Chapter 33 #2
She took a long time answering, and into that moment, I found myself whispering in my own mind to Shadowbane. I didn’t even know what I was saying to him. I wasn’t asking for advice. Even though I didn’t know what to do.
“I’m here,” Shadowbane promised. The promise that I was not alone anymore, I never had to be alone again.
Unless, of course, I freed Cara from her bond.
“If it’s you that I’ve begun to remember, you were very small,” Maris said. “You carried a stuffed toy everywhere.”
“A raven,” I filled in.
“Yes, a raven. I think I remember bringing it to your bed when you were sleeping. I tucked it into your hands, and I wondered if someone would take it from you.” There was a question in her gaze. She looked at me as if it really mattered, as if she would be destroyed if it had been stolen from me.
I had brought the raven with me from the barracks today, afraid that the queen would destroy the barracks now that we were gone, or thinking, in that rather unfocused way one sometimes tries to cover up an emotional reaction with some messy logic, that perhaps Lidi would like the toy.
“I have it.” And then, ridiculously, I pulled it from my pocket. I felt like a fool immediately as her lips parted in surprise. “I do not usually carry it.”
Maris’s deep brown eyes flooded with sudden tears. “You have it? You had it all this time?”
Seeing her reaction, I did not feel quite so foolish for having carried it with me today. “It was a great comfort.”
“It all seemed as if it wasn’t quite real, but seeing it…. It always was real. Oh, Fear. I meant to come back. I’m sorry I never came back.”
Cara suddenly came to her mother’s side. She’d put Lidi down, and her gaze swept between the two of us, confused. She looked at me as if I had done something to her mother.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I survived.”
“You did more than survive. You have no idea how things have changed even in Stonehaven. People are full of hope. Because of you.”
It was a gratifying thought, especially from this woman who still meant so much to me, but I corrected it anyway. “Because of your daughter.”
“I’ve had the strangest feeling of something tugging at my memory every time I’ve seen a raven ever since. Or a crow, too, for that matter.” She smiled through her tears, and I found myself smiling as well. “Crows are much more common.”
Cara was still looking at the two of us as if there was something here she could not understand, and she did not like that.
As we were moving out into the green space in front of the cottage, Cara came so close her arm brushed mine. The impulse to touch the small of her back, to stay near her, flared, though I defeated it. Yearning for my own wife. How ridiculous.
“Maris looked after me when I was a little boy in the palace. From what I’ve heard, I was dreadful.” I confided in the Bismyth shifters who waited outside. Dairen looked up, grinning, as I’d intended.
But Cara was frowning, clearly in no mood for jokes.
Cara
We landed well before the rebel camp so no spies would see dragons near it and hiked the rest of the way.
I held Lidi’s hand, grateful to be with my family again and to have them out of the queen’s palace.
Rees walked on my other side, his enormous head often ducking under my fingertips then rising up, pushing up my hand so I would be reminded to pet him.
“You are ruining my terrifying hound,” Fear complained but did not sound disappointed.
The camp appeared the way a held breath releases: gradually, then all at once.
One moment there was forest, the dense, lightless kind. Then a shimmer at the edge of one’s vision, and the trees parted into a makeshift village.
Structures patched from salvaged timber and stretched canvas, low against the earth as if trying not to be seen even from within. There were buildings up within the canopy of the towering trees.
Two guards stepped into our path. Fear’s gaze flickered up, and an itch bristled at the back of my neck.
I was sure there were more above us in the trees with nocked bows.
I already had Lidi’s hand in mine, and her steady, bubbly stream of conversation washed over me, unheard now.
At least holding onto her made it easier not to reach for my sword.
Tay and Mam were behind me. The Nightwalkers walked at the back of our group, hooded and masked at Fear’s instruction. Trying to conceal what they were would read even worse than bringing Nightwalkers into camp.
“Hold.” The word landed flat and hard. The man who’d said it was big, probably not mortal, and his eyes tracked across our group, cold and hard, until he found the Nightwalkers. “You’re not bringing Nightwalkers in here.”
“They’re with us,” Fear said.
The second guard was looking at Tay. Tay smiled back at her, pleasant and vague.
I tightened my hand around Lidi’s.
