Chapter 40
Forty
Cara
Fear was with the clan, moving through the final checks, by the time I’d finished some distinctly fraught goodbyes.
Lidi had been running wild around camp, so I still had to find her.
Tay had been kind and concerned and slightly distant, and I’d been awkward in return.
My mother had given me permission I didn’t need, alongside a hug that I did. It all felt rough and unfinished.
Bismyth, worn and dirty, was eating hastily as they stood, getting ready for another fight. Because that was what they did.
Tesa and Riven, masked and hooded, lingered in the shadows of the trees, waiting for Dairen and Inida to carry them with us.
Corbyn had suggested that we bring our Nightwalkers—who still made his people uncomfortable—with us.
I dreaded that meant Tesa would still be in Ander’s orbit. We could not keep them apart forever.
Kiegan bumped my shoulder, a bowl in his hand, and I almost leapt to hug him. “Kiegan!”
“What are you doing, kitten?” he demanded; the nickname was made less sweet by the way he spoke in a growl and the way he overacted his unwillingness to hug me back. I hung off his neck for a long beat before he sighed and wrapped his arms around me. “Orcs do not hug.”
“You’re only half-orc, and you’re all my friend,” I said because the sweetness would make him want to die.
He gave me a bleak look that made me smile. “I don’t remember asking you to be my friend.”
“That’s how it works. You were able to receive such a great gift without even asking. Friendship is the real miracle.”
He snorted and nudged his pack with his foot. He was eating out of a bowl, and there was less of the stew splattered on his face than usual. I wondered if he was trying to impress Anayla or Sera.
I had one more goodbye. I cast a worried glance over my shoulder at Bismyth, afraid they would leave me—I was not much use in a fight, and Fear might be protective of his flawed miracle—but I couldn’t leave without hugging Lidi.
I found her at the edge of camp, where the trees began, in the center of a cluster of children. They seemed to have made a magic shop out of flowers, ripped apart and carefully arranged on a large flat rock. Lidi and two other girls had their heads bent together, laughing.
She looked up and saw me, and her face opened. I caught her when she launched herself into my arms, rocking us back and forward as if I were comforting her. It was for my own sake.
“I have to go.”
“I know.” She leaned in to whisper in my ear, and the flowers gripped in her hand tickled the back of my neck. “You’re going to bring our magic back.”
Gods, so everyone knew. “I’m going to try.”
She nodded, as if my try was the same as certainty. When I set her down, the handful of flowers teased over my arm. The longing I felt for Lidi’s magic rose. So did warmth, rising through my body; a sudden quickening flowed through my arms and legs as if I were growing stronger.
The three wildflowers in Lidi’s hands trembled.
She had plucked the petals for their shop, leaving only their centers and stems. Now they were closed.
Lidi looked up at me, wide-eyed. I dropped to my knees before her without thought.
I cupped my hands over hers to keep anyone from seeing, but golden light—the color of an early sunrise—glowed between our fingers.
I moved my hands away, and Lidi stared at the three flowers, tightly furled. They bloomed, yellow petals restored; the flowers made new again.
Lightbringer suddenly pulled away. The warmth, the sense of strength, fled.
“How?” Lightbringer’s voice was a growl in my mind.
My mind spun, trying to make sense of what happened. Lightbringer had sounded startled. I’d assumed this was a gift from my dragon, but perhaps I could take it.
“Cara,” Lidi whispered, and her voice was joy itself. “Did you see that?”
“I saw.” Despite all my questions, I was grinning.
“If you wish your sister to regain the rest of her magic, you will keep this a secret,” Lightbringer warned. “Until—if—I am ready.”
Triumph hummed in my chest. It was only a beginning, but it meant everything was possible.
“I’ll keep your secret for now.” I had more power than I had realized. I could be generous.
“Go light all the magic,” Lidi told me with her childish faith.
“Don’t tell anyone yet.” I touched my finger to my lips. “Just between us.”
I trusted an eight-year-old’s commitment to secrecy as much as I trusted Stonehaven not to gossip. This moment of hope would grow wings and take flight among the mortals, no matter what Lightbringer demanded.
Lidi’s face was still bright with hope. She hugged me hard, and I kissed the top of her head.
I went back, still feeling jubilant. But I had to walk past the mortals who had gathered on the outskirts of Bismyth’s preparation, watching.
Their observation seemed hungry. The hunger of people who needed something to be true and were here to see it confirmed.
They came for a miracle.
The queen had told that to Fear, too. Take your miracle and go.
She had believed I would fail, and the mortals would lose interest in me and in our rebellion. The rebellion needed the mortals, and the mortals needed the rebellion.
“Can we fly today?” I asked Lightbringer. “Are you ready?”
She was there. The warmth flared the way it had when I threw myself off the overlook before she changed her mind. She was an enormous presence at the same time she was only in my mind, and for one bright second, I thought…
And then she was still.
Not gone. It was the difference between a fire that had gone out and a fire that was banked. She had saved me from death. Everything about life, apparently, was my problem.
Except…I had bloomed Lidi’s flower with my wishing. Somehow I had drawn Lightbringer’s power. Perhaps I could force more without her will.
That seemed like a violation. I was not going to use her. “Fine. I’m waiting for you.”
Fear appeared at my elbow. He’d taken in the mortals and, of course, he had assessed the problem of followers faster than I had. “Walk with me.”
I walked with him to the edge of the clearing, far enough that our voices wouldn’t carry, but close enough that it didn’t look like retreat.
