He rocked me in his arms, warm and comforting.
“I had some questions about marriage,” I told him.
“Is that so?” he asked in that damnable way he had, as if he already knew everything.
Maybe he did. Maybe he’d planted those seeds for me. Right now, I couldn’t hate his manipulations when I knew he was manipulating all of us against the queen.
“Is it true that marrying you wouldn’t just protect me but my family too?” I didn’t want to say their names, but then they fell from my lips anyway. “Tay. Lidi. One generation can’t kill another, even if by marriage.”
“The queen would be bound by the magic not to kill them.” He sounded troubled.
“Then marry me.” He had wanted me to ask—to beg, really, knowing Fear—and I would if I must. “What do we have to do?”
“Cara…” His tone was impossible for me to parse, and so was his face. “Let’s discuss this when things are calmer.”
“Isn’t it what you want? I thought you wanted to marry me.”
“I do,” he said.
“For practical reasons,” I added, and he smiled slightly at that. It made me feel as if I were obvious to him, too, as if I must be throwing off the impression that I had indeed fallen for him and now I was protesting the truth.
“Yes,” he said gently. “I want to marry you and know that you will survive and meet your full potential. I believe your potential to trouble the queen is near limitless once?—”
“Don’t tell me,” I whispered against my own edge of curiosity. “Because I won’t be able to help telling her.”
His face shifted again, and I tried to read the flash of feelings across those chiseled planes in the moonlight. Was that relief? Victory? Wonder?
“I know,” he told me. “I can tell you everything after we are married, Cara. When you’ll also be protected from being enchanted.”
“And Tay will as well?” I seized on that possibility, hoping desperately it was true.
“Yes,” he admitted, sounding reluctant.
“Then why not tonight?”
“Because you might be making the right choice, but you’re not thinking clearly.”
“I am thinking clearly. I’m protecting my family. Like I always do.”
“You do. And I both admire that fierce protectiveness of yours and am growing to fear it.”
“Why? If you’re not a threat to them…why does my protectiveness of them make you afraid?”
“Cara, I fear you’re a threat toyourself.”
I let out a shaky laugh. “Tay thought he was freeing me to follow my dreams when he left with the queen.”
“Oh, Cara.” He sounded genuinely heartbroken for me, but was Fieran ever genuine? He stroked my arm gently, turning his face into my forehead to press a kiss to my hair. “What a painful night. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”
“Howdidyou find me?”
He hesitated. “A tracking spell.”
“Of course.” I couldn’t even summon anger. I was grateful he’d been able to reach me.
“It alerted me when you left the barracks’ boundary. I was on my way to find you, and then, when you were so afraid, it alerted me again, and I was…” His jaw worked once. “Eager to reach you.”
He’d seemed pretty eager to kill that which threatened me, too.
