Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Cara
In the morning, he was beside me. This time, we were not touching; the gap between us felt vast. But I studied his face.
His dark hair was mussed, falling across his forehead, and it made him look younger.
Sleep stripped away the layers over Fear that controlled rooms, that made shifters shy out of his way.
He looked unguarded, his lush lips slightly parted, the hand on the pillow beside his face calloused and scarred.
He was unfairly beautiful. How was I supposed to chisel apart all the versions of him and know what was real?
I remembered the night before, the tender kiss and the cuddling in front of Bismyth, the change to being careful but spare in his movements as soon as it was only us. He’d touched me only when he had to.
I sat up carefully, still stunned to find myself fully healed in a way that I never could have been as a mortal back in Stonehaven. The potion had left behind that scraped-open feeling, the one that came from sleeping under a healer’s draft, where the body had rested and the mind hadn’t.
My emotions were still dismayingly close to the surface. I closed my eyes, wishing for strength. The need to see my family and know they were truly well was a restless tide. The thought of pretending to be Fear’s loving wife overwhelmed me.
Rees had been asleep beneath the windows. When I slid my feet out of bed, moving slowly to avoid waking Fear, he rose too and padded toward me. I ran my hand over his sleek black head in good morning before I went to wash and dress.
When I stepped out of Fear’s room, Rees followed, so close that his shoulder was against my hip, and my palm rested in his fur. I was grateful that I was not alone.
Bismyth was still asleep. Beyond them, the barracks were empty.
Not quiet-in-the-morning empty. It was deeply silent; the only sound was the waterfall’s steady rushing. Golden light filtered across the vast stone floor of the anteroom, but not a single shifter stirred. No voices called back and forth, bantering about training or the superiority of their clan.
I was unsettled even before the shadows moved.
My hand was at my chest, my heart beating too quickly, and Rees darted in front of me at my reaction, baring his teeth.
Unease raced down my spine like a spider. I felt, rather than saw, the presence and looked over sharply as Rees’s head swung around too, his nostrils flaring. Nightwalkers waited in the shadows around the edge of the anteroom.
The Nightwalker who waited down the hall from Bismyth’s door met my gaze evenly. His face was shrouded by a mask; it made his eyes appear inhuman.
I backed toward Bismyth’s door, but the Nightwalkers were not trying to hide now, and I picked out more of them.
Half a dozen at least. Positioned at every exit.
How many more had chosen to be unseen?
If they meant to take us, they’d have done it already. So what were they doing?
There was movement coming up the stairs. The brown-haired mortal servant. Heida.
I stood my ground to make sure the Nightwalkers didn’t hurt her.
Her head was down over her tray. Her breathing was slightly ragged, and I didn’t think it was from the stairs. When she reached the top, she finally saw me, and she came to a stop. Her face cycled through relief into something that looked uncomfortably like awe.
“I brought tea. I didn’t know if—” She stopped.
“Heida.” I said her name the way I would’ve spoken to a spooked animal back home. Then I led the way into Bismyth’s rooms. She followed me, and I closed the door, knowing it was futile to try to shut out the Nightwalkers. “Where is everyone?”
She set the tray down. Poured a cup for me. I took it from her, because what else could we do.
“The clans are gone, and half the servants are dismissed except for the crew that always stays on to serve any shifters who return. Until the next Trial.”
The thought that we would do this again next year—an endless churn of new shifters, the same monsters, the same bodies—filled me with dread. “And Nightwalkers are everywhere.”
She paled and glanced around as if just naming them might summon their attention.
“Are you done working here for now, Heida?”
She nodded. Then, in response to my unvoiced question, she added, “I wanted to see you. Some of us were nervous after…trying to watch the Trials. When you weren’t there.”
I hadn’t been visible in the mirrors to the arena. It felt like a relief to have that confirmed in someone’s voice that wasn’t Fear’s.
“I was hurt.”
“Are you all right now?” Her eyes widened.
“Well as can be.” I must be picking up the shifter’s knack for lying because the words came so easily.
“There were stories after,” she said with relief, clearly taking them as untrue now that we were face to face.
“What kind of stories?”
Her gaze flicked up to mine. “That it was all a trick. That you aren’t truly anything more than a mortal. That you weren’t what he thought you were.”