“Some of the mortals are going to leave.” I felt frustrated. We were so close. But I wouldn’t trade away Lightbringer’s freedom for the chance to please the crowd.
“Some of them.” He was looking at the crowd, not at me. Reading them, doing the rapid inventory he brought to every room. “Not all.”
I hated that I didn’t know what to do and he did, but the rebellion mattered more than my feelings. “What do I do, Fear?”
He was quiet for a moment, clearly spinning through plans. “Is your only value in bringing Lightbringer into the world?”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted. “No?”
“Don’t overwhelm us with your confidence.” His sarcasm was tinged with exasperation. “You’re brave and fierce. As a mortal. You would do anything to protect your family and free your people.”
He nodded out at the crowd. “So will they. Show them you’re alike.”
“That’s your story, not mine. You’re the one who has been building this ridiculous myth since Stonehaven. Me and the shovel—”
“That happened.” He cut in. “Do the people need a myth? Yes. They need you.”
“They need Lightbringer.”
And Lightbringer was the most difficult dragon in centuries and refused to touch claw to earth or wing to sky. She’d curled up again in my mind, silent and distant and maddening.
“And if Lightbringer always refuses you, you’re going to do…what? Give up and go home to Stonehaven?” He delivered those words, then waited patiently for me to catch up.
That was what I had said I wanted all this time. To return to Stonehaven with Tay and Lidi and my mother.
It was not what I wanted anymore. I had understood that on the overlook, too late. I exhaled. “No. I can’t go home again.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I can’t go home after what I’ve seen. I’m here to fight.”
Fear smiled. “That’s my girl.”
There was an audience for that smile. He might or might not mean it. But he was right.
“Thank you.”
When I went back to Bismyth, Tay was standing at the edge of the gathered mortals with his arms folded and his chin up, and he was looking at me with the expression I had seen him wear since we were small when I was afraid. I know you can do this.
Tay believed in me the way he always had, unconditionally, even now, even after everything. I held onto that.
It seemed as if all the camp’s children had arrived now.
Lidi stood with a small knot of her friends on one side and Rees at the other.
Flowers were woven messily through all of their hair, and even Rees was adorned with a wreath around his neck, which he seemed to be taking with remarkable good humor.
The flowers were not as beautifully woven together as she once had with magic, but she was finding a way.
The adults behind them were restless, but it was one of the little boys who was pushed forward by his friends, like a sacrifice. He looked back at them, then shouted, “Can you shift into a dragon?”
“No,” I admitted, and felt the last of their hope turn in the way they moved impatiently.
My mouth felt dry. I didn’t want to step forward and say another word to this disappointed crowd.
Kiegan moved to stand at my shoulder. He said nothing, just stood behind me, the clan’s presence made physical.
I had to speak. I began and hoped I’d be surprised by my wisdom, for once in my life.
“You came because a mortal who carries the dragon mark means we mortals can be powerful. The queen tells us we are powerless without the Fae. Without the dragons. Without their magic.”
My voice had grown stronger as I spoke. Louder. “It’s a lie.”
Well, I had their attention. A sea of skeptical faces spread before me.
“I believe Lightbringer is coming, and I believe it matters. But I want to tell you something else. Three days ago I used this knife to cut the queen’s enchantments away.”
When I drew it, light glinted off the blade. The mortals nearest me pulled back slightly before they caught themselves. “I freed two of her Nightwalkers. My own brother.”
They knew this story. But there was more to it.
I raised the blade above my head. “Without Lightbringer, I freed them from the queen. No one but a mortal can wield this knife. We have our own gifts. Gifts that we surrendered to the Fae, bringing them our children to have their magic stripped away.”
Understanding washed over me. There were dozens of mortals to every Fae. Perhaps a hundred to one. “Never again! Why do they take our magic? Because they are afraid of us! You don’t need me. The rebellion needs you.”
I exhaled. Most of them looked interested, even moved. Others shifted back, eager to leave. The possibility of being raised to something higher than a mortal had been dangled over them all their lives. It was not easy to see the raising to Fae as a stupid aspiration.
What would Fear say?
“Mortals are not the audience to an epic story about how the dragons saved the kingdom. You are the story.”
I turned. Bismyth was behind me, and the faces I found first were the ones I wanted: Kiegan’s bleak approval and Anayla’s full-hearted smile. I didn’t need to see what the crowd was doing. I could feel the shift.
“I kept my promise to you,” I told Lightbringer.
There was no answer, of course.
Fear took my hand in his. That was for the crowd; the pride on his face might not be. “Only you could give them that hope.”
The girl I’d been in Stonehaven couldn’t have stood before an angry crowd and made that speech. He had given me the beginning, but I had found the rest along the way.
I didn’t know what to do with the way he believed in me when I was still angry. I definitely didn’t know what to do with the complicated feelings churning within me every time I looked at him. His palm was warm and dry against mine; I felt his ring on my finger when we held hands.
Fear raised his other hand, telling the clan it was time to fly.
Then Bismyth was moving, and the morning was opening.
Dragons shifted, then rose into the sky, wings soaring effortlessly. Mortals cheered, and children ran along in their shadows, arms outstretched.
Lidi ran in those shadows, barefoot with other children, Rees racing with them. I wished I was the one with my wings stretched wide. If I were free to rise on these winds, I would’ve done a loop for her and listened to their distant whoops and cheers.
Fear’s arms came around me easily, as if nothing else was expected.
We lifted off into the gray sky with the remaining mortals watching from below. Tay’s upturned face was the last thing I saw before the camp fell away beneath us.
He was waving.
I didn’t know yet that might be the last time.