Fieran was at my side; I knew he would be even before I felt the warm solidity of his presence. “Your last trial is beginning.”
Sera took Kiegan’s plate out of his hands. “It’s for your own good,” she told him as he let out a truly feral growl. “No one who sees you eat is going to claim you for their clan. No one wants to sit across from your massacre three times a day.”
“You know most here think I’m going to burn in a week,” he muttered. “No one expects a dragon to claim me. I could eat a turkey leg and?—”
“No,” Sera and I interrupted at the same time, so emphatically that his brow furrowed. The two of us exchanged a knowing glance.
She looked so different tonight, with her short hair styled and her black dress form-fitting, like a glimmering flow of the night sky cascading around her body. Her beauty was striking, but every time I looked at her, I saw that wild grin when she jumped in beside me into dangerous water.
“Why are you being seen with us, anyway?” I asked. “What if Fear doesn’t pick you for Bismyth? We’re the two recruits who are most…”
She helpfully picked up the thread I’d dropped, even though I’d trailed off deliberately. “Unsavory? Undesirable? Ill-favored? Ill-mannered?”
“Yes, all of that,” I cut her off, because she seemed quite willing to continue.
“You’re not dull. And some of these shifters areverydull.” Her dark eyes tracked someone through the crowd. “But not that one.”
I turned to find Ander cutting through the sea of people toward me. They melted out of his way; Ander always moved like a prince, just as much as Fieran. His attentiveness to me in this glittering room felt dangerous.
“They already made their offer,” Kiegan said abruptly. “Obsidian will choose me.”
My stomach gutted unexpectedly. “No. Come to Bismyth with me.”
He scoffed.
“I’ll make Fear guarantee it,” I said. “I want us to be together.”
“What’s the cost?” Sera asked him.
But there was no time, because Ander was at my side. His firm fingers latched around my arm. “I need you. Now.”
I nodded but cast a look over my shoulder at Kiegan as I let Ander pull me away.
“It’s not the Fae offering the tests tonight,” I guessed as Ander pulled me into his arms. This time, he held me closer, though it radiated protectiveness, not romance. “It’s the clans.”
“With the Fae pulling the strings,” he murmured. “The queen, in your case.”
As much as I never wanted to face her again, it worried me that she had set me a task to spy on Fieran and then never forced me to return. “Has she found some way to use me to hurt Fear?”
He scoffed. “She should. Fieran’s going to tear this kingdom apart. He wants to be its savior, but he also wants to remake it to suit his own vision. Maybe that vision is alluring, but in trying to create it…he’ll get every shifter killed.”
He’d glanced toward Fieran out in the crowd. Ander always knew where he was.
“And you intend to stop him. To save us all.” My tone came out light, but I wasn’t joking. “With the queen.”
“I’m not an ally of the queen, either,” he murmured.
“But you are her instrument.”
His eyes blazed, but he swallowed his anger down, looking as if he were swallowing something sharp. “She wants to give you a gift.”
“I know it’s not a gift, Ander.”
“It’s a trap.” He reeled me out, caught me again, his lips near my ear as he murmured, “But is it a trap you can escape?”
The room felt like a glittering blur, a gilt cage rising around me. “Tell me the offer; tell me the cost.”
“Fieran cannot relieve Tay’s curse. But the queen is prepared to do so tonight.”
