Chapter 46
Forty-Six
Cara
Asrael found us coming back from the sea wall. “Fear! Cara!”
Relief was written on his face, and my heart sank. “What’s happened?”
“Sevran went to the queen.”
“Yes, I know.” Fear sounded as certain as ever.
That did not comfort me.
“His clan uncovered something there.” Asrael’s gaze had a slight wildness. “The queen sent a message to Nightwalkers she’d already dispatched, trying to stop them. They had been sent to retrieve weapons from the Caer Lira kingdom. After that, they were to find Cara and kill her.”
Fear took it in with his usual calm. “She dispatched them before we were married. Buying herself time to see how things played out. Ready to kill her if it turned out to be the better play.”
He did not seem alarmed. Asrael looked at me, his gaze softening.
Fear’s decision was quick. “We’re leaving now. Asrael, you’ll stay and help Obsidian?”
Asrael nodded. “While Anayla leads the contingent on our mission.”
I did not like Bismyth spread thin. I did not like leaving the clan behind. I did not like, either, how Fear was already moving us toward the stairs, his hand at my back as if my path was decided.
“Ander has what he needs,” Fear said, anticipating my protest. “We need to get you back to Corbyn’s camp, where you’ll be shielded. Bismyth will be well without us both.”
I glanced at the shadows in the corridor, momentarily convinced they might be alive with Nightwalkers. My fear was in the tightness of my chest and the too-rapid pounding of my heart, but neither mattered.
“You have a blind spot,” I told Fear gently, putting my hand on his forearm to halt him. “Bismyth won’t be well without us, and neither will the rest of the clans, and neither will the mortals. You cannot disappear from leadership. And neither can I.”
“If we lose you, there was no point to any of this,” Fear reminded me.
“If the Nightwalkers try to kill me, we’ll see if Lightbringer comes out to play,” I told him.
“If the Nightwalkers try to kill you, I’ll cheer them on, you terrible mortal—” Lightbringer snarled in the back of my mind.
“We can’t let the rebellion collapse now,” I told him. “If the Nightwalkers come for me, protect me.”
His jaw tightened. “Just like that. Just protect you.”
“Just like that. I have faith in you.”
The door at the far end of the hall opened, and Corbyn stepped through it.
Corbyn was alone. He should have been at the camp with Mam and Lidi.
Images of Tay and Lidi and my mother being slaughtered by Nightwalkers who found them instead of me rose, fast and furious.
My mother’s falling corpse toppling over Lidi.
A Nightwalker leaping out at Lidi from the shadows, cutting her small throat.
My brother, trying to fight, landing on his knees before he fell forward into a pool of his own blood.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, and I barely recognized my own voice, tight and seething with anger because beneath it was fear, so much fear.
Corbyn paused. It was Fear who translated between us. “Is her family safe?”
Corbyn’s hard expression eased into compassion. “Your mother’s staying with Lidi where it’s safe, Cara. They’re both well.”
For a moment, I was seized with relief. Then I understood that he had not mentioned Tay.
Corbyn held out a folded square of paper. “She wanted to come. But she’s staying with Lidi. Tay hid with the mortals to leave the camp. We’ve been trying to track him down.”
I took the note. It bothered me to know they were watching me read it, and I wished for a distraction.
Fear asked Corbyn, “Do you know the route he took?”
“Yes,” Corbyn answered. “The mortals went by the—”
Their voices faded for me as they carried on their conversation.
Cara, I have to go. You have always put your family first, and I am relieved that it seems you are finally learning to put yourself first, to want things and to chase after them.
I want the same. I want to be well, and, truth be told, I want something bigger than Stonehaven myself.
I cannot chase my desires and hang onto your hands and Mam’s, any more than you could.
But I’m still your brother. We will find our own ways, and eventually, we’ll find our way back together.
Love,
Tay
“Tay’s gone,” I repeated, trying to make sense of the words. “He went to the queen.”
Anger swept over me before anything else. Everything I had done to try to protect him, and that stupid ass ran back to the queen.
“He was with the mortal group that left at dawn,” Corbyn confirmed. “I don’t know for certain if he went to the queen or not.”
“My mother sent you.”
She must have come to trust Corbyn a little again. She had done the terrible math on Tay and on me and had decided it was wisest to protect her smallest, most fragile child. The one who could definitely be saved.
Tay was lost to the queen, and I was lost to the rebellion. Lidi was the one she could protect.
My mother’s expression in the tent when we cut the enchantment out of Tay came back to me. Resolute, practical, and filled with pain for her decisions that never faded.
“Cara.” Fear’s voice was careful. “We still need to leave. The queen’s people are looking for you. The camp is the only place that I can fully guard your safety.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I understand why you’re asking.”
Fear’s face said he had not been asking.
But I wasn’t refusing to be safe. I was refusing to be pushed around the board. “The queen has been using my family against me since you first stole me out of Stonehaven. Do you think she’s not using them now?”
Fear knew it was a good point, but he countered anyway. “Tay may have acted of his own volition. Not as part of her plan.”
“It will become part of her plan, then, the moment he appears at her doorstep. Unless we capture him first. If I run back to Corbyn’s camp, the rebellion starts to collapse.”
Fear studied my face. “You wanted to stay even before we found out about your brother.”
“I don’t want to lose the rebellion. Your alliances with the other clans are too fragile for you to leave.”
“I could leave you in the rebel camp under Corbyn’s protection and continue leading the clans.”
“You could, but we both know you want to be at my side.” The words came out more certain, less teasing, than I had intended. I didn’t take them back anyway.
