Chapter 39 #2
“Why are you here, truly, Ander?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I am happy to give them an exit. If they will take it. It seems they have little to lose. But why are you here?”
Ander’s jaw worked. “We both know what you are plotting. This seems like a more private conversation.”
I was more than happy to move us somewhere private and far from where we might encounter Tesa.
“Very well.”
I gestured into the forest, moving opposite where Tesa would be. It was not my most subtle choice. “You look tired.”
“I’m always tired around you,” Ander returned, as if the queen had not been running him and his clan ragged. “You’ve got a new toy. Nightwalkers.”
He was going to regret that choice in wording later. “Two Nightwalkers, extracted from the queen’s household.”
“You trust them.” He managed to imply many emotions in three words, chief among them judgment.
“As much as I trust anyone outside my clan.”
“So, not much.”
“We trust them.” Cara spoke for me, and to my surprise, I appreciated it.
Ander glanced over at her as if he had forgotten her and then, realizing she was barefoot, leaned over and pulled off first one boot, then another. He threw them at her feet. “The ground is rough here.”
“You think he does these things just to make you mad,” Shadowbane mused, though I had not invited him into discussion. “But I think he is probably just superior to you. Giving up his shoes rather than carrying her? It’s metaphorical, really—”
“Please shut up,” I said to the ancient being in my head.
“You probably do not understand ‘metaphor.’”
In the meantime, Cara and Ander had argued over the boots. Cara, however, was willing to lose to him, and she finally sighed and smiled and pulled on the boots. “Thank you.”
“She tried to stab me,” I reminded Ander, Cara, and Shadowbane alike. And myself, perhaps.
“I understand.” Ander clapped my back. “She didn’t stab me.”
He winked at me, then moved forward in the forest.
“You’re in a spirited mood today.” Annoying though he might be, I was glad he didn’t seem beaten down by the queen’s games. “Remind me why you’re here?”
“What’s your plan?” Ander demanded. “The queen is crushing the clans. She’s starting with Obsidian, but if we don’t unite now, I doubt she will end there. She’d rather see the kingdom overrun by monsters than us freed.”
There was no hiding the bitterness in his voice. His gaze moved from mine to Cara’s. “What has changed? Is now the right time for a new rebellion?”
Hope lit his gaze. It would’ve embarrassed him if he had known. Ander would prefer to act as if he were beyond hope.
But none of us were. Hope was our strength and our weakness.
“I hope Lightbringer will allow me to ignite mortal magic,” Cara admitted, her voice steady. “But so far she has rejected me.”
“Not you,” I disagreed. “She’s angry at Shadowbane and me. That has nothing to do with you.”
“If it had nothing to do with you, she would talk to me. I am failing in some way.” Cara looked rueful. “It would be easier if she would tell me how.”
“You two have a lifetime together. It will come,” Ander promised.
“Apparently, Fear and I will also have a lifetime together.”
Ander looked from her to me to her again. “You didn’t know?”
I raised a hand to pause him. I never minded if Ander punched me and I had the chance to return the favor, but time was waning. “She already tried to stab me once, remember.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cara said swiftly. “What matters is Lightbringer’s powers haven’t yet manifested.”
“If she can draw the stolen magic away to give it back to mortals, then she can take the queen’s magic. Then we have our chance at killing her.” I had fantasized a thousand times about the look on my mother’s face as her power fled.
“Our second chance,” Ander said, rather than avoid the subject of our disastrous first attempt, which would have been polite. He had never been polite with me—first because we were brothers, then because we were enemies.
“Touching that you consider it ours.” Since he had introduced the subject, I asked, “Why would you try again?”
“Why would you?”
“I asked you first.” I regretted the pettiness as soon as it was out of my mouth. Gods, he brought out the worst in me.
“Fair.” He smiled slightly, as he always had when he found me childishly amusing.
He had been older than me when we were boys and never forgotten it for a moment.
“There’s no other choice left. It is time to tear her off the throne.
” His jaw worked. “Clan Amber will fall anyway after Obsidian if we do not act now. And personally, I have little left to lose.”
