Chapter 51 #2
The image of home—of the three of us walking with our mother back up the road toward the gate, the lights in the cottage windows and the garden blooming—rose with all the power home carries.
“I did wish that.” Once upon a time. Now things were more complicated. “And what is the cost of the queen’s generous offer?”
Tay ignored my sarcasm. But then, my brother had long practice ignoring my sarcasm. That did not necessarily mean my brother was enchanted.
Nor did it mean he was not. Sudden fear squirmed through my chest. What if this was the trap? What if the queen had set Tay and me face-to-face so that he could kill me?
No. I had cut the enchantment out of him. Whatever the queen had arranged before I married Fear, she could not compel him to harm me now. I had nothing to fear from him.
Not by her order or by her hand.
The words always comforted me. They had become something I all but whispered to myself. Yet alarm ghosted over my skin, raising goosebumps. I had missed something. I was sure of it.
When Tay began to speak, I had almost lost the thread of conversation.
“Of course there is a cost,” he admitted.
“The queen fears the pain that this rebellion will cause her people. The shifters abandoning the mortals to fight their queen. The cost of all those mortal deaths to the monsters. The shifters themselves, dying needlessly, pitting them against her guards, the Nightwalkers…So much death, so much suffering.”
He sounded sincere. He sounded worried. “I know it is a sacrifice, Cara. But you can stop it all. You can give up your dragon and return to Stonehaven.”
“And how do I give up my dragon?” But I already knew. It was what Fear had offered to do for me.
If I didn’t care about the rebellion. Or if, like Lightbringer, I thought it was doomed, I could sever myself from Lightbringer and I could go home.
“Use the unmaking knife and cut away your dragon mark,” Tay said, and it was what I had expected, but there was still something bitterly shocking about hearing the words out loud.
“I know it’s a lot to lose, but the pain will pass.
We’ll go home. We’ll all be a family. And you’ll know that you stopped a war. ”
He reached across the table for me. Tension rippled through the room, but my brother was no threat. His gaze was sincere and troubled. “Save them all, Cara. Come home.”
“You cannot think that the queen is good,” I said. “That this rebellion is without cause.”
“I think she is beyond good, like a force of nature.” He glanced up at Fear, his face dismissive. “And I do not think the man that you love—who controls you and uses you—is good either.”
I didn’t respond to the accusation against Fear, or against me that I loved him, for that matter.
I wasn’t sure Tay was enchanted again, or at least, not in any way that mattered to this moment.
He loved me. He wanted me home. He saw this as a mercy offer from the queen: his sister, whole and safe in Stonehaven, not dying in someone else’s war.
From his perspective, shaped by the queen’s careful tutoring and what he saw of the Fae world, we were being offered a better life.
I was going to refuse that life.
As if he knew, he reminded me, “It’s all you’ve ever wanted, Cara. The three of us together. Lidi can have her magic back. We can all have her magic back. Do you even remember yours?”
I smiled faintly. “Only in dreams. In wisps.”
“It can all be restored,” he promised me.
“We’ll return to Stonehaven, but our life will be better.
We could be like royalty in our little town.
You could buy anything you wished. Books and whatever we wished for the bakery.
We could eat like every day was a holiday.
We could grow the farm. We can make life better in Stonehaven. ”
He had envisioned our future as a dream.
I could tell from the way he looked now, reminding me of a thousand childhood fantasies.
We had planned a life of wealth as we mucked the animal stalls.
We’d built wild towers of dreams together as we lay in our beds in the loft until our mother stormed to the stairs to tell us to shush. My memories made me smile.
“It’s a beautiful dream.” I could feel the attention in the room, that Fear was watching me, afraid that I would go. But I had meant it when I promised him I would not sacrifice myself.
It had also been a promise to myself.
I didn’t want to go back to Stonehaven. I didn’t know if Lightbringer would ever relent or if I would forever carry this leaden power, curled up in my chest. But there was the potential of it. There was her voice, even if that was all I ever had of her.
There was Bismyth.
There was Fear and the world seen from up high in his arms.
And there was a rebellion that had to be waged, even if my brother was right about the cost, even if it would be terrible. If there was a way to avoid war and still have freedom, then I wanted that path.
But power did not surrender. We would have to fight to make the kingdom right. My gaze rose to the Fae behind Tay, who seemed entirely bored. That troubled me too. It was as if they were just waiting.
“Come back to Stonehaven with me.” Tay’s gaze flickered down to the scabbard at my waist. “You could free yourself now from this rebellion. Or would he stop you?”
His gaze rose to Fear, full of challenge. He looked at Fear as if he hated him. “I brought my Fae guards with me so that I can protect you. So that he cannot force you to stay.”
“My husband cannot force me to do anything, to his great disappointment,” I promised Tay. “But I’m not going back to Stonehaven.”
His lips parted in shock, as if I had slapped him. The hurt was real, and I felt it in my own chest. “Cara, think about what you’re saying. What you’re doing. You’re damning all these people to fight in an endless war, to suffer and die.”
“I don’t want war at all. But you’re asking me to sacrifice myself.”
“I’m asking you to come home, to be who you were before. I’m not asking you to kill yourself, Cara. Our life in Stonehaven was good. It will be even better.” He sounded so sure of himself, and I wondered what else the queen had promised him.
“I had to hide that I was Dragon-marked for so long,” I said. “But I was meant to be one of them. I was meant for Lightbringer. That wasn’t just Fear’s trick. That was my destiny.”
“Mortals don’t have destiny,” Tay told me.
“Maybe we only have the one we choose. And I choose this one. To carry Lightbringer, and to fight with my clan, and stay at my husband’s side.”
All of that was true, but it wasn’t the most important thing I was choosing. “I made a lot of sacrifices for our family. You and Lidi and Mam were worth every one. But I’m worth something too. And this is what I’m choosing for myself.”
Tay looked as if he wanted to argue, and I shook my head, beginning to rise from the table. I couldn’t stay and argue with my brother. It hurt too much.
I’d been willing to kill Fear for the sake of my family. It was time to love and value myself as much as I loved and valued them.
“I’ve made my choice. I’m not going back to Stonehaven.”