Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Fear
“Over here!” Griega, one of Obsidian’s shifters, shouted from the rubble.
I was the nearest so I went to her. Broken bits of stone shifted under my feet, and the sun reflecting off the glittering sea was almost blinding through the gaps in the wall.
Terrible storms and sea monsters both ravaged this town and would again if the wall was not repaired, but the queen needed the sea ports. Or so she claimed.
“What do you need?” I asked her before I saw the stretch of skin visible through the stone.
Her gaze flashed up to me, her eyes widening as she registered who I was.
As a dragon, I took the fallen chunk of wall carefully in my mouth and shifted it away to drop it elsewhere. As my head swung to one side, she pulled the body free. I shifted back because unfortunately, Obsidian needed its prince now. I would’ve rather escaped into Shadowbane.
She checked for life, cupping her hand over his throat, leaning over to search for a heartbeat, over and over.
I waited. There was no rushing the acceptance of a clan member’s death.
Finally, she sat back on her heels, pulling her hands away from him abruptly. “He’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
Her eyes searched my face as if she were surprised.
“I’ll carry him to the pyres.”
It was a risk. I knew that. Some clans would see me carrying bodies as a sign of both leadership and service. Obsidian might not. Obsidian was always invested in ferreting out any weakness and using it for their purposes. I understood the impulse, but being the nearest target was inconvenient.
Obsidian would be looking for someone to blame for their dead. The queen was too far away, and her son was very present.
And in truth, the queen’s wrath would not have descended on them without me. Every corpse found in the rubble was the result of my choices, and I did not want to be here for the accounting.
Had the story of Cara’s work with the unmaking knife been carried to them yet? If it had, there would be no denying that I was the one who had stolen it from them. Could they be convinced to still fight on our side against the queen, or would I lose them?
“Fine,” she said grudgingly, as if she were doing me the favor.
For now, I shouldered the corpse and trusted myself to talk my way through Obsidian’s wrath. I always talked my way through it.
As I lifted him, I caught a glimpse of his face and recognized him. Terick. He’d had a habit of giving candy out to mortal children to soothe them when the monsters had been struck down.
The pyres had already been built at the edge of the sea. She glanced at me and answered the question I hadn’t asked. “Their civilians had been building them for us.”
“How many?”
“Five. Not counting today.”
Griega removed his cloak, her fingers working at his collar, then laid it out over the street. I settled Terick onto the dark fabric, resting my hand briefly on his lifeless chest. “Rest now. You earned your sleep.”
As I rose, I caught a glimpse of Ander, cloak fluttering in the wind and sword sheathed, standing with one of Obsidian’s lead three.
Obsidian would go to him instead of me, given what they must suspect. Ander was not as mythic as I was, but he was certainly more tolerable to those who didn’t buy the legend. Those I knew adored me or hated me, with little between the two extremes.
I looked up from leveraging up part of a building to get at a body and saw Cara coming toward me.
She was carrying a litter under one arm, a bit awkwardly, the other end dragging over the cobblestones.
There was blood across her tunic, and she looked tired, but then, she always looked tired these days.
“You are excited to see her,” Shadowbane observed.
“I am not excited to see the would-be little murderess. I’m glad she’s alive.”
“Dramatic, fragile thing.” Shadowbane sniffed. “You knew she was alive and well already, or you would have hunted for her first.”
It was difficult to argue with the creature that occupied half my mind and spent centuries learning how to be annoying. “She is important to my plan.”
“She is your mate,” Shadowbane said merrily. “You should give her gifts and ask for her forgiveness. I see something shiny in the rubble!”
“Are you going to ask Lightbringer for her forgiveness?”
“Yes. I am not new to being her mate.” Heavily implied in his tone: my foolishness.
“She tried to kill me.”
“And yet your heart still leapt when you saw her.”
There was no point in arguing with Shadowbane.
Cara glanced around, and I thought for a moment she was carrying the litter to somewhere else—I was managing fine, carrying the bodies out alone—but then she came a few steps closer to me and dropped it on the rocks.
“I came to help you carry their dead,” she said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Neither do you.”
