.