I stared at him skeptically.
“I’m serious. Your only loyalty is to your brother and your sister. You’re scheming for the life you think you deserve. Working that awful little farm until your brother marries and your little sister grows up, and your dreams wither. But the fields will bloom, and so will they, and that’s all that matters, right?”
The image he’d just rattled off so easily—as if it were a foregone conclusion—stung. “You’re an asshole.”
“You’re callingmenames, sweet little traitor? For the most part, I admire your loyalty—though I wish I had a share of it. I’m not angry.”
He sounded awfully magnanimous for a man who had stolen my sister’s magic, used my brother’s suffering, and successfully trapped me at his side in what was likely to be my doom.
“How generous of you,” I said coolly.
“Hold this,” he told me, handing me something while he held abandage strip between his teeth. The words came out garbled. “I’m going to need both hands for the stitches.”
I might as well be blunt. He’d figure out the truth anyway, and the queen would know too. “What does the queen want? She has to know we’d be having this conversation. Or are you a mystery to her?”
I sometimes felt like a stranger to my own mother, even though we’d shared the same house.
“She has plots upon plots.”
“Why do I have a feeling that’s hereditary?”
“Perhaps.” He sounded remarkably unaffected by the accusation he had much in common with the evil queen. “But we have plots for different purposes.”
“You don’t trust me. Fine. But tell me what it is that you want, at least in broad strokes, Fieran. You’re trying to free the shifters from this hell the queen has created for them?”
“I do want to see shifters freed from the Trials.” He gritted his teeth as he poured a cleansing potion over his wound. “Andyouwant to be free from the Trials, so you should work at my side as my ally.”
“As your ally, or as your wife?” I asked, still stuck on that bizarre proposition of his.
“Ideally, your wifeisyour ally. It’s awkward when you’re enemies.”
“The queen wants me to report back. She knew you’d feed me information to report to her.” I didn’t try to hide the irritation in my voice. “What lies have you already told me?”
“I did learn from the best.” He sat gingerly, holding the edges of his wound together so he could begin to stitch it. He couldn’t hide the way he winced, the way the muscles in his lean side spasmed.
“Why don’t you go to the healer?”
“I might as well stay in practice. It’s not as if being stabbed is an uncommon experience for me.” He flashed me a smile, though it was a shaky one. “Isn’t that a thought that cheers you up?”
He bit his lip as the needle dipped under his skin, and came up again.
“Why not use your healing magic?”
“It costs my dragon. Bleeding him to make the potion.” His voicewas short, along with his breath, from the pain. “I’d rather suffer a little so I can take less of it. She said she’d grant your brother peace?”
“Yes. I found the choice of wording troubling.”
“As well you should. She might mean she’d cure him, or she might mean she’d kill him. Which leads to two possible conclusions.”
“Which are?” The thought that my brother was in danger set my heart to a feverish beat.
Fieran looked undisturbed. “Perhaps she doesn’t need you, she plans to kill you, and that entire conversation was misdirection. Or she doesn’t know if shecancure him, so she’s keeping her options. The magic won’t let her lie, but that’s never limited her.”
“Why would she want to kill me?” The answer was clear as soon as I said the words, and before Fieran could beat me to it, I added, “Because you’ve decided I’m useful. You’re the reason Tay and I are in danger.”
“You were already in danger. Your brother was dying of a curse no simple Fae could have cured, and you were going to die once the shifter’s curse reached your door.”
The queen must be right that I was immune to the curse as a mortal, given that I was a year older than he thought I was and still alive. The nightmares of burning troubled me, but it made sense my mind would try to come to terms with my likely fate when I was unclaimed by a dragon.