Arguing with Cara was probably as useless as arguing with Shadowbane. I settled the body down onto the litter, then took up one end. She lifted the other, the difference in our heights making it awkward, but we made our way across the rubble anyway.
Her foot slipped, and one side of the litter dipped. Luckily, I caught the corpse while she was still cursing. We placed the litter down and started over.
“I’m sorry,” she said shortly, her voice clipped. She never sounded as if she meant it when she apologized, but it was because she meant it so much and was so uncomfortable with her emotions. “I thought I’d make it easier, but I’m not helping.”
She was here, and she was trying to help. That was remarkable, given what she and I had done to each other. “It is helping, Cara.”
Her breath was coming short. “Don’t humor me; I’m not a child.”
“How do I talk to this infuriating woman?” It had been intended as an internal thought rather than an appeal to Shadowbane. Or at least, I thought it had.
“You could try something unusual like honesty,” Shadowbane suggested. “Though, is that too frightening when you are bonded to her forever?”
“Not if we sever the bond.” The thought was grim. I kept returning to the fact Shadowbane had offered.
Afterward, both Cara and I could theoretically fall in love with someone else. Life as I knew it would be over: Cara would be freed of her bond with me, Shadowbane would return to the Dreaming, and Bismyth would choose a new First. I would be alone.
The future with someone who was not a prickly, petite hassle who was far too quick to draw knives should have been a peaceful thought, even a relief, but I found it was impossible to imagine.
“Do you think she would choose the severing,” Shadowbane mused, “knowing it would mean you and I lose each other?”
“I was going to lie about that part.”
There was a moment of silence in my mind that I could hear as shocked, then aggravated.
“Breakable little fool.”
“If she knows what it would cost, she’ll choose selflessly. This is my last lie to her, and it’s a gift. I want her to choose for her own sake. If she wants me or not.”
Shadowbane’s silence continued to be aggrieved. “No. You want her to choose you because you’d rather die than go on in a world where no one truly knows you and no one chooses you.”
“I’m not interested in dying at all.”
My shoulders were beginning to ache, and I glanced back at her. Her face was set in that tight, long-suffering expression that indicated she was struggling. I knew that expression a little too well. She had often worn it when she was in my arms and pretending to be a good wife.
“You wish her to choose you, but you also will not forgive her stabbiness?”
“I’m beginning to genuinely wonder what your life was like with Lightbringer, because you seemed inclined to paint right over her trying to stab me in the back. Literally.”
“You should tell her that she hurt you, even though the knife entirely missed.”
“I told her I’m angry.”
Shadowbane’s pause felt as if it contained blistering thoughts about my intelligence.
We reached the pyres. Cara knelt carefully to lower the litter, but she was tired enough that her knees hit the cobblestones too hard, and I winced in sympathy. She needed rest.
There were three other bodies in the street now. Obsidian was focused on searching for their missing, and they had been joined without discussion by Clans Amber and Bismyth.
“What now?” Cara asked me, dusting her hands off on her trousers. She was looking out at the shifters picking through the rubble, at the mortals who had begun to repair the wall, at the glimmer of the sea.
So she did not see me close the distance between us until I was right there.
I took her wrists as she startled and raised her hands, palms up, for me to examine.
The fresh blisters on her palms from swinging a sword, overlapping the old calluses from farmwork, had torn open carrying the stretcher; they looked pink and raw, and a few were bleeding.
Her lips parted as she looked up at me. For a heartbeat, her expression was open and vulnerable. Then she blinked, and it was gone. She snatched her hands back.
“There’s no one watching, Fear.”
“There’s always someone watching.”
The urge I felt to salve and bandage her hands was one I could barely resist. Someone would see, of course, and it would seem a tender moment. I dropped her hands.
“Now? Now we call for a meeting of all the clan leaders. Now they all know the queen wants Obsidian dead. Hopefully they’re smart enough to know that means she will turn on them in time.”
I studied her, and she was the one who finished my thought. “Now we fight.”
“But first, we try to make allies of the other clans.” The smile that touched my lips was rueful. “Which is the hardest fight.”
The pyres were still smoking when the first of the other clan leaders appeared on the horizon.