Ander moved to my side protectively, gripping his sword’s hilt.
“What do you think he’s going to do?” I demanded, putting my hand over his. “You beat him to the edge of death, Ander.”
“And he’s still the most dangerous thing in this kingdom,” Ander warned me.
Fieran glanced at him dismissively. His face was a mass of bruises, his lip cut and swollen red. Somehow he still looked rakish and alluring. “I’d never hurt her.”
“Let me stay with him, Ander,” I said. “He’s watched over me enough as I visited the healer.”
“He’s the reason you’ve visited the healer,” Ander reminded me.
“Cara?” Tay’s voice carried down the hall.
He stood at the far end of the corridor, small in the expanse of glittering Fae architecture, wrapped in a coat too fine and far too long for him. His hair was mussed, his eyes bright and terrified andalive.
“Tay.” The word broke out of me like a sob. My feet moved before I could think, before guilt or heartbreak could pull me back.
Ander stepped aside without a word, his face softening for the first time since the arena.
I rushed toward my brother. Tay met me halfway, colliding with me in a fierce, shaking embrace.
By the time I turned back, the healers were carrying Fieran away.
Fear raised his hand, still bloodied, in a flippant wave. I couldn’t read his face.
“He doesn’t want you to stay with him,” Ander told me, calm and rational and perhaps lying to me too. I didn’t trust him.
It felt as if part of my heart went with Fieran.
Ander and Fieran’s lieutenants completed the selection ceremony alongside the other leaders. Ander brought Tay and I to watch from a hall beneath the arena, my heart aching as Anayla selected the other members of Bismyth.
Afterward, Clan Amber received Tay and me as if I were a prize. They cheered as Tay and I walked in behind Ander.
The quarters they gave us were in the midst of their warm hallway, with stone walls hung with thick tapestries. They gave Tay and me adjacent rooms, with a door opening between the two of them that we left standing open. I never wanted to be out of shouting distance of my brother again; I felt certain I’d lose him somehow still.
I was one of them, no longer locked out. Or in.
And yet, I’d never felt more trapped.
I sat on the edge of the bed, still wearing the same clothes from the Trials. I should bathe, I should change, and yet something made me resist casting off the remnants of the day.
Dust clung to my boots. Blood—I didn’t even know whose—was dried on my sleeve.
“Cara.” Tay stood in the doorway, giving me a worried look.
“I’m sorry.” I blurted out the words as I leapt to my feet, my grief and shame spilling over. “I tried so hard to get you safe, and here you are in this awful place with me. It doesn’t matter that you’re healed; you’re?—”
“Hey, hey.” He wrapped his arms around me, hugging me. “It matters tomethat I’m healed, all right? I’m not dead weight being hauled around asyoufight the monsters. I can fight the monsters too. I can watch your back.”
I sagged into a hug that felt like family.
“You don’t have any reason to apologize tome.But you know that, don’t you?” He pulled back so he could give me that too-knowing smile—thatI grew up with you and all your assorted nonsensesmile.
A knock sounded at the door.
Ander stepped in, cloak unfastened, sword at his hip. He didn’t smile, but there was something kind in his voice. “You and every other new recruit will be expected at the shifters’ ball tonight. I’ll leave Candassa and Riven behind to make sure Tay is safe.”
I nodded. He seemed thoughtful, but I couldn’t forget the unsettling look on his face as he drove Fieran to the very edge of death.