I could not imagine Fear leading this rebellion without me, and suddenly I could not imagine myself without him. For practicality. The two of us were bound together in every way.
“Bismyth is spread thin to help Obsidian and still serve their own mission. They need to see you here, in command. What happens to their faith if you hide with me?”
Asrael was looking between us. He did not say anything about the clan’s leadership, though I was sure he had opinions. His face was carefully neutral, as if to say this is between you two.
Fear’s hand on my back did not move. His mind moved so quickly; he must work through all the same fears and concerns I had, with his much greater knowledge of the clans and their dynamics and the threats.
“All right. We’ll stay.”
I had braced for an argument. The lack of one almost did me in. I felt stunned. “All right.”
“What do you need from me?” Corbyn asked.
“Protect my mother and my sister, please. They need you. And find Tay.”
Corbyn nodded, unsmiling, but there was a flicker of unexpected joy in his gaze. Maybe his daughter, asking him for help, meant something to him.
Lightbringer, who had been coiled and angry and silent, suddenly lashed out. “You should run back to the rebel camp, little mortal.”
I grew weary of being called little.
“Say what you have to say.” Then we could move on to the part where we fought together.
I didn’t believe the same dragon who watched Shadowbane fly and longed for her wings, who had called out directions to prevent me from being slaughtered by monsters, was going to stay caged within my mind as the queen won.
There was some kind of test Lightbringer had for me that I kept failing. I was sure of that. But I didn’t understand what it was.
“You promised my power,” she said. “My power. Which I have not given you. You stood in that room and you told them I would strip the queen of her magic and drain her power. You cannot currently do anything of the kind, can you?”
“I cannot fight the queen without you,” I admitted. “Well, I could. I will, if I must. But we both know I’ll just die.”
She made a furious snarling sound. “Now she is going to come for you, and I am going to have to—”
She stopped. “I am going to be extremely inconvenienced. You could at least be sorry.”
I strained for something to be sorry about because it would be best if I could please the dragon in my head.
She scoffed, furious at how little I seemed to churn up in my search. “For promising my power when you are just a mortal child with no—”
“I made the only move available in that room to keep the rebellion from dying, and you know it. You were straining toward it the entire meeting; don’t tell me you weren’t. You don’t want the queen alive any more than the rest of us.”
“You are,” Lightbringer said finally, “just as terrible as your mate.”
“Thank you,” I said, and even though she seemed to need my gratitude, she made a furious snarling sound.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Lightbringer warned.
“Life as a mortal is a series of terrible mistakes.”
“You said I would save them. All of them.”
“I said you could.”
“There is a difference between could and will. Do you understand what you’ve done? They’re going to believe in this. Within days every mortal settlement in the kingdom is going to believe that the queen can be killed. By you. And that their magic can be restored.”
“Yes.” That was the story that brought mortals to our side rather than clamoring for the queen’s favor. Otherwise, more mortals would run, like the ones who had left with Tay. “That’s what I told them.”
There followed a very long silence, sizzling with anger.
“I am sorry,” I admitted. When I had knelt in front of Lidi, I had told Lightbringer I would keep her secret for now. I hadn’t promised forever.
And some things mattered even more than my sister’s magic. “I want you to help me of your own will. I don’t want to force you.”
Another angry dragon noise. I was building quite the complete catalog tonight. She snarled, “You can’t force me.”
“I don’t think you’ll let me die. Or let the rebellion die. Even to prove a point.”
“I’m older than your queen. She will fail, too, in her time. Every cruel regime falls.”
She had the benefit of being ancient. I didn’t have the luxury of allowing time to wash away evil.
Fear was watching me, a curious expression on his face. I tilted my head, asking him why he was staring at me.
“You’re talking with Lightbringer,” he filled in.
“She’s angry with me.”
“So is Shadowbane, half the time,” he promised me. “Always a lecture.”
“At least Shadowbane still has some sense,” Lightbringer muttered in the back of my mind.
“She misses him terribly,” I said. There was a sound of annoyance in the back of my mind.
Fear nodded. “Shadowbane too. He adores her. He’s missed her for so long. I think he’s been lonely, coming back to this world over and over while she stays dreaming.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder because I was tired, and he was my husband.
I wondered if he and Ander could ever reconcile. I didn’t know much about forgiveness. I sometimes woke at night still furious about childhood grievances. Apparently Kiara Liverson, who had pushed me into a mud puddle when I was eleven, had grown into a lovely person, but I didn’t care to know her.
But I wanted to believe. I was glad about Fear going to Tesa and the way Ander had said her name and the looks on both their faces as they studied each other.
That brief glimmer of joy faded into worrying about my brother. Corbyn was working to find him. Staying with the rebellion was the right choice. It still cost me.
“Do you think we can save Tay?” I’d made my voice very soft because it was not trustworthy. “Do you think, in the end, I’ll get to Tay alive and well and Lidi with her magic?”
It was not the thing that mattered most to me anymore. But it still mattered.
“He’s not gone, Cara.” His strong arm was around my waist, and he dropped a kiss in my hair, and I was too tired to think about an audience. “He’s walking in the wrong direction—in every way—but he’s not gone.”
When I blinked, tears spilled onto my cheeks.
Fear shifted, his arm no longer around me. I looked up at him, startled, his handsome face a blur.
Gently, he wiped away my tears.
“Someday, I still believe we’ll get to Tay alive and well, and Lidi with her magic.” He said it the way he said things he had decided to make true.
It was still his promise.
I turned my face back into his shoulder.