Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Fear
Tesa raised her mask and slid into the shadows as I approached Ander’s door. It stood open like an invitation, but when I glanced in the doorframe, Ander’s quarters were empty.
I lingered in the doorway a moment as if he might come back. But the lamp was unlit, a map half-unfurled on the table, his pack against the wall.
I stood there a moment longer because I had steeled myself to come face-to-face with Ander now. Dread knotted in my chest.
Nixi came down the hall. “What are you doing here, Bismyth?”
Nixi had hated me for choosing Maura over her, and now she seemed to hate me for casting out Maura.
“Are you looking for your wife?” she asked before I could answer. “She’s in her room.”
Why would she know where Cara was within Bismyth’s floors? “I’m looking for your clan leader.”
“Ander is with her,” she said.
I didn’t give her the pleasure of the reaction for which she wished. My horror stayed entirely internal. “Thank you.”
“He’s with your wife,” Shadowbane observed as I headed for the stairs. “Are you curious about their conversation?”
“She won’t have told him.” I was nearly certain. I usually read people so well, but when it came to Cara, nearly was the best I could do.
“Because she gave her word? Or because she will try not to betray your trust?”
I did not have a good answer. She had betrayed my trust once before, but if I reminded Shadowbane, he would yell at me about how I had betrayed her too. He could give me a headache.
“You should tell her that you still desire her,” Shadowbane instructed.
“You have not stopped wanting her for a moment, even when you are bristly and rude. Ah! Or show it. She is with your so-called-enemy, after all. Perhaps they are sitting quite close. Perhaps he has clapped his hand to her shoulder, to comfort her, like a comrade—”
“You can’t convince me to be jealous.” I cut in, my tone a bit hotter than it should have been.
Shadowbane’s concept of courtship involved both generosity and possessiveness to degrees that seemed unhinged.
“A display of jealousy might mean something to Cara. One might assume that you take her love for granted.”
“She tried to kill me. She doesn’t love me at all.”
Shadowbane sighed. “Tiresome. Of course you know she does.”
For a few seconds, I didn’t answer him. Then I admitted, “It doesn’t count when she has no choice.”
“So give her a chance to choose you.”
I heard his voice and hers before I reached the door. It had been left open, which I appreciated, for the sake of how the clan might look at Ander emerging from our quarters.
“If he could forgive me. If we could forgive each other.” Cara sounded less angry than she often was when we spoke to each other. I searched for the right word to name her emotion.
“Wistful.” Shadowbane supplied helpfully.
Something twisted in my chest. I would’ve liked to eavesdrop, but I came into the room just as Ander was asking dryly, “If you regret it, have you tried apol—”
He cut himself off when he saw me. Ander was sitting in the chair by the window. Cara was on the edge of the bed. Both of them looked at me with startled faces, not quite guilty, but certainly unsettled by my arrival.
Ander recovered first, but I cut him off as he started to speak.
“Ander, I need to talk to you.”
Ander and Cara traded a look.
“Should I stay?” she asked as she looked between us, and I wasn’t sure whose permission she requested.
Probably not mine, though.
“If you wish.”
I left the door behind me open for Tesa. I wasn’t going along with Shadowbane’s display of jealousy ploy. But I had taken Cara’s advice, and she should know that.
I had planned this conversation during the walk.
I had not planned for Ander’s gaze to move toward the door, toward the dark stretch of corridor visible through the gap I hadn’t fully closed, toward the shadow that wasn’t quite right.
He was on his feet before I processed that he’d moved. He yanked her hooded body into the light.
The knife was at her throat in the same motion, his arm across her chest, blade against her skin, with the deadly speed of a man who had kept his clan alive for years.
“Ander, stop!” I could already see Ander killing Tesa, finding only when she crumpled to his feet that he had been the one to cause his own grief. His knife hesitated, giving me enough time to blurt out, “Tesa is alive!”
She had raised her mask and hood to blend into the shadows. It was only her eyes on his that might’ve warned him.
The knife didn’t move.
Neither did she.
“No.” He might have been carved from stone.
“She is, I promise you.” I had known he would refuse to accept hope without proof.
She was looking at him. At his face. Then she blinked, and her eyes were full of tears.
He stepped back abruptly, the knife still held at the ready. He looked at her the way a man looked at something he did not trust himself to believe.
“Tesa.” He barely voiced her name.
Cara’s hand found my arm in the dark. She was not looking at me, she was looking at them, but her hand found my arm and stayed there, and I let it.
“Are you sure this is not a trick, Fear?” He didn’t look away from her when he asked.
“I’m sure,” I said, and for all he would have claimed my word counted for nothing to him, he nodded.
She crossed the rest of the distance, and he caught her with his hands at her shoulders.
Ander’s hand touched her hood. “May I?”
When she nodded, he gently pushed back her hood, revealing her dark hair. His fingers traced gently down her cheek until he could hook a finger under her mask and pull it away.
“Tesa,” he said again, that one name brimming with emotion.
It was our own quarters, but they needed their privacy. Cara still had my arm. “Take a walk with me, wife?”
Hurt flashed through her eyes. But why? Her grip slackened.
I put my hand over hers to hold it to my arm. Even though her eyes were still etched with feeling, she nodded.
It was only when we were in the hallway that I understood she thought I was mocking her when I called her wife.
Things between us felt so broken, and I was not sure how they could be repaired. Perhaps they were bad enough to justify seeking advice from Ander.
Ander glanced away from Tesa on our way out. Suspicion flashed across his face. He must have so many questions, and I owed him answers—as much as I didn’t want to provide them—but not tonight.
The two of us left the candlelit hall behind for the quiet, dark cobblestone streets.
