“You didn’t hate him then.”
“You know Fieran can be as easy to love as he is to hate.” He leveled that accusation at me like a punch. But he softened it by admitting, “I felt responsible for him. I saw myself as the older brother he needed. I was the one who could save his life.”
“And now you regret it.”
“Constantly.” He fingered his jaw absently, as if lost in the memory of blows taken.
“If you could go back in time and prevent yourself from teaching him…”
He straightened from the wall. “Cara, you don’t know what came after.”
He started for the doorway, then turned back. “Be careful tonight. Clan Amber is curious about their new sister and her loyalties. You don’t have to prove yourself?—”
“Oh, I know I do. You can control your people, but you can’t change them. Even I know that, though I’m just a foolish mortal.”
“I don’t see a foolish mortal when I look at you.” He paused. “I can’t wait to see what fierce dragon chooses you.”
I smiled faintly, unable to help it. His eyes sharpened at once, troubled by my guardedness.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have chosen me if the queen didn’t require it.”
His lips curled disbelievingly. “Now you really are being a foolish mortal.”
Forty-Seven
Iwashed and dressed and ate dinner with Tay, dreading the time I’d have to face my new clan—and my old—at the shifters’ ball.
When I went out to the courtyard, there were half a dozen other new Amber recruits waiting.
“This is the one and only time you will make this journey without flying yourselves.” Ander paced up to us, his dark gold cloak streaming behind him. “Try not to fall off. Dead shifters can’t be claimed by their dragons.”
“Is that a joke?” the girl next to me muttered.
“Not if you fall.” Ander waved his hand, and suddenly we were surrounded by dragons looming over us, with their lashing tails and enormous, toothy mouths as they regarded us. I cringed despite myself, still feeling a thrill of fear even knowing these mighty beasts were controlled by their shifters. The stories of dragons who had gone rogue had haunted me since childhood.
Now I knew those myths were used by the queen to keep mortals afraid and shifters in line, but that didn’t mean the myths were lies, either.
“Cara, you’ll ride with me,” Ander said, and the eyes of the other Amber recruits swiveled toward me judgmentally.
My cheeks colored, and I was tempted to declare that I could do anything the other recruits could. But, of course, that would have been a lie.
Lying to others is a survival skill. Lying to yourself is lethal.
I met Ander as the other recruits jumped to mount the dragons, who lowered themselves for them. Ander caught my waist in one arm and swung me up with him onto the back of a dragon that was a deep burnished copper. I settled myself as quickly as I could behind the spined head, trying to keep from touching Ander. I was a little too aware of his hard-muscled, warm body and the awkwardness of being so close to him.
Ander gestured again, and the world dropped out from beneath us as all the dragons launched. I gasped, and Ander’s arm tightened around me. “You’re all right, Cara.”
The dragons leveled out, gliding over the glittering coastline. The sea spread beneath us in endless dark blue waves.
And then the island came into view.
At first it looked like nothing more than jagged cliffs rising from the sea. But as we drew closer, the structures built into the rock came into view: arches of obsidian stone, glowing runes carved into weathered pillars, bridges suspended between towering spires draped in ivy. Lanterns floated among the trees, scattering purple and blue light.
It was a place full of tiered dance floors and banquet floors, secret grottoes that flashed into view and disappeared, and ramshackle cottages with empty chimneys and windows.
“Where did this place come from?” I asked over the roar of the wind.