If Ander saw Tesa now, he would be too furious to throw his lot in with mine. We were in a fragile time.
“But I can’t ignite mortal magic, so as Fear would say, this plan is ‘a bit academic.’” Cara broke in.
Ander looked at Cara the way he had once looked at me before he decided I wasn’t worth it.
Then, to me, “I’d like to speak to Cara alone. Just a few minutes.”
Probably to see if she would like a second chance at stabbing me while he held me still. I hoped to all the gods that Cara would not blurt out Tesa’s secret.
“Of course.”
It was an opportunity for me to help Tesa into hiding.
“You are dramatic,” Shadowbane disagreed with me as I left my wife and my enemy behind. “When are you going to stop fussing about the stabbing? You didn’t bleed even a little bit! She was the one who bled!”
“Excuse me for having my feelings hurt when someone tries to kill me.”
“You always want people to choose you, and you thought she would. That’s why your feelings are hurt.”
“Don’t talk to me, Shadowbane. I have strategy to think through.”
He scoffed. “And a tiny little brain that can barely handle thinking at all, a breakable one.”
“You could be an encouraging voice in my mind.”
“I encourage you all the time. I encourage you not to be stupid. You just don’t take my encouragement.”
“That’s not—you know what, nevermind.”
I stopped outside Tesa’s tent and said quietly, “Ander is here. He doesn’t know. Stay inside tonight.”
She peeked out cautiously. “I heard. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry.” It must be a brutal complication to have Ander so immediately present.
“Don’t be.” Her voice was even. “None of it was your fault.”
I hesitated, wondering what she remembered now of what had happened. “Are you curious to see him?”
She looked away from me. “If he is here, then you are in trouble. Go manage your chaos.”
So she must remember something.
Ander and Cara were headed back toward the tents.
I froze, feeling as if I might be caught with Tesa.
I needed to busy myself. I pulled loose the map from my cloak and turned to planning Bismyth’s movement.
I’d see my people fed, and we would move to help Obsidian.
They would be exhausted. I disliked pushing them so hard.
“I don’t trust him.” Ander said it without heat. “I have known him a long time, and my distrust is earned.”
“I understand,” Cara said.
I decided not to feel stung.
“But I trust you.” Ander touched her shoulder. “That’s why I’m here. The rebellion matters. I would not stand at his side for it, but I’ll stand at yours.”
Cara said nothing in return. When anyone expressed their faith in her, she would deflect or go quiet. Ander would read the silence correctly. He had always been good at knowing when not to press.
I put away the map. It was time to keep moving, as I always did, and whether I wished to or not, I moved toward them.
Ander’s gaze caught on me. “There you are. We have planning to do.”
“Together, our clans can save Obsidian,” Cara told me, as if she were clan leader now. “Obsidian will join us. Our three clans will unite against the queen and draw the other clans to their side.”
“Optimistic,” I noted, though it was my plan.
“The queen is punishing Obsidian for the knife, isn’t she?” Cara glanced between Ander and me, looking for whichever of us would give an honest answer. Naturally, she looked longer to Ander.
I’d hoped to keep that guilt from settling on her. Now I admitted, “Yes.”
Ander and I shared a look. There was a difference between understanding the punishment and seeing shifters fight and fall and die.
But she was in our war. There was no preserving her innocence.
“Speaking of. I’d like my knife back,” Ander told her.
“You can’t use it,” she reminded him, but relief slipped across her face. She wanted to be free of it.
“I’ll have to find my own mortal.”
A brilliant idea. He seemed rather too attached to mine.
“I haven’t been to the eastern wall in years,” Ander said to me. “You, more recently.”
“Yes.”
Last year, when I’d been at the eastern wall, we’d been three clans deep, when Maura had fought at my side.
Cara had said our clans could unite. Did she truly see herself as one of us now?
Was she going to say goodbye to her family?
Or would she stay to protect those she had fought so hard to save?
For now, I was going to prepare my clan.
I was not going to think about Tesa’s lamp burning within her tent, and whether she could hear his voice.