“The Nightwalkers don’t come in.” The big guard hadn’t moved. “Whatever else you’ve brought, fine. Not them.”
“They are my guests,” said a voice from behind him.
Corbyn came through the gathered bodies. He was tall. Golden-haired, broad-shouldered, wearing light leather armor and a face that was both handsome and tired.
My father.
The word still sat badly.
His gaze found mine, roamed my face with brief, open emotion. But only for a lightning flash. Then he moved on. “They’re all welcome here.”
The guard’s jaw was set. He looked at Riven and Tesa. At Tay. At Fear and the shifters.
Then at me, and he looked at me as if he understood I was the reason why these dangerous intruders were being welcomed into a rebel camp that had survived so long under the queen’s nose.
More guards stepped out of the woods, letting themselves be seen. The collective fear these people felt settled over us like a heavy shroud.
Corbyn didn’t try to embrace me. He looked past me and saw my mother.
I didn’t have to see where he was looking to know it from the way his face changed.
It was like watching the clouds shift across the sky, a day’s changes crowded into one moment; one emotion chased another, from recognition to relief to joy to regret to grief. All in a moment.
My Maris.
My throat felt tight, but I could not deal with it now. Not when I had to walk into my father’s camp with my husband at my side. These two men had made me into their weapon.
“Let me show you to your quarters, and then I’d like to have a discussion with you both.” Corbyn walked ahead of us, pointing out different aspects of his camp.
People paused as we passed, watching us with open interest. I thought at first it was because we were strangers in their midst, and more than that, we had brought fresh dangers.
But I was always slow to see the good. It dawned on me gradually: the way their eyes softened when they landed on Fear.
The small collective shift, like a room settling, when people registered who he was.
A woman with her arm in a sling who straightened when he passed.
An older man who said his name under his breath, just the name, as if he were assuring himself he was real. Then he murmured my name.
A small child gaped at us, then ran away, and then there were more children, orbiting us like moons.
Fear was a hero in this world. More than that. He was a legend.
And I was the dragon-marked wife. The miracle. The mortal hope.
Dread choked my throat. I was not prepared to be a legend.
His hand found the small of my back. He leaned in to me, murmuring in my ear.
I kept a smile on my face, knowing we were both performing for the crowd.
“You have faced worse than mortals pleased to see you. They want to see themselves as survivors, like you. Just be the girl from Stonehaven who raised that shovel and didn’t run. ”
His lips, soft and dry, brushed over my temple. The kiss shocked me less than him still telling that story as if it meant something to him.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of smiling faces. The crowd thought this was a love story.
They needed this to be a love story. Dragon shifters and mortals, united. Power in mortal hands. Fear and I were shaping puppets with our hands, trying to cast a larger shadow over the kingdom to show how the world could be remade.
I could kiss him and pretend for their sake. I smiled up at Fear, looping my arm around his waist, and his gaze as he looked down at me softened. He kissed my temple again—affectionate to their eyes, approving to mine.
Lidi, oblivious and delighted, scampered ahead to greet some children who were racing out of the trees. She dragged them over with obvious pride, and Fear shook hands solemnly with several little boys and girls.
Corbyn showed Fear and me to the tent we should share—a too-close canvas ceiling, one bed, of course—then pulled us away. I glanced back over my shoulder at Lidi, already running off, and at my mother, who had a watchful eye on Tay.
He took us down the main thoroughfare of the camp, if “thoroughfare” was the word for a path beaten into the earth by feet.
We passed a man sitting outside one of the shelters, gaunt, his back against a post. His eyes tracked us as we went.
He had no mouth.
I looked and then looked away and then looked back.
Corbyn clocked my attention. “A Fae lord’s punishment.”
“Who was it?” Fear asked with deceptive casualness.
Corbyn gave him a warning look. “If you’re successful, he’s a dead man anyway. You cannot afford distractions.”
I glanced back at the man. He was still watching us, but some dreadful spark of hope had entered his gaze.
Fear rested his hand lightly on my back again, urging me forward and comforting me in one smooth motion.
Corbyn’s quarters were a two-room tent, the front room his office: a table, maps, mismatched chairs. A smokeless fire glowed purple in the grate.
“Tell me what you’ve brought me.” He looked at Fear, then at me. “Specifically the parts I’m not going to like.”