I meant to ask Cara about her hurt, but she spoke first. “You asked Tesa for permission to tell Ander. Why didn’t you tell me that was where you were going?”
There were so many directions in which to turn the conversation. I could tell her that I had simply commanded Tesa, which would suggest I had changed my mind for her sake. But while that would win her over, it wouldn’t be particularly honest.
“Old habits of being an ass, I suppose.”
She was surprised into a genuine smile. The way it lit her gaze and transformed her face made me almost willing to insult myself again. “I’m glad they have their chance.”
The way she said it reminded me of how wistful she had sounded when she was seeking advice from Ander. I’d have teased her over how desperate she must have been to go to him. But he wasn’t bad for advice, really, if he was on one’s side. I used to seek his advice when I was young and lost.
I felt as lost with Cara at my side as I had when I was a yearning, empty boy.
“They’re going to have a hard road.”
Just as Ander had been reluctant to believe in anything good, I felt the same reluctance rising in my chest like a shield. I did not want to believe Ander and Tesa could have a happy ending and then be disappointed.
“They’ll find their way,” Cara said, which was unexpected, because usually she was the little grump.
Together, the two of us climbed the stairs to the sea wall. The moonlight seemed to wrap around her, casting her light hair to silver. “Do you think Ander will forgive you with the two of them reunited?”
“Whether or not Ander forgives me seems like a rather petty concern when the queen is waging war on our clans. He’s stuck with me.”
So I hoped. I feared that when Ander realized I’d withheld Tesa from him, he’d lose his mind and reveal the truth to Obsidian, and our entire rebellion would fall apart.
Ander was usually too clever for such an act, though. I’d have to hope he and Tesa had an agreeable reunion.
“Fear.” She grabbed my other arm and swung to face me. “Let me give you a bit of mortal wisdom. Despite how short our lives are, there’s always time to be petty.”
I found myself smiling too.
“You just don’t want to answer my question,” she added, a little more softly. Her gaze searched mine.
“I’m not some hero reuniting Tesa and Ander.” My voice was harsher than I intended. “I’m the reason they were apart all these years. There’s no forgiving that.”
Cara studied me in that unbearable way she had sometimes, like she could see through what Anayla called all my masks to what was beneath. It was unnerving.
Then she said, “Don’t be a coward.”
The word coward felt like being punched. After everything I had done? Everything I had risked? She dared to call me a coward.
The wind off the ocean had pulled strands of hair into her face, and she brushed them away angrily. She seemed furious at me now. “You’d like that to be true. It would let you off the hook of asking. It’s safer to decide it’s impossible than to risk being turned away.”
The wind coming off the sea was cold enough to sting. Good. I preferred pain with obvious causes.
My heart was pounding against my chest, as if I stood at the edge of battle. “And are you a coward, Cara?”
The sea crashed below the cliffs in slow, relentless rhythm. Moonlight silvered the black water. Beside me, Cara wrapped her arms tighter around herself against the cold.
“That’s what I asked Ander,” she admitted after a moment, more softly now. “Whether there could be forgiveness. Between you and me.”
Something low and dangerous shifted awake inside my ribs.
“He was about to give me advice when you interrupted, so I suppose now we’ll never know what to do.”
My mouth threatened to betray me by smiling.
I looked away from her before it could.
The sea stretched dark and endless beneath the moon, and for a while I let the silence stand between us.
Silence required less blood.
“I have read people well, until you.” I stared out over the water. I couldn’t look at her.
“It’s how I’ve stayed alive. I predict the people who hate me before they form their plans. I see through the people who claim to love me.” Bitter amusement touched me briefly. “It’s useful. I don’t get hurt the way others do. Surprise is where the cut lands, and I am rarely surprised.”
Cara waited silently.
“I was surprised by you,” I admitted, and I finally looked at her.
Moonlight caught her face in pale edges and shadows.
I watched her face shift as the words slid under her armor, sharp as a blade.
Not because I wanted to hurt her. But because for the first time in a long time, it felt important to be understood.
Not to be believed, as I created a story, but to be understood.
“I had every piece of information to predict what you would do. I knew what the queen was offering. I knew what Tay was worth. I should have known what choice you would make if she forced your hand.” My voice remained cool.
I had trained it to remain cool through almost anything, and I’d had much practice.
“I was stupid,” I admitted softly. “For the first time in a very long time. I knew what I took from you. I knew you had reason. And yet…I hoped you would trust me, as I had come to trust you.”
That was the wound in the end.
Not her betrayal.
My hope.
“And so I was hurt.” The words scraped coming out. I’d thought I’d carved that weakness out of myself years ago.
Cara was quiet, absorbing this, her gaze moving over my face.
Most people rushed to fill silences like this, to soothe themselves. Cara simply stayed with me, bearing the weight of what she’d done alongside me.
The moon painted a long silver path across the sea below us, like a road for ghosts.
“It was a privilege I have given no one else.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I wish I had not done it. You hurt me first, and yet…I wish I had not hurt you.”
It was not an apology. But then, I had opened the wound because I was tired of carrying it alone. It would have felt slight if she apologized now, as if we could simply move beyond what had happened. I wasn’t ready to forgive her. She might not be ready to forgive me.
For a long moment neither of us moved.
Then Cara reached for my hand.
The motion was hesitant enough that I could’ve shifted or crossed my arms and prevented her from touching me.
Her fingers curled carefully through mine as if she expected me to pull away. But I didn’t.
We stood there without speaking, the sea thundering against the rocks, hand in hand.
The moon’s light stretched its path farther across the sea, as if somewhere beyond the horizon there truly was a way through.