He. Fear was so important that he didn’t even need to be named. I despised that. “What’s wrong with being mortal?”
Disappointment tightened her features before she covered it.
I understood in one blinding flash that she needed me to be more than mortal. That all of them needed me to be more than mortal, and yet not something else entirely.
The mortals needed to believe.
“We have more power than you think,” I told her.
She nodded, but her face was still closed.
Mortals losing faith. Nightwalkers holding every exit. Fear’s carefully molded plans, cracking down the middle because of me.
What would Fear say? What would he do?
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Her eyes brightened.
“The queen is afraid of me.” I spoke the words softly, intimately. A secret that, if she were like everyone I’d known in Stonehaven, would spread. “She set a trap for me in the labyrinth. That’s why I wasn’t there. We had to outsmart her. She’s trying to destroy the bond between Fear and me.”
“Fear,” she repeated, her eyes shining. He had been a legend long before me, and I realized, suddenly, that now it felt as if he belonged to them, to the mortals, because he belonged to me.
“But nothing can destroy the bond. It’s not just a bond between a mortal and a shifter but a bond between our two dragons.”
Something stirred in the back of my mind, something ancient and hard to read. I tried to focus entirely on Heida’s face and on the story she needed to tell.
“So it’s true. You were claimed.”
When I nodded, her face lit with joy.
I had to fly.
The overlook was empty.
The wind hit me the moment I stepped through the door: the scent of salt and the intrusive cold coming off the sea. The kiosks were draped and still. The pool at the far end shimmered silver in the early gray light, spilling over in its endless, whispering sheets, disappearing into the dark below.
My knees registered the height first, shaking as I stepped forward.
I made myself walk to the edge anyway. No railing. Only open stone and the long, terrible drop.
Then the first dragon soared up from below. It flew right by me, wings spread wide, triumphant joy written over its face. A silvery dragon. Selenite.
It startled me so much that my hand came to my chest, covering my suddenly pounding heart, but the feeling faded quickly into yearning. Selenite was leaving the Trials now. Pale dragon after dragon rose up, flying up from the arena and circling over the sea.
The sheer joy of flight rose in my chest, and I felt suddenly lighter, as if I could step out over the water and let myself fall. The next moment, I was terrified I might do it before I could stop myself, and I backed away from the cliff’s edge.
“How do we do this, Lightbringer?” I spoke to her, but I spoke the words aloud. The wind whipped them away as if they were being taken to the void beyond us. “The mortals are losing faith because of me. I have to fly. For their sake.”
Lightbringer’s longing was enormous and wordless and ancient. It moved through the bond like a tide. Together, we were watching the dragons above as they circled the sky.
Then she withdrew.
She was a held breath, the banked heat in my chest settling lower, quieter.
“Where are you going?” I demanded, and thank the gods that the wind tore my words away, or my voice might’ve given away all my frustration. “I can’t let this rebellion collapse.”
Perhaps Lightbringer didn’t believe me, since I had almost struck down the rebellion at the same time I struck down Fear. I struggled with what to tell her.
“I thought I had to choose between the rebellion and my family. Even though I wanted…”
I paused, steeling myself. “I wanted to be a part of the rebellion. I wanted to belong with Bismyth. But I thought I had to choose between all that and my family.”
I closed my eyes and felt the wind at my face, tugging at my hair, as if it would lift me off my feet. “But I was wrong, wasn’t I? My family is never going to be safe. Not even in Stonehaven. The rebellion might be our best chance.”
The thought came with a rise of relief. I hadn’t realized until now how much I wanted to lead with Fear at the front of the rebellion. To stand in front of the queen and watch fear enter her eyes. To tear her off her throne and into her grave.
Then my stomach twisted.
Too bad I’d sacrificed Fear before this little moment of realization.
“It was his rebellion before it was mine. His plans and plots.” I didn’t want him, but I wanted what he wanted: freedom for shifters and mortals alike. “I want to be at his side.”
We were trapped together.
Bound to a fight we both had to finish, no matter what happened between us.
Just as Lightbringer was trapped within me.
I opened my eyes to see that my toes were at the edge of the cliff. The sea stretched out beneath me, so far distant that the thundering of the tide as the waves slammed against the rocks below was lost to the roar of the wind.
“Are you there? Are you ready to fly?”