Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Cara
Iclung to Lidi, my mind spinning, as Tay and my mother came in behind. Tay was grinning. My mother’s face was etched with terror.
Too late, the queen’s words made sense.
I will raise three mortals tonight.
“Where did you come from?” I asked, the words choked.
“You are so pretty now,” Lidi murmured, taking my face in her small hands. “Will I ever be pretty like you, Cara?”
Horror washed over me. I wanted to tell her no, and I barely managed to stop myself. She wouldn’t understand.
“The queen has reunited us all together,” Tay said cheerfully. He caught Lidi and me up in his arms in a hug altogether. Lidi laughed with all the delighted happiness of a small child pressed at the center of a hug.
“You have to get out of here.” I had to get Fear to—
I had to stop depending on Fear.
My first impulse had been to go to him, even after everything he had done, and that was madness. There was no reason to believe he would help my family unless it served his strategy. Perhaps he would. Perhaps keeping my trust and affection would be weighed and win out on his scales.
Or perhaps my crystalized hatred of the queen would serve his purposes better. Perhaps he had some plan that I could not even yet imagine.
“The castle is so beautiful!” Lidi said. “We have such a fancy place to sleep!”
Where were they? I needed to know where the queen caged them. “Oh? Do you look out on the sea or on the city?”
“On the city!”
“Do you go up a lot of stairs to get there?”
She nodded happily. “We are in a tower! We can see everything, almost all the way back to Stonehaven!”
At least that gave me something. Clearly it was all I would have, because Lidi had just noticed the flowers that grew up the wall of the queen’s study, and she ran to them, entranced.
Tay turned back to Mam. “It wasn’t a bad journey, was it? I don’t remember coming here. I was so sick, but now I am well.”
He sounded grateful. That left me rather unwell, but while they were distracted, I lifted the knife from the chest. The silk slid across the backs of my fingers, smooth and cool, and then the hard hilt was in my hand, the jewels biting into my skin with the force of my grip.
I didn’t want to hold the damned knife, but it didn’t make sense to close my options down yet.
I didn’t know if I would kill my husband or not.
I slid the knife into my belt where it would be unnoticed by anyone but Fear—Fear who was always so damned clever when it came to reading me.
Then I went to Tay and my mother. Mam was still silent, which was unusual; she put her hands on my shoulders and clung to me, her fingers curling deep into my flesh in a way I associated with whispered but intense childhood scoldings.
But though my heart quickened as if I were once again a little girl who wanted to please but could not quite manage, her eyes had flooded with tears.
“Cara,” she murmured. “Can you get Lidi out of here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll find a way.”
Lidi leaned into my mother’s skirts. There was red in her hair, and I jolted in fear, thinking it was blood. Then I saw she had a bouquet of red flowers in her hands, another tucked into her braid.
Lidi misread my spurt of fear. “The queen said I may have all the flowers I like!”
“Lovely,” I managed.
“And my magic back!”
The queen had told them she would raise them? I cast a worried look at my mother.
“She won’t care about Lidi,” my mother murmured. “You can get her free. I’ll stay with Tay.”
“I’ll get you all free,” I promised.
Tay was useless, under the queen’s enchantment, and Lidi was just a little girl. They needed me to save them. From the danger I’d created in the first place, flirting with Fieran.
“Stay together,” I told them, and my mother’s face relaxed in relief at the promise that I had a plan. She touched my face, tenderness rising in her own for once. “I will protect you. Whatever it takes. We will be together again, truly.”
I wouldn’t let them be raised.
Then the door opened, and it was the Nightwalkers who filed in like overlapping shadows.
“Already?” Tay looked disappointed.
“It’s almost time for the queen’s Last Hunt,” I said, my voice bitter. “I have to go and prepare.”
I squeezed his arm. Hugged Lidi. Met Mam’s eyes one more time.
Everything I needed to say was too large for the time I had. “Stay together. Wait for me.”
She hugged me, holding me a little too long. Into my ear, she whispered, “We’ll be ready.”
Then I made myself walk out the door, head high, as if I had borrowed a shifter’s arrogance.
The corridor was cold, and long, and quiet, and I walked back toward the labyrinth with my bare, bloodied feet, a likely-poisoned knife in my belt, and the feeling of Lidi’s arms still around my neck.
I found Anayla in her quarters, folding gear into a pack. She looked up.
That was enough for her to read my face.
“What’s wrong?” She abandoned her bag and came to me.
The calm I’d been holding together since the queen’s study cracked down the middle. I shut the door and turned my back to it and slid down until I was sitting on the floor.
Anayla sank down the wall until she was in the same pose, then put her arm around me.
“Tell me the mate bond isn’t permanent,” I said. “Tell me that there’s a way—”
“Cara.”
“Tell me.” My voice came out shattered. I wanted Fear. I wanted to be able to go to him and get his help; I wanted to be able to trust him. Even now, I knew the truth, but I didn’t want to believe it.
“It’s permanent.”
I’d known. And yet I rocked forward as if someone had driven a knife into my gut, wanting to scream out my pain. I didn’t. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“The bond is something we grow up understanding. I didn’t think to explain it.” She stopped, her face shifting into horror. “But you were raised by mortals.”
“Yes, I was.”
The silence between us had a specific weight. She hadn’t lied to me. No one had. They had simply assumed a knowledge I’d never been given, and I had never questioned Fear in this. I had trusted him when he promised me that our marriage could be a ruse. He had said it so many times.
“Fear didn’t realize you didn’t know either,” she said hesitantly, a question in it.
She wished that was true.
“He told me if I didn’t fall in love with him, there would be a door out. That if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t hold me.” My voice was doing something strange. “He said he hoped I would choose to stay. But that it would be a choice.”
Anayla closed her eyes.
“I thought I chose him.” The word felt like something I was prying out of myself. “I was proud I protected him. I knew he could be tricky and deceitful but also heroic, and I thought most of all…he would be mine.”
My jaw ached, and I ran my fingers over it, hard, trying to press away the stress that had built up. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding it so tensely. “I was always going to want him. Because of the bond. He promised me something he knew wasn’t real.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
He had taken my choice from me. He had violated me.
The rage was there. Somewhere below my sternum, building quietly into something I couldn’t name yet.
I wasn’t going to aim my rage at her. Anayla hadn’t done this to me. She was sitting on the floor beside me because I had come to her with nowhere else to go, and she would give me the truth even when the truth cost her.
I thought about the queen and the way she’d said it, almost gently. You will love him, or you will be alone for the rest of your life.
I couldn’t say the rest. Not to Anayla, who loved us both.
The queen offered me a way out. My family’s freedom and mine, back in Stonehaven. If I end the bond.
If I kill Fear.
She rested her hand on my knee. Her eyes had closed, her head touching the wall behind her as if she, too, was weary. “Cara, I’m so sorry.”
“I know.” I interrupted before she could finish. “I know. I just need to think.”
“We leave for the Hunt within the hour,” Anayla said gently. “We need to prepare for the arena.”
I pressed my palms flat against the floor and nodded.
“You could talk to him. Before we—”
“No.” The word felt like a bruise. “I need to think. Don’t tell him you saw me like this. Don’t tell him I came to you. Please.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “All right.” And then, quieter, “He does love you, Cara. Whatever else is true. I believe that.”
How could he love me and use me like that?
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I didn’t believe it. “I just don’t know what that’s worth yet.”
She put her hand over mine. There was nothing else to say. She wanted to fix it. She was completely unable to.
My mind spun. Seeing my family felt like a dream, or a nightmare, not quite real. It had come so suddenly, and I had been so overwhelmed trying to make sense of it. I wished I’d had more time with them. I wished I’d said more.
Too soon, it was time to prepare for the arena.
For my choice.
I put on my knives by habit at first, my hands knowing what they were doing while the rest of me was somewhere else entirely.
The first knife, one of the pair Fear had given me, slid into its scabbard on the left.
I slid it home and then drew it free for a moment, studying it.
He had chosen these knives for me carefully.
He had always been so careful, studied me and understood me so well.
I had thought that was love. It could have been brilliant manipulation.
I slid the second knife, the queen’s knife, into the right scabbard.
Not his gift, not his blade. I didn’t want his blood on his own blades.
He had gone into my mind. He had reached into my sleep and driven me toward the Trials. Toward him.
He had convinced me so well that he loved me, that I loved him. His love had been a lie.
Maybe mine should be too.
Ander was waiting in the arena. He glanced out across the crowd, seeking something beyond Clan Amber, clustered behind me. Then he saw me and his gaze sharpened. I had been what he was seeking, and relief lit his face.
His expression caught me off guard, and something that had been tight and painful in my chest loosened, just slightly.
He’d said he wouldn’t leave until he knew I was all right, and so it was a truth that could be relied upon.
What a rarity in this world.
I should go stand with Bismyth, but I found myself drawn to him, even though seeing me alive and standing should satisfy his need to know I was fine.
He closed the rest of the distance between us in a few quick strides, and suddenly I felt exposed. The two of us were visible standing alone between Amber and Bismyth while the rest of the shifters knotted together in their clans.
His gaze roamed my face. “Are you all right?”
It was a question he had to ask me far too often since I entered his orbit with Fear at my side. “I will be.”
Ander accepted this optimism, which seemed generous. “Not many are after dealing with the queen.”
I laughed, a bit shakily. “One more Hunt. And then you’ll all be free.”
His gaze softened, threaded with worry. “Do you still have the bracelet I gave you?”
“I do.”
“Then you can always call on Clan Amber, and we’ll come.” He hesitated. “I know you did not spend much time with us, and what time you did spend was not always…ideal. But you are part of Clan Amber, just as much as you’re Bismyth now. We will come if you need us.”
Maura rose to mind, cast out of Bismyth. The thought was accompanied by a stabbing in my chest. If I killed Fear…I would go home to Stonehaven. And Bismyth would hate me.
They couldn’t know. I’d make up a story…but then the queen would surely want to ruin me. All of that roared through my mind. I wanted to tell Ander, but the heralds were already playing the music for the queen’s arrival.
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “I’ll see you later, Cara.”
He clapped my shoulder in a goodbye—more gently than he would have done with another shifter—and moved past me, and in that movement, I could see beyond him to Fear.
Fieran’s gaze caught and narrowed on Ander’s touch. For a moment the world narrowed to the two of us: his presence, my pulse, the dagger at my hip.
Fear started toward me as if he had been launched from a